He'd been pushing down as hard as he could on the pedal. Right off the ledge, if necessary. He was going to stick the landing even if it snapped his ankles like a teenage gymnast being abused by a Russian trainer at the Olympics. Distantly, making a mental note to make a real note eventually, he was curious about why they seemed so hype on dinner. But it was nothing. Everything was taking Armand off the proverbial ledge with him.
And now,
He thinks of memories, mismatched, revealed. He looks at Armand crumpled against the floor, sitting sullen and disheveled beneath his Armand-shaped dent in the plaster, and he thinks of his own Daniel-shaped hole in the plaster of Louis' boytoy apartment in San Fransisco. He had sat there a mirror of this, also disheveled. Not as sullen. More terrified.
Clickclack, tick, far-away sounds of Louis extracting himself from the unit, the building, and maybe their lives. His words of protection feel laughable. Daniel is going to die anyway, what's the big deal? He can't call out, can't message his clandestine lifeline, not with his burning laptop— Ah, shit. A sigh, and he turn from the vampire. Grabs a cushion, heads for the fire. What a way to go it'd be. Not Parkinson's, not the creature he's now exposing his back to, but fumes from burning plastic. C'mon.
"You okay back there?"
He doesn't know why it comes out of his mouth. It just does. Thwap, he taps at the tiny fire, smothering it.
If not for Daniel, maybe Armand would stay here for some time. Not just in this room, but here on the floor. Maybe he would sink the last few inches down and lay in the dust and consider the absolute totality of the void that has now suffused his whole self, from somewhere cold within his gut and bleeding out to the edge of his fingers. He has much to contemplate. He has nothing to contemplate.
And then there is Daniel's voice, like it's coming from the end of some long tunnel. He lifts his head, first, and then adjusts. Folding his legs into a sit.
The death he considers granting Daniel is far from easeful. He could do like every other fucking vampire on this miserable world and tear what upsets him into furious pieces. The urge is there, certainly, naturally, and he can lift it up like a jewel and consider its facets.
Alright. Well, that's good, probably. He does wonder, slightly hysterically as he otherwise very calmly begins to salvage notes, papers, photographs, if Louis left Armand alive out of affection, or because he's simply not capable of killing him. But as soon as he thinks it, he lets it leave him— none of it matters.
Strange. He doesn't know what to feel. After an interview it's just over, usually. Each party awkwardly says their goodbyes and packs it in. Daniel can't leave under his own power, here. He's been managed carefully for the entire stay, and Louis, apparently, is going to call a car for him. Eventually.
—Are you sure?
No, no. Don't ask that. Don't poke him, you've poked him enough. You left holes, man.
"Alright."
Armand may not deserve the courtesy of avoiding any further antagonizing while he's down, but Daniel can't think of a great reason to carry on, either. He won. A stylish end. No need to cringe it up with a childish victory lap.
—What was dinner about?
Don't ask that, either. Interview is done. Just try to turn your fucking reporter brain off.
"We're both packing. Anything I can help you put together?"
Okay, too much brain was turned off. Bad. Overkill. At some point (this point, here) courtesy becomes a little mocking.
Is it Louis' final command of him, that has him put away that tempting jewel? Near to final, if we're being pedantic, but regardless, he has been told not to hurt the man. There is no asking or making, only the finality of a thing. Not an unappealing finality.
And Daniel's thoughts are even clearer than his voice. Are you sure? Armand draws in a long breath. What was dinner about? Breathes it out again.
Which isn't to say the words out loud don't penetrate.
Slowly, he stands. A graceful, borderline unnatural way of going from criss-cross applesauce to light on his feet.
"You barely understand what you've taken apart," he says, and now he sounds a little less far away to himself, turning to look at Molloy. Molloy who is not running, but then, where could he meaningfully go? (Louis is leaving. He is by, now, in the private lobby. His mind is busy. Frantic. Armand can't make out anything from the noise.)
The distant direction of his eye narrows, focuses. The smell of burning plastic, heated metal. No need to address that, as far as the information on the device is concerned. Daniel has everything backed up. Daniel is prepared.
He drops his stare on the items Daniel is scraping together. Packing. Absurd. As if any of this is worth anything.
Nope @ all of that. What he's taken apart doesn't matter, because it's apart. It's done and Armand had damn near eighty years to sort it out on his own anyway, to come clean, to get therapy, to go tie up the loose end and murder Daniel none-the-wiser. Instead he yes maitre'd his way right to this moment.
And obviously, Daniel is just going home.
So:
"I know you do art, this is the business you're running, curating and dealing. You have an unbelievable collection. Do you like it? Just— this isn't an interview, I'm just asking."
Big bright eyes seem to burn that little bit brighter as his words are swerved past, as another item is shoved forward. His hands curling at his sides, his posture perfectly tense, poised, heedless of plaster dust greying his sweater, dusty in his hair. The scrapes on his face are already healed, leaving behind dry blood.
"It was Louis' passion. I maintained it."
Was. A slip, maybe. What does Louis have passion for now? Or maybe, was, in that Louis isn't here, Louis is a figment.
Armand steps nearer.
"Your point, Mr. Molloy? Do you wish to itemise the list of all the nothing I have left?"
He is quiet, but not. A speaking voice, but one that fills the room a little oddly. Puts pressure on the air.
His skin itches. Not quite goosebumps, but a near thing, fine hairs on the back of his neck threatening to stand up. Daniel has never been much for the great outdoors, fatherly manly pursuits of fishing and camping, but he did once go to Yosemite for a Memorial Day, and he sat in a plastic chair for six hours staring out at the view and editing his notes while everyone else hiked up Half Dome like lunatics, and a black bear had walked out of the tree line not six feet away from him.
Any time Armand moves feels a little bit like that. He wonders why the fuck Talamasca is more worried about Louis; maybe it has something to do with murdering the coven in Paris. He supposes DJ Sam has more reason to find that worrying than Armand-Amadeo-Arun's stare, though DJ Sam is wrong.
"What do you like?"
Daniel looks at him. Not art, not the theater. What is it. The scar on his neck weighs more, today. Does Armand like crossword puzzles? Counterstrike all headshots rounds? Origami?
A twitch to his still expression, brow furrowed, and when he takes another step, his feet lift from the floor, drifting up an inch, six inches, two feet into the air.
There is a way vampires have in the world. When they mimic mortal men, maybe there is some strange entrancing quality, or some prey-type unease, but it's an undercurrent. The more you might talk to them, and Daniel certainly has experience, the more that undercurrent weakens. It goes away completely, even.
And then they reveal themselves, a reveal that has nothing to do with the intellectual. A sudden and undeniable wrongness, an innate quality that transcends terror and lands instead in horror. Armand drifts closer to Daniel and the light seems to bend.
"You're asking the wrong questions again. You wanted to know about our dinner plans."
His skin could crawl off of him. It's beautiful in a perverse way— perverse like, against nature, perverse like, it's alluring in a way that falls under no other category. Armand is frightening. Daniel can now with dreadful clarity identify why his unease at first seeing him levitate was so familiar. He has seen this man do impossible, insane things. Drinking blood is painfully boring in comparison to the strangeness that is Armand just existing.
"Now that's irrelevant."
Daniel stares right at him despite his genuine fear, and the tremor threatening his left hand, the disease finding his emotional weakness quicker than the mind-reader he's refusing to budge in front of. Fight-or-fight for Daniel Molloy is I'm going to stand right here and see what happens.
"Louis is gone, there are no more 'our' dinner plans. It's you, me, and the tree, until we're all out of here."
Behind Daniel, the tree immolates. A burst of fire from inside of itself, deep where the trunk begins splitting into roots. Flame floods upwards, escaping containment, ribboning along the branches, catching on pink petals. It's dizzyingly fast, the power and force of this inferno—no build at all before the whole thing is wreathed in fire.
"One down."
A shake to his voice. Louis is gone. Plants? Does he like plants? What did he feel when he carefully packed his magnolia clipping, one of the essential things he brought with him? He doesn't remember, now. This wasn't his odyssey of recollection.
Daniel doesn't run. Not like his usual prey, before they collapse, shaking, begging. Daniel stands in his fear. Is that what makes him fascinating?
Surges forward. Lands. His hands finding Daniel's face, and he is very strong. Even this configuration, this cage of fingers that doesn't dig or bruise, is just the right kind of unyielding that there is no real means of wrenching away.
A fire alarm goes off. Piercing.
"We were going to offer it," he says, voice raising over the sound. "The gift. We were going to give you a choice."
Daniel experiences a spike of disorienting terror so intense that for a second, he's dizzy with it. His mind hasn't finished processing the tree's annihilation and the ominous ring of One down before Armand has him caged.
He might just have a fucking heart attack right here, and Armand won't get to do anything fun at all. A tremor wracks his hand, and Daniel tries to ball it into a fist, but he feels distant. Panic, he realizes, even as he stays still and doesn't try to squirm away. (Couldn't anyway.)
"No you weren't."
There's no petulant denial to be found in his head. Daniel truly doesn't believe that Armand would have endured it, and his retort here is easy, automatic, unhelpfully scoffing. Calling bullshit on the monster about to pop his head off with no effort exerted whatsoever. He wonders if a sprinkler system is about to go off, wouldn't that be dramatic— but no, he thinks with rising hysteria, they have so much fucking money and they don't need to breathe, this whole unit can be enclosed away from the sun. A clean agent system is probably about to go off and suck all the oxygen out of the room to kill the fire and save the artwork, and Daniel is going to pass out.
"You'd never allow it. And you know I'd have said no anyway. You know I'd give two seconds of consideration and realize I'd just be Claudia, waiting around for you to torch me."
What'd Louis think was going to happen, when he left? Ah, well. Sucks about the book. He'd have liked writing it.
The cleaned up tape had captured ordinary shouted voices, two men overlapping, sneering, a wholly ordinary cacophony. And while there is the reflex for Armand to speak just that little bit louder past the alarm, it is like he doesn't need to. A voice that comes from inside Daniel's brain, stereo surround sound heartbreak delivered through a mannerly affect.
The lay of his thumbs on Daniel's cheeks are gentle. A soft stroke of them as he considers the boy, October 8th, 1973, who had so gratefully bent down his head. If there's acceptance there now, it's of a completely different nature.
"How unexpected you have proven to be."
The air will be funneled out of the penthouse very soon. Armand can hear the scurrying of movement through the building. Mechanisms and people. He has never shed a single blood red tear in Daniel's presence, in Louis' presence, and doesn't start now, fire-bright eyes clear as he flicks a glance aside.
And then back. A decision. Panicky, almost, the way it slides into place, and the immediate demand on him to act before there is no more time.
A thumb slides down, gets up under Daniel's jaw, efficient in the way he pushes his chin up and aside. Other vampires probably do this with more panache. The way Armand's jaws close against Daniel's neck first feels almost ordinary, blunt teeth, wet and damp, pressure and then the undeniable and absolutely painful piercing of fangs breaking skin.
He wraps an arm around the other man's shoulders, and when Daniel's legs give, he manages them both to the floor. By then, the pain will be gone.
Real fucking funny now that Daniel knows the sleepy seduction into death was Santiago's routine. The theater for Lestat, art dealing for Louis.
Is anything about you real? So many years in you, and you couldn't figure out that Louis was real, even when he gave you a roadmap? All you had to do was let Claudia go. See her and her girlfriend once a year on Christmas or something. That was real.
Doesn't bother trying to talk. Armand lifts his head, and Daniel stares at the ceiling, listens to the siren-like beep that signals the gas exchange system is about to kick on. A warning to cover your ears and get out. He's not going to. Is he? It feels like a threat, like so much of it back there in that shitty apartment was a threat, but also like a child prodding at a dissected frog in a classroom, uncertain.
I was real, then. All that shit I asked for and offered, was real. You were terrifying but you weren't boring. You were fascinating and you still are. I don't believe you're empty. Your accent changes when you speak Arabic. Is it because Arabic is so old? I had a dog, when I was a kid. I miss the dog.
Ears ring from the shotgun sound of the gas system discharging. Vision blurs. CO2 is safe for up until five minutes, allegedly, but what about if you have Parkinson's? What if you're rapidly losing blood because a monster is draining it out of you, delicate and violent at once? Daniel sees his life, and he tries to laugh. Bloodloss or smoke inhalation or halocarbons.
Armand drinks in long, slow swallows. Thoughts are absorbed the same way, settling in his belly, warm and heavy. Filling. If he isn't empty, why does it fill him? If he isn't empty, why—as Daniel's thoughts slow, and quiet, and wan, but stay as busy as they can to the final struggle—then why does he find himself holding the dying mortal so tightly, even after the last viable mouthful of blood is siphoned out from easy veins?
Smoke. Crackling fire, which struggles like someone slammed the flue shut, and then dies.
There is the smallest tremor through his fingers as Armand opens his palm with his fangs, and presses it against Daniel's slack mouth. Barely anything, certainly not enough to coax Daniel's mind into trying to drink, but that's barely necessary.
Strange, potent, a smear of blood that is barely enough to swallow but mingles with saliva, enters the failing human by way of membrane, little evil sparks of unlife.
Whatever happens next, Daniel is only capable of remembering it in abstract. Clutching pain, bowel-low and sick. Fever. Hunger. Then worse, thirst. The kind that feels like you'd kill a man to slake it. (On that point—) And then, in the dark, it comes. Water in the desert. There is no moving, and no ability to make it come any faster than the meagre trickle that Daniel has no choice but to accept.
"That's enough," says a voice.
And then he wakes up.
The sound of daytime traffic, from within a room low enough to the street to hear it. Daniel has seen enough shitty hotel rooms to recognise the basic layout of this one, king bed and yellow walls, fading laundry. The light is odd, with a lamp on, and the windows mostly covered with something thicker than standard threadbare curtains, casting deep shadow. But there's a corner where the daylight comes in, the corner with the obligatory chair that no one sits in, except someone is.
Lanky figure, bathed in the sun, hands folded between his knees.
The door to the bathroom is closed. The door to the hallway out is closed. And Daniel is hungry.
He's had so many hangovers, but this one is bad. His vision is fucked, a kaleidoscope of nauseating color, his head is pounding, he's starving. Blinking blearily, tasting iron, bruises on— on where? Daniel touches his face, and he cringes at the sticky feeling, alcohol or come or both, probably, and he sways as he is, prone, before he makes the attempt to sit up.
Not entirely successful.
Someone's with him, and he grunts a hello. Is that—
No, he wouldn't have taken her out. Not like this. Some things are his own issues, and Daniel has plenty, things he does on weekends and vacations and 'work trips', and he feels dizzy.
"Morning, man." He sounds so weird. Daniel coughs. "I'm completely in the fucking bag, do you—" augh. Pain. Pain in his stomach, his chest, twisting, demanding. "Do you have an Advil, or anything? I'll clear out in a second, don't worry."
Are his hands alright? Daniel tries again to roll onto his side, get his feet on the floor.
No tremors, no sense of disconnection, no absence of dexterity. If it wasn't for the cramping, the pounding in his head and the labour of his heart struggling in his chest, and the nausea, and the hunger—Advil would be a start, certainly—and beneath all of that, something else. Something good. Maybe whatever he took last night hasn't cleared out of his system.
A lurch. Something agreeable beneath the waters of his consciousness. Yes, just a one-night stand, an inconsequential collision that is, perhaps, not worth the hangover, but then again, Daniel doesn't remember much about the main event. Maybe he half-remembers something else that can fill in the blanks. A gentle hand is helping, stirring them up. Take your pick.
"No rush," says the man in the corner. Pretty, narrow face, big eyes, black curls. "Take your time."
There is a sound coming from the bathroom. Like a person, moaning. Not a nice sound.
It's bad, one of the worst, but he's got experience. He's done a few of these binges— a couple times on purpose, indulging in the dangerous cocktail of desperation, boredom, and the desire to show off to whoever he's with; a few times on accident. Daniel is generous about the accidents, because even if someone doses him with something, it's his own fault for being out here shoving it all up his nose or, once in a blue moon, injecting it.
Speaking of. He pats himself down, feeling the awfulness of all of it and the thread of euphoria that says he's still high, but finds no needle marks on his arms, even as he rolls up the unfamiliar and frankly ugly sweater sleeves. Is he wearing a watch?
Daniel looks up. That sound—
Fuck, but the man sitting over there is beautiful. A look of dumb shock takes over his woozy face. I pulled that?
"You're okay?"
How predictable I must seem to you.
Daniel manages to sit up, clutching the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. He stares at the sunlight, the extremely good-looking guy veiled by it, feels the all-devouring hunger cramp his stomach. What the fuck. It's never been quite like this. His vision does something funny, tunneling like he's about to throw up before blowing out again, and his hearing becomes hyper-sensitive. Too much weed, he thinks. It always does this with bad weed. Why does he think a few joints are going to do anything on top of hard drugs but make it worse. Like beer and wine. Knock it off, just do more coke, you know that, Daniel.
Like taking a bath.
"Hey what's up with the bathroom."
It comes out too fast. Heywhatsupwiththebathroom. The noises in there. The feeling, like if he doesn't get there and see to whatever's in there he's going to die. He's so fucking hungry, but it's deeper, desperate, fiending. Must have been amphetamines in whatever he took, to be crashing this hard and weird after.
Armand wonders where they are, exactly, in Daniel's mind. What city, what year. It's getting more difficult to tell, and soon, it will be impossible, save for that ineffable, inarticulate sense of empathy that Louis has spent the past week describing, desperate and calm, a terrible and unbreaking silver thread.
The facts of it are this: they are still in Dubai. Of what Louis had commanded of him, being gone was something Armand was happy to abide by. ('Happy'.) The anti-fire measures did their work. There is still historical documentation strewn about. He had told the staff touch nothing, and they won't.
The chair creaks as he stands.
Considers the mess of a half-form fledgling, considers the street outside. He should flick aside the curtains and be done with it. He should do a lot of things.
Instead, he wanders nearer. He sits at the edge of the bed alongside Daniel, placing a hand on his back while he brings his own wrist to his mouth. He leaves Daniel to draw his own conclusions about the sight of him pressing fangs into his own forearm, because in a moment it won't matter. The smell of blood is all-consuming, and when he offers it out to Daniel (dark blood welling out from neat little puncture wounds), he won't have much of a choice as to what he does next.
"Slowly," he instructs. Uselessly.
And a voice in Daniel's head, murmuring. I will tell you this: I begged for the gift, in the end. My maker denied me many times. He believed it to be a force of corruption. I thought it was preservation.
The groaning sound in the bathroom gives way to the sound of a heartbeat. Frantic. The rasp of breathing through a blocked nose. It all sounds as perfectly clear as the rest.
Louis, a merchant of pleasure, a dozen like him in every corner of his Storyville. A streak of violence, yes, the repression of desire and rage entwined. Would I have seen it? I don't know. Armand flexes his hand. Lestat, a player in an ever-increasing demographic of mediocre artists. And Claudia, I cannot begin to fathom. But all chosen. All with some spark that someone more monstrous than they desired to carry into eternity.
His voice is fading. Daniel's consciousness will rise with each long swallow.
Upriver from real civilization, San Francisco Bay and Oakland, is the stuffy and headache inducing state capital— Sacramento is closer to Modesto than any other major city, though, and Daniel knows it well, including which downtown haunts cater to more than just suits. Not much in the way of identity politics; class issues, mostly. Hundreds of thousands of would-be politicians and lawyers and conservatives pretending to be open minded.
There is someone in the bathroom. There is someone sitting next to him on the bed, touching his back. Outside is the city with its half-dozen squat little excuses for skyscrapers, the Americn River, his wife packing boxes for the move to Los Angeles, and...
It's easy, the way he shifts from the past to now. "Now", at least, in big wobbly quotations. Daniel is not one hundred percent sure when or why now is, and for a moment he is outside of himself, and Armand - even as he is imparting his first and last true telepathic messages - will have that same view, the two of them on a motel bed, wrist to mouth, hand to back. As though they are also standing a yard away, watching themselves.
Standing there and watching themselves, Daniel turns to Armand (also standing there, watching themselves).
You don't think your maker saw a spark in you, do you. Because you asked for it.
Armand's blood is more euphoric than any drug. It is more filling than any food. Daniel hears Slowly like the chime of a hypnotist's bell, but he can't quite figure out what to do about it.
Throw-away comments about chatter happening around a scene, as Daniel picked at it to get the timeline straight before waxing poetic about the points on it. Madeleine, bright-eyed, young, not of Armand like her lover wanted, but of Louis; and through him, of Lestat, and the bloodline Armand had detailed out like a Biblical heritage. He had bigger fish to fry and couldn't waste time on pushing about why she felt compelled to clarify that Louis does, in fact, love Armand. Why it made it into the retelling.
There is something cutting to Daniel's observations. Precise and deep at the same time. He should pull the curtain back, let the sunlight in. He should wrench his wrist away and see if Daniel will ask him for more, too, if he could be able to hear a ring of truth to it beneath the hunger. It repulses him, this. He said that.
Ineffable connection, as ancient blood warms Daniel's arteries. They know at the same time that Madeleine felt nothing of the kind. She felt a ghost of something else, of someone else. How Armand knew this as he walked away.
It had been important, at the time, that Louis remember it differently.
No, Armand says. Agreeable. He can award Daniel the confirmation he scarcely needs, and then Armand leaves Daniel's mind as it closes off from him forever.
The drawing of his blood has always felt as pleasurable to him as its taking. His heart insistently beats and keeps its pace even as a powerful hunger pulls blood through his veins. It feels like silk sliding on his skin. The happy smile Daniel had caught as Louis drank from him had—been a show, yes, but sometimes true things are displayed to execute a purpose, as well as false.
The hand at Daniel's back slides up his spine, to the back of his neck, and holds fast. Removes his wrist. Daniel is stronger than he was but there is nothing he could do to shrug off Armand's grip, a rare show of strength that vanishes as soon as Armand is able to stand.
His wrist wound heals immediately.
He could chalk this up to evading Louis' command, finding a loophole, acting out of spite, but Armand can recognise when something is over. There is no satisfaction in knowing that Louis' hold over him is less than irrelevant. Louis can't kill him. Louis is no one. (His heart, battered, pumping affection out of itself and into his chest like poison.) This is something for himself.
"I'll be curious to know if the spark in you will stay," Armand says out loud, his hand lingering on Daniel's shoulder. "For what it's worth, Daniel, I hope so."
They can pretend together that this is a social experiment.
Daniel asked for it, once. He would have probably asked for it now, if it were just Louis, if he hadn't made the discoveries he'd made. A pathetic cry to be released from the degenerative disease, from the misery of human life, from his mundane emotional agonies. Does that leave him without a spark?
Armand never hears this questioning. Daniel, maybe, never even fully realizes he's thinking about it; the blood is too powerful, and by now, his experience is running out of usefulness. What was a steadying hand at the start of the staggering bloodlust is now of little value— it's too much, the loss is like a knife plunged into his gut, the center of the crippling starvation pain.
"Hope?"
He stares up at him. Glasses absent. There's barely any blood on his mouth, having devoured all that was offered to him so completely. Daniel hears people outside, far away outside, talking and thinking in languages he recognizes but doesn't really understand beyond pigin greetings and left or right. He can say 'bathroom', 'airport', 'embassy', 'hello' and 'help' in Arabic. He feels the panicking human in the bathroom. He hopes it's not Real Rashid, as he is not going to be able to control himself.
"Since when does your hope extend beyond being repulsed by a hole?"
Daniel has held still in the face of this man before, by force. He has been terrified of Armand before. He has been certain he would die, he has whispered his desire to live, he has been agreeable as any optimistic hostage pissing himself in terror. He offered to blow him. He'd have done so. He sits and waits for that answer even as his consciousness begins to spiral, hearing nothing but heartbeats. His. Armand's. The person in the bathroom's.
Despite himself, the way he feels as though he has stepped back away from the outwards operations of his physical body, staring down at Daniel as if through magnified glass—
Not a laugh, exactly. A breath, shaped as one, the corner of his mouth in a brief and subtle uptick. Daniel asking questions, circling back, offering riposte while his body is processing its death, while it grows into something else.
It's probably too much to ask for that to be accepted as a full answer, but it nearly is.
"Do you think I don't know when I've been disproven?"
It's close to a real question. He had sat passive, frozen, as eighty years worth of craft was dismantled before him, a sprung airlock, sirens blaring as everything was blown into the void. He had fled Daniel, chasing Louis, and some of the most ridiculous bullshit he can remember himself saying for some time coming out of his mouth, desperate. Childish. So it's only fair to imagine nothing has changed since 1973.
His hands close into fists. He can't touch him. He wouldn't know why he is doing it, right now.
"We can give it a hundred years," is more wry. "Catch up on old times. It would be a shame if you hadn't been able to hold onto what makes you when we do."
Nothing to Armand. Because Armand is just watching, even though—
He's so fucking hungry. It's worse than fitting, fiending, the shakes, withdrawals. It feels as though his body is devouring itself in desperation, crunching inward like some sci-fi movie and he's being sucked out a tiny hole in a spacecraft.
Pounding of a heartbeat. Rushing of blood. There behind the bathroom door. Daniel lurches but just falls to the floor, hands and knees, clumsy like a calf taking its first steps in a stable.
"Is this really the only way you could think to get me to shut up?" His voice is wretched with rasping desperation. Armand can't read his mind anymore. But, but, oh fuck, oh god,
"I can feel you."
Stranger than the hunger that is splitting him open and restitching him in some other alien image. A sense he's never had before, a phantom limb that's all over, and awareness and at the center of it, another person. It's not the person in the goddamn bathroom, it's Armand, like he can see him inside his head but it's not imaginary, it's there, he feels him like fingerprints lingering on his skin. If the door opens. If the door opens.
His hand, on the handle of the bathroom door. Pausing.
The connection between maker and fledgling isn't unknown to him, but it's been close to half a millennia since he has known it beyond the sensory absorption of the vampires around him, their little tangles, their frayed threads of connection.
"Yes," he says. "And I can feel you."
An awareness, at its most basic. He could close his eyes and identify the shape of Daniel in the room, like he is also on his hands and knees, also feeling fangs grow in his mouth like it's all new again. And in return—
Well, there is no concealing anything. What they lack in precision, telepathic whispers, clear thoughts, the divulging or discovering of secrets, this connection makes up for in the way there is no ability to block it, manipulate it, erase it, no more than you can will your blood to flow in a new direction.
And there is something in Armand that feels like a closed, shaking fist, grasping onto that tether. Frightened in a way that seems far from existential.
"Sundown is in three hours," he says, as if he could speak over it. "But you can leave the room as you like. I'll clean up, this time."
Opening the door. Inside, a spike of panicky breathing from the stranger inside, who has been commanded to lay still, a sacrificial goat.
Haha. Well. Given everything, Armand should be fucking obligated to clean up. It's his fault. So it's not that generous.
In a world where this is not happening, Daniel critiques the offer on those grounds. Instead, there is a phantom sensation of his hand laying over Armand's trembling one. Not comforting because Daniel isn't in a state of mind where he can reach such nuance (and wouldn't be doling out comfort to Armand on purpose anyway), but a raw, ragged cousin of it. Lost in a storm, he grabs at the only familiar thing he can reach. His only company in this hurricane. At least they won't drown alone.
Daniel doesn't hear him. He hears only a heart, and lungs, and something else. Liquid sunlight moving over satin. Life, life that he needs, more than water, more than cocaine, more than quaaludes that aren't decades past their expiration dates. More than fucking oxygen.
Moving into the bathroom is either too fast or too unnecessary for him to process, but he completes the action. Moving from where he is to being where he should be is much the same. One hand grabbing the stranger's hair to jerk his head back, the other clawing at his clothed chest. Daniel stares. It's a split-second but it goes on for an eternity.
Am I doing this?
Before he even completes the thought, fangs are embedded into the sacrifice's throat. Skin like the paper wrapper of the sweetest candy, a frustrating entanglement— then suddenly it's not, the bite has gone deep enough to shred both jugular and carotid, and blood flows grotesque and abundant. Daniel drinks, and drinks, and drinks.
Armand doesn't watch, and scarcely needs to. He can hear it, he can feel it, the vampire consuming the two time Pulitzer winning investigative journalist, who has made his living absorbing and producing. The man on the bathroom ground has a story in him, and he bleeds it out between demanding fangs, monstrous appetite. Yes, this is revenge. This is punishment.
It is. In time. A hundred years from now, maybe less. It hadn't been a lie when he'd said this repulsed him. He had seen it, the way he'd become repulsive in the eye of the man he'd worshiped. The men he has worshiped.
Daniel knows the rules. If he chokes himself on dead blood after all he's heard in the past week, it's his own fault.
Armand gets to clean up the sacrificial person-goat, and he gets to clean up the man in a room down the hall, who made the mistake of walking towards a snack machine the moment Daniel opened the door. A Tunisian national in Dubai for construction work, on the verge of being trafficked. Daniel has seen a documentary about the matter before, made by a peer coming up in the investigative journalism world. The piece had been dull. He wonders why. It's clearly a dire issue.
He makes it back to the apartment building, where security guards are nervous— he is on the guest list, they have seen him coming and going, he seems to have been injured. Rashid intervenes.
Louis foots the bill for his evacuation, but Louis never returns to the building before Daniel leaves. Not to New York. To London, first, through Talamasca, where they have plans for him. Debriefing and a laundry list of other things; they want him to compare notes with Sam, they want to arrange for sterile blood bags, they want him to stay with them. Daniel plays along until he can grab a hard drive, and he's out the back door.
Who can fucking write under those conditions. Please.
One hundred years, huh.
Plenty of time to get acquainted with the nerve in his head that doesn't belong to him, and how to twist it just right.
He disappears. There is no hope in scanning the minds of the world and finding him if Daniel were capable, if his allies were to try. Louis is likely to notice a neat splitting of shared finances and acknowledge the likelihood of additional funds squirreled away and now gone, but it isn't so disruptive a removal as it could be, given how deeply embedded Armand had become in their shared business. No, it's a neat surgery.
And he proves more than adept at hiding from Google.
Daniel publishes a book, appears on talk radio and local news, claims it's all real. Viral videos, hashtags, BookTok essays, a burgeoning online cult following. The Theatre des Vampires finds itself popular again despite no longer existing, a charming YouTube series of animations after someone dug up the scripts in a little private archive in Paris. Daniel becomes easy to follow, wherever he might be.
Characteristically, the human race has an excellent capacity for rationalisation, wrong conclusions. It's only relevant inasmuch as the way the thoughts and threats of vampirekind begin filling the sky in a way that Armand can not recall ever happening before in his lifetime. Perhaps, all of history. This, too, can be observed.
And just like any media circus that becomes ubiquitous enough to break containment, there come the articles, the thinkpieces, most of them finding clever thematics about vampirism and the unlife of Daniel Molloy's career in investigative journal, the state of news media as a whole in an increasingly chaotic world, and the most cutting coming out of The New Yorker, who hadn't bothered to ask for comment.
A nice hotel room. Very good security. Molloy will be used to the necessary practice of coffin-sized luggage being flown in ahead of him.
The sun goes down and his awareness will drift to the surface.
And immediately, there's the sound of a frantic heartbeat, ragged breathing, all pain. A man, a journalist of decent renown, ten years Daniel's junior, wearing nondescript clothing and a wedding ring, and lying at the bottom of the generously proportioned bathtub in the other room with a small, neat wound in the spine that has cut off from him the ability to use his legs.
There is no screaming, no crying for help. He was given one instruction, which was to be quiet, and his whole mind is occupied on this single task.
Thump, thump, rasp. Faster and faster. Daniel does not leap out of the coffin, though for a moment he's primed to do so— bursting forth like a fucking Dracula movie before he has half an idea of what's going on is less than advisable. So he waits and listens, suspecting a very confused hotel maid, or another vampire's mortal minion. What time is it?
There is no dramatic creak as he pushes up the casket lid, which is split into two parts the way all of them are these days, but there is a tragic thunk-thunk-thunk as his cell phone fumbles itself to the floor, slipping free of the decorative memorial display section where he'd had it tucked. No one's in the room, so that's good, but—
Oh, no, just kidding.
In a blink he's at the bathroom door, staring in. What he's seeing does not conform to reality at first as Daniel looks, flummoxed, at a dickhead opinion piece factory frozen like a deer caught before a semi-truck, all tucked into the oversized garden tub. He'd sat in there yesterday, in near-scalding water, marveling at the dexterity to do so without fear of killing himself by accident trying to get out, and admiring his own toes. (It's an achievement, he knows from his work chronicling harmless kinksters, to be a man and arrive at an advanced age and still have respectably cute feet.)
His critic beams terror and relief at him through silent, trembling eyes. Daniel tenses an invisible muscle to reach out, yank answers to questions from his head, but thinks better of it before he goes through with it. He will in a minute. But why not learn.
The saddest, tiniest whimper is emitted as Daniel shuts the bathroom door and turns back to the main room. Someone was here, and someone did the fucking most. But what else did they do?
Yes, a presence, formerly speaking. Louis had spoken of his own maker having a scent, which is the kind of thing Louis might just say, citationless behaviour straight from a YA novel, and if it's true, if people can be sussed out via something a little more olfactorily ineffable than a favourite cologne or hand soap, then Daniel-as-vampire certainly hasn't been around Armand long enough to pinpoint it out.
Blood, first. Likely the guy who's bled through his shirt. Then something else, earthier, and a sharper note that's like cigarettes but isn't. Burning, dry.
A touch to the shiny surface of his coffin. To the hanging curtains, which had been pulled back enough so that the light of an afternoon sun might peek through and warm the opposite wall. His laptop, idle on the shitty little desk even a nice hotel room provides.
Eventually, however, beyond these touches (nothing on the computer, although he could probably run something to show its activity in the past twelve hours, much like he can on the book critic's grey matter), nothing terribly out of place. Just the impression of his presence, ghosting through, withdrawing.
Not a scent, no, not quite. It is some other sense that Daniel has no word for; it's as though in undeath, his body has developed a new, second nervous system, and perhaps this 'scent' is yet another thing detected by that whatever-it-is.
Like a kiln. He thinks of ancient Greek pots and the gods depicted on them in gold and onyx.
Just a light creeping, he supposes. Feeling off about it, he succumbs to paranoia and checks the suitcases tucked under the bed, which is serving as a better workstation than the shitty little desk. They seem undisturbed, but he pulls one out anyway and unzips it to behold the books within. Boasting incriminatory titles and containing data that probably won't help at all, but he has to try. Doesn't he?
No sense-memory-feeling suggests his visitor has perused them. Daniel absently zips his thumb over the corner of one paperback, like he's animating a flipbook. Whether I like it or not, he thinks wryly.
Back on his feet. Back to the bathroom.
The door opens again. Daniel stares at the younger man, listens to the fraying, swimming panic of his vitals, and he pushes oh-so-gently. He wants to see what happened, he wants conformation of what he already knows: Armand was here, Armand left him this very considerate, personally and deliberately curated breakfast. Knelt beside the bath, it's an easy thing to reach out and pull this illiterate hack close enough to pierce his panic-sweaty skin with sharp teeth.
He touches the bond. You were near. Where are you now?
It's a confusing mess of memory that the victim has been left with. A little sharp glimmer of something, the smell of fridge-cold beer, a smartphone with a tinny voice chatting on the other end, flicking on the lights
a shock, a figure in the vibrant yellow light of a homey hallway, bright red eyes, and then
fragments. A soothing voice. Walking. They walk until the lactic acid built up in his legs makes him want to collapse, until he can't feel his feet. The brush of dawn light.
And a voice.
"I've been wondering how far along you've thought ahead. If, when the truth of the thing turns your airport drugstore paperback into one of the most important historical documents in human history, if credibility allows—"
A glitch. Begging, but his jaw is locked closed. His face being touched, turned, seeing nothing at all but Armand, vividly, looking through him, like he's nothing.
"The vivisections won't end with a scathing review. You're being reckless."
Then, plunging cold, and the interior of the bathroom, watching the afternoon light slowly travelling up the opposite wall. He urinates himself, he prays, he wonders—was Molloy telling the truth? What the fuck, and he could laugh. At least the haunted doll who brought him here has left.
Nice to have breakfast delivered. He could have done without the piss, but it's very convenient; he just has to figure out how to dispose of the fucking corpse, now, but he supposes that's a part of whatever Armand is doing. Teaching him to swim by dropping him head first into the deep end and observing from the high dive platform, miles away, big eyes.
Reckless. Right. Daniel thinks viciously, If you gave a shit about discretion you wouldn't have started any of this, to no one.
Which suggests, upon reflection, that Armand doesn't hate it as much as he says he does. Repulsed, repulses me. Little hitches, shifting under Daniel's boring, insignificant attention.
A response can't come right away. Even if he had a method, he'd wait. He has to think about it, and he has to time it appropriately; it's not Louis' business, it's not that any of the vampires circling him, and certainly not Lestat's, though his intermittent company has been educational. More directly educational than Armand's so far, even if he's got to pick at him and go at it sideways to get an answer which he then has to decode. They are alike, in that way. He'll tell neither. Too soon to get murdered.
Talamasca sends him numbers (too many vampires, not enough scuttling photographers to track them). He oversees a surreal, nervous, funny Zoom call in which DJ Sam catches them up on a few things. They go to Quito in Ecuador, the oldest city in the whole continent (San Francisco de Quito, the whole title, what a funny little thing that makes two of them exchange old looks and one of them fume for being out of the loop), and foil through blood and one intense sunlight therapy lamp a plot to punish Louis for his violation. Daniel gets his own room. A third wheel keeping his third eye out for the fourth. A grain of sand in the Sahara, this plot.
He makes his decision there, in the heat. He buys a plane ticket and sends somebody else on in his stead with badly forged papers, just a joke, heads elsewhere back north, and to Vancouver.
Like a fucking spy movie. He contemplates the bond in the meantime, and wonders what news of these aberrant activities has reached his maker.
An island in Greece. The mountains in southern Germany. The coasts of Turkey. It's fruitless, ultimately, and the murders that happen there are lost in the overwhelming churn of global news, if they even break containment into the local kind.
Armand is precise, using the kind of seamless anonymity his wealth can provide him, sparing no expense because there's no point otherwise. His arrangements are meticulous, every detail in its place, and becoming a ghost in the memories of any human staff he might require for this and that, of which there are few. He is very good at managing his life.
Good enough he doesn't have to think about it. Good enough that he doesn't have to think at all.
Now and then, the shiver of tension, the cord strung between himself and one other. He thinks he would know if it snapped, but then, Lestat and Louis had been so stupid about all of that, so perhaps it's an illusion. An illusion when the cord shivers. An illusion when he can, so gently that it never trembles, hold onto it.
His search is a distraction. What would he even do, if he found Marius de Romanus? Besides requesting his judgment.
Vampires dead in south America. Forged paperwork, hotel bookings, the occasional image leaking out into common social media. He knows enough to know that Daniel is not heeding him. You know I'd give two seconds of consideration and realize I'd just be Claudia, and yet, he tags along with the two lovers. Or they tag along with him. Louis is as good a follower as he is poor a joiner, and what Armand remembers of the tattered condition of Lestat's mind when last he touched it casts doubt on him being the driving force of this trio—
All the same. Annoying.
He ignores the tugging at their bond, anyway. Daniel will have to do better than that.
Like Claudia, Daniel drags Louis (and a +1) around on a mission; like Claudia, he is the youngest vampire among them. Unlike Claudia, he doesn't require an escort, and can come and go as he pleases. That he has living family still, that he is a public figure, are handy excuses. His daughters are worried after all his shit on TV. One of his exes wants money. He has agents to wrangle.
He says goodbye to Louis, he tells Lestat to think of who he'd like to play him in a movie adaptation (just to rile him up).
Stupid, he thinks, when he gets to where he's going. This is stupid, and Armand isn't even going to notice, and why would he want Armand to notice him anyway? Why is he doing any of this? But it can't go unanswered, or he'll go insane, no matter that it's been weeks.
The man is a former YouTube grifter turned TikTok grifter turned conservative streaming pundit. He calls himself a philosopher, and millions of eager, dipshit fans agree. He's written four books and they're all awful— neotrad, capitalist drivel that misses the point of Stoicism and dresses it up in a wannabe-Mormon dress shirt and tie. He does these awful weekly shows where he misunderstands a new (real) philosopher each episode and explains why their work is all lies, and he really, really hates (and really, really doesn't get) Sartre.
One among many. He doesn't seem to get anything. But Marxism is a buzzword, and the guy selects himself one day while Daniel is attempting a scheme, by announcing a partnership with a unique blockchain coin.
Sparks in people. There must have been an incredible one in Jean-Paul Sartre, for Armand to have wanted to flex his friendship with him. He even has (had, maybe) his books still. An insignificant mortal who was so important that he got a deliberate, smug-casual cameo in a story that tore Armand's heart out. That Sartre and Beauvoir were infamous for seducing young students together is something he opts not to think too hard about.
(Mostly.)
Armand likes existentialism. Armand likes French philosophy and he hates Web3 pricks. There's no way for Daniel to make the vampire see this murder and know it's for him, so he takes a while, loopy from the kill (the guy was buzzing on oxy, a predictable hypocrite), to go through his office. He finds some notes, selects a specific page, folds it up, and puts it into the corpse's pocket.
Plans to read Journey to the End of the Night, though based on these shallow scribblings, he never got around to it. The notes are mentioned in the news coverage, and the grifter has an endless parade of enemies to investigate.
Given the noise of the world, Daniel is right to imagine the chances of Armand finding his kill and attributing it as a message, or a gift, is low.
Except it isn't low. It's found like fresh rainwater collected in the leaves on a desert island, unlikely but looked for.
It justifies a return to America.
When vampires find little to live for, but don't yearn for death either, they go to the ground. They bury themselves and become as corpses until something awakens them. Armand has seen it a few times, here and there, and can't fathom it as anything but a kind of annihilation. He is not certain there would be anything now or in the future that would compel him to rise again. He's not sure how the others manage it.
But he does slip the leash of existence, some, once he lands again. Money, properties, assets dropped, discarded, to be picked up later, maybe. The sun can't hurt him and his ancient metabolism makes infrequent demands of him. He is in stasis without trying. He goes to where this grifter was killed.
And pulls something taut, as if testing distance. Daniel, not so far away. And now Daniel knows, he too isn't so far away.
Daniel has rented a car for his scenic route, and upon collecting it as the dusk darkens to night, the sound of a heartbeat from within the trunk greets him. Inside, a gift: here is a young-ish man in last night's club outfit. His hands and feet are secured in zipties, and shreds of fabric have been stuffed into his mouth, knotted in place. The MDMA in his system can't have been from a full twelve hours ago, still bright in his blood.
In a pocket, a little page fragment, an excerpt out of Journey to the End of the Night. Torn out as if along the edge of a ruler.
Again, as he feels Armand's nearness; again, as he looks down at the guy in his trunk, and reaches out with one hand to tug below his eye and observe his pupils. He smells like shitty vodka and fear and thrumming, shimmering blood, and he has two blue tablets in a tiny bag in his back pocket.
The trunk closes.
Everywhere is middle-of-nowhere on the road between South Dakota and Iowa. Daniel drives into the dark (into the night), and he thinks about how he is, in fact, actually incredibly angry at Armand, still. Not for turning him, in retrospect, that seems as sure as anything, which is a little funny. For everything else. For doing strange things to his life, for torturing him, for Claudia, who Daniel never even knew. For Louis, even though he knows Louis wasn't a perfect victim.
I must be the dumbest person on Earth.
The origin of their association, the psychic surgery on his brain, the violation every time his memories were dug into. (The hand on Louis' shoulder, stopping the way he was forcing a tremor.) Being given a drugged boy is insane. It's insane, Armand, like he can hear him. What the fuck are you doing. He doesn't know who he's asking. (Himself.) Gifts and pages like secret letters.
He drives to a rest stop with dozens of miles of nothing in either direction. He forces the remaining pills into the abducted clubber's mouth. He closes the trunk and waits, and thinks about:
Fumbling. Low lights. Thrumming music, more heartbeat than sound.
The strange sense that he (this kid, whoever he is) isn't getting anywhere. His hand is caught in Armand's shirt and his other hand is being held at the wrist, and they are pushed together, like gravity has tipped towards the wall that he has Armand against. Armand is taller (and stronger), and gazing at him with
something. Want? Pity? His eyes are crazy to stare into, fire-coal orange, twin lanterns that continue to burn in his mind's eye between each blink. He gets a hand behind his neck to try to pull him down
and can't. Unmoving. Something sharp beneath his chin, pushing his face aside.
"Human philosophy," Armand is saying, so quiet, but somehow easily heard in the riot of the establishment, "is often deeply flawed for being premised on the eventuality of death. To give meaning to life, there must be an end. And that everything a person does is in service to prepare or fend off that inevitability."
So what do you wanna do about it?
Ignored. "It's why I am fond of Sartre. His writings seemed unconcerned with this question, at least at times. To exist is to behold. To behold is to love. And love is nothing but an illusory celebration of that existence."
Let go of my arm—
"Rest."
The mind is still. They leave.
When the boy's hands are tied, he obediently has his arms held behind him. He sits into the open trunk and offers out his ankles, Armand diligently tying them too. Out here, in a pre-dawn haze, there are some more details to pick up. A kind of sharpness to Armand, a tense way of holding his face.
His makes eye contact with the kid, and seems to want to say something else. Maybe it's deliberate, showing off this glimmer of vulnerability, uncertainty, the desire nested in hesitation. Maybe Armand is only so good at curating a person's mind.
Instead, "I sometimes enjoyed our conversation," before the rest is submerged in deep blackness, which resolves into the humid interior of a car's trunk and the taste of saliva-soaked denim.
The boy shivers and shifts in his bonds, still pliant from Armand's mindwhammy even if a part of him is very, very afraid, layered drugs making him dizzy and euphoric. His heart beats erratically; if Daniel drinks from him, he'll get that transferred high, and the young man will die in a hurry. A heart attack from shock before the blood loss has a chance to do it. Daniel wants to.
He sits. On a bench away from the car, looking out at a view that wouldn't be visible to him a year ago. Now, he sees it all in a hundred shades of dark— Picasso, but real, midnight violets and deep sea blues, velvets, coals. Stars like salt spilled over a shiny black table. He smokes a cigarette, then another one, and he thinks.
Armand protected Louis' happiness even when he was unable or unwilling. Armand maintained Louis' passions, to the point of going beyond his awareness of their dealings. Armand cleaned up after over one hundred boys, until Louis snapped and Armand snapped harder. Armand can't give an answer about what he likes, but Daniel knows what he hates. And he hates this. The first was an appeal to Daniel's ego, flattering him by silencing a critic. This is appealing to his vices, even though he knows damn wall that Armand cannot fucking stand it. Why, then? What does Armand like, what does Armand want, enough that he'd do this despite his revulsion?
Fucking puzzle box. Like the one out of Hellraiser. Daniel's going to get sent to the suffering dimension again before he makes any headway. Especially if Armand takes this as a rejection.
But his decision is made. He pulls the kid out of the trunk, finds his wallet. Unties him, settles him in the back seat, and begins the seven hour drive to bring him home. Three hours in, he stops at a drive-thru and gets the poor guy a Diet Coke and a bottle of water. When they finally make it back to an apartment complex on the edge of a community college town, Daniel helps him up the stairs to his door. Tells him that things went weird, that his son's roommate picked him up, but they were both too high and too drunk. As far as I know nothing happened, he says, as the kid tries about ten times to get his keys to work before finally succeeding. You guys just got super fucked up, and I don't have the right homeowner's insurance for that. Take care of yourself, alright? It's all fun and games until somebody doesn't actually drive you home.
It doesn't take psychic powers to muddle his memory. He'll barely remember anything, just somebody's weird grandfather driving him home and making him hydrate.
The shittiest Motel 6 in the world is good enough for Daniel. It smells, but it has blackout curtains. He folds up the torn-out book page and sticks it in his wallet, next to an old corny photo of his youngest daughter she made at a photo booth kiosk in a mall, and then he drags all the bedding into the bathroom. Blackout curtains or not, he feels strange and restless and the room is too big— he bites his own wrist, he turns the lights off, he lays on his side on cold, awful tile, and really, really wants to have eaten that kid.
There will be a way to send a letter to Armand. He knows it. He's got lawyers and real estate agents. And Daniel is an excellent investigator.
It takes no time at all for Armand to decide against killing the boy himself. And to be clear, there is nothing in this decision about sparing the boy's life. After a scattering of his memories are sifted through for explanation, for secret messages, and finding nothing of much value but confirmation, the mortal's life is deemed irrelevant, and winks out from Armand's perception like a distant star, dying.
A missed step, a stumble in the dark. What must Daniel think of him, to inspire this rejection? What is its meaning? Contemplating this is like contemplating wallpaper, its uniform nonsense patterns, or contemplating his hands, considering the whorls of patterns in his fingertips and the odder smoothness everywhere else, or a sky shrouded in cloud. No answers there.
There are other gifts he could give. More rivals, more naysayers. His agent, his publicist. His ex wives, his own daughters. Provocation, condemnation. This is a punishment.
Unbidden, an old memory: I am not Lestat. Responding to the prospect of annihilation with destruction. What Armand knows is that things destroy themselves on their own. Entropy. Daniel will hate him, in time. A hundred years. Maybe less.
(He still has business ties in San Francisco and New York, a couple of different firms holding his portfolios, a part of the neat surgery of financial interests from Louis'. He had decided that these ones can belong to him, and so these are his forged identities and contacts attached to old buildings and bank accounts, not so difficult to uncover when one knows what to dig for, even without Louis' confirmation or knowledge.)
A news headline, a couple of days later, barely a blip in the scheme of things and otherwise entirely missable if not for proximity: the mysterious death of a motel clerk, found sitting at her desk like a blue-tinge doll, and close to entirely exsanguinated.
Pages fall off the calendar, too slow even with twelve hours blocked from him. Daniel is looking into buying a house. Daniel is looking into Armand's financier's post address in Manhattan. The latter is easier than the former, in this economy.
The letter he leaves is short. He's careful about his handwriting, which has been accused of being barely-legible; he wants to be clear, while he's being deliberately obscure for the sake of just-in-case privacy.
I remember, and you know I remember. It can't start from there again.
Included is a small stapled-together booklet of poetry picked up from a Midwest university event he drove through on the scene route. Multicolored, photocopied badly, folded in half. College students of a campus of no particular prestige expressing flippancy and fear about the pandemic, about politics, about their families in Ukraine and Sudan and Yemen. They laugh at death. One writer details the last text messages she exchanged with a closeted lesbian waiting to be evacuated, lamenting she will never see the end of her favorite TV show, and probably not get into heaven.
There's no way it reaches Armand before the motel clerk meets her end. But who knows how long it will take after. Daniel hears about it, though certainly not as quickly as Armand hears about things— his sources, or his ability to sift precise information from the global spiderweb of minds, Daniel can't yet fathom. He gets emails from one of his researchers (they stuck with him when his editors bailed, but of course they did, he can pay even better now) about it, having sifted through deranged fanmail to find mentions of it. Just a few days ago. Vampire conspiracies abound already.
Well. It's a fucking motel. Can't hurt, right?
Incorrect.
If Armand is there, he has no idea, because the FBI is there. And a heavy-browed agent with shiny shoes and a band of pale skin that betrays a recent divorce is quicker than Daniel expects. They are so, so curious why a writer in a famous, public spiral into insanity over vampires is here lurking around the vampire murder scene in Connecticut. At least he can be almost honest, as he chats with two agents in a shitty diner near the motel, and has his assistant arrange for them to view the emails he received about the murder. He tells them he became worried it was related to people being 'incorrectly excited' about his book, given the volume of mail he receives.
Just an old man having a financially profitable breakdown, and feeling a little bad about some aspects. He is going to kill Armand, he decides. Not for all the murders. For this interaction. Oh my fucking god. He wants to extricate himself and tell them to talk to his lawyer, but he also really, really, really does not want to end up trailed by the fucking Feds.
What prevents a vampire from careless and frequent use of the mind gift?
Arrogance, Louis had cuttingly suggested. Love, Armand's riposte. It is these things, and more. The mind is complex, fragile, prone to collapsing in on itself when the wrong kind of pressure is applied. It is as good at protecting itself as it is easy to manipulate, and certain minds can close like steel traps over those manipulations unless you know what you're doing.
And Armand does, typically. Like here, tonight, the FBI agents sitting across from Daniel Molloy and asking uncomfortable questions. They aren't night guards or drug addicts or the usual fare of inconsequential people that Armand may snap his fingers and make think or forget this or that, but highly attentive, focused, dangerous.
So he is subtle. Slowly, the questions being asked become shorter. The answers provided from Daniel sink in more readily. They are more certain they're dealing with an uninvolved fanatic, looking for another piece of meat to feed the celebrity. They become sure they are wasting their time. They think it in clear unison, in a silent glance to each other.
One would hope Armand couldn't do this from a long distance away.
One would hope Armand couldn't do this from a long distance away
to him.
Daniel doesn't notice right away. Why would he? He lacks the experience in telepathic finesse, for one, but the biggest reason is he has no reason to expect it. A slow realization, born entirely of his own mundane ability to observe people so closely; the moment is paralyzing. For a blink, for an absent heartbeat.
Armand is terrifying. He frightens Daniel. Now, in Dubai, in San Fransisco. It's a personal failing that fear does nothing to caution him— despite the ice sliding up his spine, he finds himself utterly captivated. An urge like the desire to get high or drink blood grips him, and he wants so badly to push into one of the agent's minds just to see how it's being done.
He doesn't. It's too delicate of a thing to risk fumbling. Daniel plays along, in perfect pace. At last they get up, he gets up, they all shake hands. Thanks, we'll call you if we think of anything, you have my number and my assistant's number. He opts to stay in the diner after to collect his things, gather his thoughts, and hold a warm cup of coffee in his hands. He can't drink it, but the heat feels nice. From here, he has a view of the parking lot, and the unremarkable four door sedan with its government exempt plates.
So he'll see Armand approach as well, maybe around when he's thinking of taking his leave.
Hilariously ordinary, given the strange back and forth they've been doing. A chase, an exchange of letters, veiled threats, veiled assistance, all things up for interpretation. Dead bodies, kidnapped zoomers. The man who crosses the parking lot at a casual clip interacts with his environment in a profoundly ordinary way, plain black clothing reflecting grey off the streetlamps, the scuff of his shoes on the concrete.
But also not. Also always that little bit like he is from another world altogether. But the door to the diner swings open, and he is polite to the server who greets him—probably, because she doesn't space out and he is otherwise permitted to enter.
On the broad spectrum that Daniel has been able to observe in Armand's appearance, to 'perfectly composed' to 'a curl or two is out of place due to a recent temper tantrum', he appears somewhere in the middle. His brandlessly bland and expensive wardrobe is not freshly pressed, but even an investigative eye would have some difficulty attempting to deduce where he has been, where he has come from.
He thinks about a Stephen King book. Not a novel. One of the short stories. Ordinary people made horrifying as they move around, shuffling from place to place, having the audacity to exist off-kilter from reality. Maybe King knows a vampire. Wouldn't that be funny.
"Always happy to entertain further questions," he says amiably, despite the ice that hasn't shaken free of his spine, his nerves. Daniel feels the pulse-free version of adrenaline again, hyper aware and alert, without any of the skittish uncertainty. Of course these undead creatures (we) are such good hunters. Armand becomes singular in his attention.
And he can, just as he could in that room, on the fucking floor, feel him.
"Hey."
Hi, hello, it hasn't been one hundred years, want a hand warmer? (Coffee. Or tea. Whatever.)
He sits, and the waitress comes by once he does. Yes, he would like 'a coffee' (the phrasing more of a European quirk than an ancient vampire quirk), and in this light, hot-coal irises aren't quite rendered in a normal human shade, but have lost some of that bright hellish lustre that Daniel would remember seeing the last time they were face to face. A calmer disposition, perhaps.
Or maybe it's just the lights.
Armand can feel him too. The chill that comes with fear, but no sense that Daniel is about to bolt. Noting this, the rush of breath out of Armand has that suggestion of mirth. It's funny because it was the same when he was human. In the more recent past, anyway.
"Shall I start with, what are you doing here?" is two questions for the price of one, mildly put.
Yeah, Daniel has had a cat before, he knows they can look really cute and soft in between bouts of clawing at your face.
"It's a normal activity on the east coast," he says, in the same deadpan tone of voice that Armand is familiar with, the one that says I cannot believe you expect me to play along with your bullshit performance, "this whole driving around New England thing. It's nice out. Leaves, and whatever."
A coffee. Dweeb.
I sometimes enjoyed our conversation. Prick.
Daniel lets the bond sit in his awareness like a curious jewel; he holds it in his hands, turning it over, feeling the different facets and temperatures of it. He doesn't think it's like one of those fucking sensors in the Alien movies, beeping faster and louder the closer Armand is, but something about it is easier to conceptualize when he's got Armand right here in front of him. It's not a thing he might be imagining.
"How about: what do you actually want to start with?"
The waitress returns, pours coffee into the cup set down, and Armand wraps his hands around it.
Unbreaking focus, and the sense of more close up study. The government men had been encouraged not to make much out of the sight of diamond-sharp fingernails or bright eyes. No one knew of Daniel's prior condition, but Armand can note the absence of shake in his hands, and a certain amount of bodily relaxation. Different from weariness, resignation.
Daniel looks strong, to his eye. It's new. Considers the question. Is it good journalism, to cut to the chase? He had spent a lot of time, watching Daniel work, but he wasn't always conscience of all of it.
Evidently.
What does he actually want to start with? The corner of his mouth lifting. Fine, we'll try again.
You get things straight, first. The timeline. The story.
"Uh-huh."
Daniel doesn't think Armand wants to know how he is. He thinks Armand is watching him like he's an unidentified eruciform, and he's waiting to see if he turns into a moth, a sawfly, or if he just shrivels up and dies. Maybe he's even got a magnifying glass, which with both to observe, and to burn.
And yet, if that's the case, he can't entirely explain why Armand would be doing things like leaving him such specific people to eat. He has no good reason for why he's responded to it, either. Other than the usual, anyway: I have to fucking know.
"I'm great." It sounds funny, and so Daniel lets himself smile. A lopsided, half-exasperated thing. "I'm not sick, I'm not in pain, and I have millions of dollars. It rules."
He turns the cup around in his hands. Despite a characteristic stillness, Armand had always fidgeted a little during conversation. Louis had been, in some ways, even more contained, more controlled, while Armand toyed with his own glass chalice of warmed up bagged blood that he never actually drank from.
Focus unwavering, though. No fidgeting there. He doesn't ask if Daniel has taken to the killing, not when it's been obvious: he's been doing just fine in that department.
"You returned my gift," has some character to it, eyebrows raising.
Here we go. (Not incredulous. Bracing. Fortifying.)
"I wasn't sure that's what it was."
It'd be easy to be angry at Armand, here. And Daniel is. Angry. For San Fransisco, for Paris, for fucking with Louis for so long. Louis wasn't an innocent, in that arrangement - staying with Armand to spite Lestat, staying with Armand to force him into eternal labor to make up for Claudia's death, of course it was all wrong - but Daniel is strongly biased towards him.
He could make it about anger. He's got grievances. It'd make sense.
"I don't presume to think I understand you," he begins, watching Armand. The most terrifying predator on Earth. "But I'm pretty sure I see you. And my instinct is that you really don't like what you gave me."
Hopefully he doesn't have to spell it out, sitting here in relative public. What a thing for a waitress to overhear. Hey, so, now that I remember, I seem to recall you really not having any fun dealing with Louis' drug use by proxy. When did the resentment really get bad? After he fucked and drained fifty boys? A hundred? How many times did you clean up for him while he was out of his mind?
A subtle thing in Armand's expression that indicates: no, Daniel doesn't have to spell it out.
But it does seem to take a moment to sink in, this specific angle. Re-calibration, happening fast beneath the mostly-still surface, and he doesn't get much of a chance to do so when Daniel pivots to a question, and a one-worded one at that. Maybe Armand had been expecting something more along the lines of because you need to fuck off forever.
Which doesn't neatly align with Daniel having already accepted a gift before, with a gift in return, with a written letter delivered to his people inviting some sort of beginning, but it's been a disorienting time.
So. Why? An instinct to start with 'perhaps,' as though his own motives are a fun mystery they can solve together, just like old times. He bites it back.
"I wanted to give you something I didn't think you would seek for yourself," finally. "But that you would like. And I wanted to provoke you."
Both things can be true.
"Given your response, I don't know that I was successful on either front."
"Okay," is a fine reaction from someone that Armand spent a week torturing, once. And who has no real excuse for his own gift-murder. Something that he would like. Something that would provoke him.
But really, why—
Not an acceptable question. Bad interrogation technique.
"You kind of." How to phrase this. "Hit things in reverse. I would seek that out on my own, if I wanted. Whether I have or not already, even, is my own business. And I do like it. Just not like that, not risking putting us in a pattern of you cleaning up after it and hating me more than you already do. If you want to—"
Don't, some aghast instinct says in his head, Who cares if he gets mad, what the fuck are you going to do if he says YES?
"—try it sometime, it'd have to be even. Equal. Participation-wise, I mean. There are a multitude of things I'm only just learning about, and might benefit from a tutor over, but not that. I'm an expert in that, and anyway, it's recreational. You know. Fun."
Whatever. No comment on the success of provocation, because whether he likes the result or not, Armand did provoke something. Here they are. Hey, Armand, want to do drugs sometime? Please say no. (Or say yes? Help.)
Strange, the sweep of hot and cold, internal and private, in response to how he had not quite missed the mark. Only that he'd done it, in the manner that he'd done it in. Something shaken out from between the lines. Remembering the happy gallop through the decades towards the end of the interview, no lingering on the circumstances that drove Daniel Molloy into their lives.
The boys, the drugs sparkling in their blood, whether Louis put them there himself or found them like that. Armand, chasing after him. Armand, keeping their lives in a semblance of order, trying to measure the leash before the creature on the end of it snaps back, breaks it entirely.
An offer. A real offer? He is calculating more of what Daniel might do or say if Armand says yes or no, more so than whether he wants to say yes or no.
"I didn't hunt for Louis," finally, after too long of a silence. He doesn't have to glance to ensure no humans are near, letting his voice go quieter, almost too quiet, if not for the way they could whisper across a crowded street and hear one another if they wished. "I never brought him anyone. I was there at the other side of it, yes, but not the beginning."
His gaze dips down, into the near-black contents of his coffee cup. Never together. Had it occurred to Louis, to ask him along? Had it occurred to Armand, to ask if he could? He doesn't remember.
The question is tabled, for now.
"You said in your letter to me about starting. Are you looking for tutorship?"
Daniel isn't sure when, exactly, he decided that he knew Armand had never participated. Maybe in San Fransisco, on day three or four slowly bleeding on the north-slanting floor of the Zodiac Killer pad; he forgot he knew, and did not remember the act of remembering, merely folded it into his consciousness. But he does feel confident that Armand never took part. That anger was too genuine and too familiar. Someone in the blast radius of an addict finally snapping.
But maybe a shitload of magic mushrooms would lighten him up.
He notes the way Armand seems to look at the offer and slide it to one side. Obvious about is awareness. Daniel watches too close, too intently, sees too many details. Is a journalist a predator? Armand seemed to think something like it. Claudia's kill list. How is it any different.
(How fucking stupid of him to have said that, by the way, back in Dubai while the tree was burning. I'd just be Claudia, boo hoo. Embarrassing. Daniel wishes he'd shut up, sometimes, but he never seems capable.)
"You got that." Good to know? Yes. Good to know. He thinks. Something itches to ask his opinion on the booklet, but he refrains. "... I'm not sure. Practically there's merit, but I'm used to being on my own, you know?"
Armand ditched him, anyway. Whatever game they're playing here is not about a maker's compassionate mentorship of a fledgling.
"How are you?"
Speaking of being on one's own. Daniel has been his own companion for a while now, lucky to have settled into peace with loneliness. But how long has it been, for Armand? Has he ever had a stretch of time without company? Owners (ugh), the coven, Louis?
It certainly is not about a maker's compassionate mentorship of his fledgling. A joke, the very concept. If impulse drove him to create Daniel, then it was something more deliberate that kicked him from the nest. Armand recalls how the struggle had been not to immediately cast his creation, the shameful act, into the sun.
No plans (at all) to cultivate it further, but then, here they are.
I see you. Is that true?
"I'm sure you can imagine," he says, chin lifting. "Free of my obligations, wandering the world, finding myself. What a wonderful gift you've bestowed upon me, Mr. Molloy, that my partner of seventy-seven years despises me, and the airless few seconds granted me for my response to your dramatic revelations. What a rush that must have been for you."
Anger? Maybe. His voice is hard, edged. His focus, intent. But there is something to it that better resembles parries and ripostes in a penthouse in Dubai than the levels of potential fallout that had permeated a claustrophobic apartment in San Francisco.
"Why don't you tell me how I am instead? Or is the going rate still in the millions."
He is aware that it will sound scathing. Even in a muted voice, he is still grating and loudly unkind. The earnest charm of he and Louis at that gay bar, I want to interview you, the tether of it that continued to stitch them together over the years as Louis read his work and looked for evidence of himself. Louis was interesting. Daniel was, in return, interesting. While Armand picked lint off the sofa, alone.
But liars deserve to get their bruises poked at. Daniel has not accepted his apology for any of it, even though he's great, even though this rules. Armand doesn't get to be thanked.
"What I meant," no time to stabilize after Daniel implies he's boring, even though Daniel doesn't actually think that, "is that we can't start this life, with a permanent fishing line strung between our consciousnesses, doing shit we know goes bad on purpose. There's so much out there that can go bad as a surprise. Why sabotage? And like I said. I'm pretty sure you hate that shit. Let's do something else. You like philosophy. You like creativity. What else do you like?"
If he says Louis, Daniel is going to kick him in the shin.
"Don't— don't interview question response that. We're just talking. Ignore that I'm bad at talking when it's not an interview."
My second memory, he had begun, and never finished.
He has read Daniel's book. He has sat through Louis' interview, this thing that had begun so deliberate and constructed that if Daniel had wanted to, he could have and then what'd his way to his bestseller. He has entertained the idea of it, the outpouring, and remembers something like it, standing in a museum, speaking to the wall.
It doesn't appeal, but the strike hits true anyway, finds a tender bruise. Contemplates the phrasing that implies a life is being started. His life feels over, had felt over. But here he is. Here Daniel is.
"I don't really know," he says, in a kind of hard tone, like, isn't that what Daniel is getting at? He doesn't say Louis, and he doesn't say, again, our conversations, because the former is too strange and large to fit into 'like', and the latter—
Well, Daniel might ask why. On the topic of unhealthy patterns of behaviour, he probably shouldn't tell him that the pain is pleasing. That the scalpel-edge of his attention, his ability to cut to the heart of a person, is intriguing. (Let's not bring out the f-word again.)
"I don't know that I hate that shit either. I hated rescuing him from it. Are you intending on becoming out of your mind and a danger to yourself any time soon?"
Good intel, that Armand doesn't know if he hates being blasted out of his mind on cocaine. Interesting that he says so, instead of asserting something uppity like, I don't need to know to hate it. Offering just a hint of something that looks like curiosity about new experiences. Daniel underlines it in his mental notes, even though this is not an interview.
"It's fun. It feels good. I haven't felt good in so long, and now I don't have to worry about having a stroke or a heart attack doing it, so why not?" He shrugs. "I'm not a sad junkie."
A hard stop to that statement.
As you'll recall. High as a kite, traumatized, and hypnotized, Daniel wanted to live. He had no profound reasoning to try and sway Armand with. But he had still wanted to walk out of that place intact and breathing, whether or not he deserved it. He resisted until his mortal mind simply couldn't. But he never asked for it, not even down to the wire. Louis ran into the sun, and Daniel, sitting at that shitty card table, said he had a thing in the city tomorrow. He didn't. His plans - pre-shit going sideways - were Star Trek reruns, and a hangover burrito from the diner down the street, and maybe jerking off thinking about Louis then convincing himself it wasn't gay.
Worth living for.
"What'd you think of the poetry booklet? Not quite Sartre, I know."
Armand, sitting back in his chair, attentive to the rest. Calculating. There is no effort at all to reach for memory, as they arise naturally—Louis, laughing hysterically, or Louis, strangely comatose, or Louis, beyond weeping. Louis, who perhaps wanted to die the whole time, chasing it down, and where does that urge end, and the compounding chemical alterations of heavy drug use begin?
Something to consider. He doesn't know, truly. Vampire physiology is as varied as there are vampires. The look on Armand's face doesn't disbelieve. His hands spread from his cup, an agreement: indeed, why not? Neither of them could fathom any answers if they tried, surely.
And then, the poetry. Half a smile.
"I thought, why did he give me this?" This isn't an interview. He doesn't have to be impressive. (He always has to be impressive.) "I thought it was," and a pause, considering, scraping around for what he did, in fact, think of it, "youthful. Familiar. There is no long history of middle-class youths with a university degree and the adequate literacy to express themselves, but if there were, you might read something like it two hundred years ago. In spirit, if not form."
He turns the cup around in his hands again. "And I enjoyed the one about the tiger on the bus."
Daniel lets him think. He interacts with his coffee cup a bit, but not in a way that suggests fidgeting; little engagements, as he listens. A thumb running over the edge of the rim. Still feeling the bond, and wondering at it.
"Tiger tiger burning bright, how many metaphors can we fit into this bus before the driver gets eaten."
A writer, but not a poet himself. Some of his turns if phrases can be artful, and very insightful, but Daniel Molloy prefers throwing bricks to make a point over seduction. Still he can't help but smile, thinking about Armand enjoying that particular piece. Armand, stuck with his own decisions, contending with them. Armand, a predatory animal who eats people.
"I liked the kid who was glad their dad died."
It was a funny one. Brutal, but funny. And a little more conversational, so of course it spoke (haha) to Daniel.
The tip of Armand's head says—yes, that's the poem—and he doesn't disagree with the summary. Of course he would choose the poem that is aware it's a poem, something a little clever and meta nestled in between some of the more raw scribbles of youthful angst.
He had put hard work into the theatre too, influencing its artform, dictating its aesthetic. In the beginning, the half-improvised horror-comedies, powered by the force of vampiric charm, of the audience's familiarity with the form, everything a little different every night. Times change, of course. Taste changes. Technologies emerge. New vampires, brought into the coven, with new talents.
The plays were weird, Louis had said. The plays were an autopsy of a play. A diagram. The layers of reference made clear through rigid scripting, the projections dictating exactly how each performer had to move so as not to throw them off-sync, the light of the film like a glamour, the modernity and artifice pulling audiences into the joke of a human playing a vampire playing an actor playing a character. The ones who kept returning, delighted at trying to find the truth behind the lies.
He had liked that.
But he has a question, first giving a 'hm' of amusement for the choice, yes, very good, and then asking, "Do you know that you're dead yet?"
It would have been interesting to see one of the weird plays. Not a trial, not Claudia's mockery of Paul's death. One of the ones Louis called weird, and made that delighted laughing face over, while Armand carefully crafted his own expression. It reminded Daniel of a face Kate used to make, whenever he said he'd be out of town for a job. She had become so used to the pain of disappointment that she'd made a mask for it. Understanding and fond. Looking at her own upset, and the oblivious source of it, as though it was charming.
How many bad husbands does it take to change a light bulb.
"That's almost nuts enough to be a me-style question," he says. "Could really throw somebody off balance. But given context, maybe not so nuts."
His mouth just goes. Talks. An annoying thing for someone who is also an artful listener; most have the decency to be men of few words. But Daniel falls quiet to actually contemplate it for real, taking it on good faith (or taking it hostage) that Armand means it as a philosophical question and not a morbid one meant to dump cold water over their meeting.
"I don't know." Layers to not knowing. Unsure if he is or isn't, but sure that it's different. "I was entering negotiations with myself, before. Getting ready. 'You're going to die, you have to start making preparations.' I hadn't gotten to the preparations yet, but I had a list of things I would have to look into by the end of the year. My will, insurance policies, right-to-die laws. The shape of death wasn't formed in my head, but there were sketches of it. None of it looked like this, or you."
Philosophical is a safe bet. A cold bucket of water is, perhaps, more in the eye of the beholder. Daniel could let it be a bummer, if he really wanted. Armand could press the point.
Armand had shifted his posture by subtle degrees. Less stiff through the leg and spine as though he were in an interview (as in, like for a job, not whatever they were all doing in Dubai at any given time), more comfortable in all the subtle ways. Daniel can interpret that however, but what it is is that he has not had cause or motivation to exist in these spaces very much over the past several months. Vampires of a certain age and detachment have a way of moving. Existing.
Sometimes, it takes a minute. And, to elaborate, "Unless you intend to reveal your immortal nature to your next of kin in the next decade or so. Or the world at large."
Alternatively: Daniel could not care. But he's a public figure. He's buying a house. Mortal connections persist.
Armand looks fractionally more relaxed compared to when he first sat down, but Armand still looks like a fucking alien, to Daniel. His perspective is definitely skewed, biased thanks to the whole of it all, but here we are.
"If you've got any good hookups for repurposing identities, I'm very happy to take business recommendations," he says, and means it. Something he's spoken to Louis about, just a little, but he's been busy with too much else to worry about it. Maniel Dolloy, rejected, Elvis Presley, rejected. He'll think of something. "Writing is one thing. I'll let somebody else fall on the paperwork grenade for being the first publicly out vampire who wants to sue Social Security for retirement money."
It does not really occur to him to think of his ex-wives or his daughters. They were collectively, and individually, uninterested in engaging with his illness; the youngest girl offered to make plans to come stay with him 'in a year or two, or three?' in a voice that sounded like she had a gun to her own head. We'll see, kiddo, and they both knew he was never going to let her, and she was a little sad, but mostly relieved. He gets to 'leave' everyone a shitload of money, and it will be the happiest he's ever made them.
"I like New York, I like the idea of having a house in New York. I really like the idea of having a house in New York ready to go in a hundred years whenever I feel like coming back."
Temporary, his plans. He doesn't have the grace of another forty years of plausible deniability— he'll have to move around more often than the others, and keep an even lower profile. Indulging in what he can now feels a little bit desperate, and he recognizes that, even while he focuses on it being a celebration of a huge change.
Well, of course Armand has hook ups. This, mentally filed away somewhere. Habit. What does Daniel need? What can Armand provide?
Which doesn't mean he will. Daniel's induction into the vampiric world has been something of a free fall, regardless of what faith or thought Armand might have put into that decision, if it even was one. Just a recording, a note taken. He doesn't interrupt, remembers to blink.
"Something to look forward to."
But,
"Setting aside the logistics for the moment. There is a different sort of realisation that, I believe, awaits us. You've been made privy to the detailed account of a relatively unconventional vampire. His ties to his human life and his continued unwillingness to embrace his own nature have, in a sense, spared him of this."
Armand has yet to get the memo about the self-actualisation, it seems. No one owns the night.
"A different sort of suffering. His, the more uncommon kind."
Is it ease? Difficult to tell, with him. Daniel can get under his skin, he's proven that, he can find cracks to peer into. If this was completely good faith he'd stop and simply be here, simply listen and talk and not try and x-ray him. But sometimes as he's nodding off he thinks of a voice telling him to rest, and so.
Philosophical. Being kept on topic. Fair enough, after Daniel went through all that trouble to steer him away from the sacrifice of a drug-addled twenty-something cranked on E.
"Is it a realization that I need to realize on my own time, or one that you want to enlighten me of early?"
He's not in a huge hurry to embrace suffering.
"Actually—"
Hm.
"Pretend you're me. What would I be doing, if you were?"
Their coffee is cooling in their cups. Armand can no longer sift through Daniel's thoughts—no comment, please, on how poorly he managed that before. There is nothing in him, not a single molecule, that has forgotten that week spent in San Francisco, nothing in him that is compartmentalising it away from this chat they are having now. He had offered verbal apologies back in Dubai, but what's an itemised list of belated sorries? What is the worth?
The book itself leaves that one as something of an open ended question. No need to spell it out to the readers.
In good faith, Daniel can interpret the flutter in Armand's expression as interest in the question, the way his eyes dart down to the surface of the table. Giving it thought, in good faith.
"Finding the bearable thing," finally. "Doing it, now, while your humanity clings to you. Before the bodies stack up, and the world becomes disfigured with time."
A tik of his nail against the cup.
"Preservation. Cultivation. Will you throw yourself on the fire in a century, or will you live to see the new millennium? What do you take with you, in either scenario? Perhaps," he cedes, "it's a lot to ask. But it's worthy of consideration."
Preservation. Has Armand ever gone to sleep in earth, casting off decades, rest? Cultivation. Does Armand regret burning the tree? Has he found another plant to nurture?
Maybe Daniel doesn't quite grasp this answer because he hasn't realized yet, but he contemplates it anyway. Takes notes (he can't help himself) about Armand, if not the concept of being a vampire. Being dead. Being, as perhaps his maker still believes, under the authority of the Devil.
"What is a bearable thing, for you?"
It doesn't sound like an interview question. Too quiet. They can't read each other's minds, and it's—
Better.
No second-guessing. Daniel isn't paranoid about what Armand might be sifting from him. He wonders if there's a relief of anxiety on Armand's side, free of needing to monitor.
"Louis," Armand says, and then, "I had thought so."
Past tense, and it's the kind of past tense that isn't laced with the bitterness of having a thing taken away from him. More like a change in paradigm.
"Perhaps 'bearable' shouldn't be an aspiration for vampire companionship," has some low-grade humour to it. "Or perhaps it never was that to begin with, and it was the story I'd told myself and told him. You find the person you can tolerate and that's enough. You find the methods of that tolerance, and it's enough."
It always comes back to a person, doesn't it? Or so some vampires would have you believe. The quest for the eternal companion. But—
"I've always had a fondness for innovation," is less dicey territory. "Even in the advent of economic collapse, plague, warfare, there will always be that."
Always fun to be reminded that he's locked in a cage with a tiger (aha), hearing him process Louis this way. Oh, well, I suppose I loved the idea of him, in the end. In hindsight, after writing, Daniel has been able to go through his own processing, and accept that Armand was not the only person making bad, harmful choices in that relationship. But Armand's disproportionate, devastating choices remain the standouts, far beyond the pale even for centuries old supernatural creatures who have lost touch with humanity.
And yet. He finds himself curious about the psychology behind Armand's ability to frame things, sitting directly across the table from someone he once spent a week torture, as wistful look back. Jesus fucking Christ.
"Keeping up with the times. And seeing how our first, parent species is holding together the world we live on. Maybe getting some cool stuff out of it."
Semi-relatable. Daniel no longer lugs around a typewriter. Why weasel away from the topic, though? We're here. We're looking forward. We're in a shitty diner and there are only so many hours left to work with before Daniel has to go back to his extremely medium hotel and draw the curtains as densely as he can.
"I told my second wife 'of course I can stand you' in an argument, once. In the moment, I thought I was making a great point. It seemed kinder than what she was accusing me of. I'm not sure I'd classify that setup as 'bearable', in retrospect. We had this awful therapist who kept making us do team building hypotheticals, where our mission was to stay together to set a standard of family mettle, and we had to strategize like a spy team. It was excruciating. That therapist is the closest I came to murder in my life life. ... Bearable? I dunno. I think I'll just have to keep writing."
not so much like watching a bug under a jar, really, even if that's just a little how his face behaves. Receptive, and a softer amusement for the portrait being sketched: the failing marriage, the struggle, the well-intentioned and possibly overpaid therapist. 'Amusement' is probably a little off, sure, but what's some reminiscing on the nightmare that is the human condition, constantly under pressure by the ravages of time to find happiness, between immortals?
And he can see, he can feel, the way he understands it. He finds himself desperately uncurious about how Louis thinks of their time together, in this new light. Armand can guess.
"In between waging war against vampire nests with the two lovers, I assume."
Time as anxiety. His second marriage, her first. A child. Daniel was jaded, she was increasingly frantic. What does marriage counseling look like when time isn't a factor? Or is it just a different factor, when the misery can be eternal?
Did Armand think they'd just carry on, after Daniel went home? Was he a togetherness worksheet? Louis, too, said they were going to offer it to him, at dinner. And Daniel still struggles to believe it. He might never.
Thoughts swirling around like coffee, which he agitates now and again with a turn of the mug.
"How do you know that's not what I'm writing about?" a quick riposte, reminiscent of a longer table in between them. "They aren't, anyway. 'Yet', probably, but nobody ran back into bed immediately. They're both extremely fucked up about everything, and I'm a cut-throat career guy exploiting their willingness to tread carefully around the weird old man baby to facilitate my own investigations and prolonged safety."
Is that the update Armand wanted? Daniel just looks at him.
Something about 'they aren't', more bothersome than the news they've flown back into each others arms like they've learned nothing, regardless of the 'yet'. Perhaps, then, not everything has finished processing. Armand would prefer not to care either way, of course, but there is a slightly deeper drift to his next breath in, one that fortifies on its way out as the rest of this update is rattled out.
"Treading carefully does so sound like them," blisteringly dry. Skeptical. Not with each other, not with anyone around them, no matter how mild mannered Louis can pretend to behave.
And does he want to speak of Louis and Lestat as a unit, truly, regardless of his raising the topic? It's like a splinter beneath the skin, and made aggravating for Daniel's insistent proximity.
'Willingness', about the situation, is possibly overselling it. Awareness of mutually assured destruction over annihilating another of Louis' friends, more like. Daniel can feel Lestat's restlessness radiating off of him, and he can tell Louis is spoiling for a fight. It was a good time for a break, when it happened. Maybe yet has even caught up with the pair, but honestly—
And this is really honest. Too bad, for the first time, that Armand can't see into his head. But honestly, Daniel just isn't interested in it at all. Louis can make his own choices. It'll go well for him or it'll blow up in his face. Daniel will still be there for him, still be his friend, none of that shit matters.
Lestat is a zoo animal.
Daniel continues to look at him for a moment, but he's not studying him. Not silently reprimanding him. Just letting a moment sit there, giving Armand space, and a moment to inhabit it. Alright, alright. They can move on into less dicey territory after all.
"The vampires who've made their moves, so far, haven't been any of the voices we've heard talking shit on Fang Radio," look, if there is a name for the global psychic chat network, no one has told him, "but, they've been talking to each other privately. Mostly idiots just using phone texting, but this guy in South America had an encrypted phone with a Telegram account."
The server from earlier does a quick scan to see if they'll be taking any coffee refills, and Armand, sensing the pull of her attention from somewhere behind him, times a shallow sip of his cup to dissuade her. See, they're still working on it. No need to flex godlike psychic power for no good reason when something simpler will do, and they're left alone.
"It's never been like this that I remember," he says. "The noise. Risking their own identities to establish themselves in the chorus. It reminds me of a coven and those within it clamouring for status, not simply a dozen disparate ones."
Of course, to tell of the Paris coven would have portrayed it as an orderly affair. Yes, mutiny, yes, upheaval, but those were two incidents in even more centuries. Armand would pride himself on the fact that it did run reasonably well under his control, but it was never as simple as Louis made it to be, or himself.
Lestat and Louis again, unrivaled arrogance in their own ways. See how it's done, Armand? It's so simple. Let me change it all for you. His fault for believing them.
"My sense is that your book has thrown certain visions into question. Proving the existence of the vampire before the vampire was ready for it. They'll want the skepticism to hold while they can get rid of you and Louis."
Of course, he was also interviewed. Spoke of some of the deeper histories than Louis had knowledge or care about, and it made its way in. He wouldn't be surprised if most of those performing offense were too young to even comprehend the implications of it, going after instead of sympathetic figure, the man who penned it.
"You know how difficult change is," he points out. "Even when someone wants it very badly."
The vampires who've actually tried something aren't the vampires doing the most 'public' talking. What does that mean? Mostly that vampires are still people, for the most part, and people are prone to being 90% talking about it with 10% doing it, particularly when the it is tricky. But it could also mean that there are vampires out there who wouldn't mind a change.
And whether this is the first step to a steady overhaul of the world, or a prominent stumble before everything is shut down back to the way it was, who knows. But it's a change.
"We know my preference is to avoid finding myself rid of. What do you think about all of it? You weren't happy, on the micro level. Do you still hate it on a macro level?"
Considering the honest answer. That he wouldn't mind seeing the vampires tear each other apart in their attempts to survive the millennium as a global unit. He has the bleak sense that he will survive it regardless—the growing army of fledglings reminds him more of infestation than invasion, and the blood has become dilute, weak, over the past century.
"My feelings are that the vampire is the anathema to order. We are, in all ways that matter, in opposition to all that matters to humanity. The coven, however flawed its foundations, its grasping superstitions, is a design to prevent us from over-making, over-feeding, over-stepping. Part of my duty as coven leader was cleaning up the weakest new ones within my territory, and sometimes beyond it. They were more common than the story we told you would have you imagine."
A splay of his hand. "Hatred, dissatisfaction. I find myself these days contemplating the reality that we shouldn't exist."
Daniel meant the book. Armand's seething resentment over a suicide, as he put it. But it's a microcosm of vampiric existence anyway, and so he listens, and wonders about—
too much. So he puts a stop to it, and only listens.
Dire.
The tiniest bubble of anxiety. Not out of fear of himself. What if Armand decides to end it all? Can he, without a vulnerability to the sun? Daniel realizes in a strange moment in which he witnesses this scene from outside of himself, that he does not want Armand to die. The immediate thought is that, of course he doesn't, the bond between them has been a point of stability to navigate this new life through. He cannot explain the contrary twinge of something that follows.
He could rules lawyer. Humans are a virus, plenty shouldn't exist. But life isn't actually about order, or they'd all still be single celled organisms.
"I'm not a hopeful optimist," he says eventually. "I'm just stubborn. I'm not sure where I stand yet on our existence."
Probably won't be that, though. I like my life. Daniel wants to stay. He would like it, for some fucking reason, if Armand stayed too.
"Do you feel like this most times, when there's not a bearable thing to distract you?"
Do you feel like this, and if there was any wander of his focus, anything less than precise in the alignment of his regard, it sharpens.
Has he made an error?
Actually, that's a deeply funny question to ponder, to feel as a reflex. Armand is aware he has made nothing but errors. Blunder after blunder. The idea that he is operating in a sustained mode of control is a fiction, a performance. As if he cannot see the odd repetition of it, of the coven invading the palazzo, of Lestat's effortless words in the catacombs and Lestat twirling on a stage, of Louis' lifting a camera to take, not his picture, but that of the empty space beside him, and Louis in the soft light of an empty gallery, and Louis in the rain on a bench, and of Daniel in their living room. And Daniel here, in front of him. Asking him what he feels, and how often.
The shame is immediate and overwhelming, eyes dropping to the table between them. He is the outcasted figure in Daniel's latest work and he has irrevocably and irresponsibly bound them together to a shared eternity, too weak to pull back the curtain and clean up his own mess. Half-blank, half-apocalyptic, and he lets his hands fall loose from the cup on either side of it.
"I didn't come to you to discuss how I feel," he says.
Okay well, yes you did, is not the thing to say right now, and it's a kind miracle of the universe that Armand is looking at the table instead of Daniel, and misses his brief, comical look of incredulity. A hell of an assertion from the guy who came here very specifically to discuss how he feels.
But alright. Let's look at this. Armand has changed his mind, or he is not being honest with himself. Maybe a messy mix of those options— Hello, I am feeling slighted by your rejection of the club kid loaded on MDMA is pretty different than Here are my deep feelings about depression. Too close, too personal. And yet Armand isn't angry or defensive, in fact, his body language screams a need for comfort.
Daniel does not trust it. A cat exposing a soft belly for petting before goring the hand. He holds still anyway, once more giving his maker a moment to inhabit quiet, proverbial space.
"Would you like to anyway?"
As noted (back then), he is not a psychologist. As noted (a minute ago) he's not interviewing him. They're just... hanging out. Having some coffee, out here where the leaves and whatever are going on.
But no. Armand knows better. Nothing that Daniel takes in vanishes. Nothing is destroyed in there, not in the drug-addled, concussed mind of an idiot twenty-something, or decades later, a sick old man who had become too lonely. Not even memory that one week in San Francisco after Armand's formidable talents permanently erased them had gone to waste, in the end. A crushing gravitational pull, yes, but transformation in place of annihilation.
A sharp a mind as any human, now a vampire. His fledgling. His.
Armand lifts his eyes again. They're just hanging out. "Yes," finally. "Without distraction, it seems like a logical conclusion to draw."
He's never known a vampire to innovate. To create, not really, nothing that lasts. Louis' failures at photography ceding to a mercenary approach to art flipping, Armand's continued dissatisfaction with his coven's engagement in the theatre, Lestat's pretentious ideas about clowning, and even Marius de Romanus' not-quite-beautiful enough paintings that never set their claws into history the way his contemporaries did.
And then they kill people to live, feeling nothing, and for what. Just because he alone can see it doesn't make it untrue. Him, holding his prey, murmuring to them the thing he believes so well. Horns honking, you don't move.
It is infinitely more frightening when Armand plays ball. It is infinitely more interesting. And it is still fucking crazy to know Armand thinks there's no spark in him worth preserving, when Daniel is here fixed on his every word.
"I picked up on that, yeah," is kind of funny, if you think Daniel Molloy's rainbow of dry tones are funny.
"You had a reason to be. I handed you an unpinned grenade and stared at you as it went off."
A ruinous action that, in turn, Daniel had a reason for. The reason mostly boiling down to fuck you, which, funnily enough, remains his impression of why Armand made him. Fuck you. Armand could only dismantle Daniel temporarily. Daniel could only checkmate him through subterfuge.
Good at being narrative foils.
"Are you still angry? In general, I mean. You can be angry at me forever, if you have to, it'd be reasonable."
An easy memory to summon, the brazen look angled at him across the table. So cutting, compared to the watery transfixing fear he recalled so well. A breath out of Armand, a kind of yes, well, at metaphors of grenades. Apt.
He should say, Yes, or, Sometimes, and not the freakish truth. But, you know. In for a penny.
"Not really." Maybe it's the depression, but that doesn't feel right. Whatever he feels towards Daniel, it isn't that specific kind of numbness. "Are you at me?"
For the turning, sure, but then: everything else. All he discovered. All Armand did.
"San Fransisco happened a few months ago, for me. It's still shaking loose from my brain in little parts. Sometimes I have dreams about details, angles, words, and I don't know if it's a memory, or just regular dream bullshit playing tricks on me."
Daniel explains this calmly, which bucks against the idea of being angry, but lends itself to the ambiguity of sort of. Perhaps it's just that Daniel has grown out of being angry about things for any longer than the emotion serves a purpose.
"I'm processing it. I'm processing a few things. I'm not mad at this though." He gestures to... them, sitting here. "I'm alive. Pretty cool. You say we shouldn't exist but I'd like to get some mileage first. I wouldn't hate you being around, if you've got the patience to deal with processing."
The anger is easy to recall, festooning the interview with barbed wire. Louis', a cold thing, and Daniel's, the occasional spark flying from the furnace. But they had an interview to continue, and neither of them banished him from the room. Armand, carrying too much story to be left on the curb. More than they knew, until they did.
Weird, but not surprising, given where Armand stands in kind. It feels a little like a very important and meticulous project has been taken from him, torn apart, and leaving him with nothing at all, slipping.
It's also not untrue that Louis was a stressful fucking project. Pity to waste the work.
"Around?"
Edited (illegal to repeat squares) 2024-08-06 21:59 (UTC)
Are they even? Parts of each other's lives, ruined? Armand's torture, his psychic surgery, Daniel's detonation of his enmeshed relationship? Daniel thinks he should be angry about other things, too, like the trial and those poor girls (Louis' daughters, two of them, that Louis fucked up), like how he treated Louis. And he is, sometimes. No matter Armand's probable dysthymia, Daniel imagines that he, too, is sometimes angry.
Where do they go from here.
Not back to nanny and addict, at least. Not that. Somewhere else.
He takes a breath—
"You know. Like this. Whatever you're comfortable with, whatever works for us. I know this is all fucked, but we can't actually get in trouble for culturally appropriating normalcy."
Anger tends to have minorly apocalyptic implications.
After a century or two, one needs to have a measure of care. Maybe he is angry at Daniel and doesn't want to be. Maybe angry at Daniel looks ugly on them both. Maybe it's harder to feel entitled to it when Daniel is now sitting across from him with his unusual vampire eyes and a certain amount of strength and existing as the manifestation of anger already spent.
But Daniel has allowed this claim to slide, and says something that makes Armand kind-of laugh. He lifts the cup of near-undrunk coffee as if to indicate it, their appropriation of human culture, and sets it aside.
Anger teaches. They've learned things about each other.
The kind-of-laugh. He's seen it before; despite himself, he likes it, liked it even in Dubai. It's always gratifying to make someone laugh when it's clear they aren't used to it. He would look away sometimes, jaw tense, and Daniel would wonder if he was trying not to kill him, or trying not to laugh.
I sometimes enjoyed our conversation, through the boy Daniel sent back.
Maybe Armand is just normal-intrigued, the kind of response he might feel the need to paper over, justify, and so on—but something else, too. Like holding your hand to a candle flame, nearer than before. No, he had hated it when Louis was out of his mind in that way. It had been undignified, sloppy, a little pathetic, if he's being honest.
But Louis had never asked him along, and if he had, he hadn't ever meant it.
Daniel would like to play it cool (who doesn't want to be cool?) but he's surprised. Sparks of success, curiosity, and then, tempered: What the fuck is Armand doing, exactly? Lulling him somehow? It's such a waste to be paranoid, though. And it's not like he can do anything worse to him.
"I'll start thinking about menu, then."
Which is another kind of funny thing. What to pick. What can he source. What is the best showcase for the virtues of illegal drugs. He'd had an answer ready to go when asked about the best high he'd ever had— badly processed heroin, the kind that risks necrosis at injection sites, unfiltered, half-contaminated. It's been in his head for decades more firmly than being attacked by a vampire, and yet—
And yet.
Drinking Armand's blood was better.
An unidentifiable feeling slithers up his spine when he thinks it. He's been trying not to, he realizes. Putting it away, out of sight on a shelf, refusing to so much as look at it. Telling himself he'd have to wade through fuzzy, maddening memories anyway, disoriented and crazed as he was. Denial. The thought sits shining front and center, as though it's between them and their room temperature coffee cups.
That doesn't seem fair. Armand has picked already, even if it was Daniel's offering.
But let's not quibble. It's pleasing to have already surprised Daniel. And a valid response, to be uncertain as to his intentions. Even Armand doesn't know what he's doing.
"I like driving. And I've heard the leaves in this area are to be recommended."
Maybe a little recursive, picking up the things Daniel has already mentioned, but perhaps, some warming up is necessary. And there is a still a look in eye, a level of analysis, that feels removed from the conversation.
Some figure of himself standing at the back of his mind, taking notes.
All kinds of new territory for the both of them. No context for any of this, from either angle— not just whatever prolonged, psychological ceasefire talk this is, but their lives. Daniel has never been a vampire before. Armand has never been a maker before.
(Gossamer, silver, warm, elastic but unbreakable.)
Daniel smiles. Turnabout, etc. It's a charming little move, if not a revolutionary one. Though as noted, new territory. Who the fuck knows, it could be groundbreaking for Armand. And it is very normal to go see the leaves in New England, driving around scenic highways and toll roads just to behold the changing environment.
"Would you like to go look at the leaves, and whatever?"
The FBI has probably given up watching them by now.
A scenic drive in the depths of night, but their eyes are well adapted to seeing darkness in its infinite beauty, or however more romantic vampires than Armand might describe it. Armand considers the offer, his response to the offer.
What had he imagined, coming here? Some sniping over the table, maybe. Scratching an itch in that way. Confirmation that Daniel wants more distance, which Armand may or may not have granted him. Not this, anyway. It's nice to feel surprise, to be surprising.
Let's observe some scenery.
"Perhaps there will be room for further revelation," he says, as he stands, "when we're not trapped in a room."
Though there have been revelations in every room they've been in together.
Armand likes driving, he says. Armand also probably likes pulling wings off of songbirds and slowly peeling tech bros like over-ripe mangoes (difficult, slippery, rewarding; the kind of fiddly thing detail-oriented Armand would excel at, in Daniel's mind). A few bucks for the coffee and outside, Daniel tosses his car keys at
his maker
without warning.
"US and UAE licenses are co-valid, but I'm sure you know that. Don't run us into a tree if it turns out you've been chauffeured since the invention of the automobile, please."
This is real stupid. He gets into the passenger seat (always weird, in your own car), hitches it back a little further since he had it cranked up to move a body in the back (don't ask). It smells like car cleaner and faint cigarette smoke (he always has the windows down if he has one in here), blood, his cologne. Daniel can afford a better car by now, but it's such a pain in the ass and this one's perfectly fine.
Is this where Armand finds a bridge to drive them off?
"The drive back from Vancouver was nice," he says, as the diner vanishes behind them. (Vancouver, where he murdered someone to please Armand.) "I hadn't done anything cross-country since the 80s."
This is a shitty car is his prevailing thought, climbing into the driver's seat, but he's being a snob and knows it. It's perfectly serviceable and clearly runs fine and isn't dirty, inside or out, but some of us are more used to being filthy rich than others, and maybe someone who made millions on the dismantling of someone else's house of lies should get himself a more suitable vehicle. This doesn't preclude Armand from knowing how to drive, it seems.
He does. No trees are harmed, as he directs them out of the parking lot, onto the road, into the late night. He only has vague notions of the area, a sense of geography and direction rather than specific routes, but Daniel can course correct as needed.
"Why not?" he asks. Doesn't go for the radio. Lets the window down a touch. But also, "They won't understand your keeping willing contact with me, you realise."
Windows can be cracked; it's nice out, and the cold doesn't bother Daniel as much, it's all just pleasant, with no chills and no insulting geriatric joint pain protesting temperature changes. The console blips a little blip, pairing with his phone in case he'd like to engage Spotify, but Daniel leaves it alone.
"Busy," he says, of why not, because he is fully swerving away from that and into—
"Do you?"
He stares at Armand, while hitching one knee up with a foot pressed to the glove compartment so he can fix the tongue of his shoe.
"Yeah, any conversation with either of them is going to fucking suck, but it's way worse that we don't even know what we're doing."
"That line of reasoning won't work on them either."
Slowly, Armand relaxes. Getting used to the space he is in, the feel of the vehicle he is driving. His life has been stranger than this, but, he will grant, not by much.
It doesn't matter, anyway. He made Daniel. What are they going to do, fire him?
And it is an active problem, because Daniel is a bad liar, and he hates putting things on timers. This will be a timer, a fucking bomb ticking down, and so he's going to tell Louis. Soon. If he doesn't at least have a conversation with him about the bond in his head and how it occasionally feels like he's being warped by it, he's reasonably (hah) confident he'll go insane.
There's a high chance Louis will be angry. Daniel should be angry. Armand has put them both through too much, put fucking everybody he's ever come into contact with through too much. What more can Daniel do about it, though, besides imploding his life? Probably not this, probably not hanging out with him.
A glance, to check in on whether Daniel is shocked to hear this or not.
And yes, reasoning with them isn't Armand's problem at all. No need to tend to Louis' feelings, in constant need of pruning and encouragement, and no need to monitor the state of Lestat in the world like an imminent natural disaster, and no need to respect the absolutes they would levy at him if they could. It would be freeing if he didn't feel a little like he was falling down a flight of infinite stairs without a chance of grabbing the banister.
Well. There's Daniel, who potentially wishes to go bowling.
"I think we have the potential to reach for normalcy and find ourselves on the other side."
When does it just become deeply weird again?
"Do you believe there is a normal suited to vampires? I'm not sure make believing being human is the answer."
Daniel is not shocked. Armand, in fact, does not seem like the type of person to have ever gone bowling, no matter that he's had over 500 years to give it a shot.
Decisively: "Bowling." For his other activity. Bowling actually kind of sucks, like most things do (Daniel is fun) (this is why he likes drugs so much), but there's a pretty good chance that watching Armand bowl is going to be the funniest fucking thing he's ever seen.
"I don't yet have enough personal experience to draw from to answer that," he muses. "My hypothesis is that normal is extremely difficult for a culture that is born exclusively from humanity while being incompatible with it. It's an extreme shock. Like moving to a new country where you don't speak the language or understand anything about the social norms, plus you want to eat all your neighbors. It's going to feel weird to go bowling with them, even if you have a nice time."
The leaves (and whatever) look nice. In the dark, there's a dayglo quality about the foliage, in its yellows and tans. On an aimless path, just driving. Nice of Armand to have not found a bridge yet.
"But we still live here. This is still our planet, 'our', chatty bipedal freaks making weird art and bad politics and screwed up relationships, dead or alive. In that way, just being around is normal. Exploring and making mistakes and causing problems."
Well, as far as non-sexual punishment goes, bowling isn't the worst thing Armand can think of.
He hasn't found a bridge that. In fact, Armand is obedient to speed limits, to traffic lights, to the invisible rules that govern the roads, even though it's quite late, even though he can acknowledge some buried urge to start going faster, to wreck the ugly car he is in, test the absolutes of Daniel's patience in him. One of those urges he feels in high abstract. He can cut loose in perfect moderation instead.
Otherwise, things tend to go to shit, and he does in fact wish to have a conversation with Daniel. The discourse veers philosophical, which is always nice. "The theatre used to have such debates," he says. "Our relationship to the art, to the things produced by humans, the things we produced. Not very often," granted. Perhaps Louis would have liked it more if they had.
"The usual consensus being that the thing we are is a mockery of the human, rather than a transcended version. It appealed to their sense of humour better, I think, to participate in limited fragments of human existence as a means to make fun of them for it. We'll go bowling," apparently, "and take pleasure in the performance of doing it."
There are probably some ordinary reasons why Louis liked him and Lestat yeeted himself off a cliff to get away from him, in retrospect.
"It sounded to me, in between all the disastrous shit, was that you had a community at the theater. Which is always the insidious beginning of equilibrium, and normalcy."
Armand scoffed at the concept of a vampire with hobbies, and yet Armand ran a theater company. If it hadn't been born as a reskin of a cult, if they'd done something besides produce work that mocked their own existence, what would that have looked like?
Normal?
Anyway, Daniel is just teasing him a little (dangerous, tempting), because Armand, to his eye, is fucking obsessed with trying to achieve normalcy. Tidy domesticity and perfectly oiled business machines with schedules, routines. He suspects that if he could look through that iPad, he'd find a few hours (too generous?) a week on a spreadsheet for mandatory fun. Scheduled sex with predetermined position notes. Weird euphemisms for hunting. The works.
"What's the difference between performing and trying something out for the hell of it?"
"I suppose the appeal of novelty might rescue us from parody."
Armand has his doubts that the bowling can be rescued, but perhaps it will make for a decent hunting ground.
Normalcy is, potentially, another word adjacent to boring, but then, much of the clockwork structure of his life had entered in after. They were making an inordinate amount of money and taking on grander responsibilities, and although Louis was not a wild animal in need of caging, there was less room for mistakes. And when he was considered boring, wasn't he not at his most forgiving?
Ah. Yes, maybe a little angry, still. Maybe less for the exposure in itself, the thing uncovered, but the way it was done. A grenade, as Daniel said, in his hand. Justifications, reason, context, an explosion of shrapnel.
"Figure drawing." There, he thought of one. "Now that your hands are steady again."
Appeal of novelty. Daniel wonders what counts as novelty, for Armand. If he had enough of a mortal life to remember it, if it wouldn't matter anyway because the world has changed so much since he was born that it's an alien planet. How real does the world feel when you've done nothing but dissociate from it?
He can put quite a bit together by now. A first memory, running from slavers in Dubai. Pulled from a brothel at fifteen. The kind of origin that destroys people and doesn't let them rebuild, even if they want to. Even if they try. Daniel thinks about it in context of the things Armand has done, and he thinks about people he's interviewed and lived alongside, who suffered similar horrors, who never tortured anyone or had their kids executed.
But is he being naive? Over two centuries of cult abuse and programming. Near two more of 'recovery', in a time before things like therapy even existed. Does the time make it worse? Is he right, does every decade bring them further from humanity and towards an unearthly creature hovering down from a suspended bookshelf, eyes glowing?
Figure drawing, because his hands are steady. A funny thing happens, multiple internal reactions. Eyebrows go up and Daniel swivels his gaze over, head tipped back on the rest.
"Everyone always wanted in on those in Berkley, just to see who'd show up under the modesty cloth."
There's a memory Armand has, one that's persisted. Like finding a notable, half-shattered shell on a beach, where the mollusk that slowly produced it is long dead, irrelevant. The sensation, more so than the vision, of dragging charcoal across a page. Of the immediate feeling of inadequacy, confronting the mark he has made.
Wishing he could start again, but unwilling to waste the paper.
And that's all. No looming presences at the periphery, no pain or pleasure, no sense of what was being drawn, just a surface at a hard tilt, and his hand, which was—small? The same size it is now? He's not even sure if he was a vampire or not. He feels he has always been a vampire.
"Some of them might have been artists, not just perverts. Stranger things have happened."
They turn a corner.
"You're hesitating over an earnest suggestion. Which suggests you're looking for parody after all."
*Delhi. tfw u microaggression. tumblr was right about daniel molloy
Alright.
What can we learn from this.
Quiet, minimally expressed histrionics are not unheard of, and Daniel has encountered it before. Had he thought about it around more than just himself for a minute, he could have figured out that Armand might be putting some serious weight on art. All the creepy religious paintings and the way he spoke of the man who painted them, his maker.
At the same time: Armand does not get to learn that he can just shut down and throw himself out of proverbial window if there's a slight misstep. Daniel gives it a moment, somehow sensing the bridge without any telepathy between them.
"You said you were sick, before you were turned," he says eventually. Glancing at him through the mirror, in between observing the signs for the next rest stop. Maybe there's an awful gift shop. "Did you ever feel sick after? Did you recover the whole way?"
They can both do an exercise here, about thinking past themselves. Daniel worries sometimes, mostly when he's unlocking a door, or writing something down. He startles when he misses a keyhole, like maybe it happened for some deeper reason; he stares too long at his own handwriting, trying to decide if it looks more like it did before.
Dizzying, like waking up to oneself. He can remind himself of some things: he turned Daniel against his will, and although he is enjoying his honeymoon phase, it seems likely that the instinct that might pull them together is matched only by the latent resentment. He has been depicted as harming Louis grievously, some kind of lengthy extension from the sins he committed in Paris, the obscuration of exactly when and where he saved Louis' life. Daniel considers Louis a close friend, and both men have taken to Lestat's company, after a week of slow evisceration.
All of these things are true and lean a great weight against the likelihood that Daniel wishes to talk to him of his feelings, and do normal activities. Managing him, perhaps. Having fun in private while he does so.
It feels a little like a neat domino waterfall, where the dominos are the size of skyscrapers. He probably won't crash the car, or drive it off a bridge, but there is an odd kind of despairing pull where Armand is not exactly sure of where they are going.
It is all as dramatic as that while also not at all. No particular outward change. Even a shift in paradigm doesn't inspire a great swell of feeling. He thinks. Maybe?
Anyway.
A glance.
Thoughtful silence. Reaching so far back. Here, on this stretch of road, the clouded over sky is rendered in textures of grey from the reflection of distant city light, and so the outlines of the leaves, which they can see in an unusual kind of vibrancy, make dark, craggy edges, as if they were driving through a ravine. Here, he's looking at the leaves and whatever.
"The hunger," eventually. "I would confuse it with the nausea I no longer had. And I was more afraid of that feeling than I was concerned about the morality, sometimes. I rarely enjoyed my food as a human. I don't recall having that feeling again, as time went on."
Of course, he doesn't eat very often now either, because he doesn't need to.
"You look to me like you've made a full recovery."
Easy to conceptualize New Orleans at the turn of the century. Surreal, almost unnerving, to fully engage with the reality that the man driving his car is recalling events in his life from five hundred years ago. Is it smart to ask him to go back there, when he, apparently, might actually humor him and answer?
Daniel holds his hand out between them, flat over the center console. It does not tremor.
Tempting to stare at it for an eternity. Does he move because the car moves? Or because he doesn't have control over it? But after a long moment he drops it, because at some point he has to stop watching. Or he will stare at it for an eternity. A recovery is never full until it never comes back, and finality is gone from him now.
Armand was more afraid of the sickness coming back than he was about being a monster. Something about that is powerfully comforting, even though it roils in him, too. Could be that this is too soon to try to make peace, even secretly.
Too late now, they're in the fucking car. There are bodies between them like—
Whatever they were doing.
"Hey."
He points at the turnoff. Let's go look at the stupid leaves.
Armand looks to that hand, a lingering kind of study while the road is empty and straight. Draws his attention up from it after a while, to Daniel's face. Here, he would normally part the flimsy curtains that separate him from the minds of others, and judge what the correct thing might be to say.
He remembers Daniel's heightened distress as Louis twisted a knife. He had been moved to grip the hilt and ease the strain, and collecting the necessary information to do so.
No ability to do so now.
"Our power, by its nature, only strengthens over time. Comprehensible, I think, but I can imagine it will take longer to trust it, the longer you've lived."
He was in his twenties, somewhere, when he was turned. His experience with age, health, development is not applicable to most. But he says a thing that sounds true to him, observable in others.
He looks back out at the road, and ponders whether he is really experiencing a change in paradigm or if his feelings are hurt. Daniel points out the turnoff, and Armand obeys.
Why did Armand save him, in San Francisco? Why didn't Armand just kill him at any point those times when Louis couldn't get up? Why did Armand restrain Louis from fucking with his Parkinson's, why didn't Armand kill him after Louis left?
Why did you make me?
He can't get the question out. He's tried to talk himself into it. Been trying for some time now, awkwardly gathering up courage like a passive system running in the background. It fails to manifest now, as the car is parked in a dirt 'lot' in front of a small farm store. No Gas Here, reads a sign propped on the patio. 20 Miles South.
The cloudy night sky is like a silver blanket that bright colors of foliage decorate; the gentle illumination of the older-than-Daniel store is like a beacon, pouring light out over this corner of woods. Footpaths between dormant apple trees suggest frequent stops from roadtrippers who check in for kitsch and fresh eggs and the ability to wander and pick some fruit, should the season permit. Maples tower over those, some already red, bright like fireworks.
Sleeping birds. A distant raccoon. Cricket nightsongs.
It can be nice, departing from deep urban centres. Not that living in the middle of Dubai, San Francisco, New York, Paris had been some kind of punishment in that way—just background noise, the cacophony of a dense populace, sometimes soothing, most times unnoticed.
But the absence is not unpleasant. The anxiety of the world replaced with rustling leaves, chittering nocturnal things, and—a bit of a trick, to hone in on it—the subtle and constant deep bass hum of the atmosphere itself. Armand lifts his chin as he absorbs the auditory information of the environment they're in.
Perhaps he ought to have said hiking. Night time hiking. No fear of mistakes, from an overwound attunement to perfection or shaky hands or otherwise.
And then—loud, to overtuned ears, and therefore startling—Daniel says that, and Armand looks over at him. Vampire eyes in the dark, a subtle reflection of light, cattish. Despite his best efforts, he feels relief. Despite his best efforts, he longs to go to him. At least this second thing is actionable restraint, and Armand stays in place.
There can be hiking. They don't have to plan everything. They don't have to do anything, at all. There are compelling reasons why they shouldn't— more than reasons encouraging connection. And yet, the kills, the notes, the diner, and here, leaves.
Difficult to feel anger over his initial assumption — that Armand did what he did to tether Louis, to make their agreement over his survival past that apartment in San Francisco eternal, a symbol of their relationship — when Armand is here and seems so lost at sea. He supposes there could still be time. A long con.
But Daniel likes figuring shit out. He's good at getting angles.
"Okay."
Confirmation. They have said it, thus it shall be so. And all that. Bracing himself. Not just for staring at his own hands but the undertaking of trying to meaningfully connect with someone who tortured him. Daniel looks at him, those blood-moon eyes shimmering with the barest bits of light picked up from the store far behind them. Horror movie features he's seen in his dreams for fifty years. The lenses he wore for his costume seem so unconvincing in retrospect. Armand looks more alive when he's a vampire.
More forest to wander through, for a little while at least. Daniel has cigarettes in his pocket but he doesn't pull them out, not wanting to disturb the area. Content to exist quietly in this world he can see and hear correctly now, before the turning of the Earth asks him to return to the car, and head back to a hotel, and darkness.
Daniel's book signings attract an interesting, diverse crowd. Perhaps most pleasing, a scattering of people who would have purported to being fans of his work prior to Interview with the Vampire and were genuinely intrigued with his latest offering, what might be interpreted as a sort of avant-garde commentary on the state of biographical writing these days, this being a genre he had already left behind, or perhaps? Real, somehow?
Then, the intellectual fans. Those who like the book for what it is, a metatextual artifact that invites a state of suspended disbelief in a world of cynicism and science, a strange and perverse gothic romance told in the brisk and efficient, often comedic tone of an award winning journalist. Fans who gamely ignore the question of is this real, because if you have to ask, you're not ready for the answer.
Or something.
For them, the book is about homophobia during a specific period of time, processed through modern sensibility. It's about the AIDS crisis, which is obvious if you have read Molloy's work. It's about abuse, about forgiveness, about love. It's about the grief of time and parenthood. The vampire is a metaphor. The vampire is not a metaphor.
Younger fans, in it for the romance, who would like to know if Daniel ever met Lestat, if he still talks to Louis. Full conspiracy theorists and skeptics alike, sharing a row of cheap seating set up in the innercity bookshop.
And then, there's Armand.
Dressed a little like he imagines people should dress for a book signing, in a warm forest green cardigan, full sleeved and cosy, over simple greys, glasses with a very dim tint to take away from the brightness of his irises, and hair tidied into a bun like any modern young man might in this corner of the world. He sits with a leg crossed over the other, a copy of the book balanced on a knee.
The questions are good, lively. He hasn't decided if he intends to raise his hand or not, content to listen to the proceedings, the murmurs of thoughts from the audience, and occasionally impatiently glance towards the podcaster who is graciously hosting Daniel any time he acts particularly sycophantic and familiar.
The picture of innocence, otherwise. Interested and engaged.
These events are corny and small-time, but Daniel still loves them. He found so much inspiration as a kid from them— somewhere, he has a beat up copy of The Martian Chronicles dissected with his own high school notes, and a long, rambling 'dedication' in the flyleaf from Bradbury, who had hung out in a downtown bookshop for its entire operating hours one Saturday in March, and who finally caved to offering personalized writing advice the third time Daniel had waited in line. A formative experience despite the fact that his own work eventually evolved past routine undergrad classics, never able to stick to fiction, far more enchanted with digging at the thing he was writing about than the writing itself (though, still, the writing).
It was just that novelists did more of these than journalists. So he does them, and they're usually half full even in tiny little stores. Now it's a bit of a mess, but it's a fun and interesting mess.
Even when there's a wild animal sitting in the fifth row. Strange that no one else notices. Do wild animals make eye contact? Between two sets of tinted lenses, can either of them tell?
The host is cheery and a fan, a BookTok girl who has used Interview with the Vampire as a gateway drug to reading some of his other work and recommendations and who now feels like an intellectual powerhouse compared to her peers. Which, to be fair, she probably is. Molloy has caught some heat off more established review circuits for engaging with short form media this way, but he doesn't get it. Never has. What if Bradbury told him to go fuck himself? (Well, he did, but he was laughing about it and laughed harder when Daniel stood in line yet again. Angles.)
Questions roll in. He says he can't comment on if he still speaks to anyone mentioned in the book, regarding them as sources who he has a professional duty to protect. He says the best way to get into journalism is to be nosy and take debate classes and do karaoke at crowded bars. Lose your fear. He says he doesn't mind the mixed reaction to his recent book because it's a new experience.
Is the very innocent creature in his cozy sweater and tidy bun going to ask a question as they close out this section, or meander up to a queue?
Absently, Armand flicks through the book in his lap, not reading, just feeling the texture of glossy pages, the photograph inserts, all the while listening. This is not a copy he has read, picked up instead from the special display they'd stacked by the door, but he has, of course, read it.
He certainly has questions.
Hasn't landed on exactly which one when he does raise his hand as the floor reopens, and several other people do. It is nothing at all to steer the attention of the young woman hosting the event to call upon him, already lowering his palm when she points him out.
"I was curious about the experience itself," he says, tone mild, not even too privately amused. "Interviewing vampires. Were you ever afraid for your life, Mr. Molloy?"
There is the predictable murmured chuckle in the room when someone tosses in a question that takes the premise seriously, but all focus honed forwards for the answer regardless.
Maybe this is the sequel. The Vampire Armand. Daniel retells the experience of being tortured in 1973, in full detail past what Talamasca wanted him to expose (what he felt safe exposing— Louis, a serial killer in two countries, Daniel couldn't bring himself to state it all so directly), and the mind games in Dubai, and then a series of encounters.
The creature that kept torturing me, that struggled with his desire to kill me versus save me, sat politely in the audience and asked if I ever felt like he might go through with it.
A little smile. What the fuck is wrong with you. (Oh, are we playing a game, again.)
"Yes." So there's that. Another ripple of laughter in the room, because of course, of course. "A vampire could kill me. Easily. So could a gunshot to the head or a bus hitting me, though."
More audience chuckles.
"I like my life." Echo. Still. He looks at Armand. He knows he is dead. He liked his life before, in the 70s. He did not like it very much six months ago, something he told 'Rashid'. Did you have a restful sleep. Funny. Horror, perhaps: he likes it again, now. "It's not that I don't care about risk or that I think I'm untouchable. I just acknowledge it and try to get on with the work anyway, and then it fades away, because I care about the work. The unsettling thing about the threat of death from a vampire versus the threat of death from a Boeing CEO or whatever," the host goes Oooooo at that around more audience reactivity, topical!! stop assassinating people, Boeing, "is how death doesn't mean the same thing to a vampire as it does to a CEO. If I look at a vampire, and I did, and I think 'This guy is going to kill me', do I even know what that means? What's the experience of death going to be like? Am I changed, in those final moments? How changed? If I die, permanently die, was I a different person for a few seconds? Is the vampire who killed me changed, through me?"
And what if he didn't die. What if the vampire let him go for fifty years. What if the same vampire came back, and killed him, and changed him.
"Art is immortal, and climate damage is immortal, microplastics, vampires. It's an intimidating concept to grapple with while trying to take notes on somebody's love life. So— yeah, I was afraid, in there. In that way."
and he remembers that stubbornness, how much work it had taken to have Daniel fold into him. Armand remembers it as having finally succeeded, but he is no longer certain. His own gentle, relentless convincing, winnowing willpower right down to the edge of itself, and then in that final moment, had he simply reached in and forcibly pulled Daniel's heart out through his chest?
The taste of his blood. He hadn't been hungry for anything it offered save for some other ineffable thing, something he had been trying to discover all week. Maybe he could take it into himself, and be changed by it.
It's a good answer. The audience, drinking it in. Save for one, and Armand turns to look after the sound of a quiet scoff. The sound isn't for show, quiet, only drawing his own attention and that of the woman this audience attendee is with, who lists her shoulder into his to encourage him contain himself. A skeptic who is almost angry at the level of bullshit being spun.
He smells like laundromat soap and synthetic vanilla, and she, some kind of flowery hand cleanser. Armand's attention flicks back forward, offering a small smile that indicates he is content.
It's an answer that plays well with believers and intellectuals, and middling with others; Daniel only tries a little to make it not specifically for Armand, and wonders at himself, incredulously, if it wasn't easier to talk like this. A buffer between them. The performance of it, as Armand likes to fall back on.
How much have I changed you?
He notes the way the ancient vampire's attention shifts for a brief moment. Daniel considers reaching out, dipping into the mind of the attendee who pulled it, but doesn't. Let it be a surprise to ask about later. And let him wrap up this Q&A section without risking a superpowers fumble. The host follows through on his meditation on fear and death, asks him about how changed he feels in terms of his career, and his social circle. Levity and seriousness. She's not doing half bad. Another question from the room about the balance of research versus creativity, then a final one, about an older book, and his thoughts on how the oil industry has carried on without any meaningful change. It detours them a bit, and the host is more clumsy about cutting them off to wrap up, but Daniel is gracious about it. She spends a while with him during the transition, all bright smiles, taking photos and little videos for her TikTok, and Daniel indulges her.
Book signing. An employee sits behind the little folded out table with him, occasionally taking a photo for social media and making sure no one gets Extra Weird. A global pandemic lingers, and so it's not so strange that Daniel wears gloves for this bit, the way items are being passed back and forth. A young couple has wandered in behind the one that annoyed Armand, navigating around chairs being put away. 'I wonder what we missed', 'I think it's the vampire guy', 'Oh woah, sick—' Enthusiastic, they discuss grabbing a copy and hopping in line, drawing an annoyed look from Mr Scoff.
The skeptic lingers towards the front of the store while his partner and her floral hand cream take to the line, and then Armand behind her. That he's here alone isn't too unusual. Currently, a woman in her forties is telling Daniel that she drove from the other state to be here, asking if he'd sign another for her wife who couldn't come. A lone teenager, next, who is too shy to do more than offer his name for the signing, and nod at some prompted question.
A thoughtful audience, then, mostly. Some fans, some curious people who saw the sign at the door. Difficult not to compare it to the theatre. Armand made a habit of, occasionally, sitting amongst them back then as well, not just presiding from his balcony perch. It was good to regard the thing from the proper view.
His turn. He lays the book down in front of Daniel, pushing it forwards.
"I can't say I'm convinced," he says, ignoring the employee sitting alongside. "Given the innate romance of death by vampire compared to death by bus, or CEO. Compelled, perhaps."
A little forward, maybe, but surely, Daniel has experienced weirder fans.
Daniel has never, ever, experienced a weirder fan than Armand.
He looks up at him, finding him both ethereal and comedic in his disguise— which is still more convincing as a real person than his performance as Rashid; in retrospect his dark eyes were fake-looking, though he thinks Armand was less controlled. More willing to snipe and argue. Freedom when he wasn't being himself. Interesting.
"Innate romance?" Eyebrows up, as he slides the book towards himself. "Can the bus not also love?"
Shut up, Daniel. But there's a part of him that almost looks over his shoulder like Armand isn't speaking to him, surely. Innate romance.
"Compelled towards what?"
His hand, pen held, hovers over the blank page facing the dedication (to all the editors who dropped him over this one). Steady.
"The bus is a random event. Your assassins are doing their job."
Armand glances at the employee, who is attempting to summon some courage to find the right place to shuffle him along. Even in this current get up, unassuming jewel tones and cute hair and glasses that veil the intensity of his vampire eyes, it's difficult not to exude something, some sense of warning.
Or, perhaps, he doesn't care not to. "The vampire selects."
And, as for the blank page, he supplies, "Rakesh," easy. "And I don't know. The story, I suppose. It feels nearly true."
"Which story?" Glance down, to write. Glance up, eye contact through lenses; he feels he can see straight through, to warm amber. "The book, or the answer about my mortal fear?"
Daniel gives space for him to answer, even though the employee is looking a bit puzzled. Writing a tad more than 'Thanks for your support'. It's fine, though, the couple behind the good-looking hipster with his hair up are chatting away with each other, clearly not in a hurry.
(Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad? Pay attention to how things blend Why talk about all the known and the unknown See how the unknown merges into the known)
A curious flick down. That's more writing than most people are getting. Armand's mouth twinges, a faint smile.
"Walking into a vampire's lair and cheating death is a little like bargaining with death itself. You talk of—well, not fearlessness, but your acceptance of your own fear, your own death. But perhaps there's the expectation you will talk your way out of it. Perhaps there's arrogance at play."
A little sharp, and the employee offers the kind of laugh meant to diffuse some idea of tension, maybe their own. You're not meant to accuse authors of arrogance when you get your book signed.
"I mean no disrespect," Armand is moved to say. "Only that it's fascinating."
Daniel ticks his gaze up from where he's doing a proper thanks-blah-blah now, which would look normal if not for where he's crossed out the dedication and written a name that isn't Rakesh. Covered sunset meets— what? Well. His eyes look like nothing in particular, just outlines, but who knows what color they are.
"Oh, you don't know the half of it," he says. A final glance at his handiwork, then to the employee. "He's got a point, which makes me think he might know a journalist or two already. We're not sensitive enough for fiction, and we're too stubborn for acting. The thing that keeps a reporter from flinching is probably 60/40 ego versus nerves. On average."
Who knows what Daniel's split is. He closes the book, and looks back at Armand. Slides it over.
Armand takes the book, and moves off without a glance, without any further outward sign. His book has already been purchased, so he can drift through the remaining crowd, past the skeptic, and out into the evening street.
The couple he had identified emerge not long after. 'All done?' 'Yep. He's so funny.' 'He's a con artist.' 'Oh, who isn't.' They walk off, his arm around her shoulders, their conversation moving to dinner, to a bar he wants to try. The incredible amount of frivolity that mortals fill their tiny little lives with.
He drifts further down the street, doesn't pursue, lingering. Tracking two individuals in a city like New York's, barely knowing their minds, their scents, would make for an interesting challenge. Instead, he flips open the book to take note of all that writing he received.
As he does so, he says out loud, "I suppose you avoid draining those who attend your events," at a normal speaking voice. If Daniel chooses to, he can hear it. "Even if they're rude."
Molloy's handwriting is a jagged, but not as bad as it was; he's able to keep things on an even line. Standard pleasantries, and where his snipe at previous editors is crossed out, Armand is written. This copy is for him and him alone.
The rest— fragments of a poem by Rumi, all of which are on the rambling, stream-of-consciousness side of lyrical. It's about transformation, it's about the point of it all, it's about pointlessness. In the end (that Daniel doesn't transcribe, it's a long poem and he doesn't have the whole thing committed to memory so preciasely), it turns sexual. But it's a Rumi poem. They all do.
—In my head?
A funny half-startle for the last person in line to get a book signed. It takes him a second to realize Armand is doing something and not speaking to him telepathically. Daniel gets through everything graciously, though there are bare minutes left. He doesn't know what his maker (!) has done, exactly, but he puzzles it out while he says thanks and shakes some hands and talks to his assistant about anything they need to pack up.
"Maybe."
Just a word. Trying it out. Vampire tricks, throwing voices, finding one person in a crowd from a distance, even if it's just the awareness of them and not their mind.
He stands in the street and reads the poem fragment, fingertips wandering along the edges of the page. He reads it a few times, as if to more thoroughly parse its meaning and intention, and tips his head at that drifting maybe that he thinks is for him.
"One of them thinks you're a fraud, and the other, a clown. They'll be out late tonight."
Not very long ago, perhaps Armand would have just seen to it himself. Drained the pair a little to weaken them but with more than enough blood left over to satiate a newly made vampire, bundled them up, left them under Daniel's bed with drifting memories of the strange being that abducted them so easily, perhaps an answering fragment of poetry. The impulse is there, even, to create some distance after his little pantomime in the bookstore.
An offer, anyway. Will Daniel kill a woman who bought his book, but doesn't believe in it? Her annoying boyfriend, with his crime of being annoying? Will Daniel wish to hunt with him?
Speaking of distance. Daniel is surprised Armand is still around. Seemed like an artful note to escape on. He wonders if there's some greater purpose waiting for him, or if Armand is just doing what Daniel was doing in that diner— drawing it out and wondering why.
He doesn't manage a response. Trick too tricky, without understanding what's being done, and he isn't actually sure Armand heard him. That could be a response, or just extra goading.
Will he wait, while Daniel finishes up here? Will he be there, when Daniel exits the bookshop and goes to look for him? One thinks he's a fraud, one thinks he's a clown. People are allowed to think that. He's devoured people who've done nothing to him, not even a slight, though he tries to take deliberate aim. The hunger is difficult when it peaks, and Daniel is as prone to forgetting to eat while lost in work as he is prone to over-indulging when he has time. Once (a shard of ice) he listened to a food addict discuss his struggle, saying bitterly that at least with drugs or gambling, you don't have to do some drugs and some gambling every single day. You have to eat. Daniel found it lacking.
Now. Hah.
It's exciting, despite everything, to look for Armand. He can't track his mind, and the bond isn't a tether like that. But he can— sense? Smell? Something. It's something, a feeling that's faint like a whisper that nearly touches him. A person that isn't a void, a person he can't connect with but is connected with.
A little wind-swept from the cold and from hurrying, Daniel appears. Eyes wide and curious. Hey.
Daniel, hurrying to catch up and find him, an earnest question out of his mouth, eyes bright. Something in that that's pleasing. Endearing?
Maybe not every twinge of abnormal emotion needs analysis.
"Yes," says Armand, turning to him, book held at his side. "I've observed it before, between maker and fledgling. It's not reliable, or a secret means of communication, but," a gesture, half a shrug. Something like throwing one's voice, something like relying on that inexplicable bond to pick up the other's words in the wind, automatically honing incredible hearing in on a single note in the symphony.
Hey.
"If a naysayer of yours is found dead each appearance, that may lend some credence to your authorial honesty."
Just an idea. Vampires among us. He's kidding, by the way. It's hard to tell.
He thinks it with the full force of his consciousness, and he makes himself confront that he feels that way. He has been hauntingly beautiful, unnervingly perfect, stunningly attractive in a way that seemed too ideal to even bother engaging with. And he is those things, but he's never thought 'cute' before. It doesn't especially suit him, because he's wearing a costume, but the performance ads to the charm. Reality tips slightly. (To the north?) Armand came to a book signing just to mess with him. His level is messing with him has been playful. With claws, but still playful.
Daniel sets this aside to inspect. Not sure about it. He thinks of eyes on him, always on him, of quiet deep breaths in and hands splayed on the table, restless. He also thinks: That's a cool trick.
"I'll have to practice to get the hang of it," he says. Interested in vampirism, in the things they (he!) can potentially do. His gaze wants to tick down to the book Armand is holding, with its personalized ramble, but he refrains.
"Could also bring the FBI back." Daniel smiles, though, a funny little curious thing, because he suspects humor. Out of Armand. "Why, are you hungry?"
Out here, Armand takes off his tinted glasses, folding them, slipping them into a pocket. Lamp-like eyes again, although—well, Daniel's eyes change, and he might have observed the way bright orange can dull itself down a little. Still striking, still bright, but a little less haunted than they can be.
"Law enforcement can be a nuisance," he says. "And it doesn't seem like the kind of game you wish to play."
Daniel, still engaging with human society, still a person, still a public figure. Armand's tone doesn't imply disapproval so much as observation. It's hard to be a functional celebrity if the feds would like to investigate you for serial murder. Maybe the rude couple will live tonight.
Maybe not. "A little. And you've skipped some meals."
Orange, blood red, not-quite-brown. Deepening layers of it. Daniel has, indeed, noticed; his own shift between clear blue and orange is either more striking or more comical, depending on your point of view. He's glad he doesn't have to watch himself, in any event.
"Dominoes."
One falls, then another, then a hundred. He's not in a hurry to be on law enforcement's radar, not in a hurry to end up entrenched in an increasingly high profile series of kills to get out of a jam. He rationalizes murder just fine, he doesn't need more layers. Besides—
"I want to write the book about the first open vampire to end up in court over biological imperatives," he says, "not star in the documentary. Let somebody else fall on that one."
This little bit of celebrity is fine. It gets him money and the occasional hookup and certain freedoms, which is a nice offset to tanking the credibility of his career (for now). He will pass on more, especially if it comes with restricting his freedoms. Like jail. Pass on jail. Meanwhile: he gives Armand a look.
Daniel steers his attention off a glance to the book, but Armand lifts it, drawing focus. "You quoted Rumi," he says. "Who also once said, 'I have never become less from dying'."
Optimistic. Romantic. Religious, first and foremost, but these words exist beyond their context, a fragment of a poem penned quickly into the acknowledgments of a book about queer vampires and their violences.
Cute, also.
And he begins to walk, a pivot that invites Daniel to stay in step.
"That one gets a little blasphemous," he muses. "Imagining past the death of angels."
Rumi had style. Maybe it was the mysticism— made all the religion tolerable.
Pause. Consider. Mm, what the hell. Daniel follows him. (As if he wouldn't? He tells himself it wasn't guaranteed. It can't be. Armand didn't know he'd follow, or else he wouldn't have to invite him, even wordlessly.)
The city is always packed, it's always busy. A couple of unconvinced, marginally rude attendees fade into obscurity while an ocean of minds and bodies open up, all awaiting assessment for their potential. Daniel is more familiar with video games than the average seventy year old, owing to a combination of nostalgic tolerance based on youthful enjoyment of arcade machines and time sunk in to topics around violence in media. He thinks of the way people decry anything with harm done opponents made out of pixels arranged to look like humans, other living things, the slaughter of which is seen as nothing more than a thing to do to receive experience points.
He also thinks about the movie Gerry when he thinks of video games, but that's like, whatever. A funny thing his brain does, because it's all ridiculous. The point is: converting living beings to an inanimate resource. Thinking nothing of it. Pixels. Mortals. Different from him. He thinks of Louis. Why is a fox less than a human. Why did he tap the woozy Slavic guy's neck like a heroin user lifting a vein, a dismissive and vulgar routine, but fix himself to Armand's throat like it was a lifeline?
"Pretend you're me." Oh, another one of these. "And pretend I want to pick off skeptics. Where do I put the line? What's the most minor offense that still ranks?"
Daniel does not sounds like he thinks this is a morally deep question. He sounds like he thinks it's darkly funny to joke about.
Armand might like a video game, if he could condescend to touching the apparatus. Or perhaps it would seem ordinary. Following road rules in GTA when he could, at any moment, do whatever he wanted instead. Giving the Sims a perfect little life instead of drowning them in a pool. He is, of course, not thinking of this when Daniel asks his question—
But when he does consider the human being, there is something of a game to it. To allow their inner worlds to matter for the chance of a darkly funny debate.
"Suppose they're an infection to the conversation," he says. Gamely. "Not adamant in their convictions, not attempting to discredit you or criticise your work in some way that demonstrates thought and care. They're only interested in rendering inert any interesting question that could be raised, in belittling the curiousity of others. Entropic ignorance."
A steady stream of life around them. Thoughts, ordinary, repetitive, brushing against their minds. Nothing wrong in ordinary repetition. It's like watching a river. "You could imagine that their incurious nature as something that dulls all they touch, not just your book."
"So it's a kind of justice." We're playing a game, here. A hypothetical thought experiment, not life-ruining. Hopefully. "Not in a law and order way. A cosmic balance way. Is art not a force of nature itself, yadda yadda, if reality is defined by what we make of it."
Mixing his philosophies, but Armand is clever enough to pick up that he's doing it on purpose. Daniel is the kind of person to understand philosophy but not put much value on it— finding the engagement between differences and balances across all the spectrums and schools more interesting. Enough that he feels confident in his understanding to be imprecise in their use.
"A removal of rot. What's my motivation? Is it ego? Do I get to decide, because my judgment is unassailable about this sort of thing? Or is it selfless? Do I just like this world because I live here, and it's a community service?"
"Call it justice," Armand says. "Call it gardening."
He had said he likes their conversations. He had meant: that bright, clarifying thing he feels, rubbed raw by the right questions, the shock of revelation. He had also meant: sharp words, testing each other, little moments throughout the interview where Louis, sitting at an angle from him or close to him or across the other side of the room had nearly become ornamental to a wider game while he unspooled his life story.
But isn't it nice, too, to talk philosophy, mixed philosophy, without a recording device nearby. They have more time to do the same thing they were doing before, a kind of mutual figuring out.
"Our way of life is currently only addressed by a set of laws upheld by covens of middling power to enforce them, and none of those laws specify how we go about our selections. There is no legislation dictated by human courts that allow it, is cognizant to it, but perhaps that will change, but let us remain in the present. Even human morality, whether expressed through ancient scripture or afternoon television programming for children cannot abide by a way of life in which the baseline to survival is murder."
Talk of eating only animals, imbibing only from the willing. Louis, a master of his impulses, clinging to these things as if he isn't awaiting the inevitable plummet. Armand won't be there to catch him.
"So." So. "Who can you prescribe your own judgment to, if not yourself?"
"All those laws, and nobody bothered to outline 'who to eat'?"
That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
The book beneath his arm gravitates to being held against his belly, arms crossing comfortably as they go. Armand, having shrugged at all those laws—they should have committed to more, Christianity got away with ten of them—and denying outward sign of pleasure for praise, listens to the rest.
Thinks of being a product. Of being raised, sectioned off, manifested. The pavement underfoot takes on a new kind of quality, like he is simply rolling the whole earth beneath him, pushed along by the press of the toe of his shoe, and he is staying in place.
A vicious and sudden thought: Daniel is laying a trap for him. Only rhetorical, maybe, but a trap nonetheless. But maybe he isn't. He can't read his mind. He can't know.
"Weeds are no more or less evil than the bed of flowers," Armand says, from somewhere slightly behind himself, walking several paces back, it feels like. "And you know them when you see them."
A retreat, from philosophy to metaphor. Embarrassing.
Not every conversational turn is a hit. Daniel is better at asking questions and dissecting the answers later than he is at idle chatter— and better at that than philosophy, too, despite whatever he happens to academically know. He notes the slightly withdraw, but doesn't feel slighted or nervous; impervious to hurt feelings, when it comes to talking. He does so much of it, and it's usually so combative.
"Hey, that's good enough for congress and pornography," he says, clueless of Armand's internal paranoia. Maybe the trap was letting Daniel Molloy talk at all.
"If I'm being honest—"
Wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't? If he could shut up for a minute.
"—I don't know where I stand on morality and judgement, concerning dinner. I trust myself, mostly. I've been calling a lot of quick shots, though, and not following up on whether or not they were the right ones. I can admit that's out of wilful ignorance. I don't want to feel bad about it. So." So. "The best way is to be mindful up front, probably."
The conversation shifts, moves on. The world turns normally. The moment is over.
And Daniel Molloy talking in itself is no prison, even if Armand finds he has to tune back in a little. "Probably," Armand says. Internally guarded, still, more watchful of the possible curves and loops of the conversation ahead of then. Mindful up front. "I've seen many vampires fail to engage with the question at all, or give up after a decade or so."
He could speak a little of Louis, his mindfulness to the point of compulsion, and Armand has a lot of data, but he doesn't feel like it. Doesn't wish to evoke him now.
"I think there is no law pertaining the selecting because it will always vary. The bearable thing," treating himself to a callback. "The pleasurable thing. Do you find yourself hesitating, in the moment?"
Maybe: someday, Daniel will figure out more about what those moments are. Someday, Armand will feel comfortable telling him.
Maybe.
"Sometimes. It's been—" a movement with his hand, up and down, like a rollercoaster, or an unsteady sea. "The out of control desperation at first, and then overthinking how I'm going to get away with anything, after. There are a lot of needles to be threaded. Things to think about. Amazon not selling you blenders."
A callback of his own. Without realizing it, Daniel fails to evoke Louis. That exchange was only theirs.
"How high does 'the pleasurable thing' rank for you, when you choose?"
But then, what else is a conversation. Isn't the best sort of interview a lot like one of those? Armand holds onto his answer for a moment, considering its value, considering where its going, what flaw Daniel might find in it, what criticism might be levied his way, whether he would find the kind of pleasure in it he has before or if it would serve to wall them off from one another. But also, who cares.
"The pleasure is derived from satisfaction," after a moment. "Removing certain kinds of people from the world, that being, the recklessly powerful who answer to none but themselves. Passively and actively harmful to the world's state of affairs. Removing them encourages a different global trajectory. Or so I like to imagine."
It will take longer than thirty odd years to prove itself. But he's patient when it comes to his projects.
"And," because he isn't a saint, getting ahead of it, "it brings me pleasure to watch them try to survive, and give up the effort. If they could run that little bit faster, draw more air into their lungs. If they were stronger, or more resilient, all the things they believe they are."
He had told Madeleine something like this: all humans think they're the exception.
He could catch on 'the recklessly powerful who answer to none but themselves', really dig in. But this isn't an interview. Instead, it's Or so I like to imagine.
Could be that he is circling back, ever so slowly, to feeling like an asshole for asking Armand if he even likes art. Or, no. Daniel won't feel like an asshole. Takes more than that. More like a recognition that it was a stupid question. Starting to sift through seeing to understanding. A grain of sad in a fucking desert, though.
"Subtle notes of sadism," he observes, but there's an upbeat, game tone to his voice that suggests they are leaving Philosophy Hour and entering Fuck Around Hour. Just a little poke. They're having fun. Did Armand have any fun, then? What did he enjoy, 'sometimes'?
"So,"
doing this a lot, the both of them
"You didn't always run a Millionaire Survivor screening event to pick. Think you can do it right now? Still?"
"Are you attempting to switch our assigned roles?"
Maker and fledgling. Can, and will, Armand choose a sacrificial lamb for dinner? Does he think he can? He has warmed enough to slip a sidelong glance as he says this. Poking back. "Or is this my teaching moment?"
Quietly, a slight unfurling of his consciousness. A broadening radius of awareness, past the street they are in, past the block they are on. He has not spoken yet of his back up method in choosing the ones who want to die, at least a little bit, and reflexively, he browses around for hints of despair amongst the many.
A little like searching out the weak in a herd, psychologically on the fringes of things. Makes his task all the simpler.
Assigned roles. Neatly arranged. Roles have such a strong presence in Armand's life, it seems, and Daniel wonders how exactly he feels about this one. If Daniel should rock the boat and disturb the need for them at all, or if—
It's bleak to think of. Slavery, a fucking cult. Collapsing under the weight of maitre over and over. Is maker easier. Just Daniel, just one arrogant journalist. Does he want it to be easier for Armand, on that note? Does he want to learn from someone who directed the play that executed Claudia and Madeleine? Does he care? He didn't know them. Is he curious? He could find an angle. Within Armand, there seems to be a fucking limitless number of angles and mysteries to untangle. They'll probably all burn him.
"I'm daring you," is what he ends up saying, tipping caution off a ledge. He wants to be angry at him. He wants to understand him. He wants every corrosive angle. How fucking awful.
"I could learn, too. Probably. Maybe. It's been a while since I've been a student."
There is something to it, the revulsion of such a permanent allocation. The terrible power and influence a maker wields. That he would wield. That his own had wielded. The revulsion his own had had of him, that he does not feel towards Daniel, but perhaps will. Perhaps in time, as time stretches on and on.
But it's not always so. He has seen a dozen of these manifestations within his coven, without it, pairs of maker and fledgling, but those ones were not him. Were not Daniel.
Sharper, this next prod.
"I can tell," he says, a gentler batting back of the comment. "How well have you practiced the mind gift?"
"Uh huh." A bit like Yeah, but more teasing. Something he said to his (longsuffering) students, Never too old to be a student, to learn more, and Daniel had hated it. Hated being that person. A lifelong problem with authority makes him feel like a fucking tool whenever he's in a position of power, but more than that, it felt impossible to actually live any truth with that line. Dying. Definitely too old.
Not anymore.
So.
"I've made my assistant get me coffee a few times," he says, which betrays the fact that he's been practicing at all, as he no longer drinks coffee. "But she would anyway if I asked. Once in a while, 'Stop' will work on someone."
Someone that he's eating. This feels strange to talk about. Armand is so, so good at that gift. Which he knows intimately.
Armand is not a teacher. He has never felt the impulse, and teaching is an impulse. A skill, a personality. Maybe Daniel has felt like a tool for it in the past, maybe he hated it completely, maybe something about it drew him in. An empathetic ideal, to pass along the lesson, whether you believe it anymore or not.
But no, Armand has been director, dictator, and for longer than that, a symbol of something, and has he had conviction in those things, even then? Did he ever guide the vampires beneath him, or simply set the terms and wait? How well did he teach Louis anything that wasn't, also, his own way of leveraging an advantage? What did Lestat do with his lessons, but run off with them?
But Daniel is here, listening to him. Daniel is here because Armand put him here. A punishment.
"Directives are useful," he says. "But not everything. Your assistant will obey you because she's your assistant. Your prey will stop, because part of them would like to as well."
A nod—let's cross here. Through the gap in the traffic.
"But we're speaking of selection, not just subdual. I know in the interview, there was some talk of seeking the sin. Weaknesses. I can show you something else."
He walks after him, listening, and compartmentalizing. Watching the decisions he's making and putting pins in them. As if perhaps he's planning a revised autobiography, preparing to explain himself. Physician, heal thyself; insufferably combative investigative journalist, interrogate thyself.
(A Biblical quote regarded as being about criticizing of hypocrisy. Maybe his train of thought should give it a rest.)
"I'm listening."
It's his job. Ha ha. But he sounds more open here, less hostile. They aren't opponents sitting across a table from each other— Armand has made him something else. Put this strange obligation between them; Armand, obligated to explain, Daniel, obligated to hear.
He thinks they're both learning. Armand hasn't done this before, he's certain. Because even if he's ever helped a 'young' vampire before, it was never a vampire whose mind he couldn't read. Who he created.
Across the street, and over a block. A little park in the middle of the city.
The ways he has helped fledglings who stumble into his hands has been different. Show them how to hide, how to behave, and then burn them to nothing if they refuse. If they fail to adapt, or fail to break it all like a single one of them had managed. If he had burned Lestat too, would he be living, still, in squalor beneath the streets of modern Paris? Probably not. Part of Lestat's charm had been the impossibility of such a thing as the world became brighter and brighter.
Pointless. They arrive at a park bench, and Armand sits, making room for Daniel to sit along beside him. He doesn't feel nervous for this most unusual lesson, detached from the possibility. They adapt or they fail. They change him or they don't. And Daniel already has.
"That building," he says, a nod. Across the way, a tall apartment complex, midrange rentals, some permanent residencies. "Focus on it like a single object. You'll sift from the rest of the world the minds within it."
A park bench in New York. They're really doing the thing.
"Okay," Daniel says. He can do that. Well. He can do the focus part of it, who knows about the rest. But he's very curious about all this, and the mental powers aspect of this life are undoubtedly the thing he finds most alluring. Parts defensive, never to be fucked with that way again, and parts because he already has a knack for getting into people.
Perverse to have a lesson from this person, considering.
He lets it all go. A slow breath in, and out, as he stares at the building. Considers the shape of it and the people inside. Allows everything else to become unfocused; he slips away from the crush of human minds milling around the city, and glances into the bright spots within the bottle of the apartment complex.
Nothing else. Just the building. And, aha, Armand beside him.
"A little over one hundred souls, by my estimate. As you grow, as you practice, you can broaden the amount of data you're willing to receive without doing yourself harm. In a high density city like this, you needn't reach further than a block to find a viable mark. But, for now, a building."
The book is kept balanced on his lap, Armand gazing up at the structure, casting out his awareness. There is no chance of overlap. They will not be able to feel each other drifting over the same minds. They will make do.
Armand has, for now, disconnected from any sense of appropriateness. Who they are to each other, the things they have done—his sins, titanically outweighing the ways Daniel has transgressed against him, and the ways in which those sins were done. It doesn't matter. Daniel has dared him.
"I find the one who can't stand to be in the place they are in," eventually. "Or the one who thinks they can never leave it. I take my time, doing it. And then I invite them out."
Doing yourself harm. Louis describing Lestat with blood streaming out of his ears. Notes, notes. Daniel observes. He can't see into Armand's head, but he can, if he tries, perceive what he's doing outside of it. Difficult to fix his awareness on, like a psychic magic eye picture.
But he's patient. Attentive. Curious about it, and eager to learn this even as it feels like a sinister caress against nerves left raw by the past so recently remembered. Daniel leans with his elbows on his knees (posture made youthful again, almost looking like a young man wearing a costume). Armand wants his victims to ask for it.
Is this 'sin', to be sought? Or is it just another kind of vigilantism? Mercy? If you must kill, might as well kill those who deserve death. What about those who want it? I like my life, from 1973, from an hour ago. Daniel watches Armand weave this spell of a lure, and his unease blooms into determination. No one will be able to pull anything like that on him again. No one will do this to him. He'll see it from now on.
Another steadying breath. He looks through these minds, careful, gentle.
There's no rush. Dawn is miles away. And there is plenty to listen to.
Idle thoughts, dreams, murmured conversation, the buzz of the television, the single mother pacing a room anxiously while she tries to get her crying infant to sleep and not disturb her neighbours, disturbed neighbours, a dog scratching at a bathroom door, one couple making perfunctory love, a woman practicing her acoustic guitar, and
come to me
a lonely soul. Watching television, preoccupied with past bad decisions, a recent breakup, a job he doesn't want. He is a little nexus of ordinary melancholia, this man. The stress of a decent, even remarkable salary and rising costs of living. He knows he has to downsize. Pare down, cut down, slice and slice.
"Have you found him?" Armand inquires. He cannot direct Daniel's focus, but he has his own set on this mortal, gently encouraging this unspooling of despair, watching it grow colder and colder, denser and darker.
The man decides he has to get out of his head, out of his apartment, or he'll go nuts.
A siren luring sailors to the rocks. He can see Armand that way: ethereal, closer to divinity than humanity, talons like a predatory bird, delicate, decorative feathers. Something beautiful and something wrong. A haunting, alluring voice that wants you to die. Get out of the apartment. Sail into the rocks. It's better. It's what you want.
A mother thinking of smothering her infant. A guy shaking with post-rage adrenaline, terrified of what he just did to his girlfriend. Somebody who's voting conservative and leaving anonymous hate speech on social media. And, yes, a man with a bad job and a recent ex.
"Your guy? Yeah."
The temptation is there to interfere. He wonders if Armand can tell— even if just because it would be typical of Daniel to shove his fingers in where they shouldn't go, ask a mean, biting question. But here maybe there'd be a nudge. Yeah, but tomorrow will be fine. Hasn't he been this guy? Wouldn't he still be this guy, if not for Louis?
He doesn't push. He watches. Armand can do this to mortals, and to other vampires. Daniel wants to see it.
What is a victim of a vampire's appetite if not a human on a bad day?
Armand is aware of the ways Daniel could dissect this moment, any moment, in the way he is aware of gravity, of the sky above them. It is simply a constant. Daniel chooses not to and Armand nods once at the words he says instead, acknowledgment. They can watch together as the man throws on a jacket, heads for the elevator, slips down the spine of the building.
The mother with her child does not answer his call, preoccupied with her own ill-feeling, her awful sense of responsibility. The man, enraged with his woman and himself, does not listen for the quiet being promised. Armand doesn't offer it to them.
Out the front doors of the building, the man turns a corner. The bodega for smokes, he is thinking. Then, Daniel will probably be able to tell, secondhand, the way he changes his mind: no, let's go for a walk.
Little nudges like a psychic sheep dog. It's interesting. A silent interrogation, carefully moving a person's whole mental state around to find the answer being shielded. There's a keen familiarity in it. Conversational fencing is similar.
Armand accused Daniel's work of being no different than killing. The connection is instantaneous, a tiny, clear spark of a reveal. Oh.
"You're the boss, boss."
Motherfucker. There's a ruefulness in his voice. No mind-reading, but he wonders if Armand will connect what he's connected, or if he's too out of practice to regular-read. He gets up when his maker does, and walks with him, to—? Who's leading, here, what's the lure?
The lure: the man starts seeking somewhere quiet. A suggestion, like calm black water, like when he and his friends would go to the seaside back home in Maryland. It might put him at ease.
And the way Armand can't read Daniel is beginning to madden him.
But they walk. It's an ambitious walk, nothing this mortal would seek to accomplish on his own if he were in his right mind, if he weren't following an impulse. He will seek the water and realise there is no coming back to the things that made him happy, and this is where selection is subdual. They will drink his blood, slip his body into those black waters. The hunt will be over.
Would it be more fun, if it was a chase?
"We have some time to kill," comes out a little sharp. Probably not a purposeful vampire joke. "If you would like to speak your mind."
Time to kill. Blenders. Armand's a funny guy, though he doesn't seem to know it. The sharpness is also funny, in its way, and Daniel has to put a conscious effort in not to smile. Aware that Armand has noticed him processing something, and that, apparently, Armand can't begin to guess. A total lack of ability to read people? Or just Daniel?
He considers the amount of time Armand spent as a mortal compared to the length of time he's been alive. Even if Armand had been a very keen observer, had honed his ability to predict people as a self-defense mechanism like many abuse victims do, it's been centuries since he's had to bother with it. Daniel makes a note of it. Cheat less. Don't lose this. Fuck eating a mortal meal once a week, practice humanity by continuing to be good at poker without telepathy.
But Armand asks, and this strikes Daniel as a good thing. Even with the edge. He's being invited to share, to engage. And so: he does.
"Back in Dubai." Striking this match. Talking about then, out loud and deliberate, instead of alluding. "When you were still wearing the costume. You accused me, in my capacity as a journalist, of doing the same thing as killing. Got a little dramatic. But I see what you meant, now. You were looking at it like this, weren't you?"
Armand listens, and does so by watching Daniel as they walk rather than playing at aloof. Back in Dubai, and the natural twinge towards anxiety is matched only by his interest in the thread being taken back up. Masochistic, maybe. He has his tendencies.
A hooded lowering of his eyes before his focus goes back to where they're going.
"I wanted to provoke you. You were being judgmental."
He pauses for the span of a step or two, and then bids, "Elaborate," because it hadn't been that simple, either. Maybe Daniel sees more of himself in this than Armand did in Daniel's work.
A note of interest, about provocation, and judgement. Daniel gives him a look, but doesn't follow up. (Yet?) Might be fun to dissect who was being provocative because it was his job, and who was being judgemental. Another kind of conversational fencing match.
One thing at a time.
"When you want to interview somebody and make it real, get to the truth of why you're there, you have to get past the first answer, and the second answer, and the third. You have to redirect and argue and provoke until you get to the truth. Usually it's not because people are lying to you. They're lying to themselves, or they just don't realize they aren't going far enough. Nobody wants to say the embarrassing thing, the worst thing. You do have to talk them up to the ledge, and then get them to walk off of it. Whether it's in confession or anger."
"'I don't write puff portraiture', you said," Armand says.
Agreeing, rather than making a point, although Daniel would be forgiven for not being able to differentiate the tone. Who wins literary awards, chronicling the lives of phantoms of a person on their best day? And rarely do people win those awards by trying to win awards. They do it by being built this way.
"Focus on him," back to the lesson, for a moment, "his mind. His scent. We're going to go the long way."
Attract less attention. The mark disappears around a corner, and Armand nudges their trajectory to move out of sight, if in parallel, disappearing through late night traffic, sparse crowds.
"You feel it, when you're getting close. You thrill for it, live for it. Lived," vampire jokes on purpose. "A hunt can feel the same."
Agreement, he thinks. Armand is slippery (not all on purpose?). But Daniel is learning.
Oh, right. Also learning vampire shit.
He makes an attempt at putting a pin on the man that Armand has lured out of the building with immense sadness (what a way to do it), and at trying to keep part of his awareness there. Multitasking. He loses the man right away, but slows his steps and considers, and ends up finding him again. He does almost bump into a fellow pedestrian walking in the opposite direction as this goes on, but he recovers, walking beside Armand with his hands in his pockets and looking very normal and un-flustered. Yep.
"It's a puzzle that opens a lock." An odd thing to stay about journalism, perhaps. "It's an unraveling. A bang. Takes all kinds. You get there, and then you get to go past there."
His mark feels like a beacon he can nearly see, a cold point at the edge of his brain oriented in the correct direction. Armand doesn't think to describe this as Daniel keeps pace with him—either it will make sense or it doesn't, or Daniel will have his own way of going about things.
"A peeling back, a luring out." Armand can do both. He prefers the latter when it comes to these kinds of victims, letting them along a path which leads back to himself. His petty cryptofascists are more fun beneath a scalpel.
This, also, he doesn't say. Instead, "Do they appear more human to you, or less? Your puzzles."
He thinks about these things like pins on a map, or a research board; no string involved (usually). In this case the string would be moving, anyway. But it flows along with the way he's connected this to the work he does, it's just a matter of him being able to keep up with it. Easier when he can maintain a line of sight, easier when it's the only thing he's doing, easier when he's not second-guessing the choice of victim.
But Daniel is a fast learner, and he cares more about figuring this out and observing what he can about Armand than he does about the morality.
"Now?"
An odd question. He's not sure what to make of it at first, because everything is both more and less human to him, now. More because it's becoming defining. Less because he feels detached. But he figures Armand means before, actually, and is picking at Daniel's process. So. Reverse back for a less stupid response—
"Everybody's a puzzle." This should be a hard truth, about himself. Something that's been used as an accusation, treating the world like an investigation, seeing everyone in terms of a story and relationships as angles. And yet it's just the way he is. Accepted now that he's ruined every romance, every familial tie, every potential life-long friend. "That probably qualifies as appearing less than human. But I usually like people better when they're puzzles."
He shrugs. Distantly, he traces Armand's chosen mark as he moves around barriers to the water's edge.
A memory, of black tape ejected into the air as if into a vacuum, long inky ribbons. Useless, mundane, trivial, pointless. Armand could imagine a mind like one of those tapes, all coiled up inside of a delicate casing, and slowly dragging it all out into the open, glossy and vapid. He does not like people. He doesn't know if there was a time when he ever had the capacity.
There was a time, though, he might have accused Daniel of it. Misanthropy. He prods around for it now, a way in for dehumanisation, a process that will make the hesitations less—but there, Daniel says it. I usually like people better when they're puzzles.
And then, Armand must think of corruption. Will Daniel become someone who takes people apart for fun? Not for chronicling, not for truth, but for the way their blood tastes. Or perhaps he will go away. Start discarding boring people. He thinks of the couple he'd let go, their inane commentary.
"This way," Armand says.
He doesn't call attention to the way he gently nudges people away from the area. A couple hanging out at the railings discard their cigarettes and decide they've had enough, linking arms and leaving. Others, rerouting, or become distracted, turning around, idling. They'll find their mark sitting on the edge of sloped concrete, where boats would be let into the water. Arms tight around his knees, emanating a despair he has never truly felt before, but has always lived within him, he thinks. Rot, plastered over.
Armand stops. They're at a distance to go unnoticed, for now. He doesn't have to explain that if he were to kill this man, he would feel relief. Daniel has already felt it, ill-gotten though it was.
People are better when they're puzzles, because people suck— prejudiced and stupid, inconsistent, fallible, the dreaded b-word, vapid, selfish, or the worst, just slightly irritating without any grand offsets. Daniel doesn't love people. But he doesn't hate people, and he believes that despite his own pitfalls and inability to connect on a normal, broadly compassionate bleeding heart level, that people are mostly good. Individual people can be good, they can be born good or they can change to become good; societies can rise above, with work. And he believes such work should be encouraged and celebrated, even if he, personally, is frequently mired in bitterness and apathy about the trajectory of the world.
So it's a bit of a bummer to look at this poor fucking guy. He gets it, or at least he thinks he does, but it strikes him that it's already a waste. Armand has godlike power and he uses it to prune a misshapen flower that's already half-wilted instead of an actual invasive weed.
The blood of the dead can pull a vampire down into the grave. They all hear their victims' lives as they die, sung through blood. What do these depressed fucks pull Armand into, time and time again? How is Daniel going to feel draining someone who is, psychologically, half dead already?
He looks at Armand. It's a hard look. Searching. A horrible x-ray of a thing.
Of what he finds there, if anything, he says nothing about.
"Hey," quiet, as he paces over to the man, curled up and half-catatonic. He gets a startled response, gazing up in confusion as a strange old man sits down beside him, hand on his shoulder. Something preternatural enough about Daniel already to hold his attention, and prevent him from casting around for context, from noticing Armand or anything else. A quick exchange that nevertheless, for a moment, seems to stretch on for an eternity. Daniel asks him if he's alright, and the magic of Armand's spell his shattered with a shocked sob, a toyed-with mortal stung by the surprise of random empathy.
Armand is perfectly still under the force of that look.
Maybe a blink out of time once Daniel moves off. An urge to defend himself, which is ridiculous. Daniel had dared him. He chose a single building. Armand does not need to eat every night, not even every week, and he has time to find his perfect invasive weed. This one will simply do. Never mind that Louis has spoken before of what Armand will eat when he can't find his cryptofascists to chase, what Daniel himself has nearly experienced.
He draws in a breath, resettling the book in his arms as he watches Daniel engage with the prey. Feels himself tense as the mortal's world broadens under a show of kindness, like a cracked window. What had Armand expected? That Daniel would repeat his methodology, finish the luring song that has the man slip over the edge into acceptance? No, not really, not on reflection.
And he stays where he is rather than help with clean up, at least not unprompted. After all, didn't he say he wouldn't?
Is this worse? To give the man hope, a sudden soft light, and end it anyway? He clings to Daniel, confused, euphoric, pained. Resignation is too complex a thought for how startled he is, unable to really process what's happening until his heart is pumping too slowly for the thoughts to make it all the way to his brain.
Louis wanted to know if he considered the life of the rabbit. Vegan bait. Throwing paint on classic works of art, reminding you cows are nice. Stupid. You don't have the rabbit's life beamed into your brain when you cut it.
The man dies and Daniel is sated. Maybe he had skipped a meal. Something bloody, a sick crack, puncturing a lung to disrupt buoyancy. Then an easy lift, a shuffle, a shove, a splash. He runs a hand over his mouth before leaning down to rinse them off— one thing to eat a stranger who smelled like sweat and sadness, another to risk tasting public NYC water. The real horror.
Armand strolls his way down the concrete slope a few feet, stopping there still at the top of it. A tall, willowy presence with his cat-bright eyes and chilly composure, the cuddly soft cardigan even more of a costume than it was before.
"I thought this was my test, not yours," he says. When has he ever felt the need to defend his own killings? He had toyed with Louis and his moralising, engaging in the kind of debate that he assumed Lestat had no patience for, and never felt the need to appear more human to the other vampire. Perhaps it's because Daniel is younger. Because it's because it's Daniel, the ever observant, ever opinionated, or because it's Daniel, who dismantled him, and now he is pieces of himself.
He has no pity in the dead meat now sinking into black waters. His fledgling his fed. For that, he feels satisfied.
Imbalanced. Daniel is even shorter this way, though he's always been short, so it hardly matters. He looks up at Armand, with eyes swirling from gold back to blue, the jolt of a pleasant blood-high despite the depressing transfer warming him.
Food, like Claudia said. (More, like everyone else said.)
"It wasn't a test, it was a dare," he reminds him. "And you pulled through, so it's your turn to pick."
Has Armand ever played Truth or Dare? Probably not. Daniel should not be handing him this power. But he just doesn't feel like antagonizing him right now— he has a sense, strangely, that this surreal interaction is plenty, in terms of being a stand-in for needling him about what the fuck he's doing by eating sad people who he's made sadder.
"Doesn't have to be now, now, though." Up the slope. Shoulder to shoulder (and a little lower still, on Daniel's part) in opposite directions.
It doesn't come out snippy, or angry, or really at all bothered. It was a dare, and at some point in the future, it will be Daniel's turn. Armand knows an impulse to pivot, to follow after Daniel. To demand reflection. Judgment. Something true, something cutting. How dare Daniel walk away from him, face clean, and provide no commentary at all.
Commentary could come. Keep walking with him and find out. He might not even need to ask for it. Daniel talks, for a listener. And yet—
Armand has to wonder what he's doing. Macro, micro. Turning this man. Trying to teach him something. He finds he does not know what to do now, and that simply cannot stand.
A drift in the air, a sense of motion. Even to Daniel's heightened senses, his changing eyes, sharply attuned ears, Armand is capable of a kind of disappearance—and, after the sound of one footfall, disappear he does.
Mostly apart, then together, meetings that begin to stretch. Lessons that work out, activities that turn into arguments. Harm done, here and there. Armand skipped the part he didn't like, and Daniel has never had to grow to resent his maker; he started there. He thinks they're both surprised when they realize they're going backwards, and that it's effective.
He makes a deliberate decision to give Armand house keys and a garage door fob in between trips to Belfast and Dublin for an IRA poet thing he's working on (Molloy, Molloy, that's one of ours, you should look up your genealogy, lad). His maker has the room with the biggest windows that catch all the warmth from the sunrise, where the cat likes to curl up when he's not kicked out. Peanut is an oversized Siamese mix of some kind, the same strange sandy-grey color all over with too-long limbs and a weird, perpetually frightened expressions in green eyes, even when he's winding around ankles and fearlessly sliding down curtains. A freak of a cat. He fits in.
The kitchen is an art studio, the living room is a library. There are other rooms that could be properly allocated, but Daniel only has so much time in this 'life' left, and he likes working. His work will sprawl and take over common spaces like fungus. Best to leave it alone, unpruned. Teaching Armand bad habits, maybe, with charcoal smudges all over a fridge that only holds selected options for the cat.
Daniel has a suite in the basement. It includes a regular bed, because he feels insane without it, but he sleeps in the coffin, mostly. Dead-lizard brain says it's safer, and he's too young in this unlife to have shaken free of the instinct just yet. As such, the former serves many purposes, including flat sofa, flat filing cabinet, and flat book shelf. Presently, Daniel is moving folded laundry off of it, away from Armand's knee.
"Did you end up liking any of those crime shows?"
Winding down for the morning. Sometimes he's here, in Daniel's space; sometimes they curl up together and sleep, like they had when Armand was recovering. Other things, now and then. They'd argued bitterly in Milan and Daniel had anticipated flying home alone, maybe not seeing him for months (not unusual, but he felt a pang about it), but Armand had shown up in a seat beside him anyway, and rested his head on his shoulder for the duration of the flight. Sometimes they lace their fingers together. Sometimes. But they don't drink from each other, and they don't talk about it.
The way Armand makes himself comfortable in this space is different to how he did in Dubai. Given to control, tension, precision, even while sharing a bed, and while not all of that is gone—here, he sits against the headboard, a leg folded beneath the other, unself-conscious as he peruses the thick coffeetable type book spread open in his lap. Julie Mehretu's abstracts, and he's currently occupied in an analysis of her early sketches.
He hadn't had Louis' gift for finding young talent, but he can appreciate the work of the established, and so this doesn't truly feel like some form of reaching back for something. If he doesn't sleep the whole day away with Daniel, he will go upstairs and take charcoal into hand, and refuse to wonder what Louis might think of whatever he does next.
Soon, hopefully, the past won't be an act of negation. It simply won't matter. For now—
He turns a page as Daniel speaks, looking up and keeping the corner of glossy artbook page pinched between his fingers. His wardrobe has adapted too, a soft T-shirt and sweatpants, albeit both items criminally expensive.
"I like your commentary," he says. "Is that the same thing?"
In mortal life, if he were ever in a holding pattern like this with someone - near impossible to imagine, but going with the thought experiment - he'd have burned it down ages ago. Forced the issue, explain or get out.
What's the rush, now? He hasn't figured out what this is, and there's no one to ask. No two beings in existence have been in anything even like this situation. Dead or undead. So he proceeds with no expectations, and prunes away unhelpful mental wanderings with better efficiency than he applies when selecting meals. Experiencing it one night at a time, and unpacking things when he's alone. Armand is interesting, and dangerous, and beautiful, and smart, and Daniel is comfortable with him (somehow). Armand wants men like Lestat, and Louis, and a fucked up ancient Roman painter that Daniel hopes has gone into the earth to never return; Daniel sees women sometimes, once then never again. Reconnecting with his body is his business and not something any other vampire he knows can or will understand. He handles it away from them, and shuts it off at home.
"It's something," he says, wry humor. "I'll keep trying." A habit by now, to chuck DVDs at Armand. Another holdover from recovery, during which Daniel didn't know what to do, just put random shit on during the day when he was passed out so that the house wouldn't be silent. Like Armand might slip away into some severed vampire coma he couldn't be woken from, and then Daniel would have to contend with why he didn't want that to happen.
Clothes go where they go, a few books next. Daniel is wearing an oversized long-sleeved shirt, soft pants. Shorts when he's alone, more coverage when Armand lingers. Barriers out of— respect, privacy, something? Daniel is a substitute, he's pretty sure. Though for what, who fucking knows. Maybe Armand is still crafting the role, like a sculpture perpetually still in the blobby clay stage.
"What— oh." A slipper robbed from the foyer, wedged halfway under his dresser. Peanut crimes. Daniel yanks it free and goes to chuck it upstairs to be collected later (or just stolen again by the lurking beast). "Are you staying down here?"
Armand is free to; Daniel would say so if not. Has before.
I'll keep trying, a little like the quiet part spoken out loud. The sense of Daniel trying to bring Armand things, things to capture his interest or spark his joy or occupy his time. He has had the thought before—something to throw into the hole that is him, shape it into something, what do you like spoken to highlight his own emptiness, but,
early discomforts. Not gone forever, perhaps, but not present now. Some sense of him assured that Daniel does not consider him dull, a complete freak of nature, an alien being in need of acclimation. At least, not so much that he finds it insulting, not so much that they can't exist in each others spaces.
In Daniel's space, initially, now also his. And Peanut's, who Daniel has walked in to find in Armand's arms, chin buried in soft fur as if to absorb the rumbled purring, at least once or twice.
"Yes," he says. He has turned another page but has taken to watching Daniel when he is certain the other vampire won't notice.
With a soft impact, he closes the book. "I took the liberty of downloading more of Bakshi's films, if you'd like to see them too." He had done so a little while ago, actually, but it seems pertinent to offer in light of I'll keep trying.
Can't a guy just want to find things that cheer up the eldritch horror Botticelli angel that turned him into a vampire when he didn't ask?
It's fucked up in here. It always will be. Daniel hums confirmation to that 'Yes', does some beep-beeping on the security system panel near the door to the stairs (Armand will know how to use it, if he gets sick of being asleep during the day and wants to bail), and then—
"I'd like that." Still pleased with the success of that suggestion. Somewhere in the dark depths of his storage unit is an American Pop laserdisc, but fuck only knows where the laserdisc player is (not that he couldn't get a new one) (of any of these items) (wealth does not break all habits). Digital is the solution. "Thinking about a specific one?"
He'll listen to the answer while he brushes his teeth in the en suite, out of sight but easily connected. Still no satisfactory answers from anyone about dental work, by the way. What a world, what a world. For a moment, when he meets his own gaze in the mirror, he thinks again: It's fucked up in here.
Yeah, well, he tells himself. Kinda interesting, despite that.
"I had it in mind to view his first one. Fritz the Cat?"
The Mehretu is set down, placed on one of the side tables, and Armand drags himself a little ways off the headboard, coming to sit in a loose-cross legged posture nearer the middle. He either does not brush his teeth or does not allow Daniel to witness it, or perhaps just does so infrequently—after his occasional meals, one imagines.
"Unless you have a preferred title."
But probably at least somewhat an element of privacy, where Daniel allows himself to do domestic things in Armand's presence, laundry and tidying and grooming, Armand holds himself in more reserve. Still enjoying finding a space for himself in the routine of existence. Considers the bed, considers the coffin, considers the sound of water in the drain pipes as he loops his arms around his knees.
Anyway, he has found he likes cartoons of a certain brand and mood. Adult, complex, satirical, dark. The eternal impulse towards comparison, and equally resisting it: Louis "The Plays Were Weird" du Lac would have no patience for them. They did not even have a television in Dubai.
Not actually narrowing it down all the way, with Bakshi, but his amused point remains— "Yeah, that works."
Armand is a strange thing. The least human thing on the planet, possibly. But he thinks cartoons are neat, and sits on Daniel's bed, and sometimes cuddles with the weird cat he picked up from a local rescue. It's fucked up in here. Tooth brush goes back in its cup. Daniel touches the bridge of his nose, though his glasses aren't there. Auto-pilot. Painfully ordinary and a thousand, million miles from fascinating.
He switches most of the lights off on his way back to the bed, and sits beside Armand on it. The elder vampire can decide for himself if he wants to rev up the film now, and further, can decide if he wants to prop up his tablet, or screenshare to the tv that takes up significant real estate on the wall facing them. Surrounded by shelves, it looms, slightly reflective, sporting an undignified sticky note affixed to one corner, displaying the wifi passwords.
He makes himself comfortable, meanwhile. On days when Armand opts to stay with him, the coffin goes empty. Just not practical.
Indeed, as Daniel settles, Armand collects up his phone, and the screen glows with its idle graphics as he fishes around for the file.
Once the movie begins to play, he shifts backwards to settle as well. A nearness that has become familiar, but far from ordinary. He shifts his knee and there, a little point of contact, and on the screen, a cartoon construction working hippopotamus pisses off the side of a building, and the stream of bright yellow consolidates into the title screen. Good and wonderful.
He does have a habit of watching things with giant eyes and very little outward reaction, at least for the most part—but here and there, a smile, a breath of amusement, which may be even more satisfying to witness when it's evoked by something particularly stupid or vulgar, of which this movie has plenty to offer.
Leans in. All vampires have at least a little bit of weird cat energy, and this inching into the edges of affection is how Armand's manifests in the moment.
Vague memories of this— not in the something fucked with my head way, but in a way where he's pretty sure he's seen it before, or parts of it, in an adult theater bookended by actual pornography, back when adult theaters were a thing. As trashy as one would expect, but the were fine places to sleep through hangovers and occasionally watch other men jack off. Honest and open filth, opposed to the private, shuttered shame of the internet. At least then you were getting out of the house.
He wonders of Armand's luring songs into darkness would take to a place like that, or if he would sit in the vaguely sticky theater seats and stare unblinking at the screen for the entire duration of each absurd reel, smiling now and again at the least glamorous moments, ignoring the rest of the world. He wonders if they ever missed each other in passing at some grindhouse showing mondo films and old Disney filler cartoons.
Posture he's become near expert at by now: shifting to allow an openness that Armand might curl into, when he decides to. Daniel lets him pick the pace of it. Sometimes during this stage he thinks frankly deranged fucking thoughts, like workshopping different answers to a question posed to him in 1973. Do you think I'm boring?, and Daniel had said No, but was there something better? Something truer, if worse? How could you be boring, you're the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen, and the other monster keeps complaining about his ex and wouldn't even fuck me.
The problem with all of this is that Daniel looks forward to it. He just has to pretend not to, because thinking about it too often is going to drive him insane, and there's too much else in his life that could also easily drive him insane.
As ever, he wonders what goes through Daniel's head in moments like this.
His inability to know and his ability to imagine the worst doesn't stop him. It doesn't take very long, slotting himself in against Daniel's side, head against his shoulder, a hand resting on his torso. This comfort being offered him, warmth and presence, strange enough and unfamiliar enough in its manifestation that he could once again feel a little like he is playacting as someone else.
Maybe Armand will speak of it one day, those strange dislocations inside himself, but he is loathe to become a burden. Which might be funny if he said it out loud, given everything.
Does Daniel find comfort in it as well? Armand does not believe the other man would permit anything he hated, or even found mildly objectionable, but what is the shape of it? Sometimes (and he thinks of it now as he watches the parade of animals fucking each other papering over muddled political commentary, truly an artefact of its time) he remembers the taste of Daniel's blood, the clarity of it. His mind gift still active, yes, but all those thoughts felt like they carried through the rich crimson essence of him.
He was terrifying, he was fascinating, and he still is. Was, in that moment. Is? What is he now? Does he want to be terrifying? Is he still fascinating? When will he become boring?
Daniel's hand is laying there above his own. Armand does not think before he slides his own underneath it, toys until their fingers tangle.
One arm tucks around Armand when he fits against him, and it's cozy, comfortable; the elder vampire is taller, willowy and spindly, and to Daniel it seems more like an enormous predatory snake winding around him than Armand actually making himself smaller.
The movie is bizarre, as expected. Comically pornographic in a way that would never pass as earnestly erotic except to very particular furries, and not especially adept at its politics. A brave and bold effort regardless, though Daniel isn't paying attention to it. Too difficult to pay attention to anything but Armand. Sometimes he manages it, but not today, and he doesn't bother trying. Uninterested in anything but tracing over long fingers with his own, drawing nonsense patterns with light, careful touches of nails, resting now and then against the delicate skin of his pulse point to feel his heart and the blood that moves through him.
Blood that made him. Blood he barely remembers, outside the big picture overwhelming moment, feelings of agony and euphoria, higher than high.
He has never asked. His transformation wasn't about intimacy, and the closest thing to a conversation they've had about it was back in those infant days of Fake Rashid, and Armand's seething hostile reaction to Louis' mocking offer to let Daniel have a taste. Between that and Armand's professed repulsion about the creation of vampires, no signals are mixed. Only a total fucking moron would ask.
Regardless, it is parts comforting and sensual to feel his pulse. Armand feels good against him. He smells good. Daniel ignores the cartoon, Bakshi's lurid scenes, and draws more nonsense on his the back of his wrist.
Armand will not give credit to Bakshi's exuberantly promiscuous furries for the following: he has lain against Daniel this way before and thought of sex, as he does now.
And they have argued, sometimes fiercely, and Daniel has seen the worst of him, has deliberately scattered his house of cards while maintaining eye contact. They have gone for long absences and abrupt reunions. They have exchanged human corpses and still living prey. Armand has made him into a vampire.
All of this into account and he still wonders if sex would ruin something. Sex can be ruinous. It can also be nothing, which is a different kind of ruinous.
His eyes flick to where their hands overlap, where Daniel is drawing invisible lines down his fingers, diamond-hard nails, tendon and bone. Is this the holding pattern he has consigned himself to? He has also, a little, lost track of the movie—perhaps it's that degree more juvenile than his sensibilities would prefer, although if they were to stop now, he would watch it later for completion's sake, as an interesting and bold thing in a body of work.
He thinks about how Daniel spent a lot of Dubai with his sleeves rolled up.
Long-sleeves here. But, all the same, he turns his hand so that he might hook that wandering finger in his own, and then draws it in until he can brush his lips against that pulse point.
They cannot read each other's minds. Privacy, forever. But there's no way to miss Daniel's pulse ticking up in an instant— a startle expressed only internally, the rest of him remaining under the spell of surreal domesticity they cast on themselves during days like this. His traitor heart does not slow down once he's processed that tiny, seismic movement, further condemning him to exposure.
Why?
The movie no longer exists. He thinks of ruining Armand's life, barking every slave name at him just to be cruel and to draw blood over vengeance for a week of torture and a following lifetime of strange dreams. He thinks of looking at each other in Dubai; in silence, during the day, in sound, at night when Louis was there, talking about things Daniel should have been listening to. Dark, deep pools staring out at him from Armand's face, inviting him to drown.
How fast it happened. Out of spite, Louis said. But sometimes Daniel thinks of those eyes, and drowning, and he wonders if Armand decided far earlier. If he realized he'd decided. If sitting there and continuing the interview was as good as wading into the dark water.
Alright. Maybe he knows why.
Daniel flexes his fingers, splays them, allows Armand to hold him captive. A permissive and curious pause, with all of his attention wrapped up in it while an irrelevant cartoon plays and splashes changing colors over them.
Armand is aware he has visited a significant amount of pain onto Daniel. Much of the worst of it, without using his hands or his fangs, but also: his hands insistently stroking the man's face, his hair, violent for what they meant, violent for being unwanted and cruel. It wouldn't be exculpating in the least if he remembered it as a kind of dream, disassociated from his present self.
But worse, he remembers it all with perfect clarity, what he was thinking, how he was feeling. Far different from memories of half a millennia ago. Remembers sweat-greasy curls, the scent of tears and blood, the warm weight of him when he was finally pushed enough to stop fighting.
New memories, now. Associations. Tangled hands. Sleeping on the same mattress, waking to watch the long breaths in and out. A clinging embrace that Daniel had not been cognizant to as his blood was stolen.
Thinks of that now as Armand focuses on the infinitely fine feeling of a pulse beneath his mouth. No bloodlust behind the way it intrigues him, pressing a more deliberate kiss there, hand sliding to push Daniel's sleeve out of the way, thumb following the line of muscle from wrist to midway up towards the elbow.
A rare temptation, to bite. To taste what he can't excavate for himself. Maybe in time. Instead, a following kiss to the meat of Daniel's palm. Eventually, he will have to look up and observe his fledgling's face.
Once upon a time, Daniel offered himself. Not an offer of earnest lust, but an attempt to buy his way out of a nightmare situation that he was still struggling to make sense of. He'd traded sex plenty, mostly for drugs, but sometimes for safety. It wouldn't have been anything, just another strange dot on the line of his addictions.
Maybe. Maybe blowing a vampire would have permanently rewired something in him. Fucked him up in a different way. Less mortal peril, more psychosexual torment. Though he thinks there's already plenty of the latter between them. He wonders if it's as confusing for Armand as it is for him.
Daniel continues to allow the searching touch, and he continues to enjoy it. Armand kisses his palm, and Daniel slides fingertips over Armand's cheek.
Armand's hand overlaps, following along. Daniel would say something. He would have said something by now if he wasn't welcome. He presses Daniel's hand further against him as he considers himself.
Grainy voices from the movie in the air, no thoughts at all that Armand can access. It has been an inconceivably long time since he has been with any paramour or momentary fling that he could not simply read exactly what it is they wanted and expected from him. And before that doesn't bear thinking about it. Certainly not now.
So call it a uniquely new experience instead. Because it is.
Armand shifts to align himself closer against Daniel so that he doesn't have to twist when he lifts his head and looks at him. The lighting is dim and strange, but they are vampires, and his eyes are a specific kind of dark amber, a tone of the earth rather than leaping flames. Wood and clay. He places a hand on Daniel's chest, bracing, zigzags a look over his face.
Daniel is a better read of people, in contrast. All signs point to the desire to bridge that gap between them.
All signs, if Armand weren't Armand. Daniel has consistently read so much in him— seems to always know when he's lying, except for when Armand doesn't know Armand is lying. Which happens, sometimes. The mind is not a palace of many rooms. It's a battlefield suspended over twisting layers. Daniel imagines them on opposite sides, Daniel imagines them meeting in quiet tents, where everything is peaceful.
Armand wants to kiss him. Daniel wants it, too. He's an infuriating monster, unrecognizable as human, sometimes he's too fucking stupid to find his way out of a paper bag, and he is ruinous in his attempts to right himself. And yet he's interesting, and creative, and good in an argument, and he likes dismal poets and screwed up cartoons. They're the only two people that exist. More and more, that thought does not feel isolating.
The arm he's had around Armand stays though the adjustment in posture, and Daniel curls his fingers against Armand's back, then splays them again. A tender hold that nearly surprises him, despite what he's been doing this whole time.
"Please answer me out loud," is quiet, but steady. "May I kiss you?"
They don't have to guess. They can learn to read each other, and they can ask. He wants Armand's permission. He wants to hear it.
Daniel has been holding him the whole time, but Armand feels it as a comforting weight now as he turns to press along side and against him, as Daniel gives him that request, asks that question. He knows immediately that he would cut loose the notion of sexual or even sensual intimacy if it meant losing that kind of tenderness.
But it stays. Under Daniel's arm, ribs and shoulders lift along with a deeper breath in and out.
"Yes," he says, fingers curling in the fabric of Daniel's shirt. Armand shifts, enough to meet him a little more than half way, but inviting Daniel to close the last few necessarily fractions.
Armand is so close to him now. Daniel tells himself that this isn't going to be the thing that wrecks it between them, it's fucking laughable to think anything could wreck it between them when torture hasn't. If it falls flat, they've overcome worse things. They've destroyed each other already and seen where the pieces fit back together. They can make it no matter what and that is...
Just phenomenal. How are you possible? he wonders, and then nudges forward that last little bit, and presses his mouth to his maker's.
And more. Armand, closing his eyes, pushing that little bit forwards to insist himself on that kiss. Gentle fingers setting at the edge of Daniel's jaw. (There'd been next to no thought on his part about the subjects of sexuality and gender, those trivial human anxieties that Daniel nevertheless has been caught in before. The young man who had offered to suck his cock fifty years ago did not do so out of desire, he knows.
But all the same.) It's a shallow kiss, sweet that way, but there, a press of intimacy, where they might open for each other. When Armand withdraws, its by a scant distance alone. Lifts his head a little more so they can look at each other without crossing their eyes.
"Would you want me this way?" has notes of Am I boring?, purely in the way it leaves him open for the potential to be hurt. Less clawing desperation, at least.
It's easier than it should be. No clap of ominous thunder, no psychic floor falling out from under them. Just a kiss that feels like a warm extension of the ways they already tangle together while the rest of the world fades away.
Daniel looks at him. Little flecks of awe like the first time he saw him floating in the reading room, spirals of warm affection, warm blood-gold-blue reflecting in each other. Armand has grown so familiar, as a person and a monster. There's no room between them for insecurities, no place for You're beautiful enough to have anyone, no excuse for Daniel to shudder back under the shame of his physical age. These things have been peeled away. Armand is fucking crazy. Daniel isn't squeamish.
Still. A bit of surprise. Half at the vulnerability, half at it being kind of a stupid question. Mixed. A soup of surprise.
"I've thought about it," he says. "Often enough that I've had to make myself stop thinking about it. Because I didn't want to derail anything by being an asshole."
He touches Armand's face, which is perfect, and still occasionally nightmare inducing. They've made peace and they've made friends, and every so often, Daniel still falls asleep and sees radiating orange eyes staring at him in the midst of his worst nightmares, then wakes up and those eyes are besides him, closed, dozing contentedly against his chest. He's gotten used to it.
"I want you in any way that you'll have me, too."
Do you think I'm boring? — No. One word. Not his best. Could have used workshopping. This also may need some, its careful, awkward honesty. Armand can't read his mind, and Daniel is terrible at connecting sincerely, and, and, and. They are still so close.
A flicker of a look in Armand's eyes, his expression—a sympathy with some humour to it, for not wishing to derail things. There is a lot they might stand to lose. For Armand, an anchor in the sea of him. For Daniel—
Well. He has expressed before that Armand is frightening.
Focus sharpens at that next thing. He does not mind it if honesty is awkward. It could be a problem, if he is trying to be careful, and fails at it. Honesty has a way of rattling out of him when it comes, as if he'd been holding on to too much of it and has no way of gracefully setting it down. Slipping between his fingers, overflowing. Rare, that. Rarer and rarer as the time moved along with Louis.
"I want you completely," he says. Daniel is his. Has he ever possessed something, truly? Presiding over the coven like a boy given the leash to a wild tiger. A dim memory of a painting being displayed, and although it was known that it was Amadeo who painted it, the praise was awarded to the one who had tutored him. Lestat, never his, never even pretended at it. Louis, who did not wish to feel like he was owned.
But Daniel is his. His fledgling. There is nothing under heaven that could change this fact. And it gives him no right to anything beyond the knowledge of its truth.
He would like more, if given it. It takes barely any movement to press their mouths together again, and then follows slipping a knee on the other side of Daniel as he does so.
Completely. Has anyone ever wanted him like that? Has there ever been anyone who he would believe wanted him like that? Armand has seen everything. The very worst, most pathetic, most offensive parts of him. And he's still here, like he feels that strange, comfortable isolation too.
(He knows it's the bond. He doesn't care that it's the bond. He cares about the bond. Crucial distinctions.)
"It's yours."
All of it, whatever he wants. Daniel, apparently, which despite all his brashness still makes some small part of him inside tremble with anxiety and anticipation. He is open, accepting, fucking eager for more contact, frankly, but the look in his eyes as Armand closes the small gap to kiss him again has traces of Me? You're picking me?
Him, to slide up against. Him to turn. Him to torture for a week. Armand, his maker, his everything else anymore. Daniel tips his head into the kiss and lets him move where he wants, arms around him welcoming and supportive— only slightly awkward with where to put things (things like hands). It's been decades since he's messed around with another man in earnest. Buried behind him as too complicated to bother with. He could, there's been opportunity, he just hasn't.
It's overwhelming, this thing Daniel says. Armand is in the mood to feel overwhelmed.
To settle like this on top of Daniel has he has imagined doing so before, straddling and pressed in tightly to kiss him. To feel Daniel's arms around him and for his hands to find places to settle. Me? says that flicker in Daniel's eyes and Armand can dedicate all parts of himself to answering Yes, you.
A hand, travelling up the side of Daniel's neck, over that old circle of bite marks from half a century ago. Slipping into his hair, feeling its texture between gentle fingers, running a line with his thumb down the curve of skull to neck. A different, roving touch to the last time the way he touched Daniel resembled this. No too-hard petting.
And kissing him, a way of doing so that tests what Daniel says, inviting him to yield.
A shriek of some kind from the television, and barely a flicker of Armand's eyelashes follow the television going black. No scent of anything fried, so he probably just hit an off switch. Probably. They're doused in silence, in dimness, Armand's knees gently squeezing in on either side of Daniel's thighs.
Armand, warm and pressing down on him. It sends something profound up his spine, more than a jolt, different from the kind of arousal he feels with the humans he still hooks up with sometimes; he's never held another vampire this way. The feeling is different. He hadn't noticed— how could he? Why would he?
Kissing him is unexpected richness. Light with care and reverence, dark with eons-old promises of The only two on Earth, and that silver, shivery, bond. Daniel has never truly yielded to Armand— never fought him for dominance, but made him work. At patience, at communication, at being honest, at showing up. He has never been a dutiful, studious fledgling, even in times of learning from him. A pain in the ass to teach. Impossible to steal the last word from. Armand, paying the price of saving him, fifty years and counting.
He yields here. Leaning back to let Armand sink against him. Tipping his chin and letting him kiss him the way he wants, the way that feels good for him. Holding him and sliding his hands around his back, over the ribcage that houses that too-intense heart, up his spine, touching silken black hair, cradling him with a touch that's welcoming and capturing at once.
It doesn't matter anymore, why Armand made him. They've made the rest on purpose.
Absurd that he is extremely contented by the idea of spending a long time making out like teenagers. Old men both, for all the ways he does not consider Daniel to truly be that. A fascinating mix of human maturity and vampiric youth, and a mind as sharp as any mortal, no sign of dulling.
Armand relaxes bodily beneath these long strokes of Daniel's hands, as if he has craved that as much as the kiss burning between them. Feels, too, Daniel yield, and the kiss deepens, still slow, still testing things between them. Feels his own blood warming by the time fingers are in his hair, and the hand he has braced at Daniel's side curls into a fist, gathering fabric there.
As soon as he feels content with what he has, comes the desire for more.
This manifests as a wandered kiss, landing at the corner of Daniel's mouth, cheek, ear, then tucking down to the scarred side of his neck. To the way the hem of Daniel's shirt is pulled upwards by an inch, a few inches.
Who knows how long they spend in that first pool of it; Daniel loses his ability to accurately guess the passage of time, and the sun loses its ability to pull him into sleep. This bedroom has become its own universe out of time.
Which is a lot, for a couple of weird guys kissing. They've earned it, he thinks. An indulgence in feeling.
It shocks him that he believes Armand wants him. Quite a bit to unpack about it, most of it laughably mundane in the face of winding their vampiric bond closer and closer, and he'll do it ... later. The instinct to flinch and offer to leave his shirt on creeps up, perhaps tangible for a moment when he pauses a little to feel Armand pull at it, but he makes himself relax.
Completely, Armand said, It's yours, he answered. And he meant it. He'll trust Armand with himself, even though it's objectively stupid to do so. It's the kiss against his ear that did it, maybe. He brings a hand around to touch Armand's chest, stroke over the contours of him through his shirt, feel his heart and his breathing the old-fashioned way. Up, to cradle his face, press a thumb against his mouth just to feel the shape of his lips, and then replace it with his own, silently asking for more, deeper, all of it.
It's nice to exist in a space where nothing else exists. No one else. Armand is not entirely certain he has felt that before, if the elusive bond itself is to blame, or something else, something changed in him, nothing left to lose but the person who is ushering him into a kiss.
He hasn't put much thought into what he does or does not deserve. The answer is nothing, obviously, which makes the question useless. Earned is more compelling, more fair, but the matter of being deserving feels like an inaccessible alternate dimension, a question for people who aren't him, subject to higher judgment. There has, however, been a kind of jealous rebellion in his occupation of Daniel's focus.
And here, it eases, as Daniel touches him, as Armand's skin tingles in the wake of stroking fingers. Daniel, feeling his heart beat, his lungs inflate and deflate. Touches his mouth, and they kiss each other again.
Isolating. It feels good not to be tethered to a bunch of fucking people, and no one he has to manage. His fledgling is a terrible student in the best way.
Considers that little hesitation he had sensed, sharply attuned. There is a pleasing strip of bare skin above Daniel's waistband, and now he gets his fingers up under the hem, lets the fabric catch against his knuckles and wrist and draw up a little more as he smooths a flat hand over Daniel's belly, to his sternum. The faint scratch of nails, followed by gentler palm.
Fate versus chaos. Maybe they were destined, and the wealthy reclusive vampire he was always meant to meet in San Fransisco was Armand the whole time. Or maybe this is just finding the sweet within bitter, making something worthwhile out of spite. In a hundred years, Daniel might have enough insight to be able to sketch out the skeleton of a story about it.
A hitch of breath at those touches, the contrast between nails and softer. He slides one hand from Armand's face to his shoulder, lower, over his criminally expensive bland t-shirt to the cuff where it breaks into skin. Loops his arm around so it's not squished, and touches him. Exploring like everything, even boring parts like the inches tucked under a shirt sleeve, is hypnotic and worthy of investigation and anointing. Light touch of nails, echoing the sensation he's enjoying, smoothed over with immortal skin.
Also fun: aimless making out. Fucking great, actually.
They could spend all day doing simply this, and Armand would be content. Maybe they will. It isn't until several minutes pass that it occurs to him that he does want more, and that he could have it if he wanted, and the idea is slow to release him once it takes hold.
Doesn't rush, still. Basking in this attention, for all that basking in attention is an experience not without its baggage. Daniel's attention. Different from anyone else's. Interested, and curious, and borderline permissive and deferential, and that is its own thrill. That diverts blood in his body, and it's pleasing to feel something as mundane as lust stirring in him. Not the first time, no, but the most dedicated, the most obvious.
Aimless making out, long minutes, time slipping past without definition, until Armand shifts. Reorients until he is sitting up, straddling Daniel, a hand planted on his chest, rucked up shirt. In the dimness, his eyes show off bright rings of orange—thin, around black pupils.
"I desire you," he says. Easy and barely conscious to settling on him, an intimate press of weight and warmth. "I have for a while."
Hands at Armand's sides, one sliding low on his hip, the arch of the joint, following it, thumb sliding along the vee between his hips. Stopping low, but stopping. It's dark in here, but there are enough pinpoints of it from this small source or that, and Armand is still illuminated. Draped in deep velvet colors and outlines of amber light, centered around the hypnotic glow of brilliantly inhuman eyes.
Okay—
Don't say 'okay', that's weird, though the plainness of what Armand tells him makes arousal spark through him. He squeezes his hips, presses in against the meat of his muscles with slow pressure of fingertips.
"What have you been thinking about, specifically?"
As tempting as the idea of just going with instinct is, Don't kill the mood, Daniel needs to know. If Armand tries calling him 'maitre', he's kicking him out and they get to work on rebuilding from this, to.
He had sat up and started talking because he wanted to talk, but specifically gives him pause. A pause in which Armand can luxuriate in being so settled, in the slow pressure of Daniel's fingertips at his hips, at what this configuration could do for them with few obstacles in the way.
"That I wish to know you better," he says. Honesty, then. He lets it tumble out. "I want to know what you like and then give you that."
No mind reading, no cheating his way past verbal description. Louis might say, now, that he didn't enjoy the roles they had shared, but Armand would not have encouraged it if he didn't think it was what Louis needed of him, if he didn't in part need it in return.
He doubts, at least, that Daniel wants to be his master. He thinks he would be disappointed to find out if he did.
It's so fucking surreal to compare San Fransisco to now. The significance has him in a chokehold, and at the same time, the tenderness of how they're just pressed together, touching, kissing, feels easy. A pleasant sinking, opposed to falling into a dark pit.
Daniel sits up just enough to kiss Armand, a light press, a silent thank-you for answering. He's slow to lean back down, just looking up at him.
"I like a lot." He strokes over Armand's thigh, following the strong line of it to his knee, back up. "It's been a long time since I've been with another man, so you'll have to put up with some fumbling. I.. don't want to hurt you, or hold you down, or anything like that."
He's been into plenty of harder shit. And following, plenty of that has been voluntary and unrelated to purchasing drugs. But is feels wrong for Armand— nothing to do with wanting to be subservient to his maker (right? right), instead, a more mundane instinct. One that finds the idea of contributing to certain patterns to be a turn-off.
Armand responds to the kiss with a gentle answer. Almost surprised by it, despite the way they've been sharing in this contact for a little while now. His torso lists in as if he might pursue more. Stops himself, contents himself with a hand settling higher up at Daniel's shoulder, fingertip tracing the collar of his shirt.
A little smile for the topic of fumbling, and it fades but doesn't freeze at the rest. A flicker of a look down, acknowledgment, and back up.
"It's been a long time since I've been with anyone different," he says. "So we may find ourselves fumbling together."
And that might be nice, says his tone. Different kinds of potential clumsiness, granted.
"I won't ask that of you," to address the rest. Humour present when he adds, "And I suppose my reminding you that it's not possible for you to truly do those things is beside the point."
Nearly eighty years is a long time to spend with one person; no matter how fucked up, it was a relationship longer than Daniel's been alive. Though there's mild, buried surprise that Armand hasn't messed around in between then and now. He wonders if it's bothered Armand that Daniel has, but then decides: probably not. None of them have turned up dead, and he's backwards engineered all of Armand's acts of torment to the various sources of his ire.
So far.
Daniel lifts a knee up to jostle him slightly, a little teasing motion.
"I know you can kick my ass no problem," he says. "It's the dynamic I don't want to get near. So, thank you." For saying he's not going to ask it of him. It's a relief. I want to know you better, too. Learn what you like."
Will they lose this, eventually? The cosy affection, the humour in this little jostling gesture? It seems not only possible but inevitable. It would be easy to begin despairing, to pivot to concern that Armand will have to take great care to preserve what he is enjoying, what is new and familiar, that to change might be to erode, to fret for his skills in preservation, given his history—
Maybe later. Another time to consider the horrors of centuries of unlife ahead of them.
"The dynamic," he echoes. Not an affirmation that it's what he likes, just a thought, circled. "One without punishment." Fine. His hands ease up to find a place amongst the pillows on either side of Daniel's shoulders, a different orientation of his hips. Answers that jostle with a less playful, or differently playful, rub of contact.
Watching him. The odd mercurial mix of eye colour, where it's currently settled. "You don't wish to be in charge of us," he adds, a question in a statement. More than just refusing to be a source of pain.
"We've got plenty of other ways to punish each other."
Bitter arguing. Armand looking at Daniel's horrible doodles and possibly regretting his agreement to join in with life drawing classes— he tries earnestly for Armand's sake, but he's just awful. The times when Armand tries to get Daniel to do things without asking, the times when Daniel treats Armand like a subject to get an angle on. The complication of friendships. Remembering.
Plenty, without bringing it into this.
Daniel slides fingers around one wrist, slowly traces up and down Armand's forearm, allowing himself to be caged in. Watches him, shifts up just so into the way he flexes down.
"If it's something you're set on I'd be willing to negotiate, but overall, no, I don't want to." He nudges his knee up again, quirks an eyebrow at Armand. "Not here, anyway." More teasing, though this time it's a dare. Daniel isn't going to start being subservient in night to night life, but what's Armand interested in here?
Less out of duty or celibacy or restraint so much as Armand staying completely out of the way of other vampires and having absolutely no desire to fuck a human. This is something that is slow for young ones to grasp, the way the difference between vampire and mortal can feel as profound as the difference between a man and a dog, or a man and a child. Different species, different conceptions of reality, empathy, reasoning. Something distasteful about the idea, to him, possibly part of the tangle of having never wished to work the Dark Trick.
Or maybe that isn't Armand's age. Maybe that's just Armand. He had been transformed and then found himself on a higher plane of existence to humanity, and was no longer subject to the things he'd been shaped to endure. Then, a fire, and he found himself on a lower plane of existence to humanity, beneath their feet, existing in their shadows, never to mingle.
This feels human, though. Pleasantly ordinary. "I don't want to hurt you either," after a moment, as if taking a second to decide that this is true. He doesn't want things to feel like San Francisco. Whatever joy he'd derived from making Daniel shake and cry isn't the kind of joy he seeks now. That had, anyway, been about Louis.
"But if you would want to indulge me, I'd enjoy using you. Sometimes."
'It's like fucking a dog' could be another thing outside of here to be wielded as punishment, probably. Daniel would make a very funny sound. Though whether or not Daniel is going to be fucking anyone else ever again is very much up in the air, at this time.
Daniel turns his head and presses a kiss to the inside of Armand's forearm, even as he continues to touch him there, sliding the tips of diamond-hard nails over his skin. Good, that Armand doesn't want to hurt him. That's a good boundary, even though Daniel might not deny him that outright. Again: he has indulged in harder, kinkier things than making out in the dark, and not all because they were transactional. It interests him that this negotiation has continued to feel as erotic as a physical act, too.
Eyebrows. Oh?
"Use me how?"
Daniel's not a virgin, he can make several educated guesses. He wants to hear Armand describe it.
A fair question, and Armand wishes to be honest in these dealings, and also wishes to protect the odd little permutations around his feelings of possessiveness. The erotic ones and the less so. Protect them from Daniel's scrutiny, he who had doubted the vampire bond in place of maybe Louis had been kind of fucked up, ill with the abuse he had one through, among other latent, decidedly non-supernatural glitches.
No. Not thinking of them. Just this, Daniel solid beneath him, that little spot on his forearm tingling after a kiss, the sparks induced by sharp nails drawing paths over his skin.
"Maybe I would hold you down," he says. "Focus on only what I need from your body. There will be," hm, a pause, considering his wording, before continuing after a fractional pause, "times I wish to do it the other way. To serve you. It would please me."
Another slow shift of his body, a heavier way of his breath leaving him. "But I've never had someone to myself this way. I've never felt ownership over anything. Anyone. I want to."
Louis' insistence that the bond seduced him and his maker into being the only two people on Earth was met with skepticism because they had a third (and a forth, in Antoinette). But he understands now it was plain and simple favoritism making it true, and he finds himself unable to even consider the hypothetical of Armand making another. His mind skitters away from it. Probably a fucked up sign. A fucked up sign, of more things that are fucked up, and he welcomes all of it, because despite all of his shit talking, he really, really likes feeling like he and Armand are all there is.
Daniel takes stock of these ideas, imagining them, letting the potential wash over him. Impossible to miss the way his breathing ticks up a little, and the way he's only growing warmer. The idea of being served by someone with Armand's past threatens to string a stitch of unease through him, but he's a little foregone in the arousal department, and besides, Armand has had quite a while to unpack his own issues. If he has. But telling a survivor what they can and can't be turned on by is bullshit.
Ownership. His pulse speeds up, telltale. A horrible thing to know that in 1973, Armand described him accurately, and that a part of him in the midst of the most intense fear and shame he'd ever felt, thought it was kind of hot. That part of him seizes onto something now and says Yes, more of that, and has to take a slow breath.
Complicated. Yep. Here we fucking are.
"You're the only one," he says, and he's shocked at how affected he sounds. Uncharacteristically, he falls short on explaining what he means by that. Maybe it's clear. Armand is singular. In the world, and to him.
It catches him off guard, having not intended to press for this kind of assurance. Unless some part of him had, had wanted to hear it, but it doesn't stop him from going still. His own growing warmth, quicker bloodflow, speaking his own arousal into being and helped along by hearing it echoed in Daniel's body. And now this, a more private reaction unless Daniel were to drink the truth from his blood, or,
catch it, there, in Armand's expression. Seeing through the dark, the subtle widening of his eyes, some near-nervous set to his jaw. A drawn breath in, slowly let out.
"Yes," he says, on a delay. "As you are for me."
No other fledglings, no other immortal lovers. He had turned Daniel because he wanted Daniel to live forever, because he wanted a companion, and here it is. Almost embarrassing, how simple it has all turned out to be.
Is it reassurance? Is it offering himself? All of it? Daniel meant to say more, the only person he'd trust like this, the only one he's going to let this happen with, ever. Ever, and forever is so fucking long, so fucking long that Armand is living on an alien planet, and someday, Daniel will be, too. And it lands just the way it is, correct even without his say-so, and he sees it in Armand.
A sharper breath in, before he sinks down. Obeying without feelings of obedience, gladly fitting them back together as Armand kisses Daniel. The contact feels certain and sure of his own welcome, and like it is going to be one of many such instances, and like it is the first time again. His hand, smooth and warm against Daniel's cheek.
New ones are so fragile. Armand knows this better than most. The amount of times he has flicked a glance at one, focused in on the core of them, and set them ablaze like they were made of tinder and dry straw—scarcely effort on his part.
And now there is this one, immortal but fragile. He has never cared for one. He can't begin to fathom the idea of the true ancients waking, so he can at least take some comfort that by the standards of the active vampire populace, his presence is armor enough.
Daniel pulls his arms around him, feeling so strangely needy in a way he hasn't been since he was much younger. Or maybe never before— he finds it too difficult to think of a time that was exactly like this. There's no comparison. This is another life, and Armand is unlike anything, anyone else, for good and ill.
He kisses him with intent, learning the taste of him, what makes him press back the most intently, and he forgets everything about kissing in his life before, even his unlife before. They don't strictly need to breathe, he doesn't have to hope nothing turns sharp in his mouth and give him away; it's different, an endless heated loop of sensation. Armand feels so good on top of him. Dangerous and safe and erotic and sweet. Someone who might hold his hand for hours, someone who might try and keep him in a fucking cage. Either way, forever.
Daniel shifts up to rub against him, then touches his face, his chest, and slips a hand between them to press a hand where he's growing hard. As easy as decades ago, though really, the only thing that had finally made a major dent in his libido had been disease. Still, this too is a little different; blood pressure feels just that little bit more euphoric when you are all blood inside. He hitches them together so it's hard on hard, layers of fabric teasing separation.
Thin, soft fabric, fabric for sleeping in, and concealing very little from one another save for the precise texture of their skin, a fuzzying of detail. Daniel tucks his hand between them, evoking a soft noise from Armand muffled into their kiss, and he finds himself quite hungry for those missing aspects.
But willing to tease himself with it, satisfy instead in the warm weight of himself bearing down, at the way Daniel shifts them even closer together. Armand has no shame at all about another and much more precise roll of his hips, the specific slide of blood-filled flesh, mutual interest.
This, for a moment. Wiling away seconds and minutes like this, where the occasional, languid shifts of his body against Daniel's feels less like he is attempting to evoke, provoke, but more what he said already: seeking his own satisfaction while Daniel is caged beneath him, between his knees, his hands, beneath his weight.
The kiss breaks, and Armand kisses up under his chin. Down to his throat, a scraped open mouthed feeling across his adam's apple, the flick of a tongue, and then finally tilting up so he can insist Daniel's shirt off of him. Gets as far as helping it up around his shoulders before abandoning Daniel to that task, occupying himself with a blunt-toothed, gentle bite lower down on bare chest.
The way Armand grinds down on him feels good, and definitely evokes what he said he wanted, just using Daniel as something to get himself off. It sparks through him, and feeds something—
He almost laughs, almost pulls up something dark and terrible (Armand might shrug it off, tell him You were fine, which would also be funny, be infuriating), because if he isn't anything more than an eager hole, then maybe that's what Armand wanted in the first place. Projecting more than just insecurity onto the half-dead boy in that apartment. Would you have fucked me then, while Louis was in the other room? Would you have wanted it for more reasons than making him feel worse?
Pleasing, that the fucked up thing in Daniel interlocks with the fucked up thing in Armand.
He lifts enough - easy, like he's weightless, like Armand is, too, just hovering his spine over the bed, moving this way is still a marvel after mortality, after aging, after disease - to finish sliding his shirt off, peeling the sleeves away, letting it drop mindlessly beside him. He's going to reach back down and tangle fingers in Armand's hair, but then there's that bite, which makes him flinch. Good flinch, the rest of him twitches, he lets out a faint, unbidden 'Oh', and it's not anything with fangs, no blood, but it opens up a desire that sends a searing rush through him. Motherfucker. Daniel pets over dark curls but doesn't stay there, reaches down his back instead and starts tugging at his maker's shirt in turn.
Nearly a laugh, the shape of his breath, warm against Daniel's skin. That was a good sound to encourage, and he can almost taste the bodily reaction it evoked. Armand is considering doing it again, but—yes, that first, greedy for the intimacy of skin on skin contact. He moves just enough to help encourage the T-shirt off of himself.
Something a little unearthly about the golden tones stubborn in his skin, even under the distant blue light of idle electronics. Something charming and ordinary in the peppering dark hair across his chest. Not much time to appreciate, when the T-shirt is tugged clear of him and Armand lowers his head to bite again.
This time, little pinpricks of pressure, barely enough to draw a smear of blood, but a taste is all he is after for the moment, giving a throaty sound for the sting of copper on his tongue.
Armand is absurdly beautiful, which surely he knows, which surely he's sick of (or not, vanity is delicious in its way), and Daniel isn't immune to it no matter that he's ever been quicker to see him as a monster than a person. He looks at him now, nearly glowing despite the darkness, textured in a way that makes Daniel want to get his mouth on him everywhere, and thinks that he's still a monster, and still absurdly beautiful.
Another bite, just sharp enough, and that fucking noise Armand makes. Everything is so small and it nearly makes him gag with how much it turns him on.
"Armand," nothing else, just his gasped name, hands clasped at his shoulders and scrambling at his back. Encouragement, frustration, desire. Daniel hitches up into him, rubbing together restlessly.
His name in Daniel's mouth, spoken like that. (An echo of a memory, Amadeo, Arun, drawing blood, and worse still, later, later when he thought of it again, with the memory of Daniel's blood in his mouth, the way it had made him want.) Textured, a friction to it, like it interfaces directly with his nerve endings without needing to bother itself with physical contact.
But Daniel hitches up against him. Makes a good case for exactly that.
Armand gets his fingers in Daniel's waistband and drags the fabric down, just dexterous enough to make it a smooth enough process, a sudden baring. Panting, a little bit, with the desire to taste, and his hand captures Daniel's cock, a feeling and assessing kind of contact, memorising his specific dimensions, a fingertip questing over the head of it.
His, his, his. At this point, requesting permission would be an overly polite show of manners, but Armand thinks he would have asked or found a way to extract it before he slides further down and tastes him with an open mouth. Does not, clearly, his cupping hand and the hot-wet of his tongue sudden things in the dark, hungry too for the sounds Daniel is making, the shape of his hands on his back and shoulders.
Movement is so different. Daniel has never fucked around with another vampire, as he's already reflected on, but it's stark— Armand slips lower so effortlessly, quick and easy without any fumbling and shuffling because he's so unhindered. It's dreamy, it's shocking, but it feels so much more real.
A hand around him, then more all at once, and Daniel's breath catches in his chest on an expletive. A dizzying view of the ceiling as what's happening sinks in, the impossible velvet heat of Armand around him, elegant fingers, the threat of teeth that cranks everything up. Then, hands engaged again, scraping through his hair to cradle his skull and touch his shoulder, before Daniel is up enough on one elbow to do this and watch him.
Is this really happening? Jesus Christ. Apparently. This is his life, and this is Armand, and Daniel is more into this than he's been into maybe anything. He thinks to reach into his mind and to the bond between them, and shudders.
He can feel his own excitement like a slow winding up tension, and it happens without reluctance, without qualification. Without the ability to slip his awareness through the seams of his partner's skull and take measuring assessment of his own performance, their unspoken desires and needs, and anticipate them, or divert them. But he can hear Daniel's breathing, feel his hands, feel him shift to sit up so he can look.
And that brings about a flush of warmth, as does the tasting touch of his tongue at the tip of him, at the desire to encourage him deeper, just that little bit, and tip his head so Daniel can watch. Little fangs present, still, but kept out of the way enough that if there is the slight sense of them scraping sensitive flesh, it should mainly encourage stillness more than anything else.
Service, possession, both things can be true and complicated in the simple act of taking Daniel into his mouth in contemplative strokes of movement. His hand, flattening against his abdomen.
Blowjobs are always good. Armand makes it a thousand times better, and his brain is scrambled a little because of the intensity of the sensation, having been diligent about condom use since turning. Explaining to humans— just, you know. Pass. His mouth directly on him is maddening, and seeing it just makes everything so much hotter.
Every now and then, the faintest touch of teeth. He holds very still in his propped-up position, trying not to squirm despite ragged breathing and the clench of his hand against Armand's hair, his shoulder, attempting not to dig claws into him during moments of too-good near-flinching. He's not sure if this Armand is serving him by doing this or if he's the one offering it up, held here to give Armand whatever he wants.
Good thing, actually, that Armand can't read his mind. He wouldn't find anything useful in there, no roadmap for better pleasure, just deranged shit like It wouldn't be the worse if he actually bit me here, okay yes it would, okay stop thinking about it.
After long moments, Armand lifts his head, and he is breathing heavier by the time the end of his tongue leaves Daniel's cock. A break, maybe, where the tight fist of his hand slides over saliva-slick flesh to make up for the absence, except Armand glances at Daniel once again—brighter orange, a thin rim of it around the pooling black, diminutive fangs beneath his lip which pulls back—
Sinks a proper bite into the meat of Daniel's thigh, blood quick to rise, coaxed beneath a languid swallow that draws golden threads beneath the surface of his skin, the blood-thick flesh in fluttering abdomen muscles, reaching for his heart.
Hand, squeezing. Service, possession, some ideal thing between the two when there will be times maybe either of them will crave one more than the other. Armand's eyes slide closed under the taste of hot blood in his mouth. It's been a very long time since he's really itched for exactly that.
He says something, incoherent, kneejerk without the actual kneejerk. Maybe it's Armand's name, maybe it's Ohfuckyes, maybe senseless noise. Not aware, just knows sound leaves him, and for a second after he thinks maybe he popped off early like a fucking teenager— no, but maybe it was a near thing, this kind of pleasure he's never felt before that somehow goes past it. Fucking miles past it when Armand drinks, the bite a quick pain-pleasure jolt deeper than he's ever known, and then more.
Daniel goes weak for a second before he's clawing at his shoulder, the back of his neck, his other hand grabbing at Armand's on his abdomen. He doesn't think about heroin. He feels and goes to some fucking other dimension. Everything is blood, connected, a glowing conduit made of nerves and magic. There's desperate, aborted pleasure in his dick where it's still hard practically pressed to the side of Armand's face, feeling his silky hair, there's mind-melting pleasure in his thigh where he's bitten into him, and everything runs head to toes like a shock from something deeper that holds the note instead of sparking and moving on.
He knows better than this - this, sitting here, not reciprocating - he's always been pretty good (no complaints at least) (how's your head), but he's caught too expertly in Armand's claws and teeth to do anything besides gasp, in this moment.
The taste of blood, and a feedback loop of pleasure, and an indescribable other thing that feels like some more primal and wholly unconscious version of the way two vampires minds can mingle but theirs cannot. Part of the same organic system, blood flowing, spilling, consumed, assimilated. A muffled groan out of Armand.
It's enough. Just this one mouthful, two mouthfuls, and then his fangs withdraw and go blunt and he keeps his mouth against the wounds he's made to catch the oozing run-off, giving the flesh time to close.
Returns to himself. The feeling of a hand at his shoulder, a hand on his hand, and he tangles their fingers together. His own arousal, now aching between his legs, and Daniel's, and he has to decide if he wants to finish him that way, feels himself salivate for it, but finds himself wanting differently. Finds himself not thinking as clearly as usual. Louis, bless, had to do quite a lot of work to ensure Armand was at the level of empty-headed pleasure that he occasionally craved.
Daniel's blood still gathered between his teeth, beneath his lips, small smears at the corners of his mouth. With inhuman grace and speed, Armand returns to pressing the full length of himself down against Daniel, snaring him in a kiss.
Impatiently pushing his own sweatpants down, to gather low and out of the way.
For a second, it all makes sense: they can't read each other's minds because it's the same mind. Their hearts beat in time because it's the same blood. Daniel doesn't want him to stop, Daniel wants him to stop so he can do the same thing to Armand, he wants to come, he wants this to go on for-fucking-ever.
He squeezes their joined hands, pulls them back so Armand is pressing down and pinning him there by his head, holding on. He pushes into the kiss, tasting his own blood, tasting Armand, and the only thing that keeps teeth from growing too-sharp is the knowledge that Armand isn't receptive. That's his right, Daniel thinks; boundaries, all that shit. His maker. Daniel said It's yours, and he meant it. Anything, everything.
"Can I touch you?" he pants, against his mouth, other hand grasping at his side and his hip, pressing between them. He thinks Armand is going to say yes, that if asking at every step needed to be a thing then Armand would have done so before sucking his cock into his mouth or biting him, but he doesn't think he has any blood left in his brain. "Can I, can I—" begging, even fingers splay out to cradle Armand's erection, desperate to feel him even if not for long. Electric, right on the edge.
Armand, reaching between them, a clumsy arrangement of appendages between the close press of their bodies, but not for long. His wraps his fingers around Daniel's knuckles, encouraging that press, gathering themselves together. "Like this," he encourages, like he has managed to work his way to the one articulate idea of what he might want beyond a formless ache.
All the more intense for it without cloth to mitigate, blood-hot flesh fitting together, beneath the squeeze of their hands. A little slickness between them, enough friction to satisfy, but none of this is particularly purposeful, chasing desire as it comes.
Strangely satisfying in the midst of different intensities: the feeling of his bare thighs on either side of Daniel's, the slight tickle of body hair, the warm softness of muscle, the hot line of bare contact from knee right up to where Armand kisses him again.
Too much in how it's Armand, in how he hasn't felt another man like this in so fucking long, not enough in that he wants to feel him everywhere, there's not enough time, not enough hands. Daniel strokes him, reveling in the feel of how slick and soft he is in his hand, lets Armand's grip guide him and follows his tempo.
Another kiss, like he's desperate for it. He is. The feel of his mouth, the taste of it, of everything there. They feel so tangled despite doing nothing but this, clawing and rubbing like teenagers. Gripping each other's hands, panting, sweating, wrapped up on his stupid bed in his stupid basement.
"How do you want to come?" grated out so close to him, mouth to the corner of his.
It is good, to feel how much Daniel wants him. Not really a balm, nothing soothing in it, too intense for that. Painful, satisfying, in that way painful things often are. Evokes the desire to sink his teeth in (again), his claws, his cock. It's enough, it's not enough. Daniel asks this question in a warm breath that feels like it sears across his cheek, and Armand closes a fist around a wrinkle of bedding.
"Like this," sounds like a confession, almost, like perhaps he should have retained the ability to do more, make more of this, but also he wants it fiercely as it is, rutting through Daniel's hand, against his cock.
A messy kiss against Daniel's cheek, his jaw. "With you." Whoever is first, permission is granted.
"Alright," he pants. "Alright." Shivery and heated. With you is like lightning. It occurs to him that they shouldn't be doing this, that his hate and resentment should be too much, but he looks at this fact the same way he looks at the morality of killing mortals. Differently than before. Maybe he's just insane now, maybe Armand passed more to him than immortality. But maybe, instead of all that, he'd have fucking killed to get this kind of intensity from any other relationship. What if one of his wives tried to kill him for leaving. What if one tried to throw herself out of a window, burned the house down, left one of the kids at an orphanage. Wouldn't he have liked it.
Sweat and precome make it easier, the heat off the both of them too much for two people who are dead, Daniel keeps pressing messy badly-aimed kisses against him as he strokes them both, somehow falling easily back into muscle memory he'd tried to make himself forget. Years of I'm not, and now it feels like I was just waiting. He rasps nonsense out, that it feels good, that Armand feels so good, all of him, his hands, mouth, his teeth, he says please, please, and he doesn't know why.
There is a shivering, frantic energy to Daniel beneath him that Armand thinks he would enjoy evoking again when he is in a more right mind than he is currently. He can at least instill a measure of control in himself, keeping Daniel caged between the set of his legs, arms, the pressing down of his body, even as Armand can't stop the needful sounds leaving his own chest, the jerking forwards of his hips, the sheen of blood-tinged perspiration rising on his skin.
Good, murmured. Nonsensical. Good and like that and keep going as if Daniel were in need of instruction and praise, and perhaps he is. Either way, Armand gives it between short breaths.
Then, inevitable: fangs again, pressing into Daniel's shoulder. Not a deep draw of blood, just a sharp clench of pressure and a louder groan, maybe as loud as Daniel has ever heard Armand when he isn't yelling, muffled there, pressed into skin and muscle as he comes in hot pulses. Doesn't freeze through it, wringing every bit of pleasure out of the feeling of Daniel's palm, his cock, low against his stomach.
A gut-punch. Teeth again, soaring pleasure from it even though it's superficial, in tandem with Armand coming between them, into his hand, onto his skin, his own cock, everything scorching hot there. The smell of him is like blood and sweat and more and overwhelming— and there's something else, an echo that he can feel, winding him tighter and tighter, he thinks of static on an old TV, particles made out of euphoria.
Same mind, same blood, maybe it's supposed to feel like this when they fuck. (Does this count as fucking?) (Yeah.)
He feels his fangs in his mouth, a spiral of hunger getting its hooks into him with the rush getting his maker off brings, but he doesn't bite down anywhere because he doesn't have permission to, and inspecting why he needs to figure that out first is too difficult right now. Instead he touches himself, quicker, more desperate, using Armand's come to make everything slicker and easier and faster as everything winds tighter until he fractures and follows him off the ledge with a choked sound.
A moment of distance, but only extremely relatively speaking—Armand still stupid from his own wrench pleasure, with blood in his mouth and muscles still clenched taut, but lifting away by very little indeed. Still feels Daniel's hand working himself, but with enough room to look down between them. They will have to do this again sometime,
which is a hilariously human thought to have, acting as if there is any limit to that 'sometime', a finite amount of sex acts they might perform before the heat death of the universe
so he can remember to admire them when they're held together and thick with want. But half an aftermath and watching Daniel attend to himself is gratifying too, lifting his focus up in the moment that the other vampire begins to come to then observe his face. Armand's eyes go hooded, and he ducks down to kiss at those choked sounds, almost sweet.
A deep unspooling and brilliant fireworks of aftershocks, shivers and twitches that go through him, and soft-mouthed kisses as his brain completely whites out. A mess as coordination leaves him, and too-sharp fangs in his mouth, unbidden.
Armand, Armand, Armand. His weight on him still feels good. Daniel still isn't thinking exactly clearly - though it's still done purposefully - when he raises his hand to his mouth to lick it. Bloody, like he's almost gotten used to, which feels free of anxiety in this moment and tastes better than a human's. By miles.
This little gesture observed, absorbed, ribbons heat through him despite the relief that has made Armand rest heavy on top of Daniel. The flash of fang in his mouth, wet tongue, that Daniel has stolen a taste of him in return. He lets out a breathed sound that seems to concur with this assessment.
Settles against him, head resting on his chest as if they were still watching cartoons or settling in to sleep, although Armand isn't certain he feels tired.
Satiated. Rare that a vampire ever knows that sensation. His mind feels heavy, like a sponge, like it might be impossible to second guess, to fret, synapses too sluggish.
And pleased, that's also what he feels. Experience a marriage of the better part of a century in which all love, romance, gratification slowly drained from the bed, watch your companion fuck a thousand men and dream of his former lover while sleeping a foot away from you, and it doesn't matter how much you have done before: you may start to believe you could never elicit this response from a person again. Shivering and desperate and choking and gasping.
No. Too much reflection. Too much past. Armand wishes to be present. Draws Daniel's hand to him, and tastes their mingling as well with a touch of his tongue to the heel of his palm.
Different, because he doesn't feel like he's going to pass right out (even though they're well into the day by now), because he doesn't need to extricate himself before things get too weird. Sated and content and still elated, a new kind of experience, brought on by something as simple as scrambling at each other to rut and pet. Inelegant, but it feels so profound.
More, somehow, when Armand licks his hand too. Daniel lets him have it, splaying fingers for him, once more captured, everything laid out and permissive. Diamond nails, exposed wrist. He still feels shivery from climax and from the blood drained from him. He wonders if Armand likes the way he tastes, or if it was just an instinct at the height of sensation.
He tucks his other arm around him, encouraging him to settle like he so often does. No pajamas or blankets between them this time, and staying still will be disgusting when it all cools down, but Daniel's never been particularly put off by that sort of thing. Bodies and their mechanics are an interesting part of existence, living and undead. He pets over Armand's hair, his shoulder, down his spine. Covetous, a little greedy still. Who knows. His maker might decide this was a bad idea and bolt, abandon Daniel to a dark chamber he can't leave for fear of being immolated if he ran after. He'll enjoy what he can.
Daniel's hand opens to him, glint of sharp, hard nails, the blue veins in his wrist, the sheen of blood and come. Instinct and pleasure both, driving Armand to lick him clean. Shivers beneath the taste of Daniel against his tongue and the feeling of his other hand petting through his hair, down his back.
Bolting is not off the table, but the spark of that impulse doesn't surface, not while they attend each other in this way, not while it feels there is nowhere else for Armand to be.
Eventually, a kiss to inner wrist, to forearm, and then settling again. They will need to get clean, but the animal in him doesn't particularly care, nor the vampire, nor the figment of a person caught between these extremes. Silence, then, and Armand says, "Say something," as he rests his chin on Daniel's chest.
Those kisses are sweet in a way he wasn't sure Armand was capable of. At least not aimed at him— but no, he knew that, he thinks. They've held each other before, and Armand has stroked his hair before and coaxed him into the dark. Daniel pets over his hair and looks at him, fuzzy up close, but well enough to see the colored rings of his eyes.
Like sunset in fall. The only sun he gets.
"That was really good," is what he says. He slips Armand's hair back and trails his touch down his neck, his shoulder, then back up again. "A pretty big change, for us."
This isn't the first time it occurs to Armand that in spite of his inability to read Daniel's mind, he is certain that he will never be lied to. Not to flatter or to deceive or any number of things that petty insecurity may otherwise encourage. He has thought it before, and believed it already, or else there would have been very little cuddling, held hands, even arguments.
There would likely be no The Vampire Daniel to begin with, but he needn't venture all that far back. Reflects that Daniel likely does not have this same reassurance, but then, he has never possessed the ability to read his mind to miss it. And has never really needed it.
"Yes," Armand says. It was really good. It is a pretty big change. "I hadn't intended it." He shifts so that they can speak a little easier, less cross-eyed blurriness, and he can also bring around a clean hand that can do its share of petting, laying on the cushion beside Daniel's head, toying with grey-white curls behind his ear. "There's been very little intentionality throughout."
Obviously. But this, too, is different. Perhaps he should apologise for the way that if Daniel is caught in some labyrinthine scheme after all, it's currently under construction, building itself from the centre as they explore it.
A cozy shuffle, onto his side. Daniel continues to touch him, his uncannily beautiful face, down to the chest hair he likes a whole lot, finding a place to hold at his side and draw circles with his thumb. He contemplates all the ways Armand has stared at him, and files this away as a new favorite.
"Mm." An amused sound. "We do seem to have been a series of land mines and trip wires for each other the whole length of this thing."
Life-altering explosions, one to fuck Daniel's head completely in San Fransisco, one to destroy Armand's relationship in Dubai. All the other smaller blowups and bloody stumbles in between. A very twisty pipeline from trying to hook up with Louis in 1973 to now laying in bed naked with Armand. Dead, bonded for eternity.
"Though that's a kind of wanting. The kind that takes over when something suddenly looks like it's within reach."
Be it blowing up Armand's web of manipulation, or bringing Daniel into the blood. Or a kiss.
Onto his side, then, facing one another, clear-eyed and sober. Armand wanders his fingertips from Daniel's shoulder, over his chest. The evidence of bite marks, the wounds themselves faded, but traces of dried blood smeared with sweat and movement. It catches up to him that he sank his fangs into his fledgling at least three times and once in earnest, and that he'd been relatively restrained even then.
Something to think about. Daniel, so free and willing with his permission. Armand, who doesn't know what he is doing or will do at any time, these days. Land mines and trip wires.
The revulsion he had spoken of. The connection that tethers creator and created, the eternal imbalance of power. He doesn't feel revulsion now, that isn't the word any longer, not when he has now admitted to wanting something of it for himself. His fingernails play along pale skin, coarse hair, lines defined by bone and muscle.
"Is there any part of you that wonders at it?" His eyes, ticking back up to study Daniel's. "If what we are to one another creates the wanting."
Impossible not to think about. It is so present between them. So much that Daniel thinks Louis was underselling it during the interview, and in turn, sometimes finds Claudia's actions to be repulsive and alien. (He might take that one to his grave.)
And yet,
"Kind of a moot point, though. Without it there's nothing to want, because I was dying. I could branch off from that, and think what if it was someone else, what if it was Louis, is there still this. Is there still any of the things before this."
He looks at Armand, and thinks of the way they would look at each other in Dubai. He thinks of the way that Armand held him in San Fransisco.
"I think it had to be you. I think it was always going to be you. Or not at all."
The present, is what he wishes to focus on. The cord, the invisible cord, that binds them together. He doesn't want to consider, for the countless time, what he'd felt when it ran the other way. What he was even capable of feeling when flayed open raw in the presence of a vampire whose origins predate the son of God. Of course he had worshipped. Continued to worship.
Daniel is saying—things. This moment of resistance, failing to resist, is only a flicker, and he tunes back in in time for because I was dying and Armand slides his arm around him, over his side, fingertips trailing up along his back.
"I wasn't lying," he says. "When I said that we had planned to offer it. That Louis was going to be the one to give it to you, had you agreed."
Close their minds off forever from each other. This, Armand had told himself, would be his silver-lining. The interview would be written, it would forever immortalise the story in cement and steel, and then—
Grand plans that don't bear thinking about. Now, laying here, the idea of Louis having Daniel is enough to make his fangs itch. His.
He can tell when Armand is lying. He was just mad at him, then, and various self-esteem issues have caused him to shy away from Louis whenever he's reinforced that the offer was going to be real. It's just a mess to think about, and he doesn't like doing it— he'd have said no. Trip wires, land mines. Does Louis accept 'no'? Does Armand make him say 'yes'? Doesn't matter.
Daniel slides a hand up over Armand's chest, his throat, so he can cradle his face and ghost a thumb over his mouth, thinking about the fangs in there, and how good it felt when he bit into him each time. Different, teasing at first, then serious, then in the throes of it. He wants to feel more of it.
"I just think you were going to be the one to kill me, one way or another."
Maybe he was going to lose his temper there at dinner. Explode his head then turn Louis into a shell. Or maybe: always this, always his maker. Maybe farther back. Maybe Louis never gets up out of the coffin in San Fransisco. One way or another, his heart was always going to stop under Armand's bite.
Editor's note, Daniel could probably stand to sound a little less like he thinks that's hot? Or not. Could be fine, considering they just did what they did.
Author's aside, Armand could stand to feel a little less self-satisfied in response to this assertion. Has no right to the twinge of smugness he knows in belated reflex to Louis' plans and intentions to acquire this fledgling for himself, and even less right to the rattlesnake coil of possessiveness, even more belated, for the kill that he had claimed for himself in 1973, and was denied. He does not actually want Daniel dead fifty years ago, but all the same, an itch scratched.
Daniel's hand at his face. Being admired, being wanted. His eyes don't go huge, as established, but gleam what may become a familiar shade of wanting amber. And so it all probably reads perfectly clear in Armand's expression, and made all the plainer when Armand settles in closer to nudge past Daniel's hand and kiss him again.
He could worry at it more. Would he have said 'no' to Louis? What would he have said, if Armand had allowed him the choice? Moot point, to use his parlance. And besides, it isn't as though Armand was fully conscious as to why he was doing any of it. He remembers, after, thinking of it like: it had given him something to do. A new, pleasing dimension to that turn of phrase, suddenly.
Telling on each other, maybe, when Armand's kiss insists itself a little more, warming up to it, and when the probability of him being thrown out of bed is low.
Once, Daniel had pitched a theory to Louis, that Armand was going to make Daniel say yes, so that he could control the both of them. But maybe there's a grotesque gothic romance option where Armand loses it last second, and does it himself. An absurd thought. Fanfic level delusion.
(But maybe.)
Armand's eyes looks so beautiful. Alien, unlike anything else in this world living or dead. Daniel can see them in the dark, and he knows his own mirror their color. Amber-orange-smoldering fire of interest, a thing he used to think was about him being angry, and that being angry just happened to overlap quite often with thinking about Armand.
Daniel kisses him back. Lets him into his mouth, curls his tongue against his, presses one hand flat against his chest so he can pet him, uses the other to slide around his side and encourage him to press even closer. No, not about to kick him out. If he's honest with himself — and this seems like the day for it — he's wanted this for too long to let it fade into sleep so soon. He wants to taste the satisfaction he saw in Armand's eyes, and gloat to himself about being the one to put it there.
Armand, eager for that bare line of contact, knees to chests, pressing in as urged. It will be gratifying when sleep does take Daniel from him to feel like he might join him there, and if not, enjoy the fucked out relaxation of holding him and listening to him sink into that deep, vulnerable sleep. Long minutes, then, of returning to kissing, friction, the mess they've made between them on their skin, on the sheets.
His hand at Daniel's cheek, thumb stroking along against soft skin, and then around to his chin to force the kiss to break as he pulls back a crucial half-inch.
"Say what you would like," he bids. "And I may give it to you."
Will give it to him, of course. But what's wrong with flirting.
Making out and warming up again, free from stereotypical post-coital male helplessness; being a vampire is fucking great. Daniel's going to go insane if Armand decides this was just a one-day thing, even aside from the earth-shattering profound emotional impact of this.
A shuddering breath, with that instruction. His hand flexes where it's clutching at Armand's side, venting restless energy in the face of flirting. What a fucking tease. But he had to know that was in there, surely. He did the same thing torturing him. Meticulously unspooling him.
"I'd like—" Fuck. "I'd like you to bite me again."
Shy? A smidge. He also wants the reverse, but he's keeping in mind Armand's boundaries.
"You're the only one who's ever done that, you know. I mean, since way back then. I never expected it to feel this way."
No blood sharing on the disaster road trip, at least not with Daniel. Armand, and only Armand, after Louis gored his neck.
Armand opens his mouth like he might say something, but he doesn't. Lured, more like, as if tasting the air when he breathes in.
Thumb trailing down from chin to throat, gentle down the centre of it. A fond and gluttonous memory, as if the velvet texture of throatfuls of blood surpassed how extremely horrible everything else was about that moment—which, well, it did. This biting would not be the indulgence of that taking.
But it would be an indulgence. "You're going to be hungry tomorrow," he says.
No one else. Louis, briefly, but the taste muddied with drugs and poor memory. He's not sure he would have been capable of rending either of the other two apart for daring, what with his long habit of watching helplessly as the things he wants are scattered apart, but he can enjoy the fierce gladness of a thing that had scarcely even occurred to him.
"That's only a problem if you don't intend to let me out of the house," he notes. Flirtatious if you squint. (Please squint.)
No blood bags in the fridge. Gross. NYC has an overpopulation problem, Daniel has no problem killing. Armand knows that. Daniel palms over his chest, his belly, slides fingers over the curve of his hip. Considers.
Decides that there's no reason to buck the trend on honesty.
"You've never indicated an openness to sharing your blood. I wouldn't want something that you're not comfortable with." A squeeze, where his hand is laying on his side again, obviously reluctant to stop touching him. Knees bumping, close enough to be oh-so-quiet. "I liked that you did it. I mean it: Everything's yours."
Important that Armand knows he has blanket permission to do what he wants to Daniel. And besides, nobody talks about fledgling blood like it's a tool to be bartered with and used as some kind of video game level-up, the way ancient blood is talked about. He doesn't want Armand to feel like some ... commodity. He'd want him to enjoy it.
It's what he wants. What he expressed wanting. There is no specific change to Armand's expression as Daniel talks, save for the flickered emergence of flirtation, and then stillness again. The telltale shift of eyes at close proximity reading the other set in front of them, and then a deeper breath in.
A mirror, almost, of the feeling of—no, not exactly after Dubai, when he'd found himself slingshotting himself around the world in search of nothing, too much freedom. More like that one last night in Paris, when Louis had taken his hand and proposed they fuck off to Africa, and the anxiety and the fear abated, momentarily, in favour of something hopeful. A blank canvas of a future.
"That's," he says, and then the sentence fails, and his eyes flick down. He should speak of where he stands on bloodgiving, but this sober reiteration is so consuming that he forgets about that for the moment.
Hands on Daniel, tightening, bodies pressed firmly together, insistent, still.
"That's a relief," he manages, finally. That Daniel liked it. (That everything is his.)
Is this is a good reaction? He hopes so. Armand doesn't seem to be withdrawing, rather, he seems like he's seeing something past this basement. But then his maker clutches a little tighter, and Daniel thinks: maybe it is a good reaction, and he hasn't pushed too far. He could try to make excuses for himself, that he's just trying to be transparent, and sure, he is. But there's also greed in him, he can't deny that. A part of him wants it all to be too fucking much.
Because it's Armand, and Armand is out of his goddamn mind, and as much as Daniel wants to help him, he just wants him authentically, too.
Which is insane.
Daniel nudges forward, bumping noses and pressing foreheads together. Here we fucking are, together.
His eyes hood as Daniel settles in closer, feeling that sense of his, his, his like his own pulse. He could ask, maybe, if this means Daniel trusts him—but what does that mean? Trusts him not to abuse the privilege? Perhaps. Does Armand trust himself? This, perhaps, the part that overwhelms him.
The concrete wall, cracking behind his back. Louis had never looked at him that way, not even in Paris. It was not the same way Lestat had looked at him, not the same way Marius had as well, but they all had some flicker, towards the end, that indicated to Armand that they found him lacking, or too much, or—
His nails, dimpling into Daniel's skin. Maybe this is why the past feels so close. Louis, a part of it, and it has barely been months.
Armand angles his head, kisses him. Sweet, brief. Back on task.
"I would like it," once he is sure his voice will come out level, "for you to take from me, sometimes. Perhaps if you ask for it. And don't mind if I tell you no."
Boundaries. Important. Very important, if they're going to do this. Daniel had been mocking in Dubai, during the interview, maitre in the bedroom, maitre when it's hot or convenient, and it was deliberately unkind. He knew what he was doing, at least potentially, as he'd yet to be fully convinced of anything the odd vampire had asserted about himself. He was angry at Armand, he knew it would hurt if it landed. (Honesty is not a tactic.)
And so he's got the potential for it. He realizes that Armand is handing him yet more potential, and whether or not he trusts Daniel, he's trusting him with that. Boundaries that have been pushed. Daniel, with fingers laid on them.
"Think I'm clever enough to figure out when you'd like me to ask?"
He can always tell Daniel no, and not be punished for it, not resented, not withdrawn from. This is what Armand understands him to mean. It would be unfair to Louis to say he might have contributed to some habit otherwise (not that Armand minds being unfair to Louis), but some little reflection in himself. The way he might respond to refusal. The way it can feel.
But Daniel is made of sterner stuff than all of that. Perhaps it's why he chose him. The question evokes a twinge of amusement in Armand's expression, and he says, "Yeah."
Yes he does.
He remembers his insistence, when he was playacting as mortal. Daniel refusing by pretending to prefer Damek. Armand, as Rashid, one of a selection. A certain kind of debasement that, had Louis pushed any further, might have brought out his fangs. Or perhaps it might not have. I serve a god, he had said, and there had been the too vivid imagining of draining a sampling into a glass, or something even more obscene, Molloy's mouth to his wrist. His neck.
Maddening.
He kissing Daniel again, pulling their bodies closer together. Daniel wishes to be bitten, and Armand thinks he wants to do it while they are fucking. It's been a long time since that specific configuration of sensations. His hand slides down his back, a grasping across his ass that communicates that desire, little pinpricks of claws drawing white lines in pale skin.
He'd been captivated by 'Rashid' immediately, despite everything between himself and Louis. That whole encounter, being stared at (through brown contact lenses, you fucking weirdo) during something so obviously intimate even though it was being passed off as food. Daniel has too many conflicting thoughts about that whole thing, but it stands out in his mind now, a mirror of Armand's own thoughts.
Until he sets it aside. Being here right now is more important, especially with the way Armand is pawing at him. It makes him shiver. He nips his maker's lower lip, gentle and teasing, even as his own breath hitches.
(Daniel decides he's going to wait to ask, and pick a time when he's sure Armand is about to fucking kill him for not asking.)
"Yeah?"
Been decades since anyone's fucked him. No complaints (howsyour—) historically but he wonders if he's still, you know, got it. His dick is pretty interested in finding out, his pulse ticking back up with sharp excitement.
"Yeah," again, but less of a word, a breath, a sound.
Here, Armand would ask: may I? Do you want me to? But Daniel has been clear, the limits (or lack thereof) of his permission, and the idea of just having thickens the blood in his veins, makes his mouth sting bright in the wake of teeth. He thinks he can hear Daniel's heart beat quicker.
It has, likewise, been decades since he fucked anyone. Where the careful dynamic maintained itself between himself and Louis allowed for deviation, such instances were rare, and only became rarer. Armand hadn't minded (or cared), but he considers it now, his own want, an intrusion of desire.
They could talk about that too. Maybe they will. Not now.
"I want you on your back," he says. "So I can look at you."
Daniel kisses him firmly. Armand wants him. Fucking crazy.
"I want that, too."
He's nervous about it, but it's not a bad kind of nervous. Settling into his skin all over again, peeling away things he thought he'd put to rest, and all of it quicker than he might have imagined— though of course he didn't, not in earnest.
"I have to grab something, though, unless you have some trick I didn't manage to interview out of anyone—"
He has jokes too. Just because they didn't appreciate the sunglasses bit—
Armand lets up, allowing Daniel to fetch what they need. His awareness expanding, permitting the edges of the bed, the room, back into his consciousness, as if he has been spending the last however long its been within a coffin-sized dimension, population two. He snags at the edge of the sheet to clean himself off a little, but distracted, preferring to watch Daniel.
Feels the next pulse come a little harder. Want. Desire. With more distance between them, he can look him over better, imagine where in the future he might feel him with his hands, or sink his teeth. The desire to dominate and consume, the desire to serve and to fawn, and maybe also, the desire to just be normal. To tangle in ordinary ways, and have affection, and—
Hm. Something in that sentiment like a sharp, broken off thing. Warrants further investigation or none at all.
Shifting to kneel up when Daniel returns, hands out for him.
Armand is funny sometimes. A fucked up theater kid.
Every bitter argument, every awkward overture of peace, there was always something. Something. A deeper thread stitched somewhere unbelievable. Now this strange thing they've sewn together is being flipped over and exposed, and all the handiwork holding them together is right here, and Daniel is marveling at it.
Just a touch of cleanup while he grabs something. Kept in the bathroom, a half-guilty purchase. (Daniel is straight and he doesn't fuck men anymore, Daniel is single and even though both women he married were as adventurous as he was, he just isn't doing much anymore, he's content enough with is lot in life, Daniel is, is, is, a bunch of shit he should be embarrassed for pretending.)
Less guilt, when he returns. The sight of Armand waiting for him like that, reaching, makes heat and affection flood him like being dunked in hot water. He should run the other fucking way from an ancient creature with arms extended towards him, claws and fangs and inhuman amber eyes. Daniel's hands find his, back in the bed, climbing to meet him and press another kiss to his mouth, flickers of his expression as he goes both shy and elated.
This expression is studied intently in the split seconds Armand has to view it, and it evokes a rare kind of smile out of him by the time their mouths are pressed together. Keeps one of Daniel's hands while the other wraps around the back of his neck, enjoying the difference of position, the way gravity isn't bearing him down against his fledgling, who comes to him so willingly. Eagerly.
He had told Daniel that he often thinks about the fact that vampires should not exist. That he should not. The logical conclusion that he had drawn Daniel into the perversion of nature that is them. Punishment, anger, revulsion. A lot of complexity, philosophising, for something as simple as wishing he could cease to be, with only a duty towards persisting keeping him tethered.
Daniel as tether. As companion. (And there is a lurking essay about how Armand hated that notion, too, of a vampire forcing someone into this world just to make it more bearable for themselves, and on and on—)
He gets a hand under Daniel's chin and pushes it aside so he can kiss down his throat. Warming back up.
Why did Armand make him? Will he ever have a real answer? Or does it just not matter, because they're here and going forward?
Daniel sinks against him, hungry for it, but he tips his head back to let Armand have whatever he likes from him. It makes him shiver, and he slides hands over Armand's shoulders, letting the bottle drop down beside him. Pointy nails are a bit of a nervous-curious note around the prospect of anal sex, but also, intriguing on a kink level. He expects it'll be less racy than it seems, though. It's not like he's ever accidentally sliced a toe off while absently scratching an itch.
Thinking about existence, thinking about the exact mechanics of getting fucked. Duality of man, etc.
"Every little thing with you feels so fucking good," he says, his voice a breathy clash of appreciation and exasperation. How.
Daniel's voice, the things it says to him, the specific swift unfiltered away words emerge cloaked in it, feels as textural and real as his hand sweeping down over his shoulders. Warm as the skin under Armand's mouth. He finds himself greedy for it.
So he asks, "Did you think of me like this," after his teeth leave blunt little marks in Daniel's shoulder, "before you knew what I was? Or only after?"
However Daniel might interpret that. Before he knew Rashid was Armand. Before he knew Armand was a monster, specific to him, specific to Louis. Before Armand was his maker.
Perhaps there was nothing, and it was Armand alone with his fascinations. That would be fine too.
Moving them, meanwhile. Urging Daniel backwards by invading his space, a hand catching the side of his knee.
Sweat prickles over his skin as Armand teethes at him. Daniel grapples with him a little, light and playful, as he's crowded and re-arranged. He hasn't felt this light in so long, hasn't felt desired like this in so long. He didn't think it was still possible.
"Jesus, all that—"
Really, bringing up the psychosexual headgames going on in that penthouse? Daniel lets himself be manhandled, and thumbs over the sides of Armand's throat to feel his pulse, his breath, draws a hand down the center of his sternum.
"I had pages of notes about you as soon as I walked in the door." A wry confession. "I was embarrassed to think about you, some twenty-something, mysterious, beautiful but obviously bonkers butler. Being bothered all day by a creepy old man."
A breath that's like a laugh, around obviously bonkers. A warm furling feeling in his chest.
"You weren't meant to notice me," Armand says, and he can sound amused at himself, now, the kind of fucked up innocence of smiling fondly about the young human men Louis had flirted with his Paris, that Armand hunted for sport. But worse, probably. Insisting Daniel onto his back, kneeling between his legs. A hand, sliding up his thigh.
Looking at him as he adds, "I couldn't leave well enough alone, I know," and yes, they're talking about the strange happenings beneath the even stranger circumstance of him hovering over the interview i a bid to continue his long term control over his husband—
It's fine. Digs a thumb into the meat of inner thigh as he retrieves the bottle with his other hand.
Daniel makes a laughing sound of disbelief about the idea that he wasn't meant to notice 'Rashid'. The thought of it is so fucking absurd. Louis' surreal majordomo, staring a hole in his head even before he popped his contacts out, even before Daniel started to see him in his dreams.
"You were setting up little interactive encounters and waiting for me to walk by instead of just engaging me in conversation," he teases. A funny memory now. Fake Rashid praying, or wandering around on the phone in a thin shirt, then big eyes when interrupted, oh, Mr Molloy, what a surprise, something something, weirdest speech patterns in the world. Of course he was distracting.
He shuffles a pillow behind his back, leverage for participating, one hand still petting down Armand's chest and questing between them to circle fingers around the base of his cock. He can't stop touching him, even if he's getting in the way.
And the next exhale comes heavier at the feeling of Daniel's hand, exploring, touching, holding. Rewards this act of reaching for him with the slightest insistent shift inwards of his hips, before following impulse, pressing the cap on the bottle to open. There, a casual spilling of liquid down onto his cock, Daniel's hand, enough for some to leak through, smear on abdomen, inner thighs.
"It was, in part, a game for myself and Louis," admittedly. Yes, utility, a means of monitoring the interview and preserve his anonymity while they got their bearings, but they didn't have to do all that. Armand, wrapping his hand around the top of the bottle, tipping it to fill his palm, grease his fingers. "But it quickly became something else."
Surreal and electric to be able to talk about this now, the drama and hurt of the incidents around it laid to something resembling rest. It feels like evolution. Daniel strokes him, getting the slippery substance all over, doing a better job at just feeling him than efficiently coating him. Knowing it's Armand makes him twitch in eager sympathy.
(What if they'd fucked in 1973? A horror story. But...)
"What'd it become?"
He can guess. Distractions in both directions, when Armand took off his disguise. He thinks the elder vampire was supposed to be keeping tabs on him, and instead found himself involved in checking in on Daniel's increasingly inappropriate curiosities. He was mostly focused on the interview, sure, a dogged workaholic who loves nothing more than the angle, but he would look up and find Armand staring at him.
Armand barely snaps the bottle back shut before it's abandoned on the covers, an edge rising against the velvet warmth of sensation as Daniel gets him slick. Coaxes blood through veins, the sense of his own pulse.
"Baiting your curiousity," he says. Gets his hand between them, smearing his palm broad along Daniel's cock. Momentary, before tucking in between his legs. "Your attention from the task at hand." From Louis. "It was stupid of me. You were going to start remembering."
But he wanted it, just a little, beneath the stone tower of certainty that he didn't want it, that it would be ruinous. Some part of him buried deep that wanted to be ruined.
The press of his fingers, gentle. No sharp bits, somehow. Not going slowly, just methodically.
His breath catches at the touch, marveling at being hard again this fast. He laughs sometimes to himself, this feeling, getting younger. The vampire experiences is probably supposed to be the cognitive dissonance of the opposite. Then Armand's hand moves, and Daniel takes a steadying breath. He knows how to do this. He did this plenty, just most often on his knees one way or the other. The potential intimacy of eye contact during fucking is as terrifying as it is exciting.
"You wanted me to see you."
There, in the present, in Dubai. In the past, in his mind. Even if it was dangerous and it was going to lead to a fucking nuke. It sends a shiver up Daniel's spine, to think of Armand risking his entire life collapsing just to get Daniel's attention.
"Didn't I always?"
Even at the fucking bar. Even all the way back at Polynesian Mary's. He looked up from laughing with Louis, struck by his looming partner. Easy enough in those days, typical of gay couples, everyone just having fun. Free love. But he was still caught for a second, like a fish on a hook. Another steadying breath, letting Armand do this.
Did he always? Armand tips his head, studying him now—with a hand braced on a thigh, encouraging it open, and his fingers burying themselves slow. A long, raking look, right down to the current arrangement between them.
Asking Daniel if he thinks the vampire bond is what draws them together. Wondering if a week's worth of torture is what made him fascinating to the fascinating boy, even when he didn't remember it. Tonight, he is in the mood to enjoy these realities, and the attraction between them in spite of-because of. There will be plenty of time to pick at it, fret at it.
Or maybe not. Maybe he will distract himself with Daniel every time. Encourage scalding truths and affirmations both.
Working him, slowly but surely, gently but ceaselessly. The scrape of vampire claws a sensation that doesn't push past into pain and damage. He has practice. Thinks of a good place to score, I did what I had to, and asks, "Do you like that?" in the hush tone of bedroom talk, the intensity of curiousity.
Daniel looks back, meeting the searing gaze, letting Armand see everything he wants. Staring back into him at the same time. Closed to each other, but connected. Everything else has well and truly fallen away. Vampires, hostilities, wounded friends, the whole fucking world. Like it did every so often before the bond was there at all.
Does he like this?
He's not an incoherent mess. Despite the allegations he wasn't a closest twink shaking and gagging for it. Just a regular closeted weirdo. It was good sometimes and bad other times. He'd hoped it would happen with Louis, he wanted it even if it would have been bad. Be careful what you wish for, and all that. Since it went real fucking bad.
"Yeah." The real answer. Holding himself so still, hyper-aware of the intrusion into his body and the potential for harm. It makes him nervous, which makes it hotter. Long past the point of pretending fear isn't tangled up with sex, for him. It's the intensity, he thinks. Always looking for the inescapable, inevitable feeling. Never able to find it honestly, so looking for it through risk, instead. "You've got pretty good aim with those." A slight tremor in his voice; Daniel's eyes fall closed for a moment, face scrunched up. The deep ache slowly spiraling out from that point of connection, catching him suddenly in its current.
The mechanics of this touch shift from the coaxing of muscle to relax and the slicking of flesh, to the pursuit of something a little more deliberate. Watching Daniel with unearthly intent as fingers stroke, prod, feeling the temptation of hot-tightness like a hand on his cock. A small breath of a laugh, a show of teeth. No fangs. No blown out pupils.
But humanlike desire, forcing his mouth to part, his eyes to hood. Good, he thinks. Progress being made, on finding out what Daniel likes. In general, or with him. What he might learn he likes. If Armand had his fangs in him, maybe he could pick up on that little hint of nervousness.
Thinks he can, anyway, and it doesn't feel unwelcome. Maybe there will come a time when he no longer makes Daniel nervous. He should enjoy it while it lasts.
Slowly, easing his fingers out, letting himself be felt as he does so. That hand immediately straying to his own cock, squeezing himself near the base, a checking kind of action. Daniel, laying open and willing to him, letting him have it all. Strokes himself, and replaces that previous twinge of his fingertips with the blunter presence of the head of his cock, rubbing himself there as he shifts to balance over Daniel, a hand braced by his shoulder.
Just when his fingers are starting to feel really good, Armand pulls them away. Something about that seems typical, even though this has never happened before. Nerves return, and he chides himself internally that he's too old to feel like that, no matter how long it's been, no matter who it's with.
Armand, shifting. Armand pressing against him, that's his cock, hard and so, so fucking present, all slicked up, Armand over him, pressing him back, caging him in. Daniel instinctively wants to participate but this position makes it difficult, gives Armand total power over him, and his thoughts flinch to 1973 again, and Armand trying to convince him that death would be better than routine, absentminded missionary sex with a someday-wife.
Ha ha. Maybe death is better. Even though this is still missionary.
"Yeah," he breathes. One hand circling fingers around Armand's wrist at his shoulder, not restricting him, just a point of contact, the other a mirrored hold on his shoulder. Yeah.
At some point, Armand will have to experiment with Daniel's patience. See how long he can linger at the entryway before being invited in, so to speak. Begged in. A touch of that impulse here, but it doesn't last—he wants it too much, and so, as he feels Daniel's fingers wrap around his wrist, as he continues to watch his face, Armand sinks inside of him in a long, patient stroke of movement.
Not quite bottoming out but close, pressing close, enough to satisfy the itch that had wanted so much to feel Daniel pressed around him this way. The alluring resistance of muscle, the appealing way it yields, has to yield. Breath caught.
His hand darts from the base of his cock to Daniel's hip, his thigh, then chest, little careless smears of slickness as he feels him, testing the different points of contact he may wish to grip. Palm smoothing down to his side to settle there, claws dimpling skin.
Doesn't begin to fuck him. Waits, then pushes in deeper, until he is buried. As keyed into the sensation as he is in watching.
Not unlike fangs in him. The mechanics of penetration are all over this fucking life (this fucking, life). Stitching them together, piercing skin and drawing it tighter. He wonders what their tapestry will look like someday. Also, this feels crazy. Like every time he gets fucked, his first thought it always Why am I doing this, this is a terrible idea, but he forces himself to stay still and relaxed, and experiences a rush of euphoria for being able to. No strain, no cramps, no tremors. And he's staring right at the monster who made it possible in the first place.
Armand sinks in further and Daniel's hand scramble to touch him, shifts then doesn't, tries to figure out where to arrange himself. Remembering, not remembering at all, because his brain is being re-arranged by a vampire's dick. (You're a vampire, too, remember?) (Right, sure.)
One knee up, restless, rubbing the inside of his thigh against Armand's side, hand flexing on his shoulder. A deep breath in, out. He stares up at Armand, and paradoxically feels like he's falling.
"It's been so fucking long I don't actually remember if this is what it feels like," is a weird thing to say, maybe? There's fuzzy logic. Not sure if he's making sense. "Or if it's just you."
A shaky breath out for the feeling of Daniel trying to adjust to him, the wandering up of his knee and scrabble of hands, a long breath in. Feels powerful for it, allows himself to enjoy the feeling, even though Armand is certain he is moments away from his own scrabbly sense of desperation. That it's probably already visible in his expression.
"It's just," he starts, panting already. Trying again. "It's just bodies, Mr. Molloy." A gleam of teeth, and maybe his canines are sharper now. Drawing back, pushing in, still adapting. "Just blood, just. Friction, and tension. Just neurochemistry, electricity."
Does he believe that? Probably he has, previously. He hasn't said Mr. Molloy since, when, possibly Dubai? Maybe a sarcastic echo later on.
It shouldn't feel like distancing. Not when he is beginning to fuck him this way, and his hand catches desperately at Daniel's hip, and his eyes are as bright as hearth coals. Teasing, perhaps. Challenging, even now. Being insane, as standard.
Fuck Daniel feels incredible. Made to be fucked by him, even.
Mr Molloy, and Armand trying to play it cool while his breath is coming so much quicker, driving slowly in and out of him. Daniel feels something in him tighten and twitch, every nerve keying in to the feeling of this, hitting the threshold of where fingers started to feel good and going past it into much, much better.
"Purely mechanical?" Breathless. Voice scraping deeper as everything coils in him, and he finds the ability to engage in something besides mindless grasping. "Yeah, I get it. Like that."
(Metronomic, my Rashid / Counting down your thrusts)
"You push in, and the pressure around your dick feels good, and it goes over all my nerve endings to reach the anterior position of a gland that feels good in me, and you pull back, and we both want to fucking die from the removal of it, so you push back in. Hormones change. The brain says, I like that."
Daniel's eyes are almost yellow. Sweat on his temples, his throat, his chest. He is a writer, but he's never tried erotica. Too blunt for it.
Nothing wrong with mechanics. Blood pressure and nerve endings and secretions and the vacuum of pleasure with each withdraw, filling it again with a shift of muscle and bone that won't tire no matter how long Armand chooses to keep Daniel here, folded beneath him. Realises his gaze as wandered and reorients it towards golden irises and jetblack pupils, the shimmer of blood-tainted moisture on Daniel's brow.
This is better. Better than erotica, flowery prose, professions of love and passion. Dissection, revelation. No need to make something what it isn't when it is already good. At least, not today.
Armand's fangs pressing against his lip, visible when he curls it. No known reason to him why his never seem as wolfishly long as most others, even in the midst of a hunt rather than just love making, but they do the job. Probably hurts more, anyway.
Shifts his hands, or reaffirms them. A grasp at Daniel's hip, keeping him still. The one near his shoulder settles on it, bracketing him close. Like, let's test this theory, before moving—the slow, adjusting motions resolving into something real, and the initial earnest impact between them punching a sound of Armand even as he does it.
Just mechanics, when they're each who they are, when they're staring at each other face to face for it. Armand inside of him, brute force physicality and not just his blood. Daniel drags in his breaths and looks up at his maker, his beautiful, fucking bizarre eyes that mirror his own in their coloring, his hauntingly pretty face, the lovely pinprick teeth that made him.
Armand bears down on him and Daniel almost chokes with it, sensations he hasn't felt in ages raking through him like electricity. He squeezes Armand's wrist, rakes his other hand down his chest to reach between them and feel where his cock is pushing into him, obscene and slick, and then he has to grab his hip, nails denting skin. He's hard, which is a bit of a shock, feeling the weight and heat of it between them— good, ridiculously so.
He's going to say something else. Some mechanical, daring bullshit, but as he opens his mouth (tips of his own canines elongating, just a little) he becomes suddenly aware of the thing binding them together. How it feels. That silver thread and the way he can sometimes sense Armand's mood or his presence, and how fucking overwhelming it is in this moment.
"Yeah," another echo, the most coherent he can be. Armand is holding him still but he digs a heel into the bed and pushes into him, more, fuck.
It's not mechanical, he thinks, the pleasure he feels for that moment of resistance. Daniel's heel against the mattress, muscles pushing back as if to take him deeper and faster, strong and alive. As vital as he was when Armand took him into his arms (both times) and bit his throat (both times)—
No, more. Not the quivering, sacrificial thing. Something else, something he has made, touching him intimately and clutching around his cock and only struggling so he can get more of it.
Armand does that, burying in and pressing down. Long arms sliding around, pushing in between bed and back, shoulders. Their proportions makes this easier, a vampiric tolerance for the strain of mobility and the demands being imposed on Daniel's body that allows Armand to have him like this as well as snake up a hand to find a handful of silver curls and coax Daniel's head back.
Because he wants to drink from his throat. Wants that sense of submission, of repeat, of demand. Armand pressing his mouth against the side of it, hot breath and warm tongue and lips felt first in open mouthed kiss.
There's an easy and weightlessness of moving that shocks him, feeling less human than ever and liking it, experiencing a momentary hysterical thought for how he could have ever thought he was properly alive before— quickly scattered away under the force of how good this feels. It's so easy to shift into the perfect angle and hold there, grind back against every snap forward, and he fucks right into where it feels best and Daniel thinks, oh, okay, this is what getting fucked is supposed to feel like. Kind of insane he's figuring it out at this age. But he's not going to complain.
Nails dig into Armand's back, a kneejerk impulse, and he shudders and flattens his palms out, not sure if this hurts or not, if Armand would like it either way, if, if, if, fuck.
He tips his head back, sees Armand, the ceiling, some other fucking universe of sensation. A shudder when he kisses his throat, heart hammering. He was out of his mind and near death the first time, he did die the next time. He'd asked for this, and for Armand to decide to take it like this—
Yes. It's what he wants. He feels like he's high. He feels better than that.
Something obscene in the way saliva gathers in his mouth, a genuine instinctive hunger paired with this other kind of desire. A breathy groan pressed against Daniel's throat, feeling the other man strain for this, arch for it.
A far cry from the defeated acceptance of his prey. Of former lovers, even.
Fangs, piercing skin. As painful as that should be, as numbing as it swiftly becomes, and then as pleasurable as it had been before of blood gently coaxed through broken pathways under the force of a monster's appetite. Armand humming his pleasure at the taste of blood coating his tongue, filling his mouth, allowing it to well up messily beneath his mouth before more earnestly drinking it down.
And none of it detaches himself from what he is doing. From being buried deep in Daniel and holding their bodies pressed close together, feeling the shape of Daniel's cock pressing against his belly, the heave of his breathing. All of these sensations, amplified even, at the steady intake of warm blood.
The shock of pain is good, heightening the contrasting pleasure for the interruption, and this time Daniel doesn't have the presence of mind to avoid clawing at Armand. Getting fucking, being bit, his cock moving him, body over him, blood moving like silk over his nerves and veins out into his maker. It slams him into the line of what he thought was as much as he could handle, and then slingshots over it, another realm past human experience.
Pretty fucking cool, might be his eloquent writer's note about it later. Keeping himself from waxing too poetic.
But if there's any transfer of feeling in blood-drinking, now that Armand is doing it with such intent, Daniel can't hide from sentimentality whirling out of ecstatic control. Armand drives him crazy. As comfortable to be around as he is frustrating, fascinating, that lit dynamite word, Daniel sees him sitting cozily and sketching something, he sees him with eyes blazing as he drains someone, he envisions himself reaching out to him in the mist of the kind of horror that should break him and pressing into him for a kiss.
This post-life has been good. He's glad it was Armand.
There it is, again. That thing that hooked in him the first time he drank from Daniel like this, only amplified. Love is not the word he is looking for, he has started to feel doubtful for its efficacy, having involved himself in more love stories than he'd ever cared to experience. Having been told he is loved before.
No, this is different, more specific. Addicting, addiction. Sentiment and lust together, something in Daniel that craves something more vital in Armand than just Armand's behaviours, his abilities, his tasks, his duties. Presentations, personas, names, faces. Down, down, to where he had felt there was nothing.
How it hurt, to feel each thing torn aside, and so ruthlessly. How good it feels.
Blood runs, escaping past his teeth, streaking down Daniel's neck, into his hair, over his shoulder, on his sheets. Vampire skin will knit itself together, and Armand kisses away the excess as if he would prefer to bathe in it. Hot panting against Daniel's cheek, in the moment he resumes fucking him, his breath shaking.
Monster. Maker. A creature bonded to him for eternity; a creature that's turned Daniel into a monster, too. But being a monster feels more correct. He feels like himself. Through death, Armand didn't just make Daniel a vampire, he made him real.
Nothing damned could feel this good. No clearer proof to him that heaven and hell aren't real than his maker fucking him and spilling his own blood everywhere, hot and liquid and smelling like both of them— a part of him is always tainted just so with Armand, now, his life having filtered entirely through the ancient being in magic transformation.
Crazy that it's the bite that's going to do it. The feel of his blood, Armand re-arranging his insides, the fact that he can keep up with it and the only pain is from their sharpest edges. He wants to drown in it, choke in it. Daniel rakes claws down his back to grab at him, encourage him to take more, take what he wants, take everything. He is on the edge of shattering. When he kisses him, it's a badly aimed mess that scrapes the softest parts of his maker's mouth with fangs.
Claws in his back, his ass, his hips. Drawing white lines, his fledgling beading blood to the surface of his skin, a scrambling desire that feels sharper for the way Armand feels so close to satisfied. Lazily turns his head to meet that kiss, gives a small hiss at where fangs catch against his lip. More blood. Only answers it by kissing Daniel back deeply, bearing down.
If there is some removed part of him, it's barely a sliver, the rest of Armand too present for the kinds of dissociative analysis that he has often made room for, retreated to. This tiny part of him, observing the side this brings out in Daniel. Clawing and demand and desire, naked desire, unmediated. Not unfamiliar. They can be so cynical, sometimes, but honest too.
But enough of that. Armand has the briefest urge to tell Daniel he's about to come, some twisted up thing that is both seeking permission and giving apology, and ultimately too far gone to do anything but sink into this role of taking he has begun, that Daniel encourages with words, with hands and teeth. Grasps a hold at the base of Daniel's throat, the curve of his shoulder, kiss breaking in the moment, mouth red and wet with blood and spit.
Claws sinking in. Doesn't pause his rutting. Even the abstract part of him looking on doesn't give him a helpful reminder to see to Daniel's pleasure.
He told Armand to have everything, and he meant it. No point in doing any of this shit halfway. Armand accepted Daniel's graceless up front refusal to play maitre, so he's holding up his end of the bargain, giving everything over. (Would he like to fuck Armand? Yes. Christ, yes. That's not the point.)
It's rough and probably more than would be comfortable for a mortal, but none of that matters, because neither of them are human. It just sends him spinning higher, dragging in labored breaths, heart hammering, everything good, good, fuck, good, better, perfect.
Armand looks demonic. Like he did when he was torturing him. Daniel thinks he might climax from feeling him this way, looking like that. Clings to him, blood boiling, shuddering, holding him tightly through it. Hands slide up Armand's back, holding him, up to cradle his head and stroke his hair. Nerves twitch all through him, still hard, still right there. But hanging on the edge feels good, and knowing he brought Armand over feels even better.
Finally slows as the last of it wrings out of him, as Daniel's arms go around him, hold him, fingers through his hair. Too tempting to collapse into it, some structural integrity giving way as he goes still on top of Daniel, clinging to him. Driftwood in choppy waves, and an endless depth beneath his feet.
The scent of blood, sweat, sex everywhere, the whole world condensed down to the tangle they have made of each other. Aware of Daniel's hardness, still, and likes that too, the feel of it against his skin, signalling mutual desire, gratification.
In a moment. He wants to be held.
He doesn't think he wishes to cry, exactly, but this fullness of feeling resembles the urge. Pressing its hands against his ribcage from within, pushing. Catches his breath. Not quite his mind. Returns his mouth to Daniel's healing bite, kissing and licking away the last of the blood drying there. "Tell me," murmured. "Tell me how you want it now."
Daniel feels pinned in place on a high crest, maddening and relaxing at once. He holds Armand, feeling strangely protective in the midst of everything else. This monster made him, hurt him, and he understands it.
A shivery sigh after that kiss, as Armand tastes lingering blood. Still pushed inside of him, even softening, makes everything light up. Armand's weight feels good, his dick feels good, his mouth, his fangs, all of it. Daniel licks blood-tinted sweat at his temple.
"My hand over yours," he answers. Nudges the side of his face, presses a kiss to half of his mouth. "Just like this."
They don't have to move. Wedge between their bodies, he just wants Armand to touch him. He'll even do the work, fingers wrapping over his maker's on his cock.
A nod, more felt than seen, Armand allowing his hand to be found, moved, wrapped around Daniel's stiff cock. Squeezing, a covetous kind of touch, before relaxing, and drawing in a breath as he feels Daniel moving them together.
Allows it, allows Daniel to do what he needs. His fingers make a narrow passage to fuck through, attentive in this way, but otherwise he settles where he is, nuzzled in against the side of Daniel's neck and face, eyes half-closed and out of focus. A very human feeling, this kind of daze. Unprofessional. Luxurious to linger in. He had always been fond of this part, the after.
Although not quite after, not yet. Lifting his head, eventually, watching Daniel now, hazily hooded but focused, burning gold. His face, first, then down, the configuration they make, the swollen-needy colour of his cock in their hands together, the press of lifted thighs, wiry silvered hair, the long line of muscle running from wrist to elbow. Every little detail, all of it, possessively collected.
The first curl of Armand's fingers around him makes his cock twitch, the edge raw and cranked. Getting fucked had felt so good, and the way Armand is staying here like this, sated and language but still seemingly present, is making it even better as much as it's making it more surreal. (Will they do this more? Will Daniel get used to it, lose the nerves, end up coming while Armand is still fucking him, get to feel him while he's hypersensitive in the immediate aftermath, everything tipping to one side of pain?)
Something about it all feels so decadent. Too rich, overwhelming. Armand fucking him and finishing first, Daniel using his hand after. Fetishizing self-indulgence. He realizes Armand is looking at him, their folded-over hands on his cock which is leaking and desperate.
Fuck, he thinks he's going to say it, but his breath catches in his throat in some shattered half-sound. It hits him like something sharp, makes him flinch, orgasm shocking him with its intensity. One more experience lost to age, brought back again in death, ten times better, a hundred times better.
"Armand," gasped, grit out, instead of swearing. Maybe his name is an obscenity, though.
After those last hot pulses, Armand's hand is still. A subtle difference, from the active desire to shape his fingers just so to wring out satisfaction, to this more settled, possessive, endeared thing of holding him as he softens, goes still. Give them a minute or two, the sound of his name in Daniel's mouth that way, and they could probably do this again.
That Armand doesn't reach for that indulgence is both that it skirts too far from his instinct to do so, but also that he wants just this. Breathing together, satisfied. Settled back down, now, head on shoulder.
He could ask, was that good? Was he good? Knows it would be childish, knows the answer already. It was good, he was good, Daniel made it all very clear. How tattered his own esteem of his performance had become, a slow and hopeless wearing down over years. Parceling out control in carefully considered portions, Louis doing nothing to him that was not pre-established, Armand doing nothing to Louis that he was not absolutely certain would be welcome, beneficial.
Daniel's mind sealed off to him. Silence that is full of the sounds of hammering hearts, stuttering lungs, churning blood. Dreadfully, he feels his eyes prickle, a deeply rare sensation, and he makes himself go still and silent, huddled in close.
Dizzying afterglow, and it feels like a shattering thing that took hours to build to; Daniel draws in steadying breaths and lets the last aftershocks spark and twitch and leave him sated and awed. It is strange being a vampire, it is strange getting fucked, it is strange that it's Armand.
Armand, who he can feel draw into himself with a stillness that wasn't there before. Something he would notice even if he couldn't feel the bond that links them, ebbing and flowing with its intensity and feeling so present right now. He wonders if Armand feels it the same way, or if the lack of telepathy makes him struggle. Could be that Daniel just pays too much attention to it, fascinated by the way he's never felt alone since changing, and not in a way that crowds him.
A shift, heedless of how everything is sticky and bloody, so that he can wrap both arms firmly around his maker and hold him fully. He tips his head so he and press a kiss to Armand's forehead, his temple, catching dark hair. He should probably ask if this is okay, if maybe he wants to get up, let him leave. But something catches in his chest and he just— hopes.
"Stay with me," he asks, hushed. A pleading note. Please stay.
The difference between telepathy and whatever this is—
Tactile, almost. Here, laying still, sinking inwards by some measure, Armand can do what feels like winding a finger around the thread that connects them, testing its tension. In answer, nearly, to the way Daniel holds him tightly, kisses him that way, says what he does—and only nearly because he is sure Daniel can't feel it. Right?
The bond between a maker and fledgling was flawed, he had said. He had believed. That they could never touch each other completely in the way two other vampires can meant that there was no true ability to trust and love and be united in the way that eternity had demanded. Another thing Lestat had disagreed about. Armand could play at vanity, and imagine his actions in New Orleans being done to prove him wrong.
"Yes," he says. Slightly movement, then, a creeping across of his hands to reset his hold on Daniel. "I'm here."
They hadn't, of course. But Daniel hadn't needed telepathy at all. Doesn't need it now, to put his arms close around Armand and bid him to stay.
He does feel it, or at least he thinks he does. Maybe because he's young and every little difference is all the more obvious, maybe Louis primed him to be on the lookout, maybe there's just something about him. All of it, none of it. A hallucination. He wouldn't be able to articulate it if he attempted to do so out loud, but this tether is ever-present, and he can tell when there's tension pressed on it, like he can tell when Armand is in the next building over compared to three hundred miles away.
Armand pulls it a little and Daniel presses into it. Does it feel like anything to him? That phantom limb he thinks he feels, holding him alongside their physical ones, trying to reach into whatever made him go to still and wrap fingers around it, hold him close.
He nods, pleased. Yes, Armand says. Daniel has to believe him. He kisses the top of his head and cradles him. They'll really have to rinse off before they fall asleep, but not yet. He just wants to keep him in his arms for now and feel, connected like a circuit by something that only exists for the two of them.
Laying here in Daniel's arms, like a much loved thing.
The ever present urge to, you know, bite him all over abated, satisfied, for having done that a little and then some. For the open display of affection, for the vocalised desire for him to stay. Soon, that great flood of feeling that had almost pushed Armand adrift, that too withdraws, and he breathe a little like a boot isn't planted on his sternum, pressing down.
Some undisclosed amount of minutes later, Armand shifts, brushes his lips against where he'd been resting his head. A matter of fact rearrangement of bodies into something less like they collapsed mid-fuck. Raises himself up a little, enough that they can see each other, if still pressed in close.
"I want to stay," sounds like reiteration, which he realises, adds, "For sometime. I want to cancel your plans for the week."
Daniel has a moment, too young for a forever-seventy-year-old, blinking up at Armand because for a second he thinks something laughable like, why, I didn't think you had a problem with any of the projects I have going. He has not spent the past lifetime locked in a loveless companionship, but he, too, has his hangups; even aside from the more shallow matters of disbelief around Armand being attracted to him, there are his divorces, his failures, his reckoning with being solitary. Passion aimed at him is fleeting. People get sick of him. That's just how it is. And so he stares at Armand, cancel your plans, a beat, and finally gets it.
Oh.
"Cool. Done."
A few nice things now and again about being this forever-seventy-year-old. A professional in his prime would have to make excuses and save face and reschedule. Daniel can just say The weather's getting to me, I have to cancel, and everyone is fine with it, because he's about to shrivel up and die anyway. Huh. A week. Locked away with Armand. Again.
He slides hands up his maker's back, along his spine, draws nails over his skin. Survived the first time. Roll the dice again.
He hadn't particularly expected resistance, but its easy lack brings about a flush of pleasure—satisfaction, a kind of floating, detached arousal that can't quite get its hooks in him just yet, and then something soothing. Maybe a mirror of whatever Daniel got out of asking him to stay, his agreement.
They are filthy and Armand doesn't care. Happy for them to smell of each other, of Daniel's blood. Feels his nerves spark eagerly under each stroke of Daniel's nails across his back, craving repetition. Settles in against him, arms insisting themselves around him, a vine-like cling.
He has no plans to cancel. Daniel has been his plans for sometime, now. No impatience in his body to find some other thing, outside the little hobbies (!) he's been encouraged to have. He can go a long time with nothing at all.
Easy, to hold him. To drift to sleep like that, and to wake up and remember, oh. Yeah. This is happening, apparently. He clears his schedule, doesn't even follow up with anything, just dumps it and pulls Armand onto the sofa while his phone slips to the floor.
Daniel exists in a strange state. It's comfortable and it feels correct, versus, the worry that it's temporary, that Armand is going to vanish when the timer's up and he won't see him for another fifty years. It makes him greedier for it, handsier, even through the jitters of getting used to being wanted. By anyone, but especially Armand. Fortunately he has little shame — done worse, humiliated himself a hundred times over, lived a life Louis called fascinating but was mostly a fucking trainwreck — and feels perfectly fine asking Can I suck your cock? and getting on his knees in the kitchen around all his sketches charcoal smudges.
Sooner are later Daniel will have to eat something. Maybe they can go out. Maybe they can play a game and see who'll show up at the back door and how drunk they'll be.
The cat carries one of Armand's slippers from room to room in clenched teeth, occasionally staring at them while holding it and then immediately scampering away when approached. Daniel has yet to decipher this behavior, though he does manage to grab Peanut later. He holds the cat up by his armpits (?) making it look far more elongated than it should, and asks it what the deal is. Peanut has no answer, and just stares back with his big, weird eyes, until Daniel sighs and cradles him in his arms instead.
He doesn't think about work. (He doesn't think about work much.) He thinks a lot about Armand.
The changing shift of his eyes, for example. He doesn't know what it means. He will ask Daniel what he thinks it does, eventually, but it's good enough to observe it just for now—what hue they turn when Armand is inside of him, or when he wakes up as the sun sets and he awakes to find himself being observed.
Thinks about his hands, wrists, forearms, the appeal Armand finds in them—has drawn focus to himself by setting his teeth against the curve of muscle, just as he'd started all of this with gentle kisses. At one stage, sketches out Daniel's hands, the dance of them on his laptop or the angle he holds the TV remote, or the loose curl of fingers when asleep. Hides these away at first, and then leaves them out to be found.
Thinks about his cat and its fetish for his slipper.
Finds it under an armchair, Armand levering the whole thing back as he retrieves and inspects it. No discernible harm or biological nastiness, so he slips it back onto his foot. Goes and finds Daniel and sees him holding the cat to his chest, and thinks—he is still in a habit of observation. Perhaps that's fine. But it does mean there lacks a natural instinct to walk over, wind his arms around Daniel's waist as if they were romantic partners in a more traditional sense.
And thinks about it instead. Arms folded around himself instead, loose, easy, chin tucking in as he observes, "You're hungry," which isn't a commentary on Peanut's presence in Daniel's arms, probably.
"Not enough to eat you, don't worry," he tells Peanut, who just continues to stare at him. If he were going to anthropomorphize the cat, he'd say that Peanut looks perpetually on the verge of tears— and now is no different, looking as though maybe Daniel is going to eat him, and is very sad about it.
A sigh. Daniel pats his furry hindquarter, and looks at Armand.
Always good at reading people, and he thinks he's steadily getting better at reading his maker. He thinks he can tell that the elder vampire wants to walk across the room and touch him. Could be a million reasons why he doesn't, from 'cat in the way' to 'hundreds of years of screwed up issues'. For now, Daniel leaves the cat where he is, and even jiggles Peanut a little in his cradled hold. Peanut endures.
"We could go out."
Because he is hungry. Daniel has come to accept he's going to have to do a murder most nights— nobody talks about how the morality of it all isn't the worst part. The worst part is definitely the pain in the ass of not being able to just order take-out or warm something up in the microwave. And maybe he could, start committing to Louis' methods, but that sucks even worse. Pizza beats the absolute shit out of a blood bag. Alas, no longer an option.
"Or we could see if anyone feels like taking a walk. I've been working on it."
Armand, currently doing the math on how efficiently he can bundle up a squirming meal and bring it home again—which is to say, quite efficiently—but his reluctance for Daniel to leave this little space they've been enjoying is equal to his reluctance to leave it himself. His mind wanders out to the psychic equivalent of fly fishing when Daniel gets there first.
A little flash of interest. Approval. An eyerolling kind of ego stroke, he thinks, for a maker to convince himself that his fledgling's gifts are some personal reflection on themselves when it's just a matter of a lottery mixed with a multi-level marketing structure—
He goes over there after all, if not to the aim he'd envisioned. A hand drifting out to stroke Peanut's ruff, although the cat is too dazed in his hold to go all squinty with pleasure.
"I'd like to see that." Eyerolling or not. "Ordering in."
Pleased, to have that greeted with interest. To have Armand slip closer. Funny how these things are a marvel even after fucking. It makes it all the more real— existing with depth, applied to daily life, and not just explosive hours and grabbing at each other.
Also: this could be fun. Daniel does think that his aptitude probably comes from Armand, anyway, though the genealogy project to research that hypothesis is a ways away. He's saving his niche vampire ideas for when Daniel Molloy is legally dead, and he has to find things to do that don't involve mortals. He likes it. Of everything to have in common, he's glad it's this; interesting, useful, in line with his preexisting strengths, and he gets to talk shop with Armand sometimes.
He watches the ancient vampire's hand at his pets the cat. He likes his fingers. Elegant, pretty. Violent, sensual. His gaze ticks back up.
"Want to get them loaded?"
He knows Armand doesn't have to feed. But would he like to? For fun?
Amusement, in that sound. Kind of. What is actually is is a pleased sound and just comes out that way, because Armand likes it when Daniel asks him to do things, like drugs, or watching a Netflix docuseries, or going for a drive somewhere, and of course, sex too, but there is a different appreciation for the things that are spending time beyond that, even if they lead to it. Drugs probably will. A bonus.
Skritches behind Peanut's ears, Armand tipping his head to study the cat's watery eyes, the positions of its ears. Now and then, he informs Daniel about Peanut's body languages and behaviours, because of course he did his homework. Here, see, the ears are alert but relaxed. The little tail flicks are, likewise, more content than agitated.
"Nothing that will have us climbing the walls," he says. "Or me climbing off the walls."
Five hundred and fourteen years doesn't beat out one professional junkie septuagenarian's constitution.
He likes it when Armand plays along— though now, he sees he probably hasn't been giving either of them enough credit. Seems to have been a bit more than playing along, and he probably should have noticed before now, with the whole... occasionally holding hands, sometimes sleeping curled up together... thing.
An odd courtship. He wonders if it'll hold. Hopes so. Or at least, hopes they can come back together after, like they do already, after arguments.
Peanut finally tips his head into the scratch, bug-eyes squinting to enjoy it and Armand's artful application of nails. A little shiver after a moment, signaling a desire to escape, and Daniel obligingly sets him down. (Where Peanut will notice Armand is wearing his slippers, and begin to stare. Betrayal.)
No cat between then. Daniel closes the distance, presses a gentle kiss to his mouth. Hey.
Armand will continue to be surprised by this, but he has, over the past few days, managed to school himself into not looking it. His hands drift to gently place on Daniel's elbows, tips his chin down to receive the kiss, meets expected gentleness with an equal answer. Armand will continue, too, to want to grip harder, press such a gesture into something more aggressive and demanding—
Does not, and doesn't feel like a missed opportunity. Look, he can be normal, at least until the next hard reset. Hey back, instead.
Peanut is not so brave as to try to get his slippers while Armand is wearing them, only barely manages it if Armand is not wearing them but insists on being in the same room, so there is a trill and a silent exit when the situation doesn't resolve itself. Off to do his own hunting.
Raises a hand, a touch that plays with curls behind Daniel's ear by the time the kiss breaks. "How do you intend to go about it?"
This is good. Like demanding is good. Daniel likes both, and there is certainly a part of him that wants to coax Armand's more extreme responses to the surface, feel proverbial bruises be squeezed, choke on intensity. But they can't just spend every turn clawing at each other.
Well—
No, no, come on. Things to do. Dinner, at the very least. Hand find Armand's sides, casually linking form to form. A strange ancient demon making himself comfortable in his house, his life, his chest cavity. Daniel wants to fuck him. He wants Armand to bite him again. He wants to watch him loosen into technicolor strands and spiral into relief and understanding of the universe.
"By giving it a go and then letting you take over if I fuck it up."
:)?
Daniel's not half bad. Better at identification and mind-reading than he is at control, he's found himself adept at picking out targets, but getting them to comply as artfully as Armand is a big ask. Tricky, sometimes, to make sure they land on the same target, unable to just sift it from the other's mind, but that, too, is something he's getting better at. Following a trajectory from an angled outside perspective instead of a point of view one. Good at angles, he makes it work.
There is a pleasing lack of anxiety about killing that is nice to be around. Not that the mindless glee of the coven back when, and of most vampires today, is exactly a virtue, or really what is present when Daniel hunts—but it's one less thing. Daniel is no sadist, does not revel in violence, which might speak to personal preference as much as it does a settling moral barometer.
More than enough time to learn its limits. To pick at it curiously, see what's tender, what's calcified. In these early days, it's certainly enough that his fledgling eats, and is willing to enjoy himself.
"Ah," he says, fingertips mapping down along Daniel's nape, his other arm finding a closer place to settle around his waist. "So I shouldn't distract you while you work, given my role as contingency."
At some point, the ease of banter is going to flip on him, and he will convince himself that this is all playing pretend, and someone is going to say keep selling it, and he may need to set the house on fire, but until then—
Philosophers can argue about it. Is sadism worse then apathy? Daniel can't say he doesn't care— he's selective, he tries to pick people he thinks the world would be better off without, but he no longer feels guilt, just as he no longer lets himself randomly grab people for no reason other than hunger. He had meal preferences as a mortal. He would spend extra on fair trade coffee and chocolate, sometimes, when he could. What's so different?
"Your whole deal is being distracting," Daniel accuses, though there's no heat in it. Just banter, playing along, swaying a little as Armand knits them closer.
Until then, until then. Daniel kisses him, and it's more than Hey.
What's the rush.
But eventually, they're sitting on the back deck, and Daniel is sitting with his elbows on his knees and thinking.
Positioned off several feet, neatly bundled into outdoor furniture made of cosy wicker and a cosier blanket. It isn't a detailed sketch with the intent to complete a piece of art, and it's rare that any of what he does on paper is that, but little scribbly practice things. Hands, shoulder, light from the windows, darkness beyond. Details in the midst of abstraction, renderings in charcoal.
And patient. He has gotten being a distraction out of his system—somewhat. Likely, the occasional flickered glance up of an intent look is distracting.
"Don't think of them like puppets," he says, after a moment, "controlling every little movement. Particularly if they're in a moving vehicle. They can fill in the blanks themselves with enough motivation."
A little absent, but better than silence; he knows Armand dislikes being ignored. He caught one, or he thinks he did— currently trying to ascertain the success of his bait, finding it slippery so far away with so many people. The city's dense population is helpful in one way, murders and disappearances happening all the fucking time, but challenging in another, diffusing targets and making it challenging to be precise.
For him, anyway, Armand seems to have little trouble. Letting him do it would save some time, Daniel will only improve through practice, and he likes hearing the little scratchy sounds of his maker doodling, and the way Armand feeling comfortable enough to be doing that makes him feel.
"I think..."
Squint.
"I think I got one. Yeah."
Maybe?? ... Medium confident. Fairly confident. Seeing clearer now, he thinks his struggle was primarily around instinctively avoiding the initial best candidate, who he has returned to. A woman in her early fifties— he still tends to prey on mostly men, trying to pretend he's too good to stoop to every mortal murderer's usual fare, but like the rest of his guilt, this, too, has ebbed away. The cutthroat executive heads to her car, following a sudden blooming instinct. Daniel isn't the Come to me type, it'll never flow correctly for him. Instead, I have the answer.
"A trade off. Less humans inclined to wander than they would on a nice summer's evening. But more time for us."
A figurative 'us', clearly, given the mediocrity of the local sun and all, but maybe also us as in them, as in more hours in which Daniel is not groggily lured away from him. Looking down at his page, there is a moment of considering what he's done to it, and a familiar lurch—dimensionless, rambling markings, little hints of skill and no imagination, a waste of material, too much effort for too much simplicity, the opposite of sprezzatura, and none of this brings about dramatic artistic ennui so much as it reaffirms what he knows.
Still. He will continue. Later, perhaps, sketchpad and charcoal set aside, and reaches for the little packet of wipes he'd brought out to clean his fingers.
Armand looked angelic in the sun, which is funny - and fitting - in retrospect. Biblically accurate horrors joke. Daniel is glad he got to see it when he did, because it'll be a while before he'll see it again. If ever.
But he looks good in the dark, too.
An itching distraction, when he hears the sounds of sketching being given up on. Daniel always wants to see, even when Armand bristles. He's sure his approval is not exactly flattering, given his less than expert eye, but still. Whatever perfection Armand searches for is beyond him; Daniel thinks all of it is compelling.
"Investment company manager," he says. "Formerly in real estate, churning into tech startups now. She lies about being progressive, hangs out with a diverse group of people in her spare time because she's been rejected everywhere else, but she self-harms by listening to nothing but alpha male podcasts and voting Republican. She blames her mother."
You've got it figured out, Daniel threads into her mind. It's right here. Down the turnpike. Just one more.
"Would the 24 hour cycle still be a drain, in like, Greenland, or Alaska?"
This workaholic does not need to go be someplace where he can get away with never sleeping, for the record. At least not for the rest of Daniel Molloy's legally recognized lifespan.
A creak of furniture, and noiseless footfalls. Armand approaching, touching Daniel's shoulder when he nears. "But I've heard stories of vampires driven mad by an eternal night, and go into hibernation for the summer. I can't say the thought appeals to me."
How fortunate, to be kidnapped by a Satanic-Catholic cult, rather than some moon worshiping pagans from snowy wastelands. Without asking, he takes a seat in Daniel's lap, shifting just so that even his long legs only barely let his feet brush the ground in their slippers. Leans into him, a lean arm around his shoulders.
Would enjoy following along, so he does the second best thing, expanding his focus, seeing how quickly he can detect which glinting glow of a mind out there in the dark is the one that Daniel is reeling in for them.
Though none is on the menu tonight— Daniel has selected mostly psilocybin mushrooms, a strain he knows to be reliably potent and stable for relaxation and mind expansion, and supplementary MDMA. The kind of cocktail that in fifty years may end up offered as utterly ordinary therapy, but is worth a lifetime in prison today.
A smile, as Armand situates himself in Daniel's space, on his person. He accommodates this and winds his arms around his maker's torso, lets him get comfortable. A mortal Daniel would have complained about being squashed, a Parkinson's-riddled Daniel wouldn't have been able to tolerate it. Being dead is fucking great, actually. Daniel noses near the arch of his shoulder. Pleased, as he keeps most of his attention on the fish he's caught, carefully reeling.
She is overwhelmingly bitter and desperate. Self-righteous and self-loathing. She wants her world to make sense, even if it means her world being over. She drives too fast, not because Daniel encourages her too, but because she's impatient and being angry at other drivers scratches at the itch that never goes away in her heart. She wants the answer, though whether it's because she wants a resolution or she wants it to shut up, is difficult to ascertain.
The welcome feels precious. Earned. How good, to have Daniel's arms settle around him, for his fledgling to be pleased, transmit this pleasure in sweet gesture. All things can be ripped away, shattered apart, burned, some form of annihilation dependent on the material it is made of, and Armand is capable of enjoying it while it lasts.
And he can close his eyes, focus. Ah. There she is.
There's no cheating the veil that divides them. No ability to wave hello from within a third party's brain. The closest they get is the sharing of blood, blood being the substance that forms their connection. Armand just listens, and can guess at a sense of Daniel twisting around a neurotic kind of anxiety, hateful and quick to spark, exploiting synaptic pathways that already exist in pursuit of that answer.
Yes, good. He plays with the hair at the nape of Daniel's neck, feeling this flush of approval. "I'll entertain the idea of a vacation," he says, meanwhile. "I don't think the population of Greenland can sustain a vampire for more than a week or two, without that vampire going noticed."
Armand's ease against him, the little touches, inspire Daniel to drop a kiss against his collarbone. Too much threatens to be sickly, and he second-guesses himself now and again with the reminder of New relationships are always like this, he'll stop thinking it's cute sooner than you want. Might as well indulge while he can.
Terrifying word, by the way. The R Word. Relationship. A mundane, yet daunting, tag on something that's been deeper (and worse) (and better) since its inception. Since they looked at each other in a bar for less than sixty seconds, with somebody else between them.
"Yeah, smart money probably picks off tourists in Iceland."
Vacation— someday. There's temptation to do everything soon, before it fizzles out, before Daniel fucks it up. But you can't rush when you can't die.
This woman should also quit rushing, and he encourages her, which sort of works. She parks in a commuter lot and heads to a rail stop, buys a hat (with cash) from a vendor that's starting to pack up for the night. Her phone is in her car, she drops her keys into a trash bin. Vanishing into anonymity, as she begins to draw closer to this neighborhood, where one of them will have to start precise control to avoid her being caught on anyone's ring door cams.
"I like this, though. Millennials call it a 'staycation.'"
He watches all her movements like a cat peering at a bird through the window, his fingers in Daniel's hair still toying with more of an absent minded fidget now. Watches the actions she takes at, Armand is sure, Daniel's instruction, smiles a little at the art of hiding the body before the body has stopped moving.
Foolish for him to give instructions. Daniel scarcely needs them. This could be an opportunity to feel redundant, but it doesn't turn into one. There is much more appeal for him personally in watching this fledgling he has made act upon the world, as he wishes.
"Millennials would," he says. "Justifying an absence of disposable income and a nice time spent at home in terms of capitalist productivity, or the willful lack thereof."
Eating rich people, finding everyone else tiring, reacting to an annihilated prime by making horrendous observations about older and younger generations alike. Mentally ill and kind of hot about it, kind of horrible. (Daniel has been fired from several newspapers before.)
In the not-quite-end, Daniel does need Armand's help with more finite control— he knows where she needs to go, how to path, but making her do it with precision is tough. He's not quite figured out how to get those intricate controls without either slipping or causing more damage than he'd like. Only a little annoying, meanwhile, because of course Daniel is the actual irritating distraction between them, but he can't lurk in Armand's head while he does it, so he wants pointers. Easier than ever to ask for them when Armand has foolishly arranged himself right in Daniel's grasp.
Deana, her name is, and she does eventually make her way to a hidden gate in the tall fence that separates their back yard from a neighbor's back yard — having a borderline Luddite neighbor who rejects all modern security and goes to sleep at 8pm is handy for smuggling in food without being tracked. Walks over grass, stops before them, has a funny contradiction on her face of a frown knitting her eyebrows over blank eyes.
Daniel kisses Armand's throat, just under the line of his jaw where he can feel his pulse, before they get up.
He gives his pointers. The way one can shape their commands to resemble the sorts of things a human tells themselves: stop, duck, faster, go. A light touch that still takes a preternatural amount of concentration and care to maintain. When Daniel truly explores the untapped potential of all a vampiric mind is capable of, the amount of plates that can be spun in one moment, then there will be trouble.
And Armand is not yet tired of sweet little kisses. Of cloying behaviour. Eventually, maybe something will turn, curdle, and Daniel will kiss him in that way and he might feel like e has been set on fire or needs to remove his skin to escape whatever deception it feels like, from either of them, but for now—
A pleased hum, a reluctance to stand. But he does.
"Please, be welcome," he tells Deana, who doesn't respond to that like he actually said it, but some part of her brain receiving it, soothed by it. She moves inside, this known quantity who has turned herself into a corpse already, a missing person report filed in, let's be generous, twelve hours or so.
He picks up his drawings things, and goes to put them away. Does the rounds, ensuring curtains are drawn.
Deana walks to the living room, and does not look up at the ceiling; painted like the sky, but shifting like sunset (or sunrise?) — broader and higher than Daniel's apartment, it took some time to coax the painter into finding the right balance of not too fiddly and detailed but not too blobby, blue into violet with clouds kissed with greys or pinks. (Maybe should have done the basement instead, but the ceiling is so much lower, and he's really only in there to sleep or fuss around during the day.)
She sits down on a sofa, slightly off-center, and waits. Passive thanks to mind-control, but still eager thanks to the part of her brain that Daniel hooked into when he decided on her. I'll understand soon. I'll know soon. Soon. Soon. Soon.
He encourages this, as he gets a glass of water. You're almost there. On second thought, he tries the fridge, and lucks out with a can of soda as well.
Mushrooms first. Nothing glamorous about it, eating spindly, gilled plants, sipping Diet Coke in between; she has done pills, a little bit of coke in university, but this is very hippy-dippy and her subconscious mind is at first riled in a bad way by the idea of raw dogging shrooms. Aspartame and carbonation help. There's no rushing this bit, it has to sink into her before Daniel decides to feed her more or stop, so he just sits back in a chair and looks over to Armand, hand extended. Luring.
Lured, Armand takes that hand. Doesn't resettle in Daniel's lap again, maybe to be contrary, or not too predictable. Stays close, stays intimate, shifting around behind him, to comfortably drape his arms over his shoulders, smooth hands down his chest. Knows there would have been the chance he'd deny himself if Daniel hadn't beckoned. Knows there are times when this feels like performance.
Content, tonight, to simply do as he wants. Within reason. For instance, he could play with their prey's mind like a cat with a yarn ball, but instead he says,
"Would a bad trip transfer, do you think, during the blood drinking?"
Less in the tone that he actively desires to fuck with their meal so much as speculative, and a little assumptive that Daniel will be informed on the topic.
Still learning each other, like this. Daniel has no qualms about being greedy, especially not when he has every reason to believe that this is on a timer. He banishes potential anxiety and digs both hands into enjoy it for now.
One hand, a literal one not a metaphorical one, slips up Armand's forearm to touch him, and slide fingers along veins, to the pulse point in the ditch of his elbow, and down again to his hand. Elegant artist's fingers, against his own broad ones. The predator nails look a little funny on Daniel, but on Armand, it looks like he was always meant to have them. Beautiful like the full spread of teeth in a tiger is beautiful.
"A 'bad' trip happens in the brain," he notes. "So maybe, but it wouldn't be about substance contamination in the blood, it'd be a psychological reaction to whatever you might end up exposed to while drinking from them. Depends on if freakouts during dinner unsettle you, I guess."
He tips his head back to look at his maker, curious about his thoughts. Deana is staring at her soda can. Slowly, she reaches for another little mushroom, and as she eats it, she begins pushing the tab on the can back and forth to weaken it, transfixed.
Armand easily rocks that little bit aside to meet Daniel's eye. Happy to engage. It's still a little like playing with their food, just less aggressively. Talking about it in front of her. Sensing the way her mind has to skitter aside or bend or shape itself around the words.
"Separate things," agreeable, "the chemical we are taking in through the blood and our own physiological response to it, and our psychic sense of the person producing that blood, their feelings, their memories, their emotional state."
Turns his hand, tangling fingers with Daniel. "But I wouldn't be surprised if there's interference between the two. I'm given to understand that psychedelics produce powerful spiritual awakenings."
"They can." Fingers laced, all contrasts. "Peyote's been used for thousands of years in religious practices for a reason. But you can also just see funny colors and fall asleep."
Deana might be seeing some funny colors right now. She's noticed the ceiling.
"It'd be an interesting experiment. See if a vampire's reaction can be deliberately curated by selecting a donor experiencing what they'd like to experience in turn."
An interesting experiment that would require a truly staggering amount of drugs and worrying number of vanished mortals. Daniel's pretty sure he could easily get volunteers if they thought they'd live - people are freaks, he's one of them - but asking an impaired monster to refrain from draining a victim to the point of death isn't practical.
"You know, for the vampire scientific digest I'm eventually going to publish."
Imagine.
The woman ends up consuming all of the mushrooms left to her with little prompting— much less effort than it had taken to direct her here. She's eager to sever herself from her own mind and turn off the torrent of stress. There's an answer in here. Daniel eventually sits next to her, and she asks quietly what the pills are. He tells her, and she takes them without prompting. There is a serenity to her that wasn't there when she arrived. She fantasizes that she'll wake up on the other side of this as someone completely different, and the drugs tell her that she will. She'll understand any minute now.
No peer reviewed, control tested, exhaustive study required, mock assurance before Armand is letting Daniel up. Stands where he is, a partial lean on the back of the chair. Watches Daniel and his prey, listens to her mind, the circling the drain rationalisation that is keeping her fixed on the couch.
Fingers wandering along the arm of it as he moves in closer, coming to settle on her other side. The spell might break if he intervenes too much, but also, it's too late for her. Riding high, now, spiralling into coloured streamers of consciousness. He strokes her hair back away from her ear. Her neck.
"Who will you be, Deana?" he asks.
She shakes her head. Doesn't know. But there are little flickers of notions. Herself, with more money. A man, with a wife. Her teenage self, running a marathon, never stopping.
A kaleidoscoping interior, between drugs, and vampire hypnosis. Daniel watches her mind and lets it fracture into different observable parts— gracefully, like ripples in a pond, watching distorted shapes of koi fish and reflections of flowers and stars.
"It can be a surprise," he tells her, nudging this and that in her head. Lacking in Armand's light touch, centuries of experience, and so he compensates by being conservative with his moves. Makes sure she doesn't realize she's in some stranger's house, flanked my men she's never seen before, being plied with drugs and told that she'll be reborn in just a second.
The intoxicants make it easier. She wants to be someone else, and as the flush of sensation overtakes her, she mentally reaches out to take the hand guiding her towards the door at the top of a hill. All she has to do is open it.
"Do you want to go first?" Daniel asks Armand, quiet. Away from the woman's attention. "I can keep an eye on you if you don't like it."
Armand can flex his power in subtle and precise ways, centuries of practice, a certain talent for it to begin with. But he watches her, and watches Daniel with her, and takes pleasure in drawing together the ways a journalist is a hunter, kiting a resistance subject around, provocation, silent spaces, lures.
A pause, which is a drawing back, lifting his eyes to consider Daniel across her, eyes violent orange already. Pupils normal, naturally. "Yes," he says, an agreement.
Maybe he won't like it. He is willing to experience that too.
He settles his hand on the back of her head, and Deana falls her skull back against his palm without much coaxing. When he parts his mouth, shows his teeth, it is both the mechanics of the thing as well as wanting Daniel to watch him, see his fangs drop and sharpen. (Fun fact, the cat with the biggest kill rate is the black-footed cat, which is an especially diminutive predator, little teeth and big eyes.)
"Soon," he promises her, before leaning in, and setting his teeth to her neck, sinking them in.
Deana will open the door and fall into the rainbow rainfall of a euphoric high when her blood begins to leave her. She just wants to know what she'll be like tomorrow. It'll be better than today, better than everything, and it feels so good, so indescribably good to get there, that she's now fully committed. Holding still pliantly as she's fed from, her eyes unfocused, seeing only multicolor clouds and stars as they form the next stage of her existence.
Armand looks incredible. His eyes, his fangs. Daniel gets to watch unabashed— not that he didn't stare before, now and then when he was actually able to observe his maker drinking, but it's different now. Now, he can raise a hand and stroke over the ancient vampire's hair to make sure he can see all points of contact. Now, he can cradle him gently, and silently encourage him to take as much or as little as he likes. They've had the Don't just keep doing more if you don't feel the high right away talk before about the substances Daniel fucks around with, so he trusts him to make an appropriate call on when to stop.
It's erotic. He had thought so before (so long ago?) in Dubai. He'd thought so as he learned to do it himself, though he rarely allowed himself to look at it that way. He has the freedom to, now. It's safe to watch Armand, the flex of his throat as he swallows, the seal of his mouth to the mortal's flesh, and think: it's just fucking beautiful.
He can feel Daniel look at him. The bond, perhaps, or just a more base awareness, knowing that the cradling touch to his head was motivated by wanting to touch his hair, motivated by his fledgling drinking in the sight of him. In this century, he has decided to welcome back the enjoyment of being looked at, instead of expressly finding comfort in the wings.
Long and slow and tender, his swallowing down of poisoned blood. It had hit her quickly, he'd noticed, which means the blood will be close to instant. As soon as he begins to feel something a little like a warm undercurrent flow beneath his thoughts, a sense of floating, Armand retracts his fangs, keeps his mouth sealed just to stem the precious flow.
She is not dead, but she is not lucid, she is gone from this realm, a limp thing on the sofa with a stubbornly beating heart.
Armand lifts his head, a glimmer of blood-stained teeth. Tips head, eyes opening to slivers as he presses his cheek to Daniel's hand.
Beautiful. He doesn't say so often, too aware of the fact that Armand was valued for his beauty in a nightmarish way— he might try to explain, that his otherworldly, monstrous qualities strike him as the most beautiful, that all kinds of people are physically beautiful and Daniel doesn't sit around getting distracted by them. But it would be corny.
He cradles Armand's face, thumb sweeping low near his mouth; he wants to push inside and touch the sharp curve of a fang, feel the remnants of blood, maybe lean forward and kiss him. Instead, he behaves. Starting off as a trip-sitter. No funny business until he's sure Armand is alright.
"Here you are," he murmurs. "Just like you're sitting with your feet in a stream. Watch it go by."
Sometimes it's just charming hallucinations. Psychedelic inspiration, and he thinks Armand will like that on principle, even if the euphoria and mind expansion never kick in. But if they do, Daniel will be mindful to only ask positive questions, and try to keep his attention relatively present. The ecstasy should help with that, and make it extremely difficult for him to end up going down any dark self-examination paths.
No longer drinking directly from Deana's heart, her blood becomes his own. Or his own consumes hers, and his skin is warm with it. Considers the creature he is, the root-like system of veins and arteries, reaching down, producing something unseen in the sun, but doesn't get too far down that path before Daniel speaks, his voice a resonance texture in the air, and draws his focus.
Amber eyed, blue eyed. A twenty-year old with fear and an unwavering focus in his eyes, a busy and distracted thirty-something power walking down a city street, a sixty-nine year old saying you're not from Dubai, I thought you were a native, as if he was the story.
He had smiled then too, as he does now, a fleeting and rare thing. Blood flecked, still, but human otherwise. "Yes," he says. He likes that analogy. Likes to watch the water go by.
Externally, it isn't quite the sleepy softness that Daniel has had some exposure to, since they began some co-habitation. Dreamy, maybe, but just as much from a satisfying draw of blood as the effects of the drugs. A sense that Armand is looking at him very intently, all of a sudden. A deliberate focusing.
Twofold surges of interest: that small smile, which seemed so disarmed and honest then, seems that way again now, and the knifelike focus that narrows down onto him. Armand is such a tangle of things, and it goes down in him for miles. Daniel thinks he could tumble forever, endless depths, velvet black and strange and endless.
His own eyes are overbright, starting to turn demon-yellow in anticipation of the blood. He looks back at Armand for another moment, a lopsided smile on his face that's entirely too fond for the situation, committing what amounts to a ritual murder together like it's romantic, before he moves to take up that invitation. The hand touching Armand's face slips down, though he stays connected, resting it on his maker's knee instead. Gives him better leverage as he leans in to Deana's other side, and opens his mouth for the sizeable fangs that extend from unremarkable canine teeth.
He bites down, covers the wound, and drinks. Deana shivers, her head falling back on the sofa, and Daniel holds her steady without letting go of Armand's knee. This isn't just the high, for him, he's also taking sustenance, and this will be the last of her life, walking through the door in her mind. A big hit, for Daniel, but he'd calculated what he might take on his own for a casual trip added the tiniest bit more, eyeballing the split between him and Armand. He's done this before, and he trusts his experience just fine; there's all kind of shroom etiquette these days, extensive communities throughout the world and dedicated tutorials on Reddit that emphasize the danger of tripping alone. But Reddit wasn't around when Daniel started using, and he's been a solo traveler long enough to know he can look after the both of them.
Her heartbeat, into his, and into his maker's (always seeming to sync when they sit next to each other for long enough). He swallows blood, psychedelics, life. Deana walks on, euphoric, and she lets go of any hand guiding her to do so. A joyful crossing as Daniel finally withdraws, letting her fade on her own. Pinpricks at her throat remain— they'll heal quick, but not instantly, like Armand can facilitate. Still a babypire.
Daniel looks at him. Made of black lilies, haloed like a saint, like the devil, ceiling moving above his head and opening up into galaxies of pastel planets.
Armand watches. Armand sees that Daniel is a being made of oil paint, still wet on the canvas, layered heavy in beautiful, artful textures of silver and peach. Knows that he could reach out and smear his fingers through him. It's tempting to do that, isn't it? When you create something that's perfect, and now that there is nothing left to do, all that is available to you is ruining it? Disfiguring it?
When he reaches out, his fingertips are very gentle. Aware of this fragility. He strokes down along Daniel's cheek, his jaw, flexed enough to keep his claws away. For a moment, he thinks, that's it, it's ruined, and he swears that the paint parts to reveal layers of white, red, stained canvas.
But no, Daniel is still whole.
Armand turns his hand, checking his fingertips. Nothing has come away. This is good. And when did he ever last touch paints? This is hallucination.
"Follow the interesting things," Daniel suggests. "Or just watch."
Armand is a deep well, deep enough to drown in. Daniel might like to see what's in there, all the way. It seems like it would be easy, from this vantage point— not simple, not safe, but he could reach inside of him and find the coldest parts and at least acknowledge them. Would Armand like that? Would he tolerate seeing Daniel's hands, frostbitten and damaged, offering comfort to the worst of him?
"Can I touch you?"
Making sure. Overwhelming, sometimes, all this.
He's not going to reach in anywhere. He just wants to touch his wrist, feel his pulse, think about blood and intimacy.
He hasn't considered that, Daniel touching him. The question strikes him as, somehow, ridiculous, but that sensation, like a chime, feels like it is struck from somewhere far away, or long ago, resonates oddly. Like, of course Daniel can touch him. Anyone can do anything, except for Armand.
The moment passes. He decides: yes, Daniel can, he would like it very much, and wonders if he would smear apart beneath him instead.
"Can we," he starts, and then looks to Deana, who is no longer Deana, but a garden, compost, ready to sprout. If he looks at her much longer, he will convince himself that the odd unfurling shapes that have begin to grow past her lips are real. Armand looks back to Daniel, casts him a smile.
Like some undersea creature, cast up into colorful stars. Armand's beauty is unsettling even in ordinary times, persisting even when Daniel sees past it. Now it appears to be some unhinged thing, a force of nature in itself, and it's terrible in a way. But still beautiful.
(Maybe Daniel should have said May I.)
"Anywhere you want."
Daniel offers his hands to his maker, allowing him to guide them wherever. Hopefully not into, you know, an incinerator or something, but he's not actually worried. High enough to be enjoying himself and be seeing into other dimensions, but not high enough to be totally lost. Still keeping half a foot into the real world to maintain focus on Armand, in case he takes a bad turn.
Armand winds his hands around Daniel's, flows to his feet, pulling him along. Anywhere you want feels like a promise, like he truly could go anywhere. The old palazzos of Venice, ancient even then, or sunny narrow alleyways where the sound of voices clatters off the stone and the sun makes warm the puddles and he doesn't entirely remember when or where he has that memory, or the ocean, which wouldn't kill them, but get out far enough, deep enough, and there would be little they could do but be held by it.
(Oh, starvation? Vampires don't die of starvation, not really, perhaps not even the young ones. Feed their brittle corpses with enough blood—)
Not the theatre. It was good that Louis burned it. Everyone always does what his heart desires, until they don't.
These thoughts, sparking between stars, and he thinks he would prefer his imagined ocean than anything he remembers. But between fantasy and memory, there is reality, the present, and he finds he has led Daniel to the floor, merely a room away. "I want to be here," he explains, his hands now reaching for Daniel's face. "I want you to touch me."
The study, the floor, hardwood with a complementary rug that goes well with the color of the grain and the color of the ceiling, which is darker in here than the living room. Daniel gets down there with him, no pain in his knees there beside Armand. He wonders if he just needed to move, or if he needed to get away from the corpse; his maker is wildly idiosyncratic sometimes. (Most times.)
"All right."
Daniel turns his head enough to press a kiss to one of Armand's thumbs.
"Here. Me and you."
He keeps one hand grounded on Armand, stays where he is just next to him, and then reaches with his other. Reaches down to his feet. Starts there, touching his toes, stroking over them and the flat tops of his feet, pressing lightly on the tendons there and sliding up, careful. He watches Armand's face as he does this, waiting to see if this is actually too weird and maybe he meant a hand job.
He'd thought of sex, probably, in a general sense if not a specific act. Still a part of him that anticipates this desire in others, lessons learned young, reinforced over and over and over. The odd distance that had settled between himself and Louis, at times, broken by sex. And he likes it, fucking, so it's not exactly a burden, meeting need with need, want with want.
But Daniel touches his feet, keeps a hand on him, both of them half-huddled on the rug, and Armand has to remember the long moments they've spent touching that had little to do with any of that, even if it becomes it, or comes after. Laying against Daniel, fingers playing where his hair gets finer at the base of his neck.
And now this. He watches Daniel's hands with hooded eyes, head tipped. Not weird, not too weird. He thinks he can feel every fine little mammalian hair reach up to greet him. Electric.
Shifts a leg, encouraging that journey, after a glance of assent.
Armand is the deep whorls of his charcoal drawings. Slopes of his ankles, indents, the hard line of his shin. Daniel's grounding hand stays where it is, occasionally flexing and petting against Armand's side, while the other slides up. A little look, once, gently teasing, like— should he check the other side, too? Both feet?
Which would be fine. There's no hardship to touching him, mapping him out, his fingers with careful claws finding bare skin and clothed flesh alike. He slips his touch under the hem of his trousers, but doesn't push anything up, because Armand is just as pleasant to feel that way, too. Kneecaps, the little divots where everything connects, tendons that rarely get any attention unless you bump into something. He wishes Armand wouldn't toss all the drawings he doesn't love instantly. Daniel loves them all instantly.
"Sometimes I think of you like a plant," Daniel tells him, even though this is something he had planned on not telling him, on grounds it's stupid. But the drugs have decided otherwise.
It's relaxing. Absorbing. He can feel parts of himself unwind rather than tense up, which, he thinks, might be his more natural response. Not always like a flinch. Sometimes, it's to go as still as possible, so as not to discourage/encourage. Sometimes it's the slow winding up of something pleasant. This is how it is, under someone else's hands.
Not Daniel's, not always. Here, he can relax. He has to. No ability to wind through his brain, to monitor very much at all except for what he can observe the usual way.
Draws his focus up at this. Expression opening, amused. "How am I like a plant," Armand invites. There are a lot of plants with many different temperaments. Maybe he will teach Daniel this. But, for now—
Daniel is paying attention to the backs of Armand's knees, now. A sensitive, easily overlooked area; he traces shapes through fabric, thinks about biting him there. Wonders if Armand would let him. It'd be a funny spot to ask for, first thing. Not his wrist, not his throat. Your knee pit, could I?
Everything is dreamy and beautiful. The paint on the ceiling has floated down to blanket them in violet and gold.
He looks up. Daniel's expression turns sheepish, a little half-smile, expressing that he feels silly about what he's going to say.
"Bear with me," he requests. Sliding his touch over a calf, seeing if Armand wants to extend a leg, or keep it propped up. This might be sensual, but it isn't really sexual. Just touching him, because they're both here, real, now. "Plants hibernate. Some of them. Sometimes all they are is just a seed in the ground all winter. Or they go dormant for years, or they're just something people think is inert, like... when everybody went nuts for tulips and were buying and selling their bulbs, passing around these rock-like things. Tulip Mania. Maybe you were there."
It was in the 1600s. Maybe he was. Daniel has a hand on a thigh, now, but his touch remains slow, not aiming anywhere saucy.
"And you might think, plants need the sun, nobody like us can be like a plant. But you hibernated away from the sun, and now you can see it again. You say, sometimes, you're not sure if we should exist, and you don't feel like you're a part of the world. But I think you're like a plant." He's said this already. Look. Go with him. "Because you were hibernating. And who knows the world better than you, now? Someone that's been a part of it for so long? Who else would understand the way it's changed, the ways it could be healed? I just.. think it's beautiful."
Biddable under coaxing hands, Armand stretching out that leg, angled to rest it against Daniel's. It feels like affirmation, these wandering fingers, in time with the things Daniel is saying. Armand is, in fact, present, and he is, in fact, rooted in his own body, not just some revenant thing ambulating himself for no particular purpose, taken apart, roughly thrown back together.
"I like plants," and he doesn't remember if he said that or just thought it, when Daniel had challenged him that one time, if there was anything real in him at all. Challenged him to think about it, at least, if not the notion itself.
He is watching Daniel's hands, which he also likes, and the world which is an odd rendering of layered cellophane layers aglow has skewed rosy, and that's because his eyes are wet. Which so rarely happens. Looks back at up Daniel's face, a flutter of a blink.
Says, "I think you will be disappointed," and that sentence was more full, but ends there.
There's a nerve that runs along the outside side of the thigh. Daniel had a pinched one, in his forties. He presses his fingers along where it would be, in Armand. Who likes plants. Daniel smiles a little to himself; he knows that, he thinks. He remembers his tree and its unfortunate, symbolic immolation. He wonders if his maker would like to do any gardening here.
"It's not that kind of a thought." Still touching him. He sees painted stars, even though there aren't any on the ceiling, drift down to illuminate them here on the floor. "It doesn't come with any expectations. You just are, and that's what I think."
Finally, Daniel glances up, and sees Armand's face.
He wishes he had some endearment for him. He can't think of any that wouldn't sound patronizing, though. Babe? Honey? Boss? The free hand that's been used just for grounding slides up a bit, settling over the center of his chest.
In case this is in question. Daniel is being attentive, and they've done this kind of thing before, and so Armand understands their roles. He might even say that doing this, sharing these experiences, entering these theatres that Daniel knows better than Armand, is almost worth doing for the purpose of being led along through them, as well as for the experience itself. For Daniel to look up and see him and put a hand on him and tell him where they are.
He is alright. They're right here, still. Daniel, who sees him as something like no one has described him as before, like something alive, whose out-of-placeness is a beautiful thing. Of course, there's the impulse to argue. Daniel will be disappointed, it's only a matter of time, unless he is different, and Armand wouldn't have made him if he wasn't different.
Like with the corpse they left behind, there are shapes sprouting out from the rug, but these don't have him recoil. Watches as they curl around them, like they are still in a thick garden of wild flowers.
"I remember not really understanding that the world could change." Now with Daniel's hand wandered up further, he can touch at this contact, a trailing of fingertips across the back of his hand, to his wrist. "I didn't consider that the world was round and that it existed in a greater space or spun in circles. I didn't relate the way that I could learn things, that humanity could also learn things. I thought I was joining in with a song already written. I didn't know there was more to discover and imagine than already had been. And then I was immortal."
Up to Daniel's elbow, feeling towards the tender skin inside of it, slipping beneath his sleeve. "And a hundred years pass. Two hundred. You wish you could go back. It's too much, too fast. I think it's why the Children embraced the dark underground the way they did, but it doesn't work. We still need the blood. We'll always still drink of the world."
A creature sprawled on his floor, touching him, being touched. A creature that Daniel resembles more and more each day; they are the same kind of monster. Armand, taken too soon. Daniel, probably not soon enough. Carrying opposite ends of the same troubled rope.
Tied together with it.
But free, here. In colors, and paints, and growing things.
"You never got to rest." Daniel lets Armand's fingers climb his arm. He turns it gently, whenever it's helpful to that questing touch. Rest. What a word, like a bell. "The current pulled you along so quickly."
A hand on Armand's chest, the other resting light against his belly. They are connected. All the time, connected, a silver thread. He wonders if Armand feels like he can put his feet in the water and watch, now, or if he always feels like he might drown. Daniel wants to hold his hand and make sure he doesn't get swept away.
"Everything that lives in this world takes something. You know that." Daniel walks fingers across his soft middle. "Vampires and plants. I know it isn't simple. But it could be, for a few minutes."
The invisible and completely unbreakable string that connects them as beings. Armand's hand has settled on Daniel's arm, fingers hidden in his sleeve. Some urge in him that wants that closeness, to be inside of him, which could be sex but isn't right now, more like a desire to occupy the exact same space in the world, behind his ribcage, beneath his skin.
That would be like drowning. Armand is conscious of his breath from the way Daniel's hands are on him, and does so slowly, with consideration.
"That would be nice," he confesses. The constant tightrope walk between survival at all costs and an annihilation, a floor that gets lower and lower, vanishing away from him, with every passing second. He could just be a plant for a while. Grounded.
He pushes Daniel. Gently, ish. The aim is to lay against him amongst the grasses and flowers.
Gently, ish, Daniel goes. He lays down on his side next to Armand, careful to go slowly so he doesn't disturb the colors cradling them, and so that Armand's fingers inching up his sleeve aren't dislodged. Flowers grow around them, mingling with painted stars.
"I like being here with you."
A confession for a confession.
He means the broad spectrum: Armand's fleeting visits, his presence in the house, the times he stays in his own room, the times he crawls into bed with Daniel. This past week, carving it out just for the two of them, fooling around and sinking into each other. Right now, on the floor, in the grasses and flowers, making shapes in charcoal and the sky.
It's always true, but it feels especially obvious tonight. They're supposed to be tied together.
Armand can imagine the multitude of complicated feelings and thoughts that this confession might induce, but presently, he is a plant. Moss, perhaps, or a creeping vine. He can feel this transformation like a tickling across his skin, like little feathery offshoots are pushing past his nails and curling up towards Daniel's bicep.
Sort of feels like drawing. Maybe later.
He is told, I like being here with you, and accepts it in its simplicity. "I like that I can," he offers back. That he is welcome. A bed, a room. Art supplies. A cat who steals his slippers in such a way that it feels flattering.
Plants, and stars. Part of each other, part of the world. The same ecosystem of roots and vines; they have the same heartbeat, and so it only follows that they would be the same botanical entity, too. A sharp, earthy scent, like eucalyptus, or mint. Fresh dirt, wet paint, refreshing cold air, the soft dust of flower petals.
Daniel smiles. It makes his face do funny things, because he's already got so many deep-carved lines. His eyes disappear with it, but the impression of the look in them is sincere and sparkling, because what else is there in the whole of the Earth that he might like to hear?
Existence is a fucking mystery. No one will ever know he meaning of life. There isn't one. But Armand likes that he made him, and Daniel likes that Armand is his maker. What a luxury, to have one puzzle piece to hold and guard like the precious thing it is.
He still has places to touch him. Slowly, he continues, angled against his maker. Vines will stitch them together.
He can entertain this hallucinations for a while. They are more sensory than visual, as if his nervous system were given the ability to sprout beyond his skin and gently feel the world around him. Like he can feel the fine muscles in Daniel's face flex along with a smile, intuit the unconscious prompts that formed it. Connect it to the thing he said.
Remembers what it felt like, to be in terrible possession of Daniel's body, of at least some of his mind. Of course, overwhelming humans in that way is nothing new, was nothing new, but had he ever indulged in cruelty that way before? He doesn't think so.
Feels it now, a little, that sense of entangled physiology, except he can no more exert his will than he can convince his own pain receptors to fire or go numb.
"I like drawing you," after a moment of drifting, of feeling Daniel touching him.
He can feel Armand's pulse, where he touches him. It's the same as his own. They are one entity now, like trees whose roots mingle together and combine into the same system. A single heart cleaved in two. It makes him wonder about how long Armand waited to create another vampire, and if he was lonely before. He had been disgusted by it, sure, but Daniel's been disgusted by plenty of things that he's liked. Doesn't have to make sense.
But it does, somehow, right now. Most things do make sense when you're high as fuck on mind-expanding mushrooms, Daniel notes with some measure of serene satisfaction. Just kinda nice.
"I like it when you do." A thumb, over a pulse point. "I like when you draw anything, actually. It's nice having you there, when we're both doing something. Listening to the way you move a pencil or a charcoal over a surface. Or when I come back and find something you've done, that you're working on."
It feels like an artist's rendering, the way Daniel talks about it. The peculiar sense of being the subject of someone else's regard. Being made real that way.
A selfish reason to feed someone the gift, maybe, but an unchanging reality, and they are trading words about the things they like, and Armand has already confessed to liking it. To doing this selfish thing, and the results thereof. He could say something about Sartre, his definitional suppositions of love, but he would rather not. That comes after the mind-expanding mushrooms, not during.
"Drawing you isn't drawing anything," he says. Shifting so that as they lay against each other, they can see each other, and it immediately feels like an application of gravity. Less drifting. This is fine. Armand sketches his fingertips along Daniel's jaw, his chin. Studying him here, at this close range. "Drawing anything is practice."
Like if he can capture the way the light hits the bend of a leaf of a potted plant, he can replicate this skill then depicting the glow of light through the thinner part of Daniel's ear.
Daniel feels himself adjust to Armand's shift, like a flower tilting into sunlight. (The opposite. Beautiful for it. Dark and deep past what he ever thought was dark before. A velvet so dark it becomes its own kind of luminous.) He feels like they're nestled on a down, or one of those water beds everyone loved for five minutes. The hardwood floor, the soft rug, immaterial.
"What's different about drawing me?"
Could be a self-important question. But the light tone of his voice, the curious crinkle of his brow, exposes a laughable innocence. He definitely does not understand the appeal of himself as a subject— though he does like it, very much, because he enjoys the way Armand's gaze slides over him, like a soft, liquid thing; he enjoys the fact that Armand is obligated to sit in the same room with him, and let him hear his small thoughtful sounds and light scrapes and scribbles, his sighs, his occasional deviations to pet the cat.
(Hopefully the cat will not start eating their guest. Like it's fine if so, but.)
(The cat will go for all the soft tissue first. Not pretty.)
Armand has insisted on this turn of conversation, he knows, but still acknowledges the beat of self-consciousness in himself. Daniel, as flippant and sarcastic and deflective as anyone Armand has met, and so maybe it's justified, some fear of verbalising the vulnerable for what will become of it after. Laughed at, ignored, dismissed.
But it hasn't really been that way, particularly not when Daniel settles on asking him a question. So, alright. He considers the answer, the usual suspects of why a person may find an older man attractive. Age as virtue, as signs of experience, as authority and frailty in one thing, and isn't all that true anyway? Puts it aside, opens his mouth to speak.
"Because you're handsome," he says. "Because I like the way you're put together. I like your body and the way you move it. Even when you were mortal, ailing, you seemed strong to me beneath it. I liked to watch your hands when they weren't trembling. I like it even more now that I've made you stronger."
He can imagine this litany being a little unbearable. He hopes so. Words beneath the skin. "I like that you've been turned at the age that you are. I'm bored of the ones turned young, kept that way, of youth like that. I don't think I could touch one and feel something, anymore."
They were talking about drawing. But also not. Also talking of preservation. Of having. Still, to answer the question, "I want to show you. The things I see."
What does he expect? Something about studying Daniel like a bug in a jar. Scientific diagrams. Something strange and otherworldly, a screwed up aspect of their connection that Armand indulges in and Daniel enjoys. That it could be as simple as Armand liking how he looks stuns him, for some reason. He has thought that Armand finds him at least not intolerable-looking, but figured it was a little bit 'fucked up kink' and mostly 'despite', when it came to sexual attraction.
Maybe it is some of that still. I'm bored of the ones turned young, that's very Armand-specific, fixing him in this place that Armand likes, keeping him for himself. But does Daniel mind? ... Not really. Not as much as he should.
And it isn't that he thinks of himself as ugly. He was always alright, he figured. He got by. But looking the way he does now, the full physical manifestation of his age, is not attractive. He's come to terms with it, has had decades to come to terms with it in realtime, every change happening outside of his own control, his health slipping out of his hands along with everything else. Maybe, if they were sober, he'd feel a flutter and huff about it, because a few pretty words can't undo all the scaffolding he's built to cope with aging.
But they aren't sober. Armand's words are perfectly sincere, and they undo some little knot in Daniel, and begin to stitch something else.
Still. He looks positively shy, hearing all that. It is unbearable, in its way.
"No one's ever... I mean, even when I was younger, and looked alright." Fumbling. Like he's still the kid he's referring to. "Did you know, you have this ability to make me feel things that are completely new."
How charming, that Daniel fumbles in the wake of these words. How pleased with himself Armand will permit himself to feel, and also show that he feels so. Any sharpness to it, the way some of their banter can have a little edge, softens at the second part.
"We've run quite the gamut," he says. "Of feelings."
He shifts. Folds an arm on Daniel's chest, rests his head there. A habit for liking being on top, in the most basic sense of the premise. "There's a school of thought about mood. And beauty. Where it is located, the relationship between the feelings of a person, the thing they have a feeling towards. The existentialist says that these moods are the subjective lens through which we view the world, rendering it real that way.
"I find it compelling." The patch of carpet he is watching is rippling, warping. Swimming creatures beneath. He extends a hand, touches the pile. His senses contradict the vision. It's pleasing. "A world that is empty of mood and beauty and love until someone deigns to perceive it that way. Objects, people, places. Compelling but not convincing. I think beauty has locations. Manifestations. I think feelings can be transmitted."
Stops short of reflecting on God, His part in it all. Easy to do. All of it buried.
A weighted blanket, shaped like Armand. It still feels like they're floating, he thinks; on a barely-swaying hammock, made of all the plants that they've become. He raises his head enough to press a kiss to his maker's forehead, because he is a nightmarish monster, and he is precious to Daniel. He makes him feel. He makes him feel everything.
His head drops back, and he slides one hand up and down Armand's spine, slow and rhythmic. He thinks he can feel all the charcoal he draws with. He wonders if Armand will draw anything he remembers from this trip. If Daniel looks different here. If they've transformed.
"Like how we don't really know what anything looks like," he supposes. "Just light bouncing off things, and... imaginary colors, like magenta." Daniel wrinkles his nose. "Is it magenta?"
Maybe it's cyan. Armand's the artist, not him.
"Beauty probably does have locations." Like wherever Armand happens to be. Very good paintings. Perfect sunsets. "What are you transmitting, right now?"
Thinking about the existentialists he has evoked and quantum physics, whether their emergences betray some overlap, but narrowly avoids launching into a ramble down this path. Mostly, Armand makes note to himself to look up some books, and otherwise—
Considers the question. Imagines the way they are tangled together, physical limbs and his own strange impression of clinging vines, growing roots. He doesn't know too much about the vampire bond, such as it is, but he knows that what he experiences of it, what he thinks he experiences of it, is unlike anything he has heard. Maybe they just don't speak of it; he wouldn't. Or maybe it's different.
He winds around that shivering, metal thread that exists between them, that sometimes he thinks he can feel even better when they are physically apart, but can feel it now anyway. Pulls against it. The sense of Daniel bound to him, forever. The sense of Daniel belonging to him.
A shivery breath in. They can't read each other's minds, but they can feel each other. Daniel knows it. There's no uncertainty now, in this space where he understands the universe. He feels Armand, he feels this thing that binds them, a metaphysical body part existing in two beings at once. He feels the pull, and he likes it. Curls his presence around it, lets himself be pulled deeper, and knows it's stitching them ever closer.
Maybe that's why the sex is so good. Less about sex (though, a lot about sex, still), more about the sledgehammer complement to this beautiful thread.
Daniel winds his arms around Armand. A sense of possession, a sense of wanting to be possessed. This monster made him. Armand looked into him and saw that he had accidentally been born a person, and fixed him. By making him a monster, too.
Daniel puts his arms around him and Armand imagines it a little like iron, or titanium, or the kind of industrial grade ropes they make for mechanical winching, offshore towing. More or less inescapable, unbreakable, and deeply assuring for it. Doesn't think it, but feels it, that he is being embraced by someone who is not counting on releasing him again. Does not make him feel they are counting down the seconds.
"Yeah," nearly voiceless.
Maybe some time goes by. Armand can't be certain. Tripping the light fantastic as they exist as one organism, in the way a well planned and curated garden is one organism, or the untamed sprawl of woodland is one organism.
"Would you ever do it?" is asked, somewhere in this warm pool of time, before it occurs to him that they are not so enmeshed that he doesn't need to clarify, so he adds, "Make one?"
A receiver. Receptive. Collecting Armand's transmission and threading it through the tape player of his mind, hearing shapes and vines and blooms. There's a sex joke in that one too. But it feels sacred right now, and easy; an effortless, impossible cross-section of the two, found right here with Armand resting against him.
Daniel is drawing something on his maker's back. Trying to mimic his favorite sketchy shapes, the ones he thinks look the most satisfying, and that make the nicest scratchy sounds when he's working. He sees patterns on the ceiling, figures getting up to become constellations. It's pleasant. Hypnotic. Relaxing. Will Armand want to sink like this with him again? Will he want to stay, even after this night? Will forever feel this way, at least now and again? It'd be really, really good, if so.
That question is... interesting.
Daniel hums to acknowledge hearing, and gives himself some more of that time in their comfortable pool to consider his answer.
"I don't have any interest in it," he says eventually. "Maybe I'll change my mind someday, like you did. But that potential is so far off I can't see the shape of it."
A touch to the back of Armand's neck, swirling shapes through his hair.
It is a question that cascades into many more. Not only the ethical and philosophical aspect of making a vampire, but the personal. Would Daniel seek other companionship? Would he want it in that fashion? What, to him, would make a good vampire? And so on.
Daniel, drawing shapes along his back, into his hair. Armand has the sense of them both being charcoal sketches, shaped by each others smudged fingertips.
"As do I."
He wonders if he would kill this hypothetical, unlikely fledgling, or if he would stand frozen at the sidelines of the thing as yet another tectonic plate shifted, formed a new ocean. Or if he would decide on the latter and one day snap and do it anyway. If Daniel would mind very much.
So far off, Daniel says. Armand thinks he is quite good at seeing to that distance, even if his past feels like smudged charcoal.
"I thought I knew you well," he says, as he thinks these things. "I thought I'd seen the depths of you before that moment. I suppose I had. But it's different. It's like a last flood of information before you become a black box. It's like I had you inside of me before I fed you yourself. And I did it very slowly."
Daniel could not make a marriage work, or second another marriage; he could not make a paternal relationship work. Time will still have to tell if this is working, but he suspects it's going to work far better than his mortal connections. Like the trick of it is to be a fucking disaster— get all the worst out ahead of everything else.
He doesn't know if he'd want to commit to that with anyone. Armand didn't give him a choice, and as fucked as that was, he thinks he prefers it. Which does not bode well for his prospects on making one.
No. Content with just them. He likes being Armand's only tether (ignoring the lurking maybe-maker back down the line behind Amadeo). He likes not having any flowing out of him. He hadn't really wanted to be a parent, he hadn't really wanted to be a husband. This is better.
"Do you think about it?" he asks. "Turning me?"
His memories of it have become clearer, over time, but it's still a bloody, disorienting mess.
"I do. For a second, I think I heard you in my head. Did I?"
A strange period of time. Armand was not subject to the same utter disorientation that he dragged Daniel through, but still disoriented. Out of body, a little. In this moment, he thinks of Peanut, lamp eyed beneath the shadow of a chair, claws dug into the wooly interior of a slipper. Curious about what is happening in his little cat brain.
Hard to decipher what was going on in his own, on reflection. A series of actions, words, impulses, curiousities. And he was so—
Angry? He supposes so. A tree alight in a gallery.
"And yes," to answer the other question. "I didn't know if we would see each other again soon. I knew I couldn't be around you then. I tried to understand why I'd done what I'd done by explaining it." Amusement in his tone, lifting his head again. "You turned it back to me. As you are wont to do."
Daniel, somehow seeing through half a millennia, straight to the soul of who Amadeo was when he become immortal.
"It was selfish of me," he adds, but there is something warm in his tone. Pleased with himself, for doing the selfish thing.
(Yes, certain other vampires might scoff at this idea, that this is a change in behaviour for Armand. Perhaps they are right to.)
Daniel's just a black hole. Dragging in light, experiences, information. Answers to his questions. He was interested in Armand in Dubai, even when he was telling him to shut up. He was interested in Armand while he was being tortured, because every psychopath has a motive. He was interested in Armand even in the bar the evening before. A beautiful, strange man, a thousand miles out of Daniel's league, and his boyfriend was stepping out on him.
Why? How fucking nuts must that guy be, for Louis to be looking elsewhere?
Pretty fucking nuts, it turns out. Daniel combs his fingers through his hair. Selfish. Yeah, he can see that. He can see the way Armand rationalizes and makes excuses. But there isn't one for Daniel, is there.
"Something for yourself," he observes. Him, that's the something. "You said one hundred years, but then you missed my annoying ass, huh."
Amused. Warming to banter, to the tone in Daniel's voice. It is a reductive description of the stressors that led to him finding Daniel again, but not completely inadequate for it.
"You were out of your mind during your turning," Armand adds, tipping his head as he loos at him. Shifting to settle comfortably like this on top, arms folded. "You were in a different country. You thought I was someone you'd picked up. That you'd done rather well for yourself."
There'd been little moments in the interview that, if Daniel wasn't busy internally retching at the happily married routine, were potentially a little funny. Both of them with a habit for fondly recounting horrifying things. Hunting guys for sport, both of them with separate kinds of reminiscing smiles.
Some of that energy, speaking fondly of Daniel dying and delirious.
What can he say, it was an internally retch-inducting routine.
Daniel continues to slowly move his hand up and down Armand's back, his elegant spine, the column of his neck, the base of his skull. He rests there sometimes, rubbing near his hairline. Thinking about stars, and vines, and how beautiful Armand is. How much like an interesting, dangerous insect, or like an alien, an HR Giger drawing. Beautiful, but horrible.
Funny, sometimes. Stupid sunglasses. Mean comments. Veering between nerdy and cutting. Daniel is leagues past shouldn't find it charming.
"Sounds like me." He'd have been baffled, indeed. Punching way above his weight. "A little spike to my dumbass ego before putting me into the craziest tailspin, that's nice of you."
A languid shift of configuration, just a little, vampiric grace and strength and even a manipulable sense of gravity take away some of the charming human fumbling around weight distribution, pointy elbows and knees. Moves so they are eye to eye again, Armand's hands coming to rest gently on the rug on either side of Daniel's head.
Floating, a little, but still pressed close. In a funny way, it feels like they're standing against each other.
"And how's your ego faring now?"
Little peeking hints of fang, a lazy hooded look to his expression, but still, eyes of sunset orange as slivers of their own light.
When Daniel realizes how Armand is moving, the wonder in his expression becomes more pronounced. It's just cool when he uses his powers. When he acts like they're as natural as any other part of him. Daniel remembers the first time he saw him, that ridiculous display. He'd been angry at him for lying and for the charade, but he'd been so impressed, too. Fascinated. (Haha.) It makes him feel good at Armand is comfortable enough to just be, around him.
A soft laugh, at the question. He sees flowers growing around Armand.
"Oh, inflated to the fucking moon." Armand called him handsome. Said he likes his body, likes drawing him, is happy he made him. Daniel is flustered and smug and happy and curious and all of it, all of it. He smiles and it distorts his face, aged as it is, but it's clear the mood is genuine. "You're so... you're the prettiest plant. And cool. The floating, it's cool..."
Hearing himself. Daniel scrunches his nose and closes his eyes, sigh. Still laughing. He knows he sounds like an idiot with a crush, not an old man talking to his own maker.
There, a breath of a rare laugh that shows his teeth when he's called the prettiest plant. Because Daniel is funny and very high and fumbly when he is being sweet, and they can almost pretend there is anything like youth between them in these little moments.
Or maybe there is. This thing they share now is young. Daniel is still getting his bearings, learning. Armand, too, a new maker. Maybe that's all what it is.
"I'm cool," Armand echoes, as if pondering this assignment. Teasing. Even more unlikely than being a pretty plant. Even more likely than being called a seed with all of its potential. Endearing for it. Daniel's eyes are closed, so Armand uses his hands to touch at his face, guide him into a kiss.
A proper one. He isn't sure what sex will be like on the drugs they are on, how quick they are to fade, but he is in the mood to pursue the things he wants.
Doubling down, despite being embarrassed at himself. Daniel murmurs it, smiles at the way Armand's fingers are on his face, and then smiles more at the kiss. Tangible beneath Armand's mouth before he reciprocates.
Mostly mushrooms, but there'd been some ecstasy too in the cocktail of the dead woman— mostly to fortify against paranoia and bad trips, build a buffer around Armand staring too long into the void. This is the other benefit: everything feels extra good, extra easy, ready and waiting to slip over into the warm water of sensuality, pleasantly wrapped in the heightened sensory experience of it all.
Terrifying, cool, a monster, his murderer, the prettiest plant. A person he likes to make out with.
Hands smoothing downwards, until his fingertips find the circling, overlapped scars at Daniel's throat. Louis' tearing teeth, and his own daintier contribution somewhere in the knot of coarse tissue. Strokes along it, around it, as they kiss.
And it does all feel good and easy, settling with his thighs on either side of Daniel's, a pleasant alignment of their hips, letting a more human sense of gravity pull them together. His body feels extra alive and receptive, as if all these little grasping hallucinated fronds and leaves and petals are reaching out, tangling, rooting together in the barely-any-space between them.
A fair chance he could be content with just this, where sex is barely the transaction interlocking of parts but some extra-planar sharing, strange and romantic. But he can feel all the mechanical things beginning to shift, blood flow and flesh, and he indulges in a shifting movement, hips pressing, rubbing just a little as they kiss.
Touch to the scars on his neck is a dice roll between shivery and nothing; he still experiences sensation there, but like all scar tissue, it comes and goes. Tonight, now, be it the drugs or the mood or Armand or all of it, feeling is cranked up. Like the wound is connected to his nervous system in a unique way. Something once touched by the supernatural, made a permanent part of him.
Swaddled in vines and stars. Daniel kisses him, and kisses him, and one of his roaming hands moves down lower on its path, and incorporates squeezing Armand's rear into the equation. He feels comfortable, he trusts that this kind of touch is alright for him to do, and he hopes that's still the case. He likes fooling around with Armand. It's fun, and profound. Hints of something kinkier lurking, while being some of the most emotionally significant encounters he's ever had.
The most? Maybe. Probably.
The thread that binds them seems to wind closer. Like it, too, is wrapping around them with everything else. They can't read each other, but they can feel each other. One heartbeat.
He feels a little detached, in a good way. As if the little hit of ecstasy has done its work in severing him from the potential for darker rumination to the point that he feels a little ahistorical, very present, quite alive. Like he is a person for whom all ways Daniel wants to touch him is okay.
Which is always true, but complicated, snarled up enough that it takes work to untangle, work he doesn't always wish to do. Now it is simple.
So: an encouraging, satisfied sound for the feeling of Daniel palming over him, a shift of his body back into this touch, and then back down into where he is settled. He wishes they didn't have any clothes in the way, and as he wishes it, there is an odd sense that Daniel might pick up, of fabric being tugged in a few different directions. Pulled taut, then loose again.
Not simply clumsy telekinetic grasping, but also, a seam weaving itself apart, threads furling out into the air like ink in water. Buttons skittering aside, a closed zipper unmoored from the stitching. As if nothing is very real, or everything is temporary, and can be disassembled once it is made aware of itself.
Fooling around is exactly what party drugs are for. Daniel is pretty fucking happy with how this is turning out, so far— both for selfish reasons, though there's nothing selfish about enjoying oneself now and again, surely, and because he feels good knowing that he's given Armand a positive experience. The tiniest sliver of time, just some stupid chemicals to mess about with.
You know. Night swimming. Funny movies. Flowers.
Life sucks, but sometimes: worth it.
"Is that..?"
He thinks he's imagining it at first. Or rather, he thinks it's a part of a hallucination that's perfectly merged with the reality of their current circumstances. But something really is unstitching his clothes, and only one person present is capable. Daniel lifts one hand to observe this process, the way his sleeve detaches itself at the shoulder, thread spooling away, fabric lifting.
Armand lifts his head, turns to look at that sleeve. His experience of it extrasensory, but fun to watch too through lazily half-hooded eyes. This, he thinks, would probably take more concentration normally, but something about the chemicals he is on makes it all simple. He wonders if he could unravel a person.
"I like that you like it," he says, as they are undressed in this way. Shifting a little to let fabric slither and split apart between them. "That you don't fear it as you should."
(A little unfair to Louis, maybe, who came into things with a whole mess of perfectly valid hang ups and worries about the balancing of power, overtuned to it, watchful of it. Armand did what he could. He limited his reminders.)
"Fear is like a direction on a compass," he says. "I've always gone towards it. Maybe I do fear the things you can do, but I can ... just, see them, too."
And it's neat. Armand is very powerful, and he's very skilled. Anyone who can move things with their mind could drag a sofa across a room. His maker is unspooling all of their clothes, leaving skin on skin, and Daniel's back on the luxury rug in this room.
Neat, and impressive. It's very Armand. Detailed and precise and unusual. It's an expression of how sees the world, and it always surprises Daniel. He likes it. He does sometimes think of being crunched repeatedly into the floor, or his tapes being turned into shiny black noodles of their own accord, but those terrifying memories are things to be dissected now. Interesting that he's had them for fewer years than they've existed. Interesting that they met in such a deranged fashion.
"It makes me happy that you feel comfortable doing it. Letting me see."
This sounds correct, more true. Maybe Daniel would have tried to run if he were wired differently, during his last moments alive. Maybe Daniel knew better than to even try, but that isn't really how it works. A human kneels off the side of a bridge and, while plummeting, squirms in the air, grasps at it in a panic.
And maybe vampiric death is different, the kinds of promises Armand makes, the kinds of mental states he can coax a mind into, but none of that occurred in the Dubai penthouse. Just fire, fangs, a sense of wishing to see the thing that happens next.
A compass that points to danger. Points to Armand.
He moves to press now naked bodies together, the subtle misalignment of proportions just encouraging movement. He is not actually desperately hard or anything, but not disinterested, blood flow coaxing him along slowly, the way petals turn or leaves rise. Around them, the remnants of their clothing settle and collapse, strange unmade shreds, stray buttons, the last shivers of motion writhing snake-like until they go still.
"Spook, then," is his belated amendment to his statement. Writers.
He kisses Daniel, not a sudden clash but a swift rise in pressure, intimacy, intention. He feels a little like they could just wriggle together in this strangely sensitive state of sharing and find some kind of conclusion that way, but he also wants this. Wants the friction of coarse hair, the neutral tang of saliva and the glossy bite of fangs against tongue. Wants all those base physical things. Wants to be greedy.
Daniel should get spooked. Armand is spooky. Flavors of haunting, of witches, of demons. But all those things are alluring, too. A past that still wants to keep you company, and the seductive nature of the dark, and magic. Even if it's scary, who doesn't want to reach out and touch all of that?
Particularly when all of that is naked and pressed against him, kissing him, rubbing and shifting and finding nice ways to braid their limbs together. He hums something into Armand's mouth, not really an answer; easy agreement. Yeah, he doesn't spook. No more nerves around Armand, except for when it's adrenaline, like being on a rollercoaster just before the drop. Terror, excitement, fucked up glee. Louis would be disappointed to see all the souvenir pictures of Daniel stuck in Armand's Wild Ride, smiling over and over with each rotation.
Sensual and cozy, erotic, strange. Daniel lets his hands roam, petting wherever their enmeshing movements take him. His initial concerns with bringing sex into their complicated disaster of a connection, his stubborn insistence that there be no foundation of the curse of maitre, seems insignificant. None of that matters, because none of that's here. It's just skin, warm from blood, mouths and the prickle of hair, of teeth. Daniel's fangs are there for a few moments, then not, indecisive, but he's barely conscious of it.
Almost dreamlike, feeling a fang against his tongue, his lip, feeling it melt blunt again. Daniel is rewarded with a panted sound, a more fervent kiss.
Armand wonders: does he miss it? For a moment, he doesn't know. It had been satisfying to bare his neck to Louis, to feed him his blood, to be the supplementary course in his dining that had done as much to keep his lover functional as the Farm had, and wasn't that pleasing? It had felt like service, yes, an act of submission to sit obediently and tip his head aside, but something else. The feeling of his own essence snaking into Louis' body, strengthening it, slipping through his arteries, pumped by his heart, into his brain, into his cock.
And now there is Daniel. Much the same. No, more so. If Armand is a plant, then Daniel is sodden earth and he feels it like a tangled root system inside of his fledgling. His fledgling, his, a strange extension of himself, an additional nervous system intrinsically connected to his own, no matter how far it wanders. He rubs against him, presses up into roaming hands, thinks about Daniel's long fangs sinking into his throat, his blood saturated him, claiming him, claiming each other.
Some sober part of him says: no. Not yet.
"Make me come," he says, a murmur against Daniel's shoulder. An instruction, for all that it's so softly delivered. He can feel himself becoming calculated. He doesn't wish to be. Armand might have to make a note to feel embarrassed later, plastered and wriggling against Daniel and making this plea, but for now, it is what he wants too much for that to matter.
The temptation to prick a hole in Armand and taste his blood is there, but it would only be about intimacy; Daniel's textbook is sated, which is a nice feeling. He doesn't want to starve himself, or lose the desire to drink blood with age, or pick up dogs and cats. (Who could ever eat Peanut?) He's glad that they did this. That they do this, that they can share kills, drink together. Armand should take more in general, he thinks. People who are a little happier. It's alright. There are plenty of happy people in the world to prune a few leaves aside for the good of the whole plant.
"Mmn?"
Has he ever received a sweeter order? Daniel smiles to himself, and continues his appreciative petting. Stops only to press his index finger down on a spot at the base of Armand's spine. Playful. Hm? Oh? Does this work? Is there a button he can push?
Hands stroke up, down, the breadth of his palms, then careful, light trails of pointed claws. Thinks about how he might do that, even as they continue to shift and rub against each other. Daniel is hard, or at least halfway, a comfortable thing that's crept up on him. It feels more real, now that Armand has bid him do this, but still dreamy, high. He rubs Armand's hipbones, the curved muscle of his behind, and slides his touch into the cleft of his rear. Everything is easy and exploratory with clear appreciation to the way his body feels under his hands, and it's unhurried. When he begins to slide fingers (and the tease of nails) over hidden-away parts of him, it's mostly the tops of his inner thighs. Leisurely searching for places Armand likes to be touched.
Blunt teeth close at Daniel's earlobe. No, that doesn't work. Keep going.
A favourable comparison: the way he can feel shy with Daniel, the way he had felt it on occasion with Louis, the way Lestat had to coax such feelings out of him, speaks to a certain amount of presence that he could choose to opt out from. He has had half a millennia with his own body, has run the gamut of thinking himself as grotesque, of believing he is beautiful, of caring about either thing, of feeling nothing at all. Has known how something like feeling embarrassment would be a luxury for what it means.
And Armand feels claws tease at such an intimate place and feels his body flush hot, has to urge himself to follow the impulse to skid his knees a little wider as Daniel's fingers make their unhurried exploration. Daniel touches him as if the experience of that alone is arousing, the feeling of his skin beneath his palms and fingertips, and he warms for that too.
His own hands make less work for themselves. One grips a shoulder, the other lingers over his ribs, an anchoring kind of hold for the time being.
Feels good to touch him, to shift against his body, to trade kisses with him. Daniel's mind supplies an extra layer of sensation, like the colors from all the stars and flower petals are draping down over them, making shivers rise on their skin and slide around curiously, sensually, toes to noses. Armand fits well against him, and Daniel encourages that shift of his thighs with more attention in the gap created. Yes. He wants that— this, Armand leaning into it, Armand asking for more, silent or otherwise, Armand enjoying it, wanting it. Wanting Daniel to do it.
Everything is heightened, awareness zeroing in on physical contact. Armand's weight against him has turned his whole body into pleasant, easy nerves. He steals a kiss as he squeezes one globe of his ass, kneads it, and experiments with sliding fingers inward. Not seeking penetration, instead, seeking the soft skin tucked away there, where the right pressure will stimulate the prostate externally.
Daniel's enjoying this configuration too much to want to move, not even to wriggle a hand between them. Not yet. He wants to stay just the way they are, and he wants to touch Armand in a way that doesn't ask anything of his maker besides accepting the touch. He feels almost selfish, wanting Armand to just let him do whatever. But how often does he get to feel up his terrifying, beautiful maker, while he's a warm, high puddle draped over him?
They can both feel selfish, then, which is perhaps as good an outcome for sex as one could hope for, and Armand feels particularly indulgent in the way he stays draped over Daniel, pliant only for receiving the attention he asked for. Still an instinct to anticipate, to control, to give—
Scatters apart with each new thing, like here, the press of fingertips urging a soft, approving sound out of him. Flushes away that brief clawing feeling of embarrassment at himself, suffuses it into something simpler, and his hips shift back against this hand in needy response at that deeply rooted pulse of pleasure.
Kisses Daniel's neck. Shoulder. The bone and muscle leading back to the base of his throat, wild curls of hair tickling along against his face. A panting hot breath across warm skin as Armand catches himself with a rub of hardening length against Daniel's hip, low on his abdomen.
And overall, a tug of need pulls at Daniel's body, something like telekinesis or a shift of gravity that presses them closer together. Like Armand has command over local physics, impulses eking out into the air around them.
Daniel keeps on touching him, emboldened by the welcoming response. Not wondering about what Armand usually prefers, sexually; not worried about it. If he wants something, then he hopes Armand asks him, but he most of all he hopes they're able to do their own thing. Taking the past into consideration where they need to, but... just going on ahead, exploring, learning, sharing.
When did he get so fucking sappy?
Probably the mushrooms. The universe expanding his mind, brushing away all the cobwebs of self-deprecation and hesitation. Daniel feels good, and Armand likes him, and he has no reason to be shy or insecure. He can slide his touch further in, find where he's questing for, rub at him. He can shift just enough let Armand feel that he's getting hard for him, too, and he can turn his head to kiss his maker's forehead and temple, breathe in deep the smell of his silky hair, and—
Feel that. Like a current pulling him. Reality bending to envelop just the two of them. Daniel lets it coat him, and he reaches for it with his mind, even as he continues to look for just the right angle to make Armand sigh.
Is it new, or just rare? This sense of comfort, being comfortable, this sense of letting his influence leak out beyond the primitive trappings of his physical self, letting it be merely the nexus through which he can connect to his fledgling and be given pleasure. New, he thinks, decides. The drugs. The person. The circumstance.
Armand sighs. Moves only as impulse directs, the lift of his hips back against Daniel's hand, and then back down to rub himself against soft skin, the sympathetic burgeoning hardness nestled against his own. Gravity is replaced by something more magnetic, trapping them together. Pulling Daniel's body against his own, off the ground by fractional degrees.
He has ruined the rug a little. More than a little. Patches have become thin and shabby through threads unravelling, twisting, making shapes and patterns of their shared, imagined garden, if not so artful, just wild, tangled. Daniel can reach out and maybe it feels like a series of invisible hands linking fingers, testing strength.
Armand is stronger, of course, but isn't interested in overpowering, showing off in that way. Just showing, demonstrating the texture of reality that creatures like them can appreciate.
It feels like they're floating. Not just because they're high, but because they're being lifted off the ground; threads spinning to make flowers, vines, stars, and Daniel finds himself conceptualizing Armand as a presence that only has a physical body because he feels like it. Because it might be the center of him, but it's not all of him. He is the carpet threads and the melting paint and the particles around them, so it's not so surprising to be laying against 'nothing'— it's not nothing, it's him, as him as the soft skin, and the chest hair that drives Daniel slightly crazy, and his cock, which is warm and comfortable, a funny word for it, but it's all the same emotion, now.
Arousal and curiosity and contentment. Daniel hopes Armand feels, if not the same way, then a way that's just as good.
Armand wants Daniel to make him come. He can do that. He did that semi-professionally for a while. He wanted to do that years and years ago, decades ago, even though Armand had terrified him. The memory isn't a bad one right now, not even when he's wrapped up Armand's spiderwebs. It's just an interesting one, and a link in the silver chain that binds them.
He pets and rubs the tender skin of Armand's perineum, pressing in as if to reach into his body from somewhere it can't be reached into from. He rocks up against him, gentle, but deliberate. One heel presses down into a bird's nest of pieces of luxury rug to give him a little more leverage. He feels fingers, or something like it, all along the undersides of his legs, and spine.
And in the abstract, expansive nebula of Armand's awareness, Armand's control, there's the centrepoint of quiet that is Daniel's mind. The thing he can't touch, invade, control. Can't order it to rest or to spin or to feel or to think. Can't spool thought out of it like so much glossy black tape.
And it's a relief. Otherwise, he might accidentally unravel Daniel in a way he can't easily fix. It would be harder to relax.
To make the sounds he is making, little urgent sighs and groans at the dedicated press of Daniel's fingers, and the by now somewhat slick alignment of their cocks pressed between them. Lifted inches off the ground, he can sense Daniel's bracing his heel back down against it for leverage.
Another push, a little further upwards. Gravity is each other. He winds his arms around Daniel's waist and shoulders, moving against him with hedonistic intent and lifting his head to kiss him with more intent than the wandering grazes of teeth and lips against his fledgling's neck and shoulder.
A feeling of weightlessness at the same time as a feeling of being so very grounded. They aren't doing anything but petting each other, and yet there's a sense of deep merging. Sharing this strange, unique experience, the only two creatures who will ever be right here, right now. And they happen to be monsters, who happen to be maker and fledgling, and Daniel thinks he can feel the bond like a tangible thing, like the threads from their clothes and the rug have become something stitched through them. Warm eroticism instead of stinging needlework, like expanding nerves, feeling.
Rocking gentle up into him, hard against hard with wet, sticky proof of enjoyment melting out of them both, pressing against him with intent. Intent, but not urgency; the idea of an explosive end is as seductive as the idea of being here, suspended, forever.
Aimless, indulgent almost-kisses, open mouths finding each other, or cheekbones, or earlobes.
"What colors do you see when you come?" What is this question. Incredible journalism. "You're like... the sky the first time I really saw it, in this life. So dark as to be bright again."
Maybe Mr. Molloy missed a calling to be a poet. And no, not in the vapid romantic sense of the idea, because Daniel is about as unromantic as a rubber mallet, deliberately so—but not unsentimental. Every poet needs to be sentimental, even the kinds Armand has shown to favour, the odd ones, the cynical ones, who wield words like hardware, seeking the weak points, pounding them together to hold fast or break apart.
And even with talk of skies that are so dark as to be bright again, the poetry is in the asking. Finding a question that no one in Armand's long life has asked him, would ever think to ask him. Poetry in the feeling this induces, as poems do. As journalism can.
Does he have an answer? He kisses Daniel, and a fang catches the other man's lip.
"I don't know," he says. He has enjoyed sex. He has gone into that internal and selfish space, allowed himself to receive pleasure. It has been a long education, with few educators. He is certain an answer exists, but he can't summon it now. Now, now, feeling himself desperate. "Show me."
He could come like this, too, but he wants more. Reaches back to grasp at Daniel's hand, presses, an urge, and invitation to use his hand properly. Unabashed in a way he can't recall being before in this direction.
The sharp tease of teeth makes him want more, makes his cock jump, and at any other time he might be embarrassed at how obvious and predictable it is, but right now it just feels warm and good and like another layer of thrilling sensation. If Armand wants to bite him, he can have all of him, if he doesn't, even just the scrape, the hint of his own blood, is achingly enjoyable just as it is, and—
Show me, so much better than Rest. Daniel presses a kiss to Armand's mouth, all messy heat, and curls strong fingers around both of their erections, delves deeper with his other hand, following the way his maker guides him. He can do this, follow the artful lines of flesh, press into the tight clutch of him, careful with diamond-sharp claws but free from anxiety about them. He wants to feel Armand go tight then tip over the edge all around him, in his hands, against him, every shiver of his body and all the ways it's extended in the air, in the threads, in their woven, painted grotto of vines and stars.
Maybe he'll follow him over. It's a good night to be enamored, and lost in shimmering lust and affection.
Endearing, his sense of Daniel's cock twitching in response to (he assumes) the sharp sensation that must have come before the tang of blood between them. At a sudden rush, Armand wants to know everything that incites such a reaction, all that Daniel has done before and still favours, anything he hasn't. But it's mostly borne of arousal, the pre-orgasmic rush and flood of neurochemistry and blood in veins. He is in no position to pursue experimentation.
Currently. He lets out a coarse sound as Daniel does as requested, the crude burn and stretch of being entered. More for that than any articulated probing after nerve clustered, sensitive spots.
Kisses him rough, fangs down, liable to cut. Goes tight around Daniel's knuckles. Shudders, muffles a rougher moan into his mouth.
Daniel will feel the ground slam into his back, but it doesn't feel like falling. More like being pinned to a surface that may as well be a wall, the ceiling. A clumsy pursuit of friction as his orgasm is rung from him. Armand is still his centre of gravity—who knows where he might fall if he were to let go?
(No unlocked secrets of the universe, no spontaneous astral projection or elevated states of being. He comes and it feels good, better than it has in a long time, and sees colours.)
Death is freedom. From illness, from pain, from society, from morality, from endings. And from grocery bills, and having to piss, and vegetables stuck in teeth. Daniel thinks of stars, spiral galaxies, flowers blooming, and little freedoms, like how every body part being engaged with now only exists for feeling good. A shit joke, in the midst of drug and sex addled euphoria. No one has to know but Daniel.
It doesn't do anything to lessen the experience for him. Stray spiderweb thoughts all seize together, like Armand's body around the intrusion of fingers. So easy, to pull him into ecstasy this way? Or has it been hours, and has he been edging him? His own fangs have manifested, pearl daggers, nicking his own mouth, or Armand's, he can't tell, the smell of blood in his come is nearly as intense as tasting it. And he wants to, as the last warmth their free, dead bodies can produce pulses over his hand and the ground finds his back again. Like the force of his maker's orgasm has restuck them to the earth.
Good thing. They might spin away otherwise, join other planets and roaming asteroids in orbit.
Daniel feels suspended on an edge. It's good. Tense and satisfied at once. Armand is beautiful, Armand is horrible. He likes both of those things, and his teeth against his mouth, and the shivering grinding into his hand, and the mess of blood and frayed carpet.
They lay in a wreckage of bald carpet and tangled thready weeds of mixed colours, and slowly, Armand's invisible grasp of his surroundings slowly retracts. He is a more ordinary weight on top of Daniel. He shivers in his own skin, feeling sweat and come and blood and friction and slickness.
But not out of tune with the sublime. No sudden hit of sobriety. Focus, maybe, lifting his head to look down at Daniel, let out a heavy breath at the sight of him with a bloodied mouth and long fangs and orange eyes. Daniel, who he likes to draw because he is handsome, because his body is aged in a pleasing way, because he wants to capture in some external way the way he sees him.
He captures Daniel's jaw with a hand, a gentle but firm bracket of force. Wandering a thumb over his chin. Judging his current state.
Still hard, but still kind of in space. High and feeling perfectly fine with it. Better than fine. Armand grabs him and Daniel stares at him, aware as though he can see himself from outside his own body, admiring their sunset-colored eyes that glow like mirrors of each other. A matching gradient. Daniel a bit more yellow, Armand a bit more amber.
Head tips to try a playful bite at Armand's thumb. Hmm. What a nice time, all of this. He shifts his weight to feel how his maker pins him, and the pressure of his own hand against his arousal.
"Magenta," is a ready response, as he shifts in response, weight balanced across Daniel's hips, feeling the ball of his fist at the crook of his own thigh. A shift of his hips adds pressure, clumsy and broad.
Colours without names, like the gradient Daniel's eyes take on when they shift between blue and predator orange-yellow. He runs his hand back down from Daniel's chin, over his throat, his chest, relishing in the shifting texture of muscle and skin and hair and fat and bone, letting his claws leave white tracks behind, bloodless abrasions.
No objective beyond chasing whims, which has made for a nice night.
An exhaled laugh, marred by a slight hitch in breath as Armand moves, the slow-scorching pleasure of it like moving in a hot bath.
"Some kind of amber-magenta, that's what you are," he sighs. "On a spectrum people can barely see. I'm glad I can remember you in the sun."
A velvet-dark void haloed by the unimpressive star that Armand probably still think orbits the Earth. He rocks up into him, feeling more, more of his body, more of his nails.
Good. Armand would like to participate in granting him the ability.
He reaches down, takes Daniel by the wrist, tugs his hand away from himself. The plan had been to then touch him, but whim dictates he look him over. His own spend glistens on his skin, rough grey hair, the thready dregs of annihilated cloth clinging here and there to both of them like persistent spider web.
"Do you recall what the sun feels like, still?" he asks, as he makes this study. Imagines it rendered in charcoal, decidedly pornographic, a frame that cuts Daniel off at the knees and neck, a needing cock rendered only in vague strokes and shadows.
Being admired is new-old; something he's experienced before, but not in a long time. It makes Armand feel all the more singular. No one else is looking at him this way. No one else has a gaze that melts over him, scouring and caressing.
"I recall the first time I got really, really sunburned," he says, laying back to let his maker get his obscene fill. Daniel draws his hand up to his mouth, and licks the pomegranate-colored mess from them, and it makes his eyes shift, makes his cock twitch. "I moved to Los Angeles, after San Fransisco. July. Venice Beach, sitting in between the bodybuilder yard and the volleyball posts. Everyone was sweating, baking, it felt like needles all over my skin, I just had this shitty baseball cap and sunblock that had sweated off in ten minutes, hours behind me. I had burns," he moves his hand, down over his own chest, indicating some slutty, awful, early 1980s v-neck, "all the way down here, and here," lower, the top of his thigh, he must have been in sports shorts, or trunks, or raggedy cut-off jeans. "That's what the sun feels like, right? Do you sweat still, in the sun?"
Fingers trace what he can reach of Armand's chest, between his pectoral muscles, conjuring thoughts of rivulets of sweat, pink-tinted, shining.
Daniel speaks. It feels sensory, even this, just a story. Still pleasantly high, vaguely synaesthesic for it. Armand lets his eyes wander, tracks the journey of sticky fingertips to mouth.
"Yes," he answers.
Armand feels out curves, dips, textures across Daniel's chest in return, down the centre of him. The highest of the high has been journeyed over, but some of it lingers, remains, and it only takes a little bit of intentional thoughtlessness to feel something like ash lifting off his touches as he goes. Coloured chalk. Pencil dust.
"I don't stay in it for long," he adds. "Relatively. An hour, two hours, and I can feel it. A sensitivity. Needles."
His fingers travel to Daniel's cock, stroking along the underside it volunteers. A gently applied itch of nails.
Armand in the sun, the summer head of Daniel's memories (what a thing, putting him in more memories) in a flimsy white t-shirt, fraying cut-off denim shorts that would be too short by today's prudish fashion standards, everything made half-transparent by sweat. A nice thing to picture.
Nicer, the teasing attention to his arousal, which makes him hiss. Ah, it's good, though.
"Do you like it?"
Sensitivity. Needles. The itch of nails. The initial poke of teeth.
Armand gives Daniel the flat of his palm, a luxurious spread of warmth compared to light fingertips, but then also sets the tip of a nail somewhere sensitive, enough to bring a speck of blood to the surface. Hands go firm immediately, a pinning lean through the heel of his hand at the centre of Daniel's chest, the other wrapping fingers around his cock. Smear of bright red.
Colours. "I tested it about thirty years ago or so. I spent a day on a white beach by the Aegean Sea, watching the sky and the water, sometimes the people. By the time the sun went down," strokes Daniel long, slow, tight, "I couldn't feel anything. Numb all over, half-blind, thirsty."
Chooses not to relay what came next. What Arun needed of Louis that night.
Armand looms over him, even as they just lay there together, like he's a unique moth being pinned. Free of thoughts like This shouldn't be interesting, it is what it is, with no second-guessing, and Daniel stares up at him with an expression that's startled, but awed. His blood, fresh, in with all else, and wants to bite Armand. He wants to fuck him. He wants to lay right here and watch pinwheels of colors, forever.
"Did it feel better than it had in years?" A light squirm, flex of his hands. They find Armand's arms, his sides, trailing, like he's drawing a touch over water's surface, making ripples. "Like sinking into cold glass? I think about—"
Pauses, to just feel.
"... That walk with you, after the diner. All the time."
Attached, the clearest headshot that Talamasca has of the female vampire labeled 'Eimear' — she seems to be frozen in time in her mid-thirties, medium height, slender build, a hard expression framed by long, straight black hair. The quality of the picture makes it difficult to see what color eyes she has, but Daniel remembers near-glowing pastel green.
Just assumes tabs are being kept. Does not explain. Sends it, along with:
Armand considers some responses, automatic instincts suggesting to him that he ask why Daniel is asking, where did he get this image, and so on, create the illusion of more distance. Knows better.
Not personally. Marked for death on the British Isles for sedition, drew focus as one of the earlier and more authoritative voices under the Conversion movement some years back. Is she still at large?
He is not far. A block or so down, keeping his own tabs after all that noise. Mostly lurking about the minds of Louis' security detail, his assistant, rather than being too direct about it. He is also not calm, replying quickly, but at least the medium of text message affects a kind of neutral monotone.
The Conversion? That's interesting. And so is Armand's instant reply.
Pretty sure she's a chunky paste in several different parts of the river, so, no, not at large. As far as I'm aware there's no more active threat from her, or anyone who was with her. Best guess is they were all her fledglings. I counted six, five were for sure dead when I left the scene, and the last one was in a critical state. Talamasca says they finished him off, but I can't confirm that.
Who else was talking to her about the Conversion, do you remember? This can be a question you come back later to, for the record, I'm not launching an investigation this second.
Well.
Yes he is, but he's also going to sleep soon, so. Hypothetically, anyway, there's every chance he'll be awake in his coffin until night returns, nerves shot, attention skittering away and desperate to cling onto anything but what he's feeling. He does not send And I'm fine, not because he isn't (he is, he's fine) (he's definitely fucking fine), but because... because. Because it's Armand. Armand is comfortable putting him in fucked up situations, whether or not he's fine is a whatever.
She would talk to any who would listen. I recall some pontification while she was active in Kazakhstan and so I presume had the permission or the apathy of the elders from that area. I would guess at the latter.
Not one for allies. Mainly underlings. You're concerned about reprisal?
He should ask. Is Daniel alright. A dimmer voice, is Louis alright. Pure curiousity, is Lestat alright. Glimpses of the three of them sneaking into their makeshift lair, blood spattered but on their feet. Some urgent feeling in him to know more, where knowing serves no other purpose but itself.
How weakened is this little unit? How shaken by the events that occurred? How protected is Daniel, really, if the other two are going to be insufferably self-involved?
But he has already asked a question. He will wait.
Kazakhstan. Pulls up anything related in the ill-gotten files he has, opening a dozen windows to read and dig through. Doesn't matter what this connective tissue means, or if he's just putting up a conspiracy board with miles of thread. He just has to do something, think about something, besides the unsettled pit that's still open in his stomach.
Not specifically, but it would be stupid not to assume it's a real possibility. Either from her community or anyone who doesn't like what happened on principle.
I have a hunch there's a third party interested in the conflict, too, based on something that popped up.
And so, another photo is attached. Cuffs, like fucking manacles, popped open and with evidence of chains having been snapped off of them.
Flaming bottles, a stolen van, really shoddy terrorist threats, and then a single piece of extremely sophisticated anti-vampire equipment.
Interesting x2. He might have to shove a fork into the Talamasca laptop he has now and see if he can dig out exactly who was trying to block the book's publication. A couple oligarchs being literal bloodsuckers would be on the nose, but flow well enough. Track two diplomacy has always been unorthodox.
I have a few vampire hunter leads. They sound bogus, but there might be a trail of something legitimate hidden in there, so I'll run them down and see what shakes out. Can't really speculate anything with how little I have at the moment.
I assume no one's tried anything with you over it, but just to confirm: has anyone messed with you?
Many reasons why this might be so. Armand had, of course, participated in the interview, and falls somewhere between Louis' outright heresy and reckless challenges, and then Daniel's penning of it, and continued promotion, and the fact that he is a vampire is sure to spread in time. And then there is Armand, something of a hapless villain, lending word to the narrative but undermined by its truth.
He expects his status is nearer to Lestat's in relation to the text, more so than Louis or Molloy. But perhaps the ones who are anxious for war are young, or younger. The old ones, those who could meaningfully punish him, still sleeping.
It isn't about him. But Daniel is concerned. Or trying to gather information.
Notes the Big M. Thinks a little, of San Fransisco; his memory whirring like a satellite trying to find the correct signal. Too much for right now, especially with Armand a) making an offer of aid and b) they. Yeah. That's fine.
Relief in it, too. Armand wasn't so closely observing that he saw every little thing like a creeping Talamasca snitch, wasn't stewing in loneliness just on the sidelines, choosing to stay apart even when shit kicked off. He hadn't even thought about the possibility until now, but—
Maybe they're alright, in a way. Maybe they aren't as fucked up as they could be.
Thank you.
I know. It's not a surprise that something finally happened. You were nearly right on the money with it. Scaling the tower, and all that. I think most vampires are just like most people, and there's an ocean of difference between threatening to do something and actually doing it.
So. No total deluge of attacks, because most of the ones talking shit aren't willing to move past that stage for one reason or another, but there will be more attacks, and maybe a more dangerous, organized effort, if they don't make their own push to discourage things.
Maybe they're alright. Never mind that Armand is practically across the street, and can see no other alternative for himself but to monitor the building once the sun rises. He doesn't offer to do so, he just will do it, and then extract further details of Daniel's itinerary from the relevant humans who have it, and consider how best to continue to trail them all.
He expects there will be a narrow window of time between now and their departure from the city, so he texts,
Were any of her spawn left alive that you know of?
He won't be shocked to know that the other two salted the earth, but if one managed an escape, that might be a fun way to wile away the evening.
'Spawn' is such a horrible word in this context. But Armand finds it disgusting, he reminds himself. What they did the other night—
just the bond fucking with them, and they'll be alright, they just have to not act too weird. Remember that you disgust him, that you ruined his life, that you hate him.
Just the one whose death I couldn't confirm. Hold on.
A couple minutes as he takes some screenshots of the seemingly mile-long list of the Irish vampire's known fledglings. It's sorted by who Talamasca thinks have stayed with her, who they think broke from her permanently, and Daniel has made notes about who he thinks died tonight.
It is disgusting, and spawn is the correct word. Disgusting to turn so many, to dilute the blood in this way. Worse than weeds in a garden. An infestation.
If it lives, I can extract whatever information she decided it needed to know.
Nothing, for a minute, but the silence suggests something more is coming— unlike Daniel to not finish a thought, and this is clearly unfinished. Bitterly wondering at himself that the language concerning fledglings is not actually killing off the instinct to articulate the following sentiment.
I don't want to be insulting.
Uh-oh.
Blame my fucking ignorance. It's not dangerous for you to do any of that, is it?
He's soooooo fine about everything that happened tonight by the way, it's all fine.
Armand writes a message. Deletes it. Writes another. Deletes this one too. He knows he is overthinking it, a determined pursuit for the clearest and most succinct answer that at the same time assumes nothing of Daniel's motivations, and finally lands on,
They will find it very difficult to do me harm that matters.
Fine. Great. That works for Daniel. For a few minutes, anyway, as the rollercoaster not-conversation with Louis clunks around. Contending with the reality that he's going to spend the next eleven fucking hours locked in a tiny box, and there is no possible way he's ever falling asleep.
I have another line of questioning, if you have a minute. Impersonal hypothetical stuff.
Vampires are more susceptible to burning than humans, but in practice, it is a matter of will more than science. It would take a powerful vampire against a substantially weaker one to cause combustion directly.
A delay in response. Daniel considers whether or not to confirm. He doesn't know for sure what happened, so not mentioning it to Louis hasn't been a lie, not even by omission. He's simply decided nothing happened to him.
She made a threat, and I felt something warm in my chest. It was brief and I'm not sure if it was real or my imagination because it scared me. I tried to 'push' the sensation away, and it stopped. But she also moved on not long after anyway.
Why is Daniel talking to Armand? Why did he text him? He has no obligation to. Agreeing to see him sometimes is not the same as agreeing to keep him fully in the loop. Why did he tell him about this at all? Louis can make fire, maybe he'd know better. Surely getting over his current sadness-anxiety-anger about Louis would be a thousand, a million times more sensible than exposing this to Armand, even though everything about him as already been exposed to Armand, so it might not really matter.
Demonstrate it, like he's demonstrated all else he can do, to Daniel, on Daniel, chthonic psychic tentacles in his brain sifting every cruel thought and revolting teenage scam, controlling his body, controlling his mind, transforming him, feeding him to repair him like a fucking broken car who needed an oil change, and Daniel is going to say, what, yeah, sure, test this on me, I trust you not to go all the way, I trust you to stop, even without Louis there to demand you let up before it's too late? I trust you, and the ringing in my ears right now has nothing to do with terror?
He drafts a text, something like: and you can practice repelling my focus, if such an attack were ever to manifest again.
Make it useful. Point out its virtues. But Daniel has already said, Sure, and Armand toys with his own as he considers through extrasensory perception the movement of bodies in the building that the three of them have made their home. He deletes this message. If Daniel needs virtues, he can come up with them himself.
Depends on how quickly they can get things together. If it were just him, whatever, but it's three vampires and Louis' staff. He's pretty sure the soft plan a week ago was that they were going up, household would stay behind, but now?
No idea.
And Armand? Daniel stares at his phone, and thinks about burning.
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He'd been pushing down as hard as he could on the pedal. Right off the ledge, if necessary. He was going to stick the landing even if it snapped his ankles like a teenage gymnast being abused by a Russian trainer at the Olympics. Distantly, making a mental note to make a real note eventually, he was curious about why they seemed so hype on dinner. But it was nothing. Everything was taking Armand off the proverbial ledge with him.
And now,
He thinks of memories, mismatched, revealed. He looks at Armand crumpled against the floor, sitting sullen and disheveled beneath his Armand-shaped dent in the plaster, and he thinks of his own Daniel-shaped hole in the plaster of Louis' boytoy apartment in San Fransisco. He had sat there a mirror of this, also disheveled. Not as sullen. More terrified.
Clickclack, tick, far-away sounds of Louis extracting himself from the unit, the building, and maybe their lives. His words of protection feel laughable. Daniel is going to die anyway, what's the big deal? He can't call out, can't message his clandestine lifeline, not with his burning laptop— Ah, shit. A sigh, and he turn from the vampire. Grabs a cushion, heads for the fire. What a way to go it'd be. Not Parkinson's, not the creature he's now exposing his back to, but fumes from burning plastic. C'mon.
"You okay back there?"
He doesn't know why it comes out of his mouth. It just does. Thwap, he taps at the tiny fire, smothering it.
no subject
If not for Daniel, maybe Armand would stay here for some time. Not just in this room, but here on the floor. Maybe he would sink the last few inches down and lay in the dust and consider the absolute totality of the void that has now suffused his whole self, from somewhere cold within his gut and bleeding out to the edge of his fingers. He has much to contemplate. He has nothing to contemplate.
And then there is Daniel's voice, like it's coming from the end of some long tunnel. He lifts his head, first, and then adjusts. Folding his legs into a sit.
The death he considers granting Daniel is far from easeful. He could do like every other fucking vampire on this miserable world and tear what upsets him into furious pieces. The urge is there, certainly, naturally, and he can lift it up like a jewel and consider its facets.
"I'm fine, Daniel," he hears himself say.
no subject
Strange. He doesn't know what to feel. After an interview it's just over, usually. Each party awkwardly says their goodbyes and packs it in. Daniel can't leave under his own power, here. He's been managed carefully for the entire stay, and Louis, apparently, is going to call a car for him. Eventually.
—Are you sure?
No, no. Don't ask that. Don't poke him, you've poked him enough. You left holes, man.
"Alright."
Armand may not deserve the courtesy of avoiding any further antagonizing while he's down, but Daniel can't think of a great reason to carry on, either. He won. A stylish end. No need to cringe it up with a childish victory lap.
—What was dinner about?
Don't ask that, either. Interview is done. Just try to turn your fucking reporter brain off.
"We're both packing. Anything I can help you put together?"
Okay, too much brain was turned off. Bad. Overkill. At some point (this point, here) courtesy becomes a little mocking.
no subject
And Daniel's thoughts are even clearer than his voice. Are you sure? Armand draws in a long breath. What was dinner about? Breathes it out again.
Which isn't to say the words out loud don't penetrate.
Slowly, he stands. A graceful, borderline unnatural way of going from criss-cross applesauce to light on his feet.
"You barely understand what you've taken apart," he says, and now he sounds a little less far away to himself, turning to look at Molloy. Molloy who is not running, but then, where could he meaningfully go? (Louis is leaving. He is by, now, in the private lobby. His mind is busy. Frantic. Armand can't make out anything from the noise.)
The distant direction of his eye narrows, focuses. The smell of burning plastic, heated metal. No need to address that, as far as the information on the device is concerned. Daniel has everything backed up. Daniel is prepared.
He drops his stare on the items Daniel is scraping together. Packing. Absurd. As if any of this is worth anything.
"Where are you going?"
no subject
Nope @ all of that. What he's taken apart doesn't matter, because it's apart. It's done and Armand had damn near eighty years to sort it out on his own anyway, to come clean, to get therapy, to go tie up the loose end and murder Daniel none-the-wiser. Instead he yes maitre'd his way right to this moment.
And obviously, Daniel is just going home.
So:
"I know you do art, this is the business you're running, curating and dealing. You have an unbelievable collection. Do you like it? Just— this isn't an interview, I'm just asking."
no subject
"It was Louis' passion. I maintained it."
Was. A slip, maybe. What does Louis have passion for now? Or maybe, was, in that Louis isn't here, Louis is a figment.
Armand steps nearer.
"Your point, Mr. Molloy? Do you wish to itemise the list of all the nothing I have left?"
He is quiet, but not. A speaking voice, but one that fills the room a little oddly. Puts pressure on the air.
no subject
His skin itches. Not quite goosebumps, but a near thing, fine hairs on the back of his neck threatening to stand up. Daniel has never been much for the great outdoors, fatherly manly pursuits of fishing and camping, but he did once go to Yosemite for a Memorial Day, and he sat in a plastic chair for six hours staring out at the view and editing his notes while everyone else hiked up Half Dome like lunatics, and a black bear had walked out of the tree line not six feet away from him.
Any time Armand moves feels a little bit like that. He wonders why the fuck Talamasca is more worried about Louis; maybe it has something to do with murdering the coven in Paris. He supposes DJ Sam has more reason to find that worrying than Armand-Amadeo-Arun's stare, though DJ Sam is wrong.
"What do you like?"
Daniel looks at him. Not art, not the theater. What is it. The scar on his neck weighs more, today. Does Armand like crossword puzzles? Counterstrike all headshots rounds? Origami?
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A twitch to his still expression, brow furrowed, and when he takes another step, his feet lift from the floor, drifting up an inch, six inches, two feet into the air.
There is a way vampires have in the world. When they mimic mortal men, maybe there is some strange entrancing quality, or some prey-type unease, but it's an undercurrent. The more you might talk to them, and Daniel certainly has experience, the more that undercurrent weakens. It goes away completely, even.
And then they reveal themselves, a reveal that has nothing to do with the intellectual. A sudden and undeniable wrongness, an innate quality that transcends terror and lands instead in horror. Armand drifts closer to Daniel and the light seems to bend.
"You're asking the wrong questions again. You wanted to know about our dinner plans."
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"Now that's irrelevant."
Daniel stares right at him despite his genuine fear, and the tremor threatening his left hand, the disease finding his emotional weakness quicker than the mind-reader he's refusing to budge in front of. Fight-or-fight for Daniel Molloy is I'm going to stand right here and see what happens.
"Louis is gone, there are no more 'our' dinner plans. It's you, me, and the tree, until we're all out of here."
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"One down."
A shake to his voice. Louis is gone. Plants? Does he like plants? What did he feel when he carefully packed his magnolia clipping, one of the essential things he brought with him? He doesn't remember, now. This wasn't his odyssey of recollection.
Daniel doesn't run. Not like his usual prey, before they collapse, shaking, begging. Daniel stands in his fear. Is that what makes him fascinating?
Surges forward. Lands. His hands finding Daniel's face, and he is very strong. Even this configuration, this cage of fingers that doesn't dig or bruise, is just the right kind of unyielding that there is no real means of wrenching away.
A fire alarm goes off. Piercing.
"We were going to offer it," he says, voice raising over the sound. "The gift. We were going to give you a choice."
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He might just have a fucking heart attack right here, and Armand won't get to do anything fun at all. A tremor wracks his hand, and Daniel tries to ball it into a fist, but he feels distant. Panic, he realizes, even as he stays still and doesn't try to squirm away. (Couldn't anyway.)
"No you weren't."
There's no petulant denial to be found in his head. Daniel truly doesn't believe that Armand would have endured it, and his retort here is easy, automatic, unhelpfully scoffing. Calling bullshit on the monster about to pop his head off with no effort exerted whatsoever. He wonders if a sprinkler system is about to go off, wouldn't that be dramatic— but no, he thinks with rising hysteria, they have so much fucking money and they don't need to breathe, this whole unit can be enclosed away from the sun. A clean agent system is probably about to go off and suck all the oxygen out of the room to kill the fire and save the artwork, and Daniel is going to pass out.
"You'd never allow it. And you know I'd have said no anyway. You know I'd give two seconds of consideration and realize I'd just be Claudia, waiting around for you to torch me."
What'd Louis think was going to happen, when he left? Ah, well. Sucks about the book. He'd have liked writing it.
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The cleaned up tape had captured ordinary shouted voices, two men overlapping, sneering, a wholly ordinary cacophony. And while there is the reflex for Armand to speak just that little bit louder past the alarm, it is like he doesn't need to. A voice that comes from inside Daniel's brain, stereo surround sound heartbreak delivered through a mannerly affect.
The lay of his thumbs on Daniel's cheeks are gentle. A soft stroke of them as he considers the boy, October 8th, 1973, who had so gratefully bent down his head. If there's acceptance there now, it's of a completely different nature.
"How unexpected you have proven to be."
The air will be funneled out of the penthouse very soon. Armand can hear the scurrying of movement through the building. Mechanisms and people. He has never shed a single blood red tear in Daniel's presence, in Louis' presence, and doesn't start now, fire-bright eyes clear as he flicks a glance aside.
And then back. A decision. Panicky, almost, the way it slides into place, and the immediate demand on him to act before there is no more time.
A thumb slides down, gets up under Daniel's jaw, efficient in the way he pushes his chin up and aside. Other vampires probably do this with more panache. The way Armand's jaws close against Daniel's neck first feels almost ordinary, blunt teeth, wet and damp, pressure and then the undeniable and absolutely painful piercing of fangs breaking skin.
He wraps an arm around the other man's shoulders, and when Daniel's legs give, he manages them both to the floor. By then, the pain will be gone.
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Is anything about you real? So many years in you, and you couldn't figure out that Louis was real, even when he gave you a roadmap? All you had to do was let Claudia go. See her and her girlfriend once a year on Christmas or something. That was real.
Doesn't bother trying to talk. Armand lifts his head, and Daniel stares at the ceiling, listens to the siren-like beep that signals the gas exchange system is about to kick on. A warning to cover your ears and get out. He's not going to. Is he? It feels like a threat, like so much of it back there in that shitty apartment was a threat, but also like a child prodding at a dissected frog in a classroom, uncertain.
I was real, then. All that shit I asked for and offered, was real. You were terrifying but you weren't boring. You were fascinating and you still are. I don't believe you're empty. Your accent changes when you speak Arabic. Is it because Arabic is so old? I had a dog, when I was a kid. I miss the dog.
Ears ring from the shotgun sound of the gas system discharging. Vision blurs. CO2 is safe for up until five minutes, allegedly, but what about if you have Parkinson's? What if you're rapidly losing blood because a monster is draining it out of you, delicate and violent at once? Daniel sees his life, and he tries to laugh. Bloodloss or smoke inhalation or halocarbons.
Out.
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Smoke. Crackling fire, which struggles like someone slammed the flue shut, and then dies.
There is the smallest tremor through his fingers as Armand opens his palm with his fangs, and presses it against Daniel's slack mouth. Barely anything, certainly not enough to coax Daniel's mind into trying to drink, but that's barely necessary.
Strange, potent, a smear of blood that is barely enough to swallow but mingles with saliva, enters the failing human by way of membrane, little evil sparks of unlife.
Whatever happens next, Daniel is only capable of remembering it in abstract. Clutching pain, bowel-low and sick. Fever. Hunger. Then worse, thirst. The kind that feels like you'd kill a man to slake it. (On that point—) And then, in the dark, it comes. Water in the desert. There is no moving, and no ability to make it come any faster than the meagre trickle that Daniel has no choice but to accept.
"That's enough," says a voice.
And then he wakes up.
The sound of daytime traffic, from within a room low enough to the street to hear it. Daniel has seen enough shitty hotel rooms to recognise the basic layout of this one, king bed and yellow walls, fading laundry. The light is odd, with a lamp on, and the windows mostly covered with something thicker than standard threadbare curtains, casting deep shadow. But there's a corner where the daylight comes in, the corner with the obligatory chair that no one sits in, except someone is.
Lanky figure, bathed in the sun, hands folded between his knees.
The door to the bathroom is closed. The door to the hallway out is closed. And Daniel is hungry.
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Not entirely successful.
Someone's with him, and he grunts a hello. Is that—
No, he wouldn't have taken her out. Not like this. Some things are his own issues, and Daniel has plenty, things he does on weekends and vacations and 'work trips', and he feels dizzy.
"Morning, man." He sounds so weird. Daniel coughs. "I'm completely in the fucking bag, do you—" augh. Pain. Pain in his stomach, his chest, twisting, demanding. "Do you have an Advil, or anything? I'll clear out in a second, don't worry."
Are his hands alright? Daniel tries again to roll onto his side, get his feet on the floor.
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No tremors, no sense of disconnection, no absence of dexterity. If it wasn't for the cramping, the pounding in his head and the labour of his heart struggling in his chest, and the nausea, and the hunger—Advil would be a start, certainly—and beneath all of that, something else. Something good. Maybe whatever he took last night hasn't cleared out of his system.
A lurch. Something agreeable beneath the waters of his consciousness. Yes, just a one-night stand, an inconsequential collision that is, perhaps, not worth the hangover, but then again, Daniel doesn't remember much about the main event. Maybe he half-remembers something else that can fill in the blanks. A gentle hand is helping, stirring them up. Take your pick.
"No rush," says the man in the corner. Pretty, narrow face, big eyes, black curls. "Take your time."
There is a sound coming from the bathroom. Like a person, moaning. Not a nice sound.
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Speaking of. He pats himself down, feeling the awfulness of all of it and the thread of euphoria that says he's still high, but finds no needle marks on his arms, even as he rolls up the unfamiliar and frankly ugly sweater sleeves. Is he wearing a watch?
Daniel looks up. That sound—
Fuck, but the man sitting over there is beautiful. A look of dumb shock takes over his woozy face. I pulled that?
"You're okay?"
How predictable I must seem to you.
Daniel manages to sit up, clutching the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. He stares at the sunlight, the extremely good-looking guy veiled by it, feels the all-devouring hunger cramp his stomach. What the fuck. It's never been quite like this. His vision does something funny, tunneling like he's about to throw up before blowing out again, and his hearing becomes hyper-sensitive. Too much weed, he thinks. It always does this with bad weed. Why does he think a few joints are going to do anything on top of hard drugs but make it worse. Like beer and wine. Knock it off, just do more coke, you know that, Daniel.
Like taking a bath.
"Hey what's up with the bathroom."
It comes out too fast. Heywhatsupwiththebathroom. The noises in there. The feeling, like if he doesn't get there and see to whatever's in there he's going to die. He's so fucking hungry, but it's deeper, desperate, fiending. Must have been amphetamines in whatever he took, to be crashing this hard and weird after.
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The facts of it are this: they are still in Dubai. Of what Louis had commanded of him, being gone was something Armand was happy to abide by. ('Happy'.) The anti-fire measures did their work. There is still historical documentation strewn about. He had told the staff touch nothing, and they won't.
The chair creaks as he stands.
Considers the mess of a half-form fledgling, considers the street outside. He should flick aside the curtains and be done with it. He should do a lot of things.
Instead, he wanders nearer. He sits at the edge of the bed alongside Daniel, placing a hand on his back while he brings his own wrist to his mouth. He leaves Daniel to draw his own conclusions about the sight of him pressing fangs into his own forearm, because in a moment it won't matter. The smell of blood is all-consuming, and when he offers it out to Daniel (dark blood welling out from neat little puncture wounds), he won't have much of a choice as to what he does next.
"Slowly," he instructs. Uselessly.
And a voice in Daniel's head, murmuring. I will tell you this: I begged for the gift, in the end. My maker denied me many times. He believed it to be a force of corruption. I thought it was preservation.
The groaning sound in the bathroom gives way to the sound of a heartbeat. Frantic. The rasp of breathing through a blocked nose. It all sounds as perfectly clear as the rest.
Louis, a merchant of pleasure, a dozen like him in every corner of his Storyville. A streak of violence, yes, the repression of desire and rage entwined. Would I have seen it? I don't know. Armand flexes his hand. Lestat, a player in an ever-increasing demographic of mediocre artists. And Claudia, I cannot begin to fathom. But all chosen. All with some spark that someone more monstrous than they desired to carry into eternity.
His voice is fading. Daniel's consciousness will rise with each long swallow.
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There is someone in the bathroom. There is someone sitting next to him on the bed, touching his back. Outside is the city with its half-dozen squat little excuses for skyscrapers, the Americn River, his wife packing boxes for the move to Los Angeles, and...
It's easy, the way he shifts from the past to now. "Now", at least, in big wobbly quotations. Daniel is not one hundred percent sure when or why now is, and for a moment he is outside of himself, and Armand - even as he is imparting his first and last true telepathic messages - will have that same view, the two of them on a motel bed, wrist to mouth, hand to back. As though they are also standing a yard away, watching themselves.
Standing there and watching themselves, Daniel turns to Armand (also standing there, watching themselves).
You don't think your maker saw a spark in you, do you. Because you asked for it.
Armand's blood is more euphoric than any drug. It is more filling than any food. Daniel hears Slowly like the chime of a hypnotist's bell, but he can't quite figure out what to do about it.
Throw-away comments about chatter happening around a scene, as Daniel picked at it to get the timeline straight before waxing poetic about the points on it. Madeleine, bright-eyed, young, not of Armand like her lover wanted, but of Louis; and through him, of Lestat, and the bloodline Armand had detailed out like a Biblical heritage. He had bigger fish to fry and couldn't waste time on pushing about why she felt compelled to clarify that Louis does, in fact, love Armand. Why it made it into the retelling.
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Ineffable connection, as ancient blood warms Daniel's arteries. They know at the same time that Madeleine felt nothing of the kind. She felt a ghost of something else, of someone else. How Armand knew this as he walked away.
It had been important, at the time, that Louis remember it differently.
No, Armand says. Agreeable. He can award Daniel the confirmation he scarcely needs, and then Armand leaves Daniel's mind as it closes off from him forever.
The drawing of his blood has always felt as pleasurable to him as its taking. His heart insistently beats and keeps its pace even as a powerful hunger pulls blood through his veins. It feels like silk sliding on his skin. The happy smile Daniel had caught as Louis drank from him had—been a show, yes, but sometimes true things are displayed to execute a purpose, as well as false.
The hand at Daniel's back slides up his spine, to the back of his neck, and holds fast. Removes his wrist. Daniel is stronger than he was but there is nothing he could do to shrug off Armand's grip, a rare show of strength that vanishes as soon as Armand is able to stand.
His wrist wound heals immediately.
He could chalk this up to evading Louis' command, finding a loophole, acting out of spite, but Armand can recognise when something is over. There is no satisfaction in knowing that Louis' hold over him is less than irrelevant. Louis can't kill him. Louis is no one. (His heart, battered, pumping affection out of itself and into his chest like poison.) This is something for himself.
"I'll be curious to know if the spark in you will stay," Armand says out loud, his hand lingering on Daniel's shoulder. "For what it's worth, Daniel, I hope so."
They can pretend together that this is a social experiment.
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Armand never hears this questioning. Daniel, maybe, never even fully realizes he's thinking about it; the blood is too powerful, and by now, his experience is running out of usefulness. What was a steadying hand at the start of the staggering bloodlust is now of little value— it's too much, the loss is like a knife plunged into his gut, the center of the crippling starvation pain.
"Hope?"
He stares up at him. Glasses absent. There's barely any blood on his mouth, having devoured all that was offered to him so completely. Daniel hears people outside, far away outside, talking and thinking in languages he recognizes but doesn't really understand beyond pigin greetings and left or right. He can say 'bathroom', 'airport', 'embassy', 'hello' and 'help' in Arabic. He feels the panicking human in the bathroom. He hopes it's not Real Rashid, as he is not going to be able to control himself.
"Since when does your hope extend beyond being repulsed by a hole?"
Daniel has held still in the face of this man before, by force. He has been terrified of Armand before. He has been certain he would die, he has whispered his desire to live, he has been agreeable as any optimistic hostage pissing himself in terror. He offered to blow him. He'd have done so. He sits and waits for that answer even as his consciousness begins to spiral, hearing nothing but heartbeats. His. Armand's. The person in the bathroom's.
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Not a laugh, exactly. A breath, shaped as one, the corner of his mouth in a brief and subtle uptick. Daniel asking questions, circling back, offering riposte while his body is processing its death, while it grows into something else.
It's probably too much to ask for that to be accepted as a full answer, but it nearly is.
"Do you think I don't know when I've been disproven?"
It's close to a real question. He had sat passive, frozen, as eighty years worth of craft was dismantled before him, a sprung airlock, sirens blaring as everything was blown into the void. He had fled Daniel, chasing Louis, and some of the most ridiculous bullshit he can remember himself saying for some time coming out of his mouth, desperate. Childish. So it's only fair to imagine nothing has changed since 1973.
His hands close into fists. He can't touch him. He wouldn't know why he is doing it, right now.
"We can give it a hundred years," is more wry. "Catch up on old times. It would be a shame if you hadn't been able to hold onto what makes you when we do."
Drifting for the bathroom door.
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Nothing to Armand. Because Armand is just watching, even though—
He's so fucking hungry. It's worse than fitting, fiending, the shakes, withdrawals. It feels as though his body is devouring itself in desperation, crunching inward like some sci-fi movie and he's being sucked out a tiny hole in a spacecraft.
Pounding of a heartbeat. Rushing of blood. There behind the bathroom door. Daniel lurches but just falls to the floor, hands and knees, clumsy like a calf taking its first steps in a stable.
"Is this really the only way you could think to get me to shut up?" His voice is wretched with rasping desperation. Armand can't read his mind anymore. But, but, oh fuck, oh god,
"I can feel you."
Stranger than the hunger that is splitting him open and restitching him in some other alien image. A sense he's never had before, a phantom limb that's all over, and awareness and at the center of it, another person. It's not the person in the goddamn bathroom, it's Armand, like he can see him inside his head but it's not imaginary, it's there, he feels him like fingerprints lingering on his skin. If the door opens. If the door opens.
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The connection between maker and fledgling isn't unknown to him, but it's been close to half a millennia since he has known it beyond the sensory absorption of the vampires around him, their little tangles, their frayed threads of connection.
"Yes," he says. "And I can feel you."
An awareness, at its most basic. He could close his eyes and identify the shape of Daniel in the room, like he is also on his hands and knees, also feeling fangs grow in his mouth like it's all new again. And in return—
Well, there is no concealing anything. What they lack in precision, telepathic whispers, clear thoughts, the divulging or discovering of secrets, this connection makes up for in the way there is no ability to block it, manipulate it, erase it, no more than you can will your blood to flow in a new direction.
And there is something in Armand that feels like a closed, shaking fist, grasping onto that tether. Frightened in a way that seems far from existential.
"Sundown is in three hours," he says, as if he could speak over it. "But you can leave the room as you like. I'll clean up, this time."
Opening the door. Inside, a spike of panicky breathing from the stranger inside, who has been commanded to lay still, a sacrificial goat.
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In a world where this is not happening, Daniel critiques the offer on those grounds. Instead, there is a phantom sensation of his hand laying over Armand's trembling one. Not comforting because Daniel isn't in a state of mind where he can reach such nuance (and wouldn't be doling out comfort to Armand on purpose anyway), but a raw, ragged cousin of it. Lost in a storm, he grabs at the only familiar thing he can reach. His only company in this hurricane. At least they won't drown alone.
Daniel doesn't hear him. He hears only a heart, and lungs, and something else. Liquid sunlight moving over satin. Life, life that he needs, more than water, more than cocaine, more than quaaludes that aren't decades past their expiration dates. More than fucking oxygen.
Moving into the bathroom is either too fast or too unnecessary for him to process, but he completes the action. Moving from where he is to being where he should be is much the same. One hand grabbing the stranger's hair to jerk his head back, the other clawing at his clothed chest. Daniel stares. It's a split-second but it goes on for an eternity.
Am I doing this?
Before he even completes the thought, fangs are embedded into the sacrifice's throat. Skin like the paper wrapper of the sweetest candy, a frustrating entanglement— then suddenly it's not, the bite has gone deep enough to shred both jugular and carotid, and blood flows grotesque and abundant. Daniel drinks, and drinks, and drinks.
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Armand doesn't watch, and scarcely needs to. He can hear it, he can feel it, the vampire consuming the two time Pulitzer winning investigative journalist, who has made his living absorbing and producing. The man on the bathroom ground has a story in him, and he bleeds it out between demanding fangs, monstrous appetite. Yes, this is revenge. This is punishment.
It is. In time. A hundred years from now, maybe less. It hadn't been a lie when he'd said this repulsed him. He had seen it, the way he'd become repulsive in the eye of the man he'd worshiped. The men he has worshiped.
Daniel knows the rules. If he chokes himself on dead blood after all he's heard in the past week, it's his own fault.
Armand leaves before he stays.
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He makes it back to the apartment building, where security guards are nervous— he is on the guest list, they have seen him coming and going, he seems to have been injured. Rashid intervenes.
Louis foots the bill for his evacuation, but Louis never returns to the building before Daniel leaves. Not to New York. To London, first, through Talamasca, where they have plans for him. Debriefing and a laundry list of other things; they want him to compare notes with Sam, they want to arrange for sterile blood bags, they want him to stay with them. Daniel plays along until he can grab a hard drive, and he's out the back door.
Who can fucking write under those conditions. Please.
One hundred years, huh.
Plenty of time to get acquainted with the nerve in his head that doesn't belong to him, and how to twist it just right.
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And he proves more than adept at hiding from Google.
Daniel publishes a book, appears on talk radio and local news, claims it's all real. Viral videos, hashtags, BookTok essays, a burgeoning online cult following. The Theatre des Vampires finds itself popular again despite no longer existing, a charming YouTube series of animations after someone dug up the scripts in a little private archive in Paris. Daniel becomes easy to follow, wherever he might be.
Characteristically, the human race has an excellent capacity for rationalisation, wrong conclusions. It's only relevant inasmuch as the way the thoughts and threats of vampirekind begin filling the sky in a way that Armand can not recall ever happening before in his lifetime. Perhaps, all of history. This, too, can be observed.
And just like any media circus that becomes ubiquitous enough to break containment, there come the articles, the thinkpieces, most of them finding clever thematics about vampirism and the unlife of Daniel Molloy's career in investigative journal, the state of news media as a whole in an increasingly chaotic world, and the most cutting coming out of The New Yorker, who hadn't bothered to ask for comment.
A nice hotel room. Very good security. Molloy will be used to the necessary practice of coffin-sized luggage being flown in ahead of him.
The sun goes down and his awareness will drift to the surface.
And immediately, there's the sound of a frantic heartbeat, ragged breathing, all pain. A man, a journalist of decent renown, ten years Daniel's junior, wearing nondescript clothing and a wedding ring, and lying at the bottom of the generously proportioned bathtub in the other room with a small, neat wound in the spine that has cut off from him the ability to use his legs.
There is no screaming, no crying for help. He was given one instruction, which was to be quiet, and his whole mind is occupied on this single task.
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There is no dramatic creak as he pushes up the casket lid, which is split into two parts the way all of them are these days, but there is a tragic thunk-thunk-thunk as his cell phone fumbles itself to the floor, slipping free of the decorative memorial display section where he'd had it tucked. No one's in the room, so that's good, but—
Oh, no, just kidding.
In a blink he's at the bathroom door, staring in. What he's seeing does not conform to reality at first as Daniel looks, flummoxed, at a dickhead opinion piece factory frozen like a deer caught before a semi-truck, all tucked into the oversized garden tub. He'd sat in there yesterday, in near-scalding water, marveling at the dexterity to do so without fear of killing himself by accident trying to get out, and admiring his own toes. (It's an achievement, he knows from his work chronicling harmless kinksters, to be a man and arrive at an advanced age and still have respectably cute feet.)
His critic beams terror and relief at him through silent, trembling eyes. Daniel tenses an invisible muscle to reach out, yank answers to questions from his head, but thinks better of it before he goes through with it. He will in a minute. But why not learn.
The saddest, tiniest whimper is emitted as Daniel shuts the bathroom door and turns back to the main room. Someone was here, and someone did the fucking most. But what else did they do?
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Yes, a presence, formerly speaking. Louis had spoken of his own maker having a scent, which is the kind of thing Louis might just say, citationless behaviour straight from a YA novel, and if it's true, if people can be sussed out via something a little more olfactorily ineffable than a favourite cologne or hand soap, then Daniel-as-vampire certainly hasn't been around Armand long enough to pinpoint it out.
Blood, first. Likely the guy who's bled through his shirt. Then something else, earthier, and a sharper note that's like cigarettes but isn't. Burning, dry.
A touch to the shiny surface of his coffin. To the hanging curtains, which had been pulled back enough so that the light of an afternoon sun might peek through and warm the opposite wall. His laptop, idle on the shitty little desk even a nice hotel room provides.
Eventually, however, beyond these touches (nothing on the computer, although he could probably run something to show its activity in the past twelve hours, much like he can on the book critic's grey matter), nothing terribly out of place. Just the impression of his presence, ghosting through, withdrawing.
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Like a kiln. He thinks of ancient Greek pots and the gods depicted on them in gold and onyx.
Just a light creeping, he supposes. Feeling off about it, he succumbs to paranoia and checks the suitcases tucked under the bed, which is serving as a better workstation than the shitty little desk. They seem undisturbed, but he pulls one out anyway and unzips it to behold the books within. Boasting incriminatory titles and containing data that probably won't help at all, but he has to try. Doesn't he?
No sense-memory-feeling suggests his visitor has perused them. Daniel absently zips his thumb over the corner of one paperback, like he's animating a flipbook. Whether I like it or not, he thinks wryly.
Back on his feet. Back to the bathroom.
The door opens again. Daniel stares at the younger man, listens to the fraying, swimming panic of his vitals, and he pushes oh-so-gently. He wants to see what happened, he wants conformation of what he already knows: Armand was here, Armand left him this very considerate, personally and deliberately curated breakfast. Knelt beside the bath, it's an easy thing to reach out and pull this illiterate hack close enough to pierce his panic-sweaty skin with sharp teeth.
He touches the bond. You were near. Where are you now?
There will, of course, be no answer.
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a shock, a figure in the vibrant yellow light of a homey hallway, bright red eyes, and then
fragments. A soothing voice. Walking. They walk until the lactic acid built up in his legs makes him want to collapse, until he can't feel his feet. The brush of dawn light.
And a voice.
"I've been wondering how far along you've thought ahead. If, when the truth of the thing turns your airport drugstore paperback into one of the most important historical documents in human history, if credibility allows—"
A glitch. Begging, but his jaw is locked closed. His face being touched, turned, seeing nothing at all but Armand, vividly, looking through him, like he's nothing.
"The vivisections won't end with a scathing review. You're being reckless."
Then, plunging cold, and the interior of the bathroom, watching the afternoon light slowly travelling up the opposite wall. He urinates himself, he prays, he wonders—was Molloy telling the truth? What the fuck, and he could laugh. At least the haunted doll who brought him here has left.
No more laughing now.
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Reckless. Right. Daniel thinks viciously, If you gave a shit about discretion you wouldn't have started any of this, to no one.
Which suggests, upon reflection, that Armand doesn't hate it as much as he says he does. Repulsed, repulses me. Little hitches, shifting under Daniel's boring, insignificant attention.
A response can't come right away. Even if he had a method, he'd wait. He has to think about it, and he has to time it appropriately; it's not Louis' business, it's not that any of the vampires circling him, and certainly not Lestat's, though his intermittent company has been educational. More directly educational than Armand's so far, even if he's got to pick at him and go at it sideways to get an answer which he then has to decode. They are alike, in that way. He'll tell neither. Too soon to get murdered.
Talamasca sends him numbers (too many vampires, not enough scuttling photographers to track them). He oversees a surreal, nervous, funny Zoom call in which DJ Sam catches them up on a few things. They go to Quito in Ecuador, the oldest city in the whole continent (San Francisco de Quito, the whole title, what a funny little thing that makes two of them exchange old looks and one of them fume for being out of the loop), and foil through blood and one intense sunlight therapy lamp a plot to punish Louis for his violation. Daniel gets his own room. A third wheel keeping his third eye out for the fourth. A grain of sand in the Sahara, this plot.
He makes his decision there, in the heat. He buys a plane ticket and sends somebody else on in his stead with badly forged papers, just a joke, heads elsewhere back north, and to Vancouver.
Like a fucking spy movie. He contemplates the bond in the meantime, and wonders what news of these aberrant activities has reached his maker.
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An island in Greece. The mountains in southern Germany. The coasts of Turkey. It's fruitless, ultimately, and the murders that happen there are lost in the overwhelming churn of global news, if they even break containment into the local kind.
Armand is precise, using the kind of seamless anonymity his wealth can provide him, sparing no expense because there's no point otherwise. His arrangements are meticulous, every detail in its place, and becoming a ghost in the memories of any human staff he might require for this and that, of which there are few. He is very good at managing his life.
Good enough he doesn't have to think about it. Good enough that he doesn't have to think at all.
Now and then, the shiver of tension, the cord strung between himself and one other. He thinks he would know if it snapped, but then, Lestat and Louis had been so stupid about all of that, so perhaps it's an illusion. An illusion when the cord shivers. An illusion when he can, so gently that it never trembles, hold onto it.
His search is a distraction. What would he even do, if he found Marius de Romanus? Besides requesting his judgment.
Vampires dead in south America. Forged paperwork, hotel bookings, the occasional image leaking out into common social media. He knows enough to know that Daniel is not heeding him. You know I'd give two seconds of consideration and realize I'd just be Claudia, and yet, he tags along with the two lovers. Or they tag along with him. Louis is as good a follower as he is poor a joiner, and what Armand remembers of the tattered condition of Lestat's mind when last he touched it casts doubt on him being the driving force of this trio—
All the same. Annoying.
He ignores the tugging at their bond, anyway. Daniel will have to do better than that.
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He says goodbye to Louis, he tells Lestat to think of who he'd like to play him in a movie adaptation (just to rile him up).
Stupid, he thinks, when he gets to where he's going. This is stupid, and Armand isn't even going to notice, and why would he want Armand to notice him anyway? Why is he doing any of this? But it can't go unanswered, or he'll go insane, no matter that it's been weeks.
The man is a former YouTube grifter turned TikTok grifter turned conservative streaming pundit. He calls himself a philosopher, and millions of eager, dipshit fans agree. He's written four books and they're all awful— neotrad, capitalist drivel that misses the point of Stoicism and dresses it up in a wannabe-Mormon dress shirt and tie. He does these awful weekly shows where he misunderstands a new (real) philosopher each episode and explains why their work is all lies, and he really, really hates (and really, really doesn't get) Sartre.
One among many. He doesn't seem to get anything. But Marxism is a buzzword, and the guy selects himself one day while Daniel is attempting a scheme, by announcing a partnership with a unique blockchain coin.
Sparks in people. There must have been an incredible one in Jean-Paul Sartre, for Armand to have wanted to flex his friendship with him. He even has (had, maybe) his books still. An insignificant mortal who was so important that he got a deliberate, smug-casual cameo in a story that tore Armand's heart out. That Sartre and Beauvoir were infamous for seducing young students together is something he opts not to think too hard about.
(Mostly.)
Armand likes existentialism. Armand likes French philosophy and he hates Web3 pricks. There's no way for Daniel to make the vampire see this murder and know it's for him, so he takes a while, loopy from the kill (the guy was buzzing on oxy, a predictable hypocrite), to go through his office. He finds some notes, selects a specific page, folds it up, and puts it into the corpse's pocket.
Plans to read Journey to the End of the Night, though based on these shallow scribblings, he never got around to it. The notes are mentioned in the news coverage, and the grifter has an endless parade of enemies to investigate.
Daniel takes the scenic route to New York.
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Except it isn't low. It's found like fresh rainwater collected in the leaves on a desert island, unlikely but looked for.
It justifies a return to America.
When vampires find little to live for, but don't yearn for death either, they go to the ground. They bury themselves and become as corpses until something awakens them. Armand has seen it a few times, here and there, and can't fathom it as anything but a kind of annihilation. He is not certain there would be anything now or in the future that would compel him to rise again. He's not sure how the others manage it.
But he does slip the leash of existence, some, once he lands again. Money, properties, assets dropped, discarded, to be picked up later, maybe. The sun can't hurt him and his ancient metabolism makes infrequent demands of him. He is in stasis without trying. He goes to where this grifter was killed.
And pulls something taut, as if testing distance. Daniel, not so far away. And now Daniel knows, he too isn't so far away.
Daniel has rented a car for his scenic route, and upon collecting it as the dusk darkens to night, the sound of a heartbeat from within the trunk greets him. Inside, a gift: here is a young-ish man in last night's club outfit. His hands and feet are secured in zipties, and shreds of fabric have been stuffed into his mouth, knotted in place. The MDMA in his system can't have been from a full twelve hours ago, still bright in his blood.
In a pocket, a little page fragment, an excerpt out of Journey to the End of the Night. Torn out as if along the edge of a ruler.
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Again, as he feels Armand's nearness; again, as he looks down at the guy in his trunk, and reaches out with one hand to tug below his eye and observe his pupils. He smells like shitty vodka and fear and thrumming, shimmering blood, and he has two blue tablets in a tiny bag in his back pocket.
The trunk closes.
Everywhere is middle-of-nowhere on the road between South Dakota and Iowa. Daniel drives into the dark (into the night), and he thinks about how he is, in fact, actually incredibly angry at Armand, still. Not for turning him, in retrospect, that seems as sure as anything, which is a little funny. For everything else. For doing strange things to his life, for torturing him, for Claudia, who Daniel never even knew. For Louis, even though he knows Louis wasn't a perfect victim.
I must be the dumbest person on Earth.
The origin of their association, the psychic surgery on his brain, the violation every time his memories were dug into. (The hand on Louis' shoulder, stopping the way he was forcing a tremor.) Being given a drugged boy is insane. It's insane, Armand, like he can hear him. What the fuck are you doing. He doesn't know who he's asking. (Himself.) Gifts and pages like secret letters.
He drives to a rest stop with dozens of miles of nothing in either direction. He forces the remaining pills into the abducted clubber's mouth. He closes the trunk and waits, and thinks about:
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The strange sense that he (this kid, whoever he is) isn't getting anywhere. His hand is caught in Armand's shirt and his other hand is being held at the wrist, and they are pushed together, like gravity has tipped towards the wall that he has Armand against. Armand is taller (and stronger), and gazing at him with
something. Want? Pity? His eyes are crazy to stare into, fire-coal orange, twin lanterns that continue to burn in his mind's eye between each blink. He gets a hand behind his neck to try to pull him down
and can't. Unmoving. Something sharp beneath his chin, pushing his face aside.
"Human philosophy," Armand is saying, so quiet, but somehow easily heard in the riot of the establishment, "is often deeply flawed for being premised on the eventuality of death. To give meaning to life, there must be an end. And that everything a person does is in service to prepare or fend off that inevitability."
So what do you wanna do about it?
Ignored. "It's why I am fond of Sartre. His writings seemed unconcerned with this question, at least at times. To exist is to behold. To behold is to love. And love is nothing but an illusory celebration of that existence."
Let go of my arm—
"Rest."
The mind is still. They leave.
When the boy's hands are tied, he obediently has his arms held behind him. He sits into the open trunk and offers out his ankles, Armand diligently tying them too. Out here, in a pre-dawn haze, there are some more details to pick up. A kind of sharpness to Armand, a tense way of holding his face.
His makes eye contact with the kid, and seems to want to say something else. Maybe it's deliberate, showing off this glimmer of vulnerability, uncertainty, the desire nested in hesitation. Maybe Armand is only so good at curating a person's mind.
Instead, "I sometimes enjoyed our conversation," before the rest is submerged in deep blackness, which resolves into the humid interior of a car's trunk and the taste of saliva-soaked denim.
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The boy shivers and shifts in his bonds, still pliant from Armand's mindwhammy even if a part of him is very, very afraid, layered drugs making him dizzy and euphoric. His heart beats erratically; if Daniel drinks from him, he'll get that transferred high, and the young man will die in a hurry. A heart attack from shock before the blood loss has a chance to do it. Daniel wants to.
He sits. On a bench away from the car, looking out at a view that wouldn't be visible to him a year ago. Now, he sees it all in a hundred shades of dark— Picasso, but real, midnight violets and deep sea blues, velvets, coals. Stars like salt spilled over a shiny black table. He smokes a cigarette, then another one, and he thinks.
Armand protected Louis' happiness even when he was unable or unwilling. Armand maintained Louis' passions, to the point of going beyond his awareness of their dealings. Armand cleaned up after over one hundred boys, until Louis snapped and Armand snapped harder. Armand can't give an answer about what he likes, but Daniel knows what he hates. And he hates this. The first was an appeal to Daniel's ego, flattering him by silencing a critic. This is appealing to his vices, even though he knows damn wall that Armand cannot fucking stand it. Why, then? What does Armand like, what does Armand want, enough that he'd do this despite his revulsion?
Fucking puzzle box. Like the one out of Hellraiser. Daniel's going to get sent to the suffering dimension again before he makes any headway. Especially if Armand takes this as a rejection.
But his decision is made. He pulls the kid out of the trunk, finds his wallet. Unties him, settles him in the back seat, and begins the seven hour drive to bring him home. Three hours in, he stops at a drive-thru and gets the poor guy a Diet Coke and a bottle of water. When they finally make it back to an apartment complex on the edge of a community college town, Daniel helps him up the stairs to his door. Tells him that things went weird, that his son's roommate picked him up, but they were both too high and too drunk. As far as I know nothing happened, he says, as the kid tries about ten times to get his keys to work before finally succeeding. You guys just got super fucked up, and I don't have the right homeowner's insurance for that. Take care of yourself, alright? It's all fun and games until somebody doesn't actually drive you home.
It doesn't take psychic powers to muddle his memory. He'll barely remember anything, just somebody's weird grandfather driving him home and making him hydrate.
The shittiest Motel 6 in the world is good enough for Daniel. It smells, but it has blackout curtains. He folds up the torn-out book page and sticks it in his wallet, next to an old corny photo of his youngest daughter she made at a photo booth kiosk in a mall, and then he drags all the bedding into the bathroom. Blackout curtains or not, he feels strange and restless and the room is too big— he bites his own wrist, he turns the lights off, he lays on his side on cold, awful tile, and really, really wants to have eaten that kid.
There will be a way to send a letter to Armand. He knows it. He's got lawyers and real estate agents. And Daniel is an excellent investigator.
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A missed step, a stumble in the dark. What must Daniel think of him, to inspire this rejection? What is its meaning? Contemplating this is like contemplating wallpaper, its uniform nonsense patterns, or contemplating his hands, considering the whorls of patterns in his fingertips and the odder smoothness everywhere else, or a sky shrouded in cloud. No answers there.
There are other gifts he could give. More rivals, more naysayers. His agent, his publicist. His ex wives, his own daughters. Provocation, condemnation. This is a punishment.
Unbidden, an old memory: I am not Lestat. Responding to the prospect of annihilation with destruction. What Armand knows is that things destroy themselves on their own. Entropy. Daniel will hate him, in time. A hundred years. Maybe less.
(He still has business ties in San Francisco and New York, a couple of different firms holding his portfolios, a part of the neat surgery of financial interests from Louis'. He had decided that these ones can belong to him, and so these are his forged identities and contacts attached to old buildings and bank accounts, not so difficult to uncover when one knows what to dig for, even without Louis' confirmation or knowledge.)
A news headline, a couple of days later, barely a blip in the scheme of things and otherwise entirely missable if not for proximity: the mysterious death of a motel clerk, found sitting at her desk like a blue-tinge doll, and close to entirely exsanguinated.
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The letter he leaves is short. He's careful about his handwriting, which has been accused of being barely-legible; he wants to be clear, while he's being deliberately obscure for the sake of just-in-case privacy.
There's no way it reaches Armand before the motel clerk meets her end. But who knows how long it will take after. Daniel hears about it, though certainly not as quickly as Armand hears about things— his sources, or his ability to sift precise information from the global spiderweb of minds, Daniel can't yet fathom. He gets emails from one of his researchers (they stuck with him when his editors bailed, but of course they did, he can pay even better now) about it, having sifted through deranged fanmail to find mentions of it. Just a few days ago. Vampire conspiracies abound already.
Well. It's a fucking motel. Can't hurt, right?
Incorrect.
If Armand is there, he has no idea, because the FBI is there. And a heavy-browed agent with shiny shoes and a band of pale skin that betrays a recent divorce is quicker than Daniel expects. They are so, so curious why a writer in a famous, public spiral into insanity over vampires is here lurking around the vampire murder scene in Connecticut. At least he can be almost honest, as he chats with two agents in a shitty diner near the motel, and has his assistant arrange for them to view the emails he received about the murder. He tells them he became worried it was related to people being 'incorrectly excited' about his book, given the volume of mail he receives.
Just an old man having a financially profitable breakdown, and feeling a little bad about some aspects. He is going to kill Armand, he decides. Not for all the murders. For this interaction. Oh my fucking god. He wants to extricate himself and tell them to talk to his lawyer, but he also really, really, really does not want to end up trailed by the fucking Feds.
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Arrogance, Louis had cuttingly suggested. Love, Armand's riposte. It is these things, and more. The mind is complex, fragile, prone to collapsing in on itself when the wrong kind of pressure is applied. It is as good at protecting itself as it is easy to manipulate, and certain minds can close like steel traps over those manipulations unless you know what you're doing.
And Armand does, typically. Like here, tonight, the FBI agents sitting across from Daniel Molloy and asking uncomfortable questions. They aren't night guards or drug addicts or the usual fare of inconsequential people that Armand may snap his fingers and make think or forget this or that, but highly attentive, focused, dangerous.
So he is subtle. Slowly, the questions being asked become shorter. The answers provided from Daniel sink in more readily. They are more certain they're dealing with an uninvolved fanatic, looking for another piece of meat to feed the celebrity. They become sure they are wasting their time. They think it in clear unison, in a silent glance to each other.
One would hope Armand couldn't do this from a long distance away.
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to him.
Daniel doesn't notice right away. Why would he? He lacks the experience in telepathic finesse, for one, but the biggest reason is he has no reason to expect it. A slow realization, born entirely of his own mundane ability to observe people so closely; the moment is paralyzing. For a blink, for an absent heartbeat.
Armand is terrifying. He frightens Daniel. Now, in Dubai, in San Fransisco. It's a personal failing that fear does nothing to caution him— despite the ice sliding up his spine, he finds himself utterly captivated. An urge like the desire to get high or drink blood grips him, and he wants so badly to push into one of the agent's minds just to see how it's being done.
He doesn't. It's too delicate of a thing to risk fumbling. Daniel plays along, in perfect pace. At last they get up, he gets up, they all shake hands. Thanks, we'll call you if we think of anything, you have my number and my assistant's number. He opts to stay in the diner after to collect his things, gather his thoughts, and hold a warm cup of coffee in his hands. He can't drink it, but the heat feels nice. From here, he has a view of the parking lot, and the unremarkable four door sedan with its government exempt plates.
(Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.)
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Hilariously ordinary, given the strange back and forth they've been doing. A chase, an exchange of letters, veiled threats, veiled assistance, all things up for interpretation. Dead bodies, kidnapped zoomers. The man who crosses the parking lot at a casual clip interacts with his environment in a profoundly ordinary way, plain black clothing reflecting grey off the streetlamps, the scuff of his shoes on the concrete.
But also not. Also always that little bit like he is from another world altogether. But the door to the diner swings open, and he is polite to the server who greets him—probably, because she doesn't space out and he is otherwise permitted to enter.
On the broad spectrum that Daniel has been able to observe in Armand's appearance, to 'perfectly composed' to 'a curl or two is out of place due to a recent temper tantrum', he appears somewhere in the middle. His brandlessly bland and expensive wardrobe is not freshly pressed, but even an investigative eye would have some difficulty attempting to deduce where he has been, where he has come from.
Nails set on the table edge. "May I?"
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"Always happy to entertain further questions," he says amiably, despite the ice that hasn't shaken free of his spine, his nerves. Daniel feels the pulse-free version of adrenaline again, hyper aware and alert, without any of the skittish uncertainty. Of course these undead creatures (we) are such good hunters. Armand becomes singular in his attention.
And he can, just as he could in that room, on the fucking floor, feel him.
"Hey."
Hi, hello, it hasn't been one hundred years, want a hand warmer? (Coffee. Or tea. Whatever.)
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Or maybe it's just the lights.
Armand can feel him too. The chill that comes with fear, but no sense that Daniel is about to bolt. Noting this, the rush of breath out of Armand has that suggestion of mirth. It's funny because it was the same when he was human. In the more recent past, anyway.
"Shall I start with, what are you doing here?" is two questions for the price of one, mildly put.
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"It's a normal activity on the east coast," he says, in the same deadpan tone of voice that Armand is familiar with, the one that says I cannot believe you expect me to play along with your bullshit performance, "this whole driving around New England thing. It's nice out. Leaves, and whatever."
A coffee. Dweeb.
I sometimes enjoyed our conversation. Prick.
Daniel lets the bond sit in his awareness like a curious jewel; he holds it in his hands, turning it over, feeling the different facets and temperatures of it. He doesn't think it's like one of those fucking sensors in the Alien movies, beeping faster and louder the closer Armand is, but something about it is easier to conceptualize when he's got Armand right here in front of him. It's not a thing he might be imagining.
"How about: what do you actually want to start with?"
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Unbreaking focus, and the sense of more close up study. The government men had been encouraged not to make much out of the sight of diamond-sharp fingernails or bright eyes. No one knew of Daniel's prior condition, but Armand can note the absence of shake in his hands, and a certain amount of bodily relaxation. Different from weariness, resignation.
Daniel looks strong, to his eye. It's new. Considers the question. Is it good journalism, to cut to the chase? He had spent a lot of time, watching Daniel work, but he wasn't always conscience of all of it.
Evidently.
What does he actually want to start with? The corner of his mouth lifting. Fine, we'll try again.
"How are you?"
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"Uh-huh."
Daniel doesn't think Armand wants to know how he is. He thinks Armand is watching him like he's an unidentified eruciform, and he's waiting to see if he turns into a moth, a sawfly, or if he just shrivels up and dies. Maybe he's even got a magnifying glass, which with both to observe, and to burn.
And yet, if that's the case, he can't entirely explain why Armand would be doing things like leaving him such specific people to eat. He has no good reason for why he's responded to it, either. Other than the usual, anyway: I have to fucking know.
"I'm great." It sounds funny, and so Daniel lets himself smile. A lopsided, half-exasperated thing. "I'm not sick, I'm not in pain, and I have millions of dollars. It rules."
A secret Lestat quote. Armand will never know.
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He turns the cup around in his hands. Despite a characteristic stillness, Armand had always fidgeted a little during conversation. Louis had been, in some ways, even more contained, more controlled, while Armand toyed with his own glass chalice of warmed up bagged blood that he never actually drank from.
Focus unwavering, though. No fidgeting there. He doesn't ask if Daniel has taken to the killing, not when it's been obvious: he's been doing just fine in that department.
"You returned my gift," has some character to it, eyebrows raising.
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"I wasn't sure that's what it was."
It'd be easy to be angry at Armand, here. And Daniel is. Angry. For San Fransisco, for Paris, for fucking with Louis for so long. Louis wasn't an innocent, in that arrangement - staying with Armand to spite Lestat, staying with Armand to force him into eternal labor to make up for Claudia's death, of course it was all wrong - but Daniel is strongly biased towards him.
He could make it about anger. He's got grievances. It'd make sense.
"I don't presume to think I understand you," he begins, watching Armand. The most terrifying predator on Earth. "But I'm pretty sure I see you. And my instinct is that you really don't like what you gave me."
Hopefully he doesn't have to spell it out, sitting here in relative public. What a thing for a waitress to overhear. Hey, so, now that I remember, I seem to recall you really not having any fun dealing with Louis' drug use by proxy. When did the resentment really get bad? After he fucked and drained fifty boys? A hundred? How many times did you clean up for him while he was out of his mind?
"So—"
A shrug.
"Why?"
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But it does seem to take a moment to sink in, this specific angle. Re-calibration, happening fast beneath the mostly-still surface, and he doesn't get much of a chance to do so when Daniel pivots to a question, and a one-worded one at that. Maybe Armand had been expecting something more along the lines of because you need to fuck off forever.
Which doesn't neatly align with Daniel having already accepted a gift before, with a gift in return, with a written letter delivered to his people inviting some sort of beginning, but it's been a disorienting time.
So. Why? An instinct to start with 'perhaps,' as though his own motives are a fun mystery they can solve together, just like old times. He bites it back.
"I wanted to give you something I didn't think you would seek for yourself," finally. "But that you would like. And I wanted to provoke you."
Both things can be true.
"Given your response, I don't know that I was successful on either front."
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But really, why—
Not an acceptable question. Bad interrogation technique.
"You kind of." How to phrase this. "Hit things in reverse. I would seek that out on my own, if I wanted. Whether I have or not already, even, is my own business. And I do like it. Just not like that, not risking putting us in a pattern of you cleaning up after it and hating me more than you already do. If you want to—"
Don't, some aghast instinct says in his head, Who cares if he gets mad, what the fuck are you going to do if he says YES?
"—try it sometime, it'd have to be even. Equal. Participation-wise, I mean. There are a multitude of things I'm only just learning about, and might benefit from a tutor over, but not that. I'm an expert in that, and anyway, it's recreational. You know. Fun."
Whatever. No comment on the success of provocation, because whether he likes the result or not, Armand did provoke something. Here they are. Hey, Armand, want to do drugs sometime? Please say no. (Or say yes? Help.)
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The boys, the drugs sparkling in their blood, whether Louis put them there himself or found them like that. Armand, chasing after him. Armand, keeping their lives in a semblance of order, trying to measure the leash before the creature on the end of it snaps back, breaks it entirely.
An offer. A real offer? He is calculating more of what Daniel might do or say if Armand says yes or no, more so than whether he wants to say yes or no.
"I didn't hunt for Louis," finally, after too long of a silence. He doesn't have to glance to ensure no humans are near, letting his voice go quieter, almost too quiet, if not for the way they could whisper across a crowded street and hear one another if they wished. "I never brought him anyone. I was there at the other side of it, yes, but not the beginning."
His gaze dips down, into the near-black contents of his coffee cup. Never together. Had it occurred to Louis, to ask him along? Had it occurred to Armand, to ask if he could? He doesn't remember.
The question is tabled, for now.
"You said in your letter to me about starting. Are you looking for tutorship?"
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But maybe a shitload of magic mushrooms would lighten him up.
He notes the way Armand seems to look at the offer and slide it to one side. Obvious about is awareness. Daniel watches too close, too intently, sees too many details. Is a journalist a predator? Armand seemed to think something like it. Claudia's kill list. How is it any different.
(How fucking stupid of him to have said that, by the way, back in Dubai while the tree was burning. I'd just be Claudia, boo hoo. Embarrassing. Daniel wishes he'd shut up, sometimes, but he never seems capable.)
"You got that." Good to know? Yes. Good to know. He thinks. Something itches to ask his opinion on the booklet, but he refrains. "... I'm not sure. Practically there's merit, but I'm used to being on my own, you know?"
Armand ditched him, anyway. Whatever game they're playing here is not about a maker's compassionate mentorship of a fledgling.
"How are you?"
Speaking of being on one's own. Daniel has been his own companion for a while now, lucky to have settled into peace with loneliness. But how long has it been, for Armand? Has he ever had a stretch of time without company? Owners (ugh), the coven, Louis?
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No plans (at all) to cultivate it further, but then, here they are.
I see you. Is that true?
"I'm sure you can imagine," he says, chin lifting. "Free of my obligations, wandering the world, finding myself. What a wonderful gift you've bestowed upon me, Mr. Molloy, that my partner of seventy-seven years despises me, and the airless few seconds granted me for my response to your dramatic revelations. What a rush that must have been for you."
Anger? Maybe. His voice is hard, edged. His focus, intent. But there is something to it that better resembles parries and ripostes in a penthouse in Dubai than the levels of potential fallout that had permeated a claustrophobic apartment in San Francisco.
"Why don't you tell me how I am instead? Or is the going rate still in the millions."
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He is aware that it will sound scathing. Even in a muted voice, he is still grating and loudly unkind. The earnest charm of he and Louis at that gay bar, I want to interview you, the tether of it that continued to stitch them together over the years as Louis read his work and looked for evidence of himself. Louis was interesting. Daniel was, in return, interesting. While Armand picked lint off the sofa, alone.
But liars deserve to get their bruises poked at. Daniel has not accepted his apology for any of it, even though he's great, even though this rules. Armand doesn't get to be thanked.
"What I meant," no time to stabilize after Daniel implies he's boring, even though Daniel doesn't actually think that, "is that we can't start this life, with a permanent fishing line strung between our consciousnesses, doing shit we know goes bad on purpose. There's so much out there that can go bad as a surprise. Why sabotage? And like I said. I'm pretty sure you hate that shit. Let's do something else. You like philosophy. You like creativity. What else do you like?"
If he says Louis, Daniel is going to kick him in the shin.
"Don't— don't interview question response that. We're just talking. Ignore that I'm bad at talking when it's not an interview."
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He has read Daniel's book. He has sat through Louis' interview, this thing that had begun so deliberate and constructed that if Daniel had wanted to, he could have and then what'd his way to his bestseller. He has entertained the idea of it, the outpouring, and remembers something like it, standing in a museum, speaking to the wall.
It doesn't appeal, but the strike hits true anyway, finds a tender bruise. Contemplates the phrasing that implies a life is being started. His life feels over, had felt over. But here he is. Here Daniel is.
"I don't really know," he says, in a kind of hard tone, like, isn't that what Daniel is getting at? He doesn't say Louis, and he doesn't say, again, our conversations, because the former is too strange and large to fit into 'like', and the latter—
Well, Daniel might ask why. On the topic of unhealthy patterns of behaviour, he probably shouldn't tell him that the pain is pleasing. That the scalpel-edge of his attention, his ability to cut to the heart of a person, is intriguing. (Let's not bring out the f-word again.)
"I don't know that I hate that shit either. I hated rescuing him from it. Are you intending on becoming out of your mind and a danger to yourself any time soon?"
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Good intel, that Armand doesn't know if he hates being blasted out of his mind on cocaine. Interesting that he says so, instead of asserting something uppity like, I don't need to know to hate it. Offering just a hint of something that looks like curiosity about new experiences. Daniel underlines it in his mental notes, even though this is not an interview.
"It's fun. It feels good. I haven't felt good in so long, and now I don't have to worry about having a stroke or a heart attack doing it, so why not?" He shrugs. "I'm not a sad junkie."
A hard stop to that statement.
As you'll recall. High as a kite, traumatized, and hypnotized, Daniel wanted to live. He had no profound reasoning to try and sway Armand with. But he had still wanted to walk out of that place intact and breathing, whether or not he deserved it. He resisted until his mortal mind simply couldn't. But he never asked for it, not even down to the wire. Louis ran into the sun, and Daniel, sitting at that shitty card table, said he had a thing in the city tomorrow. He didn't. His plans - pre-shit going sideways - were Star Trek reruns, and a hangover burrito from the diner down the street, and maybe jerking off thinking about Louis then convincing himself it wasn't gay.
Worth living for.
"What'd you think of the poetry booklet? Not quite Sartre, I know."
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Armand, sitting back in his chair, attentive to the rest. Calculating. There is no effort at all to reach for memory, as they arise naturally—Louis, laughing hysterically, or Louis, strangely comatose, or Louis, beyond weeping. Louis, who perhaps wanted to die the whole time, chasing it down, and where does that urge end, and the compounding chemical alterations of heavy drug use begin?
Something to consider. He doesn't know, truly. Vampire physiology is as varied as there are vampires. The look on Armand's face doesn't disbelieve. His hands spread from his cup, an agreement: indeed, why not? Neither of them could fathom any answers if they tried, surely.
And then, the poetry. Half a smile.
"I thought, why did he give me this?" This isn't an interview. He doesn't have to be impressive. (He always has to be impressive.) "I thought it was," and a pause, considering, scraping around for what he did, in fact, think of it, "youthful. Familiar. There is no long history of middle-class youths with a university degree and the adequate literacy to express themselves, but if there were, you might read something like it two hundred years ago. In spirit, if not form."
He turns the cup around in his hands again. "And I enjoyed the one about the tiger on the bus."
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"Tiger tiger burning bright, how many metaphors can we fit into this bus before the driver gets eaten."
A writer, but not a poet himself. Some of his turns if phrases can be artful, and very insightful, but Daniel Molloy prefers throwing bricks to make a point over seduction. Still he can't help but smile, thinking about Armand enjoying that particular piece. Armand, stuck with his own decisions, contending with them. Armand, a predatory animal who eats people.
"I liked the kid who was glad their dad died."
It was a funny one. Brutal, but funny. And a little more conversational, so of course it spoke (haha) to Daniel.
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He had put hard work into the theatre too, influencing its artform, dictating its aesthetic. In the beginning, the half-improvised horror-comedies, powered by the force of vampiric charm, of the audience's familiarity with the form, everything a little different every night. Times change, of course. Taste changes. Technologies emerge. New vampires, brought into the coven, with new talents.
The plays were weird, Louis had said. The plays were an autopsy of a play. A diagram. The layers of reference made clear through rigid scripting, the projections dictating exactly how each performer had to move so as not to throw them off-sync, the light of the film like a glamour, the modernity and artifice pulling audiences into the joke of a human playing a vampire playing an actor playing a character. The ones who kept returning, delighted at trying to find the truth behind the lies.
He had liked that.
But he has a question, first giving a 'hm' of amusement for the choice, yes, very good, and then asking, "Do you know that you're dead yet?"
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How many bad husbands does it take to change a light bulb.
"That's almost nuts enough to be a me-style question," he says. "Could really throw somebody off balance. But given context, maybe not so nuts."
His mouth just goes. Talks. An annoying thing for someone who is also an artful listener; most have the decency to be men of few words. But Daniel falls quiet to actually contemplate it for real, taking it on good faith (or taking it hostage) that Armand means it as a philosophical question and not a morbid one meant to dump cold water over their meeting.
"I don't know." Layers to not knowing. Unsure if he is or isn't, but sure that it's different. "I was entering negotiations with myself, before. Getting ready. 'You're going to die, you have to start making preparations.' I hadn't gotten to the preparations yet, but I had a list of things I would have to look into by the end of the year. My will, insurance policies, right-to-die laws. The shape of death wasn't formed in my head, but there were sketches of it. None of it looked like this, or you."
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Philosophical is a safe bet. A cold bucket of water is, perhaps, more in the eye of the beholder. Daniel could let it be a bummer, if he really wanted. Armand could press the point.
Armand had shifted his posture by subtle degrees. Less stiff through the leg and spine as though he were in an interview (as in, like for a job, not whatever they were all doing in Dubai at any given time), more comfortable in all the subtle ways. Daniel can interpret that however, but what it is is that he has not had cause or motivation to exist in these spaces very much over the past several months. Vampires of a certain age and detachment have a way of moving. Existing.
Sometimes, it takes a minute. And, to elaborate, "Unless you intend to reveal your immortal nature to your next of kin in the next decade or so. Or the world at large."
Alternatively: Daniel could not care. But he's a public figure. He's buying a house. Mortal connections persist.
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"If you've got any good hookups for repurposing identities, I'm very happy to take business recommendations," he says, and means it. Something he's spoken to Louis about, just a little, but he's been busy with too much else to worry about it. Maniel Dolloy, rejected, Elvis Presley, rejected. He'll think of something. "Writing is one thing. I'll let somebody else fall on the paperwork grenade for being the first publicly out vampire who wants to sue Social Security for retirement money."
It does not really occur to him to think of his ex-wives or his daughters. They were collectively, and individually, uninterested in engaging with his illness; the youngest girl offered to make plans to come stay with him 'in a year or two, or three?' in a voice that sounded like she had a gun to her own head. We'll see, kiddo, and they both knew he was never going to let her, and she was a little sad, but mostly relieved. He gets to 'leave' everyone a shitload of money, and it will be the happiest he's ever made them.
"I like New York, I like the idea of having a house in New York. I really like the idea of having a house in New York ready to go in a hundred years whenever I feel like coming back."
Temporary, his plans. He doesn't have the grace of another forty years of plausible deniability— he'll have to move around more often than the others, and keep an even lower profile. Indulging in what he can now feels a little bit desperate, and he recognizes that, even while he focuses on it being a celebration of a huge change.
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Which doesn't mean he will. Daniel's induction into the vampiric world has been something of a free fall, regardless of what faith or thought Armand might have put into that decision, if it even was one. Just a recording, a note taken. He doesn't interrupt, remembers to blink.
"Something to look forward to."
But,
"Setting aside the logistics for the moment. There is a different sort of realisation that, I believe, awaits us. You've been made privy to the detailed account of a relatively unconventional vampire. His ties to his human life and his continued unwillingness to embrace his own nature have, in a sense, spared him of this."
Armand has yet to get the memo about the self-actualisation, it seems. No one owns the night.
"A different sort of suffering. His, the more uncommon kind."
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Is it ease? Difficult to tell, with him. Daniel can get under his skin, he's proven that, he can find cracks to peer into. If this was completely good faith he'd stop and simply be here, simply listen and talk and not try and x-ray him. But sometimes as he's nodding off he thinks of a voice telling him to rest, and so.
Philosophical. Being kept on topic. Fair enough, after Daniel went through all that trouble to steer him away from the sacrifice of a drug-addled twenty-something cranked on E.
"Is it a realization that I need to realize on my own time, or one that you want to enlighten me of early?"
He's not in a huge hurry to embrace suffering.
"Actually—"
Hm.
"Pretend you're me. What would I be doing, if you were?"
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The book itself leaves that one as something of an open ended question. No need to spell it out to the readers.
In good faith, Daniel can interpret the flutter in Armand's expression as interest in the question, the way his eyes dart down to the surface of the table. Giving it thought, in good faith.
"Finding the bearable thing," finally. "Doing it, now, while your humanity clings to you. Before the bodies stack up, and the world becomes disfigured with time."
A tik of his nail against the cup.
"Preservation. Cultivation. Will you throw yourself on the fire in a century, or will you live to see the new millennium? What do you take with you, in either scenario? Perhaps," he cedes, "it's a lot to ask. But it's worthy of consideration."
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Maybe Daniel doesn't quite grasp this answer because he hasn't realized yet, but he contemplates it anyway. Takes notes (he can't help himself) about Armand, if not the concept of being a vampire. Being dead. Being, as perhaps his maker still believes, under the authority of the Devil.
"What is a bearable thing, for you?"
It doesn't sound like an interview question. Too quiet. They can't read each other's minds, and it's—
Better.
No second-guessing. Daniel isn't paranoid about what Armand might be sifting from him. He wonders if there's a relief of anxiety on Armand's side, free of needing to monitor.
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Past tense, and it's the kind of past tense that isn't laced with the bitterness of having a thing taken away from him. More like a change in paradigm.
"Perhaps 'bearable' shouldn't be an aspiration for vampire companionship," has some low-grade humour to it. "Or perhaps it never was that to begin with, and it was the story I'd told myself and told him. You find the person you can tolerate and that's enough. You find the methods of that tolerance, and it's enough."
It always comes back to a person, doesn't it? Or so some vampires would have you believe. The quest for the eternal companion. But—
"I've always had a fondness for innovation," is less dicey territory. "Even in the advent of economic collapse, plague, warfare, there will always be that."
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And yet. He finds himself curious about the psychology behind Armand's ability to frame things, sitting directly across the table from someone he once spent a week torture, as wistful look back. Jesus fucking Christ.
"Keeping up with the times. And seeing how our first, parent species is holding together the world we live on. Maybe getting some cool stuff out of it."
Semi-relatable. Daniel no longer lugs around a typewriter. Why weasel away from the topic, though? We're here. We're looking forward. We're in a shitty diner and there are only so many hours left to work with before Daniel has to go back to his extremely medium hotel and draw the curtains as densely as he can.
"I told my second wife 'of course I can stand you' in an argument, once. In the moment, I thought I was making a great point. It seemed kinder than what she was accusing me of. I'm not sure I'd classify that setup as 'bearable', in retrospect. We had this awful therapist who kept making us do team building hypotheticals, where our mission was to stay together to set a standard of family mettle, and we had to strategize like a spy team. It was excruciating. That therapist is the closest I came to murder in my life life. ... Bearable? I dunno. I think I'll just have to keep writing."
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not so much like watching a bug under a jar, really, even if that's just a little how his face behaves. Receptive, and a softer amusement for the portrait being sketched: the failing marriage, the struggle, the well-intentioned and possibly overpaid therapist. 'Amusement' is probably a little off, sure, but what's some reminiscing on the nightmare that is the human condition, constantly under pressure by the ravages of time to find happiness, between immortals?
And he can see, he can feel, the way he understands it. He finds himself desperately uncurious about how Louis thinks of their time together, in this new light. Armand can guess.
"In between waging war against vampire nests with the two lovers, I assume."
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Did Armand think they'd just carry on, after Daniel went home? Was he a togetherness worksheet? Louis, too, said they were going to offer it to him, at dinner. And Daniel still struggles to believe it. He might never.
Thoughts swirling around like coffee, which he agitates now and again with a turn of the mug.
"How do you know that's not what I'm writing about?" a quick riposte, reminiscent of a longer table in between them. "They aren't, anyway. 'Yet', probably, but nobody ran back into bed immediately. They're both extremely fucked up about everything, and I'm a cut-throat career guy exploiting their willingness to tread carefully around the weird old man baby to facilitate my own investigations and prolonged safety."
Is that the update Armand wanted? Daniel just looks at him.
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"Treading carefully does so sound like them," blisteringly dry. Skeptical. Not with each other, not with anyone around them, no matter how mild mannered Louis can pretend to behave.
And does he want to speak of Louis and Lestat as a unit, truly, regardless of his raising the topic? It's like a splinter beneath the skin, and made aggravating for Daniel's insistent proximity.
"Tell me of your investigations."
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And this is really honest. Too bad, for the first time, that Armand can't see into his head. But honestly, Daniel just isn't interested in it at all. Louis can make his own choices. It'll go well for him or it'll blow up in his face. Daniel will still be there for him, still be his friend, none of that shit matters.
Lestat is a zoo animal.
Daniel continues to look at him for a moment, but he's not studying him. Not silently reprimanding him. Just letting a moment sit there, giving Armand space, and a moment to inhabit it. Alright, alright. They can move on into less dicey territory after all.
"The vampires who've made their moves, so far, haven't been any of the voices we've heard talking shit on Fang Radio," look, if there is a name for the global psychic chat network, no one has told him, "but, they've been talking to each other privately. Mostly idiots just using phone texting, but this guy in South America had an encrypted phone with a Telegram account."
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The server from earlier does a quick scan to see if they'll be taking any coffee refills, and Armand, sensing the pull of her attention from somewhere behind him, times a shallow sip of his cup to dissuade her. See, they're still working on it. No need to flex godlike psychic power for no good reason when something simpler will do, and they're left alone.
"It's never been like this that I remember," he says. "The noise. Risking their own identities to establish themselves in the chorus. It reminds me of a coven and those within it clamouring for status, not simply a dozen disparate ones."
Of course, to tell of the Paris coven would have portrayed it as an orderly affair. Yes, mutiny, yes, upheaval, but those were two incidents in even more centuries. Armand would pride himself on the fact that it did run reasonably well under his control, but it was never as simple as Louis made it to be, or himself.
Lestat and Louis again, unrivaled arrogance in their own ways. See how it's done, Armand? It's so simple. Let me change it all for you. His fault for believing them.
"My sense is that your book has thrown certain visions into question. Proving the existence of the vampire before the vampire was ready for it. They'll want the skepticism to hold while they can get rid of you and Louis."
Of course, he was also interviewed. Spoke of some of the deeper histories than Louis had knowledge or care about, and it made its way in. He wouldn't be surprised if most of those performing offense were too young to even comprehend the implications of it, going after instead of sympathetic figure, the man who penned it.
Things to think about in the void.
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The vampires who've actually tried something aren't the vampires doing the most 'public' talking. What does that mean? Mostly that vampires are still people, for the most part, and people are prone to being 90% talking about it with 10% doing it, particularly when the it is tricky. But it could also mean that there are vampires out there who wouldn't mind a change.
And whether this is the first step to a steady overhaul of the world, or a prominent stumble before everything is shut down back to the way it was, who knows. But it's a change.
"We know my preference is to avoid finding myself rid of. What do you think about all of it? You weren't happy, on the micro level. Do you still hate it on a macro level?"
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Considering the honest answer. That he wouldn't mind seeing the vampires tear each other apart in their attempts to survive the millennium as a global unit. He has the bleak sense that he will survive it regardless—the growing army of fledglings reminds him more of infestation than invasion, and the blood has become dilute, weak, over the past century.
"My feelings are that the vampire is the anathema to order. We are, in all ways that matter, in opposition to all that matters to humanity. The coven, however flawed its foundations, its grasping superstitions, is a design to prevent us from over-making, over-feeding, over-stepping. Part of my duty as coven leader was cleaning up the weakest new ones within my territory, and sometimes beyond it. They were more common than the story we told you would have you imagine."
A splay of his hand. "Hatred, dissatisfaction. I find myself these days contemplating the reality that we shouldn't exist."
He still speaks calmly.
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too much. So he puts a stop to it, and only listens.
Dire.
The tiniest bubble of anxiety. Not out of fear of himself. What if Armand decides to end it all? Can he, without a vulnerability to the sun? Daniel realizes in a strange moment in which he witnesses this scene from outside of himself, that he does not want Armand to die. The immediate thought is that, of course he doesn't, the bond between them has been a point of stability to navigate this new life through. He cannot explain the contrary twinge of something that follows.
He could rules lawyer. Humans are a virus, plenty shouldn't exist. But life isn't actually about order, or they'd all still be single celled organisms.
"I'm not a hopeful optimist," he says eventually. "I'm just stubborn. I'm not sure where I stand yet on our existence."
Probably won't be that, though. I like my life. Daniel wants to stay. He would like it, for some fucking reason, if Armand stayed too.
"Do you feel like this most times, when there's not a bearable thing to distract you?"
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Has he made an error?
Actually, that's a deeply funny question to ponder, to feel as a reflex. Armand is aware he has made nothing but errors. Blunder after blunder. The idea that he is operating in a sustained mode of control is a fiction, a performance. As if he cannot see the odd repetition of it, of the coven invading the palazzo, of Lestat's effortless words in the catacombs and Lestat twirling on a stage, of Louis' lifting a camera to take, not his picture, but that of the empty space beside him, and Louis in the soft light of an empty gallery, and Louis in the rain on a bench, and of Daniel in their living room. And Daniel here, in front of him. Asking him what he feels, and how often.
The shame is immediate and overwhelming, eyes dropping to the table between them. He is the outcasted figure in Daniel's latest work and he has irrevocably and irresponsibly bound them together to a shared eternity, too weak to pull back the curtain and clean up his own mess. Half-blank, half-apocalyptic, and he lets his hands fall loose from the cup on either side of it.
"I didn't come to you to discuss how I feel," he says.
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But alright. Let's look at this. Armand has changed his mind, or he is not being honest with himself. Maybe a messy mix of those options— Hello, I am feeling slighted by your rejection of the club kid loaded on MDMA is pretty different than Here are my deep feelings about depression. Too close, too personal. And yet Armand isn't angry or defensive, in fact, his body language screams a need for comfort.
Daniel does not trust it. A cat exposing a soft belly for petting before goring the hand. He holds still anyway, once more giving his maker a moment to inhabit quiet, proverbial space.
"Would you like to anyway?"
As noted (back then), he is not a psychologist. As noted (a minute ago) he's not interviewing him. They're just... hanging out. Having some coffee, out here where the leaves and whatever are going on.
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But no. Armand knows better. Nothing that Daniel takes in vanishes. Nothing is destroyed in there, not in the drug-addled, concussed mind of an idiot twenty-something, or decades later, a sick old man who had become too lonely. Not even memory that one week in San Francisco after Armand's formidable talents permanently erased them had gone to waste, in the end. A crushing gravitational pull, yes, but transformation in place of annihilation.
A sharp a mind as any human, now a vampire. His fledgling. His.
Armand lifts his eyes again. They're just hanging out. "Yes," finally. "Without distraction, it seems like a logical conclusion to draw."
He's never known a vampire to innovate. To create, not really, nothing that lasts. Louis' failures at photography ceding to a mercenary approach to art flipping, Armand's continued dissatisfaction with his coven's engagement in the theatre, Lestat's pretentious ideas about clowning, and even Marius de Romanus' not-quite-beautiful enough paintings that never set their claws into history the way his contemporaries did.
And then they kill people to live, feeling nothing, and for what. Just because he alone can see it doesn't make it untrue. Him, holding his prey, murmuring to them the thing he believes so well. Horns honking, you don't move.
"I was angry when I turned you."
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"I picked up on that, yeah," is kind of funny, if you think Daniel Molloy's rainbow of dry tones are funny.
"You had a reason to be. I handed you an unpinned grenade and stared at you as it went off."
A ruinous action that, in turn, Daniel had a reason for. The reason mostly boiling down to fuck you, which, funnily enough, remains his impression of why Armand made him. Fuck you. Armand could only dismantle Daniel temporarily. Daniel could only checkmate him through subterfuge.
Good at being narrative foils.
"Are you still angry? In general, I mean. You can be angry at me forever, if you have to, it'd be reasonable."
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He should say, Yes, or, Sometimes, and not the freakish truth. But, you know. In for a penny.
"Not really." Maybe it's the depression, but that doesn't feel right. Whatever he feels towards Daniel, it isn't that specific kind of numbness. "Are you at me?"
For the turning, sure, but then: everything else. All he discovered. All Armand did.
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"Sort of."
Since we're being honest.
"San Fransisco happened a few months ago, for me. It's still shaking loose from my brain in little parts. Sometimes I have dreams about details, angles, words, and I don't know if it's a memory, or just regular dream bullshit playing tricks on me."
Daniel explains this calmly, which bucks against the idea of being angry, but lends itself to the ambiguity of sort of. Perhaps it's just that Daniel has grown out of being angry about things for any longer than the emotion serves a purpose.
"I'm processing it. I'm processing a few things. I'm not mad at this though." He gestures to... them, sitting here. "I'm alive. Pretty cool. You say we shouldn't exist but I'd like to get some mileage first. I wouldn't hate you being around, if you've got the patience to deal with processing."
Why. Why say this. Help.
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The anger is easy to recall, festooning the interview with barbed wire. Louis', a cold thing, and Daniel's, the occasional spark flying from the furnace. But they had an interview to continue, and neither of them banished him from the room. Armand, carrying too much story to be left on the curb. More than they knew, until they did.
Weird, but not surprising, given where Armand stands in kind. It feels a little like a very important and meticulous project has been taken from him, torn apart, and leaving him with nothing at all, slipping.
It's also not untrue that Louis was a stressful fucking project. Pity to waste the work.
"Around?"
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Where do they go from here.
Not back to nanny and addict, at least. Not that. Somewhere else.
He takes a breath—
"You know. Like this. Whatever you're comfortable with, whatever works for us. I know this is all fucked, but we can't actually get in trouble for culturally appropriating normalcy."
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After a century or two, one needs to have a measure of care. Maybe he is angry at Daniel and doesn't want to be. Maybe angry at Daniel looks ugly on them both. Maybe it's harder to feel entitled to it when Daniel is now sitting across from him with his unusual vampire eyes and a certain amount of strength and existing as the manifestation of anger already spent.
But Daniel has allowed this claim to slide, and says something that makes Armand kind-of laugh. He lifts the cup of near-undrunk coffee as if to indicate it, their appropriation of human culture, and sets it aside.
"Does normalcy encompass drinking drug-spiked humans?"
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The kind-of-laugh. He's seen it before; despite himself, he likes it, liked it even in Dubai. It's always gratifying to make someone laugh when it's clear they aren't used to it. He would look away sometimes, jaw tense, and Daniel would wonder if he was trying not to kill him, or trying not to laugh.
I sometimes enjoyed our conversation, through the boy Daniel sent back.
Eyebrows go up.
"If we say it does."
Thinking about it after all, Armand?
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Maybe Armand is just normal-intrigued, the kind of response he might feel the need to paper over, justify, and so on—but something else, too. Like holding your hand to a candle flame, nearer than before. No, he had hated it when Louis was out of his mind in that way. It had been undignified, sloppy, a little pathetic, if he's being honest.
But Louis had never asked him along, and if he had, he hadn't ever meant it.
"What else?"
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"I'll start thinking about menu, then."
Which is another kind of funny thing. What to pick. What can he source. What is the best showcase for the virtues of illegal drugs. He'd had an answer ready to go when asked about the best high he'd ever had— badly processed heroin, the kind that risks necrosis at injection sites, unfiltered, half-contaminated. It's been in his head for decades more firmly than being attacked by a vampire, and yet—
And yet.
Drinking Armand's blood was better.
An unidentifiable feeling slithers up his spine when he thinks it. He's been trying not to, he realizes. Putting it away, out of sight on a shelf, refusing to so much as look at it. Telling himself he'd have to wade through fuzzy, maddening memories anyway, disoriented and crazed as he was. Denial. The thought sits shining front and center, as though it's between them and their room temperature coffee cups.
"Mm. Your turn to pick."
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But let's not quibble. It's pleasing to have already surprised Daniel. And a valid response, to be uncertain as to his intentions. Even Armand doesn't know what he's doing.
"I like driving. And I've heard the leaves in this area are to be recommended."
Maybe a little recursive, picking up the things Daniel has already mentioned, but perhaps, some warming up is necessary. And there is a still a look in eye, a level of analysis, that feels removed from the conversation.
Some figure of himself standing at the back of his mind, taking notes.
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(Gossamer, silver, warm, elastic but unbreakable.)
Daniel smiles. Turnabout, etc. It's a charming little move, if not a revolutionary one. Though as noted, new territory. Who the fuck knows, it could be groundbreaking for Armand. And it is very normal to go see the leaves in New England, driving around scenic highways and toll roads just to behold the changing environment.
"Would you like to go look at the leaves, and whatever?"
The FBI has probably given up watching them by now.
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What had he imagined, coming here? Some sniping over the table, maybe. Scratching an itch in that way. Confirmation that Daniel wants more distance, which Armand may or may not have granted him. Not this, anyway. It's nice to feel surprise, to be surprising.
Let's observe some scenery.
"Perhaps there will be room for further revelation," he says, as he stands, "when we're not trapped in a room."
He does mean a penthouse in Dubai, but, you know.
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Though there have been revelations in every room they've been in together.
Armand likes driving, he says. Armand also probably likes pulling wings off of songbirds and slowly peeling tech bros like over-ripe mangoes (difficult, slippery, rewarding; the kind of fiddly thing detail-oriented Armand would excel at, in Daniel's mind). A few bucks for the coffee and outside, Daniel tosses his car keys at
his maker
without warning.
"US and UAE licenses are co-valid, but I'm sure you know that. Don't run us into a tree if it turns out you've been chauffeured since the invention of the automobile, please."
This is real stupid. He gets into the passenger seat (always weird, in your own car), hitches it back a little further since he had it cranked up to move a body in the back (don't ask). It smells like car cleaner and faint cigarette smoke (he always has the windows down if he has one in here), blood, his cologne. Daniel can afford a better car by now, but it's such a pain in the ass and this one's perfectly fine.
Is this where Armand finds a bridge to drive them off?
"The drive back from Vancouver was nice," he says, as the diner vanishes behind them. (Vancouver, where he murdered someone to please Armand.) "I hadn't done anything cross-country since the 80s."
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He does. No trees are harmed, as he directs them out of the parking lot, onto the road, into the late night. He only has vague notions of the area, a sense of geography and direction rather than specific routes, but Daniel can course correct as needed.
"Why not?" he asks. Doesn't go for the radio. Lets the window down a touch. But also, "They won't understand your keeping willing contact with me, you realise."
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"Busy," he says, of why not, because he is fully swerving away from that and into—
"Do you?"
He stares at Armand, while hitching one knee up with a foot pressed to the glove compartment so he can fix the tongue of his shoe.
"Yeah, any conversation with either of them is going to fucking suck, but it's way worse that we don't even know what we're doing."
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Slowly, Armand relaxes. Getting used to the space he is in, the feel of the vehicle he is driving. His life has been stranger than this, but, he will grant, not by much.
It doesn't matter, anyway. He made Daniel. What are they going to do, fire him?
"Pick another activity."
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"Reasoning with them is my problem."
And it is an active problem, because Daniel is a bad liar, and he hates putting things on timers. This will be a timer, a fucking bomb ticking down, and so he's going to tell Louis. Soon. If he doesn't at least have a conversation with him about the bond in his head and how it occasionally feels like he's being warped by it, he's reasonably (hah) confident he'll go insane.
There's a high chance Louis will be angry. Daniel should be angry. Armand has put them both through too much, put fucking everybody he's ever come into contact with through too much. What more can Daniel do about it, though, besides imploding his life? Probably not this, probably not hanging out with him.
But.
"Have you ever been bowling?"
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A glance, to check in on whether Daniel is shocked to hear this or not.
And yes, reasoning with them isn't Armand's problem at all. No need to tend to Louis' feelings, in constant need of pruning and encouragement, and no need to monitor the state of Lestat in the world like an imminent natural disaster, and no need to respect the absolutes they would levy at him if they could. It would be freeing if he didn't feel a little like he was falling down a flight of infinite stairs without a chance of grabbing the banister.
Well. There's Daniel, who potentially wishes to go bowling.
"I think we have the potential to reach for normalcy and find ourselves on the other side."
When does it just become deeply weird again?
"Do you believe there is a normal suited to vampires? I'm not sure make believing being human is the answer."
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Decisively: "Bowling." For his other activity. Bowling actually kind of sucks, like most things do (Daniel is fun) (this is why he likes drugs so much), but there's a pretty good chance that watching Armand bowl is going to be the funniest fucking thing he's ever seen.
"I don't yet have enough personal experience to draw from to answer that," he muses. "My hypothesis is that normal is extremely difficult for a culture that is born exclusively from humanity while being incompatible with it. It's an extreme shock. Like moving to a new country where you don't speak the language or understand anything about the social norms, plus you want to eat all your neighbors. It's going to feel weird to go bowling with them, even if you have a nice time."
The leaves (and whatever) look nice. In the dark, there's a dayglo quality about the foliage, in its yellows and tans. On an aimless path, just driving. Nice of Armand to have not found a bridge yet.
"But we still live here. This is still our planet, 'our', chatty bipedal freaks making weird art and bad politics and screwed up relationships, dead or alive. In that way, just being around is normal. Exploring and making mistakes and causing problems."
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He hasn't found a bridge that. In fact, Armand is obedient to speed limits, to traffic lights, to the invisible rules that govern the roads, even though it's quite late, even though he can acknowledge some buried urge to start going faster, to wreck the ugly car he is in, test the absolutes of Daniel's patience in him. One of those urges he feels in high abstract. He can cut loose in perfect moderation instead.
Otherwise, things tend to go to shit, and he does in fact wish to have a conversation with Daniel. The discourse veers philosophical, which is always nice. "The theatre used to have such debates," he says. "Our relationship to the art, to the things produced by humans, the things we produced. Not very often," granted. Perhaps Louis would have liked it more if they had.
"The usual consensus being that the thing we are is a mockery of the human, rather than a transcended version. It appealed to their sense of humour better, I think, to participate in limited fragments of human existence as a means to make fun of them for it. We'll go bowling," apparently, "and take pleasure in the performance of doing it."
There are probably some ordinary reasons why Louis liked him and Lestat yeeted himself off a cliff to get away from him, in retrospect.
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Armand scoffed at the concept of a vampire with hobbies, and yet Armand ran a theater company. If it hadn't been born as a reskin of a cult, if they'd done something besides produce work that mocked their own existence, what would that have looked like?
Normal?
Anyway, Daniel is just teasing him a little (dangerous, tempting), because Armand, to his eye, is fucking obsessed with trying to achieve normalcy. Tidy domesticity and perfectly oiled business machines with schedules, routines. He suspects that if he could look through that iPad, he'd find a few hours (too generous?) a week on a spreadsheet for mandatory fun. Scheduled sex with predetermined position notes. Weird euphemisms for hunting. The works.
"What's the difference between performing and trying something out for the hell of it?"
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Armand has his doubts that the bowling can be rescued, but perhaps it will make for a decent hunting ground.
Normalcy is, potentially, another word adjacent to boring, but then, much of the clockwork structure of his life had entered in after. They were making an inordinate amount of money and taking on grander responsibilities, and although Louis was not a wild animal in need of caging, there was less room for mistakes. And when he was considered boring, wasn't he not at his most forgiving?
Ah. Yes, maybe a little angry, still. Maybe less for the exposure in itself, the thing uncovered, but the way it was done. A grenade, as Daniel said, in his hand. Justifications, reason, context, an explosion of shrapnel.
"Figure drawing." There, he thought of one. "Now that your hands are steady again."
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He can put quite a bit together by now. A first memory, running from slavers in Dubai. Pulled from a brothel at fifteen. The kind of origin that destroys people and doesn't let them rebuild, even if they want to. Even if they try. Daniel thinks about it in context of the things Armand has done, and he thinks about people he's interviewed and lived alongside, who suffered similar horrors, who never tortured anyone or had their kids executed.
But is he being naive? Over two centuries of cult abuse and programming. Near two more of 'recovery', in a time before things like therapy even existed. Does the time make it worse? Is he right, does every decade bring them further from humanity and towards an unearthly creature hovering down from a suspended bookshelf, eyes glowing?
Figure drawing, because his hands are steady. A funny thing happens, multiple internal reactions. Eyebrows go up and Daniel swivels his gaze over, head tipped back on the rest.
"Everyone always wanted in on those in Berkley, just to see who'd show up under the modesty cloth."
Something about remembering his hands. Is it—
Just a dig, probably.
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Wishing he could start again, but unwilling to waste the paper.
And that's all. No looming presences at the periphery, no pain or pleasure, no sense of what was being drawn, just a surface at a hard tilt, and his hand, which was—small? The same size it is now? He's not even sure if he was a vampire or not. He feels he has always been a vampire.
"Some of them might have been artists, not just perverts. Stranger things have happened."
They turn a corner.
"You're hesitating over an earnest suggestion. Which suggests you're looking for parody after all."
Maybe there's a bridge nearby.
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Alright.
What can we learn from this.
Quiet, minimally expressed histrionics are not unheard of, and Daniel has encountered it before. Had he thought about it around more than just himself for a minute, he could have figured out that Armand might be putting some serious weight on art. All the creepy religious paintings and the way he spoke of the man who painted them, his maker.
At the same time: Armand does not get to learn that he can just shut down and throw himself out of proverbial window if there's a slight misstep. Daniel gives it a moment, somehow sensing the bridge without any telepathy between them.
"You said you were sick, before you were turned," he says eventually. Glancing at him through the mirror, in between observing the signs for the next rest stop. Maybe there's an awful gift shop. "Did you ever feel sick after? Did you recover the whole way?"
They can both do an exercise here, about thinking past themselves. Daniel worries sometimes, mostly when he's unlocking a door, or writing something down. He startles when he misses a keyhole, like maybe it happened for some deeper reason; he stares too long at his own handwriting, trying to decide if it looks more like it did before.
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All of these things are true and lean a great weight against the likelihood that Daniel wishes to talk to him of his feelings, and do normal activities. Managing him, perhaps. Having fun in private while he does so.
It feels a little like a neat domino waterfall, where the dominos are the size of skyscrapers. He probably won't crash the car, or drive it off a bridge, but there is an odd kind of despairing pull where Armand is not exactly sure of where they are going.
It is all as dramatic as that while also not at all. No particular outward change. Even a shift in paradigm doesn't inspire a great swell of feeling. He thinks. Maybe?
Anyway.
A glance.
Thoughtful silence. Reaching so far back. Here, on this stretch of road, the clouded over sky is rendered in textures of grey from the reflection of distant city light, and so the outlines of the leaves, which they can see in an unusual kind of vibrancy, make dark, craggy edges, as if they were driving through a ravine. Here, he's looking at the leaves and whatever.
"The hunger," eventually. "I would confuse it with the nausea I no longer had. And I was more afraid of that feeling than I was concerned about the morality, sometimes. I rarely enjoyed my food as a human. I don't recall having that feeling again, as time went on."
Of course, he doesn't eat very often now either, because he doesn't need to.
"You look to me like you've made a full recovery."
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Daniel holds his hand out between them, flat over the center console. It does not tremor.
Tempting to stare at it for an eternity. Does he move because the car moves? Or because he doesn't have control over it? But after a long moment he drops it, because at some point he has to stop watching. Or he will stare at it for an eternity. A recovery is never full until it never comes back, and finality is gone from him now.
Armand was more afraid of the sickness coming back than he was about being a monster. Something about that is powerfully comforting, even though it roils in him, too. Could be that this is too soon to try to make peace, even secretly.
Too late now, they're in the fucking car. There are bodies between them like—
Whatever they were doing.
"Hey."
He points at the turnoff. Let's go look at the stupid leaves.
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He remembers Daniel's heightened distress as Louis twisted a knife. He had been moved to grip the hilt and ease the strain, and collecting the necessary information to do so.
No ability to do so now.
"Our power, by its nature, only strengthens over time. Comprehensible, I think, but I can imagine it will take longer to trust it, the longer you've lived."
He was in his twenties, somewhere, when he was turned. His experience with age, health, development is not applicable to most. But he says a thing that sounds true to him, observable in others.
He looks back out at the road, and ponders whether he is really experiencing a change in paradigm or if his feelings are hurt. Daniel points out the turnoff, and Armand obeys.
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Why did you make me?
He can't get the question out. He's tried to talk himself into it. Been trying for some time now, awkwardly gathering up courage like a passive system running in the background. It fails to manifest now, as the car is parked in a dirt 'lot' in front of a small farm store. No Gas Here, reads a sign propped on the patio. 20 Miles South.
The cloudy night sky is like a silver blanket that bright colors of foliage decorate; the gentle illumination of the older-than-Daniel store is like a beacon, pouring light out over this corner of woods. Footpaths between dormant apple trees suggest frequent stops from roadtrippers who check in for kitsch and fresh eggs and the ability to wander and pick some fruit, should the season permit. Maples tower over those, some already red, bright like fireworks.
Sleeping birds. A distant raccoon. Cricket nightsongs.
"Figure drawing."
It fucking scares him. And yet: agreed.
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But the absence is not unpleasant. The anxiety of the world replaced with rustling leaves, chittering nocturnal things, and—a bit of a trick, to hone in on it—the subtle and constant deep bass hum of the atmosphere itself. Armand lifts his chin as he absorbs the auditory information of the environment they're in.
Perhaps he ought to have said hiking. Night time hiking. No fear of mistakes, from an overwound attunement to perfection or shaky hands or otherwise.
And then—loud, to overtuned ears, and therefore startling—Daniel says that, and Armand looks over at him. Vampire eyes in the dark, a subtle reflection of light, cattish. Despite his best efforts, he feels relief. Despite his best efforts, he longs to go to him. At least this second thing is actionable restraint, and Armand stays in place.
"Okay," he says.
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Difficult to feel anger over his initial assumption — that Armand did what he did to tether Louis, to make their agreement over his survival past that apartment in San Francisco eternal, a symbol of their relationship — when Armand is here and seems so lost at sea. He supposes there could still be time. A long con.
But Daniel likes figuring shit out. He's good at getting angles.
"Okay."
Confirmation. They have said it, thus it shall be so. And all that. Bracing himself. Not just for staring at his own hands but the undertaking of trying to meaningfully connect with someone who tortured him. Daniel looks at him, those blood-moon eyes shimmering with the barest bits of light picked up from the store far behind them. Horror movie features he's seen in his dreams for fifty years. The lenses he wore for his costume seem so unconvincing in retrospect. Armand looks more alive when he's a vampire.
More forest to wander through, for a little while at least. Daniel has cigarettes in his pocket but he doesn't pull them out, not wanting to disturb the area. Content to exist quietly in this world he can see and hear correctly now, before the turning of the Earth asks him to return to the car, and head back to a hotel, and darkness.
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Then, the intellectual fans. Those who like the book for what it is, a metatextual artifact that invites a state of suspended disbelief in a world of cynicism and science, a strange and perverse gothic romance told in the brisk and efficient, often comedic tone of an award winning journalist. Fans who gamely ignore the question of is this real, because if you have to ask, you're not ready for the answer.
Or something.
For them, the book is about homophobia during a specific period of time, processed through modern sensibility. It's about the AIDS crisis, which is obvious if you have read Molloy's work. It's about abuse, about forgiveness, about love. It's about the grief of time and parenthood. The vampire is a metaphor. The vampire is not a metaphor.
Younger fans, in it for the romance, who would like to know if Daniel ever met Lestat, if he still talks to Louis. Full conspiracy theorists and skeptics alike, sharing a row of cheap seating set up in the innercity bookshop.
And then, there's Armand.
Dressed a little like he imagines people should dress for a book signing, in a warm forest green cardigan, full sleeved and cosy, over simple greys, glasses with a very dim tint to take away from the brightness of his irises, and hair tidied into a bun like any modern young man might in this corner of the world. He sits with a leg crossed over the other, a copy of the book balanced on a knee.
The questions are good, lively. He hasn't decided if he intends to raise his hand or not, content to listen to the proceedings, the murmurs of thoughts from the audience, and occasionally impatiently glance towards the podcaster who is graciously hosting Daniel any time he acts particularly sycophantic and familiar.
The picture of innocence, otherwise. Interested and engaged.
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It was just that novelists did more of these than journalists. So he does them, and they're usually half full even in tiny little stores. Now it's a bit of a mess, but it's a fun and interesting mess.
Even when there's a wild animal sitting in the fifth row. Strange that no one else notices. Do wild animals make eye contact? Between two sets of tinted lenses, can either of them tell?
The host is cheery and a fan, a BookTok girl who has used Interview with the Vampire as a gateway drug to reading some of his other work and recommendations and who now feels like an intellectual powerhouse compared to her peers. Which, to be fair, she probably is. Molloy has caught some heat off more established review circuits for engaging with short form media this way, but he doesn't get it. Never has. What if Bradbury told him to go fuck himself? (Well, he did, but he was laughing about it and laughed harder when Daniel stood in line yet again. Angles.)
Questions roll in. He says he can't comment on if he still speaks to anyone mentioned in the book, regarding them as sources who he has a professional duty to protect. He says the best way to get into journalism is to be nosy and take debate classes and do karaoke at crowded bars. Lose your fear. He says he doesn't mind the mixed reaction to his recent book because it's a new experience.
Is the very innocent creature in his cozy sweater and tidy bun going to ask a question as they close out this section, or meander up to a queue?
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He certainly has questions.
Hasn't landed on exactly which one when he does raise his hand as the floor reopens, and several other people do. It is nothing at all to steer the attention of the young woman hosting the event to call upon him, already lowering his palm when she points him out.
"I was curious about the experience itself," he says, tone mild, not even too privately amused. "Interviewing vampires. Were you ever afraid for your life, Mr. Molloy?"
There is the predictable murmured chuckle in the room when someone tosses in a question that takes the premise seriously, but all focus honed forwards for the answer regardless.
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The creature that kept torturing me, that struggled with his desire to kill me versus save me, sat politely in the audience and asked if I ever felt like he might go through with it.
A little smile. What the fuck is wrong with you. (Oh, are we playing a game, again.)
"Yes." So there's that. Another ripple of laughter in the room, because of course, of course. "A vampire could kill me. Easily. So could a gunshot to the head or a bus hitting me, though."
More audience chuckles.
"I like my life." Echo. Still. He looks at Armand. He knows he is dead. He liked his life before, in the 70s. He did not like it very much six months ago, something he told 'Rashid'. Did you have a restful sleep. Funny. Horror, perhaps: he likes it again, now. "It's not that I don't care about risk or that I think I'm untouchable. I just acknowledge it and try to get on with the work anyway, and then it fades away, because I care about the work. The unsettling thing about the threat of death from a vampire versus the threat of death from a Boeing CEO or whatever," the host goes Oooooo at that around more audience reactivity, topical!! stop assassinating people, Boeing, "is how death doesn't mean the same thing to a vampire as it does to a CEO. If I look at a vampire, and I did, and I think 'This guy is going to kill me', do I even know what that means? What's the experience of death going to be like? Am I changed, in those final moments? How changed? If I die, permanently die, was I a different person for a few seconds? Is the vampire who killed me changed, through me?"
And what if he didn't die. What if the vampire let him go for fifty years. What if the same vampire came back, and killed him, and changed him.
"Art is immortal, and climate damage is immortal, microplastics, vampires. It's an intimidating concept to grapple with while trying to take notes on somebody's love life. So— yeah, I was afraid, in there. In that way."
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and he remembers that stubbornness, how much work it had taken to have Daniel fold into him. Armand remembers it as having finally succeeded, but he is no longer certain. His own gentle, relentless convincing, winnowing willpower right down to the edge of itself, and then in that final moment, had he simply reached in and forcibly pulled Daniel's heart out through his chest?
The taste of his blood. He hadn't been hungry for anything it offered save for some other ineffable thing, something he had been trying to discover all week. Maybe he could take it into himself, and be changed by it.
It's a good answer. The audience, drinking it in. Save for one, and Armand turns to look after the sound of a quiet scoff. The sound isn't for show, quiet, only drawing his own attention and that of the woman this audience attendee is with, who lists her shoulder into his to encourage him contain himself. A skeptic who is almost angry at the level of bullshit being spun.
He smells like laundromat soap and synthetic vanilla, and she, some kind of flowery hand cleanser. Armand's attention flicks back forward, offering a small smile that indicates he is content.
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How much have I changed you?
He notes the way the ancient vampire's attention shifts for a brief moment. Daniel considers reaching out, dipping into the mind of the attendee who pulled it, but doesn't. Let it be a surprise to ask about later. And let him wrap up this Q&A section without risking a superpowers fumble. The host follows through on his meditation on fear and death, asks him about how changed he feels in terms of his career, and his social circle. Levity and seriousness. She's not doing half bad. Another question from the room about the balance of research versus creativity, then a final one, about an older book, and his thoughts on how the oil industry has carried on without any meaningful change. It detours them a bit, and the host is more clumsy about cutting them off to wrap up, but Daniel is gracious about it. She spends a while with him during the transition, all bright smiles, taking photos and little videos for her TikTok, and Daniel indulges her.
Book signing. An employee sits behind the little folded out table with him, occasionally taking a photo for social media and making sure no one gets Extra Weird. A global pandemic lingers, and so it's not so strange that Daniel wears gloves for this bit, the way items are being passed back and forth. A young couple has wandered in behind the one that annoyed Armand, navigating around chairs being put away. 'I wonder what we missed', 'I think it's the vampire guy', 'Oh woah, sick—' Enthusiastic, they discuss grabbing a copy and hopping in line, drawing an annoyed look from Mr Scoff.
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A thoughtful audience, then, mostly. Some fans, some curious people who saw the sign at the door. Difficult not to compare it to the theatre. Armand made a habit of, occasionally, sitting amongst them back then as well, not just presiding from his balcony perch. It was good to regard the thing from the proper view.
His turn. He lays the book down in front of Daniel, pushing it forwards.
"I can't say I'm convinced," he says, ignoring the employee sitting alongside. "Given the innate romance of death by vampire compared to death by bus, or CEO. Compelled, perhaps."
A little forward, maybe, but surely, Daniel has experienced weirder fans.
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He looks up at him, finding him both ethereal and comedic in his disguise— which is still more convincing as a real person than his performance as Rashid; in retrospect his dark eyes were fake-looking, though he thinks Armand was less controlled. More willing to snipe and argue. Freedom when he wasn't being himself. Interesting.
"Innate romance?" Eyebrows up, as he slides the book towards himself. "Can the bus not also love?"
Shut up, Daniel. But there's a part of him that almost looks over his shoulder like Armand isn't speaking to him, surely. Innate romance.
"Compelled towards what?"
His hand, pen held, hovers over the blank page facing the dedication (to all the editors who dropped him over this one). Steady.
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Armand glances at the employee, who is attempting to summon some courage to find the right place to shuffle him along. Even in this current get up, unassuming jewel tones and cute hair and glasses that veil the intensity of his vampire eyes, it's difficult not to exude something, some sense of warning.
Or, perhaps, he doesn't care not to. "The vampire selects."
And, as for the blank page, he supplies, "Rakesh," easy. "And I don't know. The story, I suppose. It feels nearly true."
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"Which story?" Glance down, to write. Glance up, eye contact through lenses; he feels he can see straight through, to warm amber. "The book, or the answer about my mortal fear?"
Daniel gives space for him to answer, even though the employee is looking a bit puzzled. Writing a tad more than 'Thanks for your support'. It's fine, though, the couple behind the good-looking hipster with his hair up are chatting away with each other, clearly not in a hurry.
(Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad?
Pay attention to how things blend
Why talk about all the known and the unknown
See how the unknown merges into the known)
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A curious flick down. That's more writing than most people are getting. Armand's mouth twinges, a faint smile.
"Walking into a vampire's lair and cheating death is a little like bargaining with death itself. You talk of—well, not fearlessness, but your acceptance of your own fear, your own death. But perhaps there's the expectation you will talk your way out of it. Perhaps there's arrogance at play."
A little sharp, and the employee offers the kind of laugh meant to diffuse some idea of tension, maybe their own. You're not meant to accuse authors of arrogance when you get your book signed.
"I mean no disrespect," Armand is moved to say. "Only that it's fascinating."
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Daniel ticks his gaze up from where he's doing a proper thanks-blah-blah now, which would look normal if not for where he's crossed out the dedication and written a name that isn't Rakesh. Covered sunset meets— what? Well. His eyes look like nothing in particular, just outlines, but who knows what color they are.
"Oh, you don't know the half of it," he says. A final glance at his handiwork, then to the employee. "He's got a point, which makes me think he might know a journalist or two already. We're not sensitive enough for fiction, and we're too stubborn for acting. The thing that keeps a reporter from flinching is probably 60/40 ego versus nerves. On average."
Who knows what Daniel's split is. He closes the book, and looks back at Armand. Slides it over.
"Thanks for coming in."
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Armand takes the book, and moves off without a glance, without any further outward sign. His book has already been purchased, so he can drift through the remaining crowd, past the skeptic, and out into the evening street.
The couple he had identified emerge not long after. 'All done?' 'Yep. He's so funny.' 'He's a con artist.' 'Oh, who isn't.' They walk off, his arm around her shoulders, their conversation moving to dinner, to a bar he wants to try. The incredible amount of frivolity that mortals fill their tiny little lives with.
He drifts further down the street, doesn't pursue, lingering. Tracking two individuals in a city like New York's, barely knowing their minds, their scents, would make for an interesting challenge. Instead, he flips open the book to take note of all that writing he received.
As he does so, he says out loud, "I suppose you avoid draining those who attend your events," at a normal speaking voice. If Daniel chooses to, he can hear it. "Even if they're rude."
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The rest— fragments of a poem by Rumi, all of which are on the rambling, stream-of-consciousness side of lyrical. It's about transformation, it's about the point of it all, it's about pointlessness. In the end (that Daniel doesn't transcribe, it's a long poem and he doesn't have the whole thing committed to memory so preciasely), it turns sexual. But it's a Rumi poem. They all do.
—In my head?
A funny half-startle for the last person in line to get a book signed. It takes him a second to realize Armand is doing something and not speaking to him telepathically. Daniel gets through everything graciously, though there are bare minutes left. He doesn't know what his maker (!) has done, exactly, but he puzzles it out while he says thanks and shakes some hands and talks to his assistant about anything they need to pack up.
"Maybe."
Just a word. Trying it out. Vampire tricks, throwing voices, finding one person in a crowd from a distance, even if it's just the awareness of them and not their mind.
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"One of them thinks you're a fraud, and the other, a clown. They'll be out late tonight."
Not very long ago, perhaps Armand would have just seen to it himself. Drained the pair a little to weaken them but with more than enough blood left over to satiate a newly made vampire, bundled them up, left them under Daniel's bed with drifting memories of the strange being that abducted them so easily, perhaps an answering fragment of poetry. The impulse is there, even, to create some distance after his little pantomime in the bookstore.
An offer, anyway. Will Daniel kill a woman who bought his book, but doesn't believe in it? Her annoying boyfriend, with his crime of being annoying? Will Daniel wish to hunt with him?
Too many unanswered questions.
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He doesn't manage a response. Trick too tricky, without understanding what's being done, and he isn't actually sure Armand heard him. That could be a response, or just extra goading.
Will he wait, while Daniel finishes up here? Will he be there, when Daniel exits the bookshop and goes to look for him? One thinks he's a fraud, one thinks he's a clown. People are allowed to think that. He's devoured people who've done nothing to him, not even a slight, though he tries to take deliberate aim. The hunger is difficult when it peaks, and Daniel is as prone to forgetting to eat while lost in work as he is prone to over-indulging when he has time. Once (a shard of ice) he listened to a food addict discuss his struggle, saying bitterly that at least with drugs or gambling, you don't have to do some drugs and some gambling every single day. You have to eat. Daniel found it lacking.
Now. Hah.
It's exciting, despite everything, to look for Armand. He can't track his mind, and the bond isn't a tether like that. But he can— sense? Smell? Something. It's something, a feeling that's faint like a whisper that nearly touches him. A person that isn't a void, a person he can't connect with but is connected with.
A little wind-swept from the cold and from hurrying, Daniel appears. Eyes wide and curious. Hey.
"Could you hear me?"
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Maybe not every twinge of abnormal emotion needs analysis.
"Yes," says Armand, turning to him, book held at his side. "I've observed it before, between maker and fledgling. It's not reliable, or a secret means of communication, but," a gesture, half a shrug. Something like throwing one's voice, something like relying on that inexplicable bond to pick up the other's words in the wind, automatically honing incredible hearing in on a single note in the symphony.
Hey.
"If a naysayer of yours is found dead each appearance, that may lend some credence to your authorial honesty."
Just an idea. Vampires among us. He's kidding, by the way. It's hard to tell.
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He thinks it with the full force of his consciousness, and he makes himself confront that he feels that way. He has been hauntingly beautiful, unnervingly perfect, stunningly attractive in a way that seemed too ideal to even bother engaging with. And he is those things, but he's never thought 'cute' before. It doesn't especially suit him, because he's wearing a costume, but the performance ads to the charm. Reality tips slightly. (To the north?) Armand came to a book signing just to mess with him. His level is messing with him has been playful. With claws, but still playful.
Daniel sets this aside to inspect. Not sure about it. He thinks of eyes on him, always on him, of quiet deep breaths in and hands splayed on the table, restless. He also thinks: That's a cool trick.
"I'll have to practice to get the hang of it," he says. Interested in vampirism, in the things they (he!) can potentially do. His gaze wants to tick down to the book Armand is holding, with its personalized ramble, but he refrains.
"Could also bring the FBI back." Daniel smiles, though, a funny little curious thing, because he suspects humor. Out of Armand. "Why, are you hungry?"
Want to get, like.
A pizza.
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"Law enforcement can be a nuisance," he says. "And it doesn't seem like the kind of game you wish to play."
Daniel, still engaging with human society, still a person, still a public figure. Armand's tone doesn't imply disapproval so much as observation. It's hard to be a functional celebrity if the feds would like to investigate you for serial murder. Maybe the rude couple will live tonight.
Maybe not. "A little. And you've skipped some meals."
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"Dominoes."
One falls, then another, then a hundred. He's not in a hurry to be on law enforcement's radar, not in a hurry to end up entrenched in an increasingly high profile series of kills to get out of a jam. He rationalizes murder just fine, he doesn't need more layers. Besides—
"I want to write the book about the first open vampire to end up in court over biological imperatives," he says, "not star in the documentary. Let somebody else fall on that one."
This little bit of celebrity is fine. It gets him money and the occasional hookup and certain freedoms, which is a nice offset to tanking the credibility of his career (for now). He will pass on more, especially if it comes with restricting his freedoms. Like jail. Pass on jail. Meanwhile: he gives Armand a look.
"Are you keeping track?"
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To the tune of: maybe.
Daniel steers his attention off a glance to the book, but Armand lifts it, drawing focus. "You quoted Rumi," he says. "Who also once said, 'I have never become less from dying'."
Optimistic. Romantic. Religious, first and foremost, but these words exist beyond their context, a fragment of a poem penned quickly into the acknowledgments of a book about queer vampires and their violences.
Cute, also.
And he begins to walk, a pivot that invites Daniel to stay in step.
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Rumi had style. Maybe it was the mysticism— made all the religion tolerable.
Pause. Consider. Mm, what the hell. Daniel follows him. (As if he wouldn't? He tells himself it wasn't guaranteed. It can't be. Armand didn't know he'd follow, or else he wouldn't have to invite him, even wordlessly.)
The city is always packed, it's always busy. A couple of unconvinced, marginally rude attendees fade into obscurity while an ocean of minds and bodies open up, all awaiting assessment for their potential. Daniel is more familiar with video games than the average seventy year old, owing to a combination of nostalgic tolerance based on youthful enjoyment of arcade machines and time sunk in to topics around violence in media. He thinks of the way people decry anything with harm done opponents made out of pixels arranged to look like humans, other living things, the slaughter of which is seen as nothing more than a thing to do to receive experience points.
He also thinks about the movie Gerry when he thinks of video games, but that's like, whatever. A funny thing his brain does, because it's all ridiculous. The point is: converting living beings to an inanimate resource. Thinking nothing of it. Pixels. Mortals. Different from him. He thinks of Louis. Why is a fox less than a human. Why did he tap the woozy Slavic guy's neck like a heroin user lifting a vein, a dismissive and vulgar routine, but fix himself to Armand's throat like it was a lifeline?
"Pretend you're me." Oh, another one of these. "And pretend I want to pick off skeptics. Where do I put the line? What's the most minor offense that still ranks?"
Daniel does not sounds like he thinks this is a morally deep question. He sounds like he thinks it's darkly funny to joke about.
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But when he does consider the human being, there is something of a game to it. To allow their inner worlds to matter for the chance of a darkly funny debate.
"Suppose they're an infection to the conversation," he says. Gamely. "Not adamant in their convictions, not attempting to discredit you or criticise your work in some way that demonstrates thought and care. They're only interested in rendering inert any interesting question that could be raised, in belittling the curiousity of others. Entropic ignorance."
A steady stream of life around them. Thoughts, ordinary, repetitive, brushing against their minds. Nothing wrong in ordinary repetition. It's like watching a river. "You could imagine that their incurious nature as something that dulls all they touch, not just your book."
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Mixing his philosophies, but Armand is clever enough to pick up that he's doing it on purpose. Daniel is the kind of person to understand philosophy but not put much value on it— finding the engagement between differences and balances across all the spectrums and schools more interesting. Enough that he feels confident in his understanding to be imprecise in their use.
"A removal of rot. What's my motivation? Is it ego? Do I get to decide, because my judgment is unassailable about this sort of thing? Or is it selfless? Do I just like this world because I live here, and it's a community service?"
Poking at the edges of a theory. Arrogance.
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He had said he likes their conversations. He had meant: that bright, clarifying thing he feels, rubbed raw by the right questions, the shock of revelation. He had also meant: sharp words, testing each other, little moments throughout the interview where Louis, sitting at an angle from him or close to him or across the other side of the room had nearly become ornamental to a wider game while he unspooled his life story.
But isn't it nice, too, to talk philosophy, mixed philosophy, without a recording device nearby. They have more time to do the same thing they were doing before, a kind of mutual figuring out.
"Our way of life is currently only addressed by a set of laws upheld by covens of middling power to enforce them, and none of those laws specify how we go about our selections. There is no legislation dictated by human courts that allow it, is cognizant to it, but perhaps that will change, but let us remain in the present. Even human morality, whether expressed through ancient scripture or afternoon television programming for children cannot abide by a way of life in which the baseline to survival is murder."
Talk of eating only animals, imbibing only from the willing. Louis, a master of his impulses, clinging to these things as if he isn't awaiting the inevitable plummet. Armand won't be there to catch him.
"So." So. "Who can you prescribe your own judgment to, if not yourself?"
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That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
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Thinks of being a product. Of being raised, sectioned off, manifested. The pavement underfoot takes on a new kind of quality, like he is simply rolling the whole earth beneath him, pushed along by the press of the toe of his shoe, and he is staying in place.
A vicious and sudden thought: Daniel is laying a trap for him. Only rhetorical, maybe, but a trap nonetheless. But maybe he isn't. He can't read his mind. He can't know.
"Weeds are no more or less evil than the bed of flowers," Armand says, from somewhere slightly behind himself, walking several paces back, it feels like. "And you know them when you see them."
A retreat, from philosophy to metaphor. Embarrassing.
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"Hey, that's good enough for congress and pornography," he says, clueless of Armand's internal paranoia. Maybe the trap was letting Daniel Molloy talk at all.
"If I'm being honest—"
Wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't? If he could shut up for a minute.
"—I don't know where I stand on morality and judgement, concerning dinner. I trust myself, mostly. I've been calling a lot of quick shots, though, and not following up on whether or not they were the right ones. I can admit that's out of wilful ignorance. I don't want to feel bad about it. So." So. "The best way is to be mindful up front, probably."
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And Daniel Molloy talking in itself is no prison, even if Armand finds he has to tune back in a little. "Probably," Armand says. Internally guarded, still, more watchful of the possible curves and loops of the conversation ahead of then. Mindful up front. "I've seen many vampires fail to engage with the question at all, or give up after a decade or so."
He could speak a little of Louis, his mindfulness to the point of compulsion, and Armand has a lot of data, but he doesn't feel like it. Doesn't wish to evoke him now.
"I think there is no law pertaining the selecting because it will always vary. The bearable thing," treating himself to a callback. "The pleasurable thing. Do you find yourself hesitating, in the moment?"
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Maybe.
"Sometimes. It's been—" a movement with his hand, up and down, like a rollercoaster, or an unsteady sea. "The out of control desperation at first, and then overthinking how I'm going to get away with anything, after. There are a lot of needles to be threaded. Things to think about. Amazon not selling you blenders."
A callback of his own. Without realizing it, Daniel fails to evoke Louis. That exchange was only theirs.
"How high does 'the pleasurable thing' rank for you, when you choose?"
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But then, what else is a conversation. Isn't the best sort of interview a lot like one of those? Armand holds onto his answer for a moment, considering its value, considering where its going, what flaw Daniel might find in it, what criticism might be levied his way, whether he would find the kind of pleasure in it he has before or if it would serve to wall them off from one another. But also, who cares.
"The pleasure is derived from satisfaction," after a moment. "Removing certain kinds of people from the world, that being, the recklessly powerful who answer to none but themselves. Passively and actively harmful to the world's state of affairs. Removing them encourages a different global trajectory. Or so I like to imagine."
It will take longer than thirty odd years to prove itself. But he's patient when it comes to his projects.
"And," because he isn't a saint, getting ahead of it, "it brings me pleasure to watch them try to survive, and give up the effort. If they could run that little bit faster, draw more air into their lungs. If they were stronger, or more resilient, all the things they believe they are."
He had told Madeleine something like this: all humans think they're the exception.
"So, to answer your question: somewhat."
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Could be that he is circling back, ever so slowly, to feeling like an asshole for asking Armand if he even likes art. Or, no. Daniel won't feel like an asshole. Takes more than that. More like a recognition that it was a stupid question. Starting to sift through seeing to understanding. A grain of sad in a fucking desert, though.
"Subtle notes of sadism," he observes, but there's an upbeat, game tone to his voice that suggests they are leaving Philosophy Hour and entering Fuck Around Hour. Just a little poke. They're having fun. Did Armand have any fun, then? What did he enjoy, 'sometimes'?
"So,"
doing this a lot, the both of them
"You didn't always run a Millionaire Survivor screening event to pick. Think you can do it right now? Still?"
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Maker and fledgling. Can, and will, Armand choose a sacrificial lamb for dinner? Does he think he can? He has warmed enough to slip a sidelong glance as he says this. Poking back. "Or is this my teaching moment?"
Quietly, a slight unfurling of his consciousness. A broadening radius of awareness, past the street they are in, past the block they are on. He has not spoken yet of his back up method in choosing the ones who want to die, at least a little bit, and reflexively, he browses around for hints of despair amongst the many.
A little like searching out the weak in a herd, psychologically on the fringes of things. Makes his task all the simpler.
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It's bleak to think of. Slavery, a fucking cult. Collapsing under the weight of maitre over and over. Is maker easier. Just Daniel, just one arrogant journalist. Does he want it to be easier for Armand, on that note? Does he want to learn from someone who directed the play that executed Claudia and Madeleine? Does he care? He didn't know them. Is he curious? He could find an angle. Within Armand, there seems to be a fucking limitless number of angles and mysteries to untangle. They'll probably all burn him.
"I'm daring you," is what he ends up saying, tipping caution off a ledge. He wants to be angry at him. He wants to understand him. He wants every corrosive angle. How fucking awful.
"I could learn, too. Probably. Maybe. It's been a while since I've been a student."
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But it's not always so. He has seen a dozen of these manifestations within his coven, without it, pairs of maker and fledgling, but those ones were not him. Were not Daniel.
Sharper, this next prod.
"I can tell," he says, a gentler batting back of the comment. "How well have you practiced the mind gift?"
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Not anymore.
So.
"I've made my assistant get me coffee a few times," he says, which betrays the fact that he's been practicing at all, as he no longer drinks coffee. "But she would anyway if I asked. Once in a while, 'Stop' will work on someone."
Someone that he's eating. This feels strange to talk about. Armand is so, so good at that gift. Which he knows intimately.
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But no, Armand has been director, dictator, and for longer than that, a symbol of something, and has he had conviction in those things, even then? Did he ever guide the vampires beneath him, or simply set the terms and wait? How well did he teach Louis anything that wasn't, also, his own way of leveraging an advantage? What did Lestat do with his lessons, but run off with them?
But Daniel is here, listening to him. Daniel is here because Armand put him here. A punishment.
"Directives are useful," he says. "But not everything. Your assistant will obey you because she's your assistant. Your prey will stop, because part of them would like to as well."
A nod—let's cross here. Through the gap in the traffic.
"But we're speaking of selection, not just subdual. I know in the interview, there was some talk of seeking the sin. Weaknesses. I can show you something else."
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(A Biblical quote regarded as being about criticizing of hypocrisy. Maybe his train of thought should give it a rest.)
"I'm listening."
It's his job. Ha ha. But he sounds more open here, less hostile. They aren't opponents sitting across a table from each other— Armand has made him something else. Put this strange obligation between them; Armand, obligated to explain, Daniel, obligated to hear.
He thinks they're both learning. Armand hasn't done this before, he's certain. Because even if he's ever helped a 'young' vampire before, it was never a vampire whose mind he couldn't read. Who he created.
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The ways he has helped fledglings who stumble into his hands has been different. Show them how to hide, how to behave, and then burn them to nothing if they refuse. If they fail to adapt, or fail to break it all like a single one of them had managed. If he had burned Lestat too, would he be living, still, in squalor beneath the streets of modern Paris? Probably not. Part of Lestat's charm had been the impossibility of such a thing as the world became brighter and brighter.
Pointless. They arrive at a park bench, and Armand sits, making room for Daniel to sit along beside him. He doesn't feel nervous for this most unusual lesson, detached from the possibility. They adapt or they fail. They change him or they don't. And Daniel already has.
"That building," he says, a nod. Across the way, a tall apartment complex, midrange rentals, some permanent residencies. "Focus on it like a single object. You'll sift from the rest of the world the minds within it."
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"Okay," Daniel says. He can do that. Well. He can do the focus part of it, who knows about the rest. But he's very curious about all this, and the mental powers aspect of this life are undoubtedly the thing he finds most alluring. Parts defensive, never to be fucked with that way again, and parts because he already has a knack for getting into people.
Perverse to have a lesson from this person, considering.
He lets it all go. A slow breath in, and out, as he stares at the building. Considers the shape of it and the people inside. Allows everything else to become unfocused; he slips away from the crush of human minds milling around the city, and glances into the bright spots within the bottle of the apartment complex.
Nothing else. Just the building. And, aha, Armand beside him.
Again, quieter, decisive: "Okay."
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The book is kept balanced on his lap, Armand gazing up at the structure, casting out his awareness. There is no chance of overlap. They will not be able to feel each other drifting over the same minds. They will make do.
Armand has, for now, disconnected from any sense of appropriateness. Who they are to each other, the things they have done—his sins, titanically outweighing the ways Daniel has transgressed against him, and the ways in which those sins were done. It doesn't matter. Daniel has dared him.
"I find the one who can't stand to be in the place they are in," eventually. "Or the one who thinks they can never leave it. I take my time, doing it. And then I invite them out."
That old refrain. Come to me.
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But he's patient. Attentive. Curious about it, and eager to learn this even as it feels like a sinister caress against nerves left raw by the past so recently remembered. Daniel leans with his elbows on his knees (posture made youthful again, almost looking like a young man wearing a costume). Armand wants his victims to ask for it.
Is this 'sin', to be sought? Or is it just another kind of vigilantism? Mercy? If you must kill, might as well kill those who deserve death. What about those who want it? I like my life, from 1973, from an hour ago. Daniel watches Armand weave this spell of a lure, and his unease blooms into determination. No one will be able to pull anything like that on him again. No one will do this to him. He'll see it from now on.
Another steadying breath. He looks through these minds, careful, gentle.
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Idle thoughts, dreams, murmured conversation, the buzz of the television, the single mother pacing a room anxiously while she tries to get her crying infant to sleep and not disturb her neighbours, disturbed neighbours, a dog scratching at a bathroom door, one couple making perfunctory love, a woman practicing her acoustic guitar, and
come to me
a lonely soul. Watching television, preoccupied with past bad decisions, a recent breakup, a job he doesn't want. He is a little nexus of ordinary melancholia, this man. The stress of a decent, even remarkable salary and rising costs of living. He knows he has to downsize. Pare down, cut down, slice and slice.
"Have you found him?" Armand inquires. He cannot direct Daniel's focus, but he has his own set on this mortal, gently encouraging this unspooling of despair, watching it grow colder and colder, denser and darker.
The man decides he has to get out of his head, out of his apartment, or he'll go nuts.
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A mother thinking of smothering her infant. A guy shaking with post-rage adrenaline, terrified of what he just did to his girlfriend. Somebody who's voting conservative and leaving anonymous hate speech on social media. And, yes, a man with a bad job and a recent ex.
"Your guy? Yeah."
The temptation is there to interfere. He wonders if Armand can tell— even if just because it would be typical of Daniel to shove his fingers in where they shouldn't go, ask a mean, biting question. But here maybe there'd be a nudge. Yeah, but tomorrow will be fine. Hasn't he been this guy? Wouldn't he still be this guy, if not for Louis?
He doesn't push. He watches. Armand can do this to mortals, and to other vampires. Daniel wants to see it.
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Armand is aware of the ways Daniel could dissect this moment, any moment, in the way he is aware of gravity, of the sky above them. It is simply a constant. Daniel chooses not to and Armand nods once at the words he says instead, acknowledgment. They can watch together as the man throws on a jacket, heads for the elevator, slips down the spine of the building.
The mother with her child does not answer his call, preoccupied with her own ill-feeling, her awful sense of responsibility. The man, enraged with his woman and himself, does not listen for the quiet being promised. Armand doesn't offer it to them.
Out the front doors of the building, the man turns a corner. The bodega for smokes, he is thinking. Then, Daniel will probably be able to tell, secondhand, the way he changes his mind: no, let's go for a walk.
"Shall we?" says Armand.
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Armand accused Daniel's work of being no different than killing. The connection is instantaneous, a tiny, clear spark of a reveal. Oh.
"You're the boss, boss."
Motherfucker. There's a ruefulness in his voice. No mind-reading, but he wonders if Armand will connect what he's connected, or if he's too out of practice to regular-read. He gets up when his maker does, and walks with him, to—? Who's leading, here, what's the lure?
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And the way Armand can't read Daniel is beginning to madden him.
But they walk. It's an ambitious walk, nothing this mortal would seek to accomplish on his own if he were in his right mind, if he weren't following an impulse. He will seek the water and realise there is no coming back to the things that made him happy, and this is where selection is subdual. They will drink his blood, slip his body into those black waters. The hunt will be over.
Would it be more fun, if it was a chase?
"We have some time to kill," comes out a little sharp. Probably not a purposeful vampire joke. "If you would like to speak your mind."
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He considers the amount of time Armand spent as a mortal compared to the length of time he's been alive. Even if Armand had been a very keen observer, had honed his ability to predict people as a self-defense mechanism like many abuse victims do, it's been centuries since he's had to bother with it. Daniel makes a note of it. Cheat less. Don't lose this. Fuck eating a mortal meal once a week, practice humanity by continuing to be good at poker without telepathy.
But Armand asks, and this strikes Daniel as a good thing. Even with the edge. He's being invited to share, to engage. And so: he does.
"Back in Dubai." Striking this match. Talking about then, out loud and deliberate, instead of alluding. "When you were still wearing the costume. You accused me, in my capacity as a journalist, of doing the same thing as killing. Got a little dramatic. But I see what you meant, now. You were looking at it like this, weren't you?"
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A hooded lowering of his eyes before his focus goes back to where they're going.
"I wanted to provoke you. You were being judgmental."
He pauses for the span of a step or two, and then bids, "Elaborate," because it hadn't been that simple, either. Maybe Daniel sees more of himself in this than Armand did in Daniel's work.
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A note of interest, about provocation, and judgement. Daniel gives him a look, but doesn't follow up. (Yet?) Might be fun to dissect who was being provocative because it was his job, and who was being judgemental. Another kind of conversational fencing match.
One thing at a time.
"When you want to interview somebody and make it real, get to the truth of why you're there, you have to get past the first answer, and the second answer, and the third. You have to redirect and argue and provoke until you get to the truth. Usually it's not because people are lying to you. They're lying to themselves, or they just don't realize they aren't going far enough. Nobody wants to say the embarrassing thing, the worst thing. You do have to talk them up to the ledge, and then get them to walk off of it. Whether it's in confession or anger."
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Agreeing, rather than making a point, although Daniel would be forgiven for not being able to differentiate the tone. Who wins literary awards, chronicling the lives of phantoms of a person on their best day? And rarely do people win those awards by trying to win awards. They do it by being built this way.
"Focus on him," back to the lesson, for a moment, "his mind. His scent. We're going to go the long way."
Attract less attention. The mark disappears around a corner, and Armand nudges their trajectory to move out of sight, if in parallel, disappearing through late night traffic, sparse crowds.
"You feel it, when you're getting close. You thrill for it, live for it. Lived," vampire jokes on purpose. "A hunt can feel the same."
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Oh, right. Also learning vampire shit.
He makes an attempt at putting a pin on the man that Armand has lured out of the building with immense sadness (what a way to do it), and at trying to keep part of his awareness there. Multitasking. He loses the man right away, but slows his steps and considers, and ends up finding him again. He does almost bump into a fellow pedestrian walking in the opposite direction as this goes on, but he recovers, walking beside Armand with his hands in his pockets and looking very normal and un-flustered. Yep.
"It's a puzzle that opens a lock." An odd thing to stay about journalism, perhaps. "It's an unraveling. A bang. Takes all kinds. You get there, and then you get to go past there."
The real shit's off the edge of the cliff.
Or!
"Or." ! "Dinner."
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"A peeling back, a luring out." Armand can do both. He prefers the latter when it comes to these kinds of victims, letting them along a path which leads back to himself. His petty cryptofascists are more fun beneath a scalpel.
This, also, he doesn't say. Instead, "Do they appear more human to you, or less? Your puzzles."
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But Daniel is a fast learner, and he cares more about figuring this out and observing what he can about Armand than he does about the morality.
"Now?"
An odd question. He's not sure what to make of it at first, because everything is both more and less human to him, now. More because it's becoming defining. Less because he feels detached. But he figures Armand means before, actually, and is picking at Daniel's process. So. Reverse back for a less stupid response—
"Everybody's a puzzle." This should be a hard truth, about himself. Something that's been used as an accusation, treating the world like an investigation, seeing everyone in terms of a story and relationships as angles. And yet it's just the way he is. Accepted now that he's ruined every romance, every familial tie, every potential life-long friend. "That probably qualifies as appearing less than human. But I usually like people better when they're puzzles."
He shrugs. Distantly, he traces Armand's chosen mark as he moves around barriers to the water's edge.
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There was a time, though, he might have accused Daniel of it. Misanthropy. He prods around for it now, a way in for dehumanisation, a process that will make the hesitations less—but there, Daniel says it. I usually like people better when they're puzzles.
And then, Armand must think of corruption. Will Daniel become someone who takes people apart for fun? Not for chronicling, not for truth, but for the way their blood tastes. Or perhaps he will go away. Start discarding boring people. He thinks of the couple he'd let go, their inane commentary.
"This way," Armand says.
He doesn't call attention to the way he gently nudges people away from the area. A couple hanging out at the railings discard their cigarettes and decide they've had enough, linking arms and leaving. Others, rerouting, or become distracted, turning around, idling. They'll find their mark sitting on the edge of sloped concrete, where boats would be let into the water. Arms tight around his knees, emanating a despair he has never truly felt before, but has always lived within him, he thinks. Rot, plastered over.
Armand stops. They're at a distance to go unnoticed, for now. He doesn't have to explain that if he were to kill this man, he would feel relief. Daniel has already felt it, ill-gotten though it was.
"We shouldn't waste him on me."
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So it's a bit of a bummer to look at this poor fucking guy. He gets it, or at least he thinks he does, but it strikes him that it's already a waste. Armand has godlike power and he uses it to prune a misshapen flower that's already half-wilted instead of an actual invasive weed.
The blood of the dead can pull a vampire down into the grave. They all hear their victims' lives as they die, sung through blood. What do these depressed fucks pull Armand into, time and time again? How is Daniel going to feel draining someone who is, psychologically, half dead already?
He looks at Armand. It's a hard look. Searching. A horrible x-ray of a thing.
Of what he finds there, if anything, he says nothing about.
"Hey," quiet, as he paces over to the man, curled up and half-catatonic. He gets a startled response, gazing up in confusion as a strange old man sits down beside him, hand on his shoulder. Something preternatural enough about Daniel already to hold his attention, and prevent him from casting around for context, from noticing Armand or anything else. A quick exchange that nevertheless, for a moment, seems to stretch on for an eternity. Daniel asks him if he's alright, and the magic of Armand's spell his shattered with a shocked sob, a toyed-with mortal stung by the surprise of random empathy.
Daniel still kills him.
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Maybe a blink out of time once Daniel moves off. An urge to defend himself, which is ridiculous. Daniel had dared him. He chose a single building. Armand does not need to eat every night, not even every week, and he has time to find his perfect invasive weed. This one will simply do. Never mind that Louis has spoken before of what Armand will eat when he can't find his cryptofascists to chase, what Daniel himself has nearly experienced.
He draws in a breath, resettling the book in his arms as he watches Daniel engage with the prey. Feels himself tense as the mortal's world broadens under a show of kindness, like a cracked window. What had Armand expected? That Daniel would repeat his methodology, finish the luring song that has the man slip over the edge into acceptance? No, not really, not on reflection.
And he stays where he is rather than help with clean up, at least not unprompted. After all, didn't he say he wouldn't?
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Louis wanted to know if he considered the life of the rabbit. Vegan bait. Throwing paint on classic works of art, reminding you cows are nice. Stupid. You don't have the rabbit's life beamed into your brain when you cut it.
The man dies and Daniel is sated. Maybe he had skipped a meal. Something bloody, a sick crack, puncturing a lung to disrupt buoyancy. Then an easy lift, a shuffle, a shove, a splash. He runs a hand over his mouth before leaning down to rinse them off— one thing to eat a stranger who smelled like sweat and sadness, another to risk tasting public NYC water. The real horror.
So.
He turns around. Eyebrows up.
"Any notes?"
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"I thought this was my test, not yours," he says. When has he ever felt the need to defend his own killings? He had toyed with Louis and his moralising, engaging in the kind of debate that he assumed Lestat had no patience for, and never felt the need to appear more human to the other vampire. Perhaps it's because Daniel is younger. Because it's because it's Daniel, the ever observant, ever opinionated, or because it's Daniel, who dismantled him, and now he is pieces of himself.
He has no pity in the dead meat now sinking into black waters. His fledgling his fed. For that, he feels satisfied.
"It's only blood." Food, like Claudia said.
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Food, like Claudia said. (More, like everyone else said.)
"It wasn't a test, it was a dare," he reminds him. "And you pulled through, so it's your turn to pick."
Has Armand ever played Truth or Dare? Probably not. Daniel should not be handing him this power. But he just doesn't feel like antagonizing him right now— he has a sense, strangely, that this surreal interaction is plenty, in terms of being a stand-in for needling him about what the fuck he's doing by eating sad people who he's made sadder.
"Doesn't have to be now, now, though." Up the slope. Shoulder to shoulder (and a little lower still, on Daniel's part) in opposite directions.
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It doesn't come out snippy, or angry, or really at all bothered. It was a dare, and at some point in the future, it will be Daniel's turn. Armand knows an impulse to pivot, to follow after Daniel. To demand reflection. Judgment. Something true, something cutting. How dare Daniel walk away from him, face clean, and provide no commentary at all.
Commentary could come. Keep walking with him and find out. He might not even need to ask for it. Daniel talks, for a listener. And yet—
Armand has to wonder what he's doing. Macro, micro. Turning this man. Trying to teach him something. He finds he does not know what to do now, and that simply cannot stand.
A drift in the air, a sense of motion. Even to Daniel's heightened senses, his changing eyes, sharply attuned ears, Armand is capable of a kind of disappearance—and, after the sound of one footfall, disappear he does.
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He makes a deliberate decision to give Armand house keys and a garage door fob in between trips to Belfast and Dublin for an IRA poet thing he's working on (Molloy, Molloy, that's one of ours, you should look up your genealogy, lad). His maker has the room with the biggest windows that catch all the warmth from the sunrise, where the cat likes to curl up when he's not kicked out. Peanut is an oversized Siamese mix of some kind, the same strange sandy-grey color all over with too-long limbs and a weird, perpetually frightened expressions in green eyes, even when he's winding around ankles and fearlessly sliding down curtains. A freak of a cat. He fits in.
The kitchen is an art studio, the living room is a library. There are other rooms that could be properly allocated, but Daniel only has so much time in this 'life' left, and he likes working. His work will sprawl and take over common spaces like fungus. Best to leave it alone, unpruned. Teaching Armand bad habits, maybe, with charcoal smudges all over a fridge that only holds selected options for the cat.
Daniel has a suite in the basement. It includes a regular bed, because he feels insane without it, but he sleeps in the coffin, mostly. Dead-lizard brain says it's safer, and he's too young in this unlife to have shaken free of the instinct just yet. As such, the former serves many purposes, including flat sofa, flat filing cabinet, and flat book shelf. Presently, Daniel is moving folded laundry off of it, away from Armand's knee.
"Did you end up liking any of those crime shows?"
Winding down for the morning. Sometimes he's here, in Daniel's space; sometimes they curl up together and sleep, like they had when Armand was recovering. Other things, now and then. They'd argued bitterly in Milan and Daniel had anticipated flying home alone, maybe not seeing him for months (not unusual, but he felt a pang about it), but Armand had shown up in a seat beside him anyway, and rested his head on his shoulder for the duration of the flight. Sometimes they lace their fingers together. Sometimes. But they don't drink from each other, and they don't talk about it.
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He hadn't had Louis' gift for finding young talent, but he can appreciate the work of the established, and so this doesn't truly feel like some form of reaching back for something. If he doesn't sleep the whole day away with Daniel, he will go upstairs and take charcoal into hand, and refuse to wonder what Louis might think of whatever he does next.
Soon, hopefully, the past won't be an act of negation. It simply won't matter. For now—
He turns a page as Daniel speaks, looking up and keeping the corner of glossy artbook page pinched between his fingers. His wardrobe has adapted too, a soft T-shirt and sweatpants, albeit both items criminally expensive.
"I like your commentary," he says. "Is that the same thing?"
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What's the rush, now? He hasn't figured out what this is, and there's no one to ask. No two beings in existence have been in anything even like this situation. Dead or undead. So he proceeds with no expectations, and prunes away unhelpful mental wanderings with better efficiency than he applies when selecting meals. Experiencing it one night at a time, and unpacking things when he's alone. Armand is interesting, and dangerous, and beautiful, and smart, and Daniel is comfortable with him (somehow). Armand wants men like Lestat, and Louis, and a fucked up ancient Roman painter that Daniel hopes has gone into the earth to never return; Daniel sees women sometimes, once then never again. Reconnecting with his body is his business and not something any other vampire he knows can or will understand. He handles it away from them, and shuts it off at home.
"It's something," he says, wry humor. "I'll keep trying." A habit by now, to chuck DVDs at Armand. Another holdover from recovery, during which Daniel didn't know what to do, just put random shit on during the day when he was passed out so that the house wouldn't be silent. Like Armand might slip away into some severed vampire coma he couldn't be woken from, and then Daniel would have to contend with why he didn't want that to happen.
Clothes go where they go, a few books next. Daniel is wearing an oversized long-sleeved shirt, soft pants. Shorts when he's alone, more coverage when Armand lingers. Barriers out of— respect, privacy, something? Daniel is a substitute, he's pretty sure. Though for what, who fucking knows. Maybe Armand is still crafting the role, like a sculpture perpetually still in the blobby clay stage.
"What— oh." A slipper robbed from the foyer, wedged halfway under his dresser. Peanut crimes. Daniel yanks it free and goes to chuck it upstairs to be collected later (or just stolen again by the lurking beast). "Are you staying down here?"
Armand is free to; Daniel would say so if not. Has before.
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early discomforts. Not gone forever, perhaps, but not present now. Some sense of him assured that Daniel does not consider him dull, a complete freak of nature, an alien being in need of acclimation. At least, not so much that he finds it insulting, not so much that they can't exist in each others spaces.
In Daniel's space, initially, now also his. And Peanut's, who Daniel has walked in to find in Armand's arms, chin buried in soft fur as if to absorb the rumbled purring, at least once or twice.
"Yes," he says. He has turned another page but has taken to watching Daniel when he is certain the other vampire won't notice.
With a soft impact, he closes the book. "I took the liberty of downloading more of Bakshi's films, if you'd like to see them too." He had done so a little while ago, actually, but it seems pertinent to offer in light of I'll keep trying.
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It's fucked up in here. It always will be. Daniel hums confirmation to that 'Yes', does some beep-beeping on the security system panel near the door to the stairs (Armand will know how to use it, if he gets sick of being asleep during the day and wants to bail), and then—
"I'd like that." Still pleased with the success of that suggestion. Somewhere in the dark depths of his storage unit is an American Pop laserdisc, but fuck only knows where the laserdisc player is (not that he couldn't get a new one) (of any of these items) (wealth does not break all habits). Digital is the solution. "Thinking about a specific one?"
He'll listen to the answer while he brushes his teeth in the en suite, out of sight but easily connected. Still no satisfactory answers from anyone about dental work, by the way. What a world, what a world. For a moment, when he meets his own gaze in the mirror, he thinks again: It's fucked up in here.
Yeah, well, he tells himself. Kinda interesting, despite that.
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The Mehretu is set down, placed on one of the side tables, and Armand drags himself a little ways off the headboard, coming to sit in a loose-cross legged posture nearer the middle. He either does not brush his teeth or does not allow Daniel to witness it, or perhaps just does so infrequently—after his occasional meals, one imagines.
"Unless you have a preferred title."
But probably at least somewhat an element of privacy, where Daniel allows himself to do domestic things in Armand's presence, laundry and tidying and grooming, Armand holds himself in more reserve. Still enjoying finding a space for himself in the routine of existence. Considers the bed, considers the coffin, considers the sound of water in the drain pipes as he loops his arms around his knees.
Anyway, he has found he likes cartoons of a certain brand and mood. Adult, complex, satirical, dark. The eternal impulse towards comparison, and equally resisting it: Louis "The Plays Were Weird" du Lac would have no patience for them. They did not even have a television in Dubai.
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Not actually narrowing it down all the way, with Bakshi, but his amused point remains— "Yeah, that works."
Armand is a strange thing. The least human thing on the planet, possibly. But he thinks cartoons are neat, and sits on Daniel's bed, and sometimes cuddles with the weird cat he picked up from a local rescue. It's fucked up in here. Tooth brush goes back in its cup. Daniel touches the bridge of his nose, though his glasses aren't there. Auto-pilot. Painfully ordinary and a thousand, million miles from fascinating.
He switches most of the lights off on his way back to the bed, and sits beside Armand on it. The elder vampire can decide for himself if he wants to rev up the film now, and further, can decide if he wants to prop up his tablet, or screenshare to the tv that takes up significant real estate on the wall facing them. Surrounded by shelves, it looms, slightly reflective, sporting an undignified sticky note affixed to one corner, displaying the wifi passwords.
He makes himself comfortable, meanwhile. On days when Armand opts to stay with him, the coffin goes empty. Just not practical.
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Once the movie begins to play, he shifts backwards to settle as well. A nearness that has become familiar, but far from ordinary. He shifts his knee and there, a little point of contact, and on the screen, a cartoon construction working hippopotamus pisses off the side of a building, and the stream of bright yellow consolidates into the title screen. Good and wonderful.
He does have a habit of watching things with giant eyes and very little outward reaction, at least for the most part—but here and there, a smile, a breath of amusement, which may be even more satisfying to witness when it's evoked by something particularly stupid or vulgar, of which this movie has plenty to offer.
Leans in. All vampires have at least a little bit of weird cat energy, and this inching into the edges of affection is how Armand's manifests in the moment.
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He wonders of Armand's luring songs into darkness would take to a place like that, or if he would sit in the vaguely sticky theater seats and stare unblinking at the screen for the entire duration of each absurd reel, smiling now and again at the least glamorous moments, ignoring the rest of the world. He wonders if they ever missed each other in passing at some grindhouse showing mondo films and old Disney filler cartoons.
Posture he's become near expert at by now: shifting to allow an openness that Armand might curl into, when he decides to. Daniel lets him pick the pace of it. Sometimes during this stage he thinks frankly deranged fucking thoughts, like workshopping different answers to a question posed to him in 1973. Do you think I'm boring?, and Daniel had said No, but was there something better? Something truer, if worse? How could you be boring, you're the scariest fucking thing I've ever seen, and the other monster keeps complaining about his ex and wouldn't even fuck me.
The problem with all of this is that Daniel looks forward to it. He just has to pretend not to, because thinking about it too often is going to drive him insane, and there's too much else in his life that could also easily drive him insane.
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His inability to know and his ability to imagine the worst doesn't stop him. It doesn't take very long, slotting himself in against Daniel's side, head against his shoulder, a hand resting on his torso. This comfort being offered him, warmth and presence, strange enough and unfamiliar enough in its manifestation that he could once again feel a little like he is playacting as someone else.
Maybe Armand will speak of it one day, those strange dislocations inside himself, but he is loathe to become a burden. Which might be funny if he said it out loud, given everything.
Does Daniel find comfort in it as well? Armand does not believe the other man would permit anything he hated, or even found mildly objectionable, but what is the shape of it? Sometimes (and he thinks of it now as he watches the parade of animals fucking each other papering over muddled political commentary, truly an artefact of its time) he remembers the taste of Daniel's blood, the clarity of it. His mind gift still active, yes, but all those thoughts felt like they carried through the rich crimson essence of him.
He was terrifying, he was fascinating, and he still is. Was, in that moment. Is? What is he now? Does he want to be terrifying? Is he still fascinating? When will he become boring?
Daniel's hand is laying there above his own. Armand does not think before he slides his own underneath it, toys until their fingers tangle.
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The movie is bizarre, as expected. Comically pornographic in a way that would never pass as earnestly erotic except to very particular furries, and not especially adept at its politics. A brave and bold effort regardless, though Daniel isn't paying attention to it. Too difficult to pay attention to anything but Armand. Sometimes he manages it, but not today, and he doesn't bother trying. Uninterested in anything but tracing over long fingers with his own, drawing nonsense patterns with light, careful touches of nails, resting now and then against the delicate skin of his pulse point to feel his heart and the blood that moves through him.
Blood that made him. Blood he barely remembers, outside the big picture overwhelming moment, feelings of agony and euphoria, higher than high.
He has never asked. His transformation wasn't about intimacy, and the closest thing to a conversation they've had about it was back in those infant days of Fake Rashid, and Armand's seething hostile reaction to Louis' mocking offer to let Daniel have a taste. Between that and Armand's professed repulsion about the creation of vampires, no signals are mixed. Only a total fucking moron would ask.
Regardless, it is parts comforting and sensual to feel his pulse. Armand feels good against him. He smells good. Daniel ignores the cartoon, Bakshi's lurid scenes, and draws more nonsense on his the back of his wrist.
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And they have argued, sometimes fiercely, and Daniel has seen the worst of him, has deliberately scattered his house of cards while maintaining eye contact. They have gone for long absences and abrupt reunions. They have exchanged human corpses and still living prey. Armand has made him into a vampire.
All of this into account and he still wonders if sex would ruin something. Sex can be ruinous. It can also be nothing, which is a different kind of ruinous.
His eyes flick to where their hands overlap, where Daniel is drawing invisible lines down his fingers, diamond-hard nails, tendon and bone. Is this the holding pattern he has consigned himself to? He has also, a little, lost track of the movie—perhaps it's that degree more juvenile than his sensibilities would prefer, although if they were to stop now, he would watch it later for completion's sake, as an interesting and bold thing in a body of work.
He thinks about how Daniel spent a lot of Dubai with his sleeves rolled up.
Long-sleeves here. But, all the same, he turns his hand so that he might hook that wandering finger in his own, and then draws it in until he can brush his lips against that pulse point.
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Why?
The movie no longer exists. He thinks of ruining Armand's life, barking every slave name at him just to be cruel and to draw blood over vengeance for a week of torture and a following lifetime of strange dreams. He thinks of looking at each other in Dubai; in silence, during the day, in sound, at night when Louis was there, talking about things Daniel should have been listening to. Dark, deep pools staring out at him from Armand's face, inviting him to drown.
How fast it happened. Out of spite, Louis said. But sometimes Daniel thinks of those eyes, and drowning, and he wonders if Armand decided far earlier. If he realized he'd decided. If sitting there and continuing the interview was as good as wading into the dark water.
Alright. Maybe he knows why.
Daniel flexes his fingers, splays them, allows Armand to hold him captive. A permissive and curious pause, with all of his attention wrapped up in it while an irrelevant cartoon plays and splashes changing colors over them.
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But worse, he remembers it all with perfect clarity, what he was thinking, how he was feeling. Far different from memories of half a millennia ago. Remembers sweat-greasy curls, the scent of tears and blood, the warm weight of him when he was finally pushed enough to stop fighting.
New memories, now. Associations. Tangled hands. Sleeping on the same mattress, waking to watch the long breaths in and out. A clinging embrace that Daniel had not been cognizant to as his blood was stolen.
Thinks of that now as Armand focuses on the infinitely fine feeling of a pulse beneath his mouth. No bloodlust behind the way it intrigues him, pressing a more deliberate kiss there, hand sliding to push Daniel's sleeve out of the way, thumb following the line of muscle from wrist to midway up towards the elbow.
A rare temptation, to bite. To taste what he can't excavate for himself. Maybe in time. Instead, a following kiss to the meat of Daniel's palm. Eventually, he will have to look up and observe his fledgling's face.
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Maybe. Maybe blowing a vampire would have permanently rewired something in him. Fucked him up in a different way. Less mortal peril, more psychosexual torment. Though he thinks there's already plenty of the latter between them. He wonders if it's as confusing for Armand as it is for him.
Daniel continues to allow the searching touch, and he continues to enjoy it. Armand kisses his palm, and Daniel slides fingertips over Armand's cheek.
Is this real?
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Grainy voices from the movie in the air, no thoughts at all that Armand can access. It has been an inconceivably long time since he has been with any paramour or momentary fling that he could not simply read exactly what it is they wanted and expected from him. And before that doesn't bear thinking about it. Certainly not now.
So call it a uniquely new experience instead. Because it is.
Armand shifts to align himself closer against Daniel so that he doesn't have to twist when he lifts his head and looks at him. The lighting is dim and strange, but they are vampires, and his eyes are a specific kind of dark amber, a tone of the earth rather than leaping flames. Wood and clay. He places a hand on Daniel's chest, bracing, zigzags a look over his face.
Daniel is a better read of people, in contrast. All signs point to the desire to bridge that gap between them.
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Armand wants to kiss him. Daniel wants it, too. He's an infuriating monster, unrecognizable as human, sometimes he's too fucking stupid to find his way out of a paper bag, and he is ruinous in his attempts to right himself. And yet he's interesting, and creative, and good in an argument, and he likes dismal poets and screwed up cartoons. They're the only two people that exist. More and more, that thought does not feel isolating.
The arm he's had around Armand stays though the adjustment in posture, and Daniel curls his fingers against Armand's back, then splays them again. A tender hold that nearly surprises him, despite what he's been doing this whole time.
"Please answer me out loud," is quiet, but steady. "May I kiss you?"
They don't have to guess. They can learn to read each other, and they can ask. He wants Armand's permission. He wants to hear it.
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But it stays. Under Daniel's arm, ribs and shoulders lift along with a deeper breath in and out.
"Yes," he says, fingers curling in the fabric of Daniel's shirt. Armand shifts, enough to meet him a little more than half way, but inviting Daniel to close the last few necessarily fractions.
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Okay.
Armand is so close to him now. Daniel tells himself that this isn't going to be the thing that wrecks it between them, it's fucking laughable to think anything could wreck it between them when torture hasn't. If it falls flat, they've overcome worse things. They've destroyed each other already and seen where the pieces fit back together. They can make it no matter what and that is...
Just phenomenal. How are you possible? he wonders, and then nudges forward that last little bit, and presses his mouth to his maker's.
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And more. Armand, closing his eyes, pushing that little bit forwards to insist himself on that kiss. Gentle fingers setting at the edge of Daniel's jaw. (There'd been next to no thought on his part about the subjects of sexuality and gender, those trivial human anxieties that Daniel nevertheless has been caught in before. The young man who had offered to suck his cock fifty years ago did not do so out of desire, he knows.
But all the same.) It's a shallow kiss, sweet that way, but there, a press of intimacy, where they might open for each other. When Armand withdraws, its by a scant distance alone. Lifts his head a little more so they can look at each other without crossing their eyes.
"Would you want me this way?" has notes of Am I boring?, purely in the way it leaves him open for the potential to be hurt. Less clawing desperation, at least.
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Daniel looks at him. Little flecks of awe like the first time he saw him floating in the reading room, spirals of warm affection, warm blood-gold-blue reflecting in each other. Armand has grown so familiar, as a person and a monster. There's no room between them for insecurities, no place for You're beautiful enough to have anyone, no excuse for Daniel to shudder back under the shame of his physical age. These things have been peeled away. Armand is fucking crazy. Daniel isn't squeamish.
Still. A bit of surprise. Half at the vulnerability, half at it being kind of a stupid question. Mixed. A soup of surprise.
"I've thought about it," he says. "Often enough that I've had to make myself stop thinking about it. Because I didn't want to derail anything by being an asshole."
He touches Armand's face, which is perfect, and still occasionally nightmare inducing. They've made peace and they've made friends, and every so often, Daniel still falls asleep and sees radiating orange eyes staring at him in the midst of his worst nightmares, then wakes up and those eyes are besides him, closed, dozing contentedly against his chest. He's gotten used to it.
"I want you in any way that you'll have me, too."
Do you think I'm boring? — No. One word. Not his best. Could have used workshopping. This also may need some, its careful, awkward honesty. Armand can't read his mind, and Daniel is terrible at connecting sincerely, and, and, and. They are still so close.
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Well. He has expressed before that Armand is frightening.
Focus sharpens at that next thing. He does not mind it if honesty is awkward. It could be a problem, if he is trying to be careful, and fails at it. Honesty has a way of rattling out of him when it comes, as if he'd been holding on to too much of it and has no way of gracefully setting it down. Slipping between his fingers, overflowing. Rare, that. Rarer and rarer as the time moved along with Louis.
"I want you completely," he says. Daniel is his. Has he ever possessed something, truly? Presiding over the coven like a boy given the leash to a wild tiger. A dim memory of a painting being displayed, and although it was known that it was Amadeo who painted it, the praise was awarded to the one who had tutored him. Lestat, never his, never even pretended at it. Louis, who did not wish to feel like he was owned.
But Daniel is his. His fledgling. There is nothing under heaven that could change this fact. And it gives him no right to anything beyond the knowledge of its truth.
He would like more, if given it. It takes barely any movement to press their mouths together again, and then follows slipping a knee on the other side of Daniel as he does so.
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(He knows it's the bond. He doesn't care that it's the bond. He cares about the bond. Crucial distinctions.)
"It's yours."
All of it, whatever he wants. Daniel, apparently, which despite all his brashness still makes some small part of him inside tremble with anxiety and anticipation. He is open, accepting, fucking eager for more contact, frankly, but the look in his eyes as Armand closes the small gap to kiss him again has traces of Me? You're picking me?
Him, to slide up against. Him to turn. Him to torture for a week. Armand, his maker, his everything else anymore. Daniel tips his head into the kiss and lets him move where he wants, arms around him welcoming and supportive— only slightly awkward with where to put things (things like hands). It's been decades since he's messed around with another man in earnest. Buried behind him as too complicated to bother with. He could, there's been opportunity, he just hasn't.
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To settle like this on top of Daniel has he has imagined doing so before, straddling and pressed in tightly to kiss him. To feel Daniel's arms around him and for his hands to find places to settle. Me? says that flicker in Daniel's eyes and Armand can dedicate all parts of himself to answering Yes, you.
A hand, travelling up the side of Daniel's neck, over that old circle of bite marks from half a century ago. Slipping into his hair, feeling its texture between gentle fingers, running a line with his thumb down the curve of skull to neck. A different, roving touch to the last time the way he touched Daniel resembled this. No too-hard petting.
And kissing him, a way of doing so that tests what Daniel says, inviting him to yield.
A shriek of some kind from the television, and barely a flicker of Armand's eyelashes follow the television going black. No scent of anything fried, so he probably just hit an off switch. Probably. They're doused in silence, in dimness, Armand's knees gently squeezing in on either side of Daniel's thighs.
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Armand, warm and pressing down on him. It sends something profound up his spine, more than a jolt, different from the kind of arousal he feels with the humans he still hooks up with sometimes; he's never held another vampire this way. The feeling is different. He hadn't noticed— how could he? Why would he?
Kissing him is unexpected richness. Light with care and reverence, dark with eons-old promises of The only two on Earth, and that silver, shivery, bond. Daniel has never truly yielded to Armand— never fought him for dominance, but made him work. At patience, at communication, at being honest, at showing up. He has never been a dutiful, studious fledgling, even in times of learning from him. A pain in the ass to teach. Impossible to steal the last word from. Armand, paying the price of saving him, fifty years and counting.
He yields here. Leaning back to let Armand sink against him. Tipping his chin and letting him kiss him the way he wants, the way that feels good for him. Holding him and sliding his hands around his back, over the ribcage that houses that too-intense heart, up his spine, touching silken black hair, cradling him with a touch that's welcoming and capturing at once.
It doesn't matter anymore, why Armand made him. They've made the rest on purpose.
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Armand relaxes bodily beneath these long strokes of Daniel's hands, as if he has craved that as much as the kiss burning between them. Feels, too, Daniel yield, and the kiss deepens, still slow, still testing things between them. Feels his own blood warming by the time fingers are in his hair, and the hand he has braced at Daniel's side curls into a fist, gathering fabric there.
As soon as he feels content with what he has, comes the desire for more.
This manifests as a wandered kiss, landing at the corner of Daniel's mouth, cheek, ear, then tucking down to the scarred side of his neck. To the way the hem of Daniel's shirt is pulled upwards by an inch, a few inches.
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Which is a lot, for a couple of weird guys kissing. They've earned it, he thinks. An indulgence in feeling.
It shocks him that he believes Armand wants him. Quite a bit to unpack about it, most of it laughably mundane in the face of winding their vampiric bond closer and closer, and he'll do it ... later. The instinct to flinch and offer to leave his shirt on creeps up, perhaps tangible for a moment when he pauses a little to feel Armand pull at it, but he makes himself relax.
Completely, Armand said, It's yours, he answered. And he meant it. He'll trust Armand with himself, even though it's objectively stupid to do so. It's the kiss against his ear that did it, maybe. He brings a hand around to touch Armand's chest, stroke over the contours of him through his shirt, feel his heart and his breathing the old-fashioned way. Up, to cradle his face, press a thumb against his mouth just to feel the shape of his lips, and then replace it with his own, silently asking for more, deeper, all of it.
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He hasn't put much thought into what he does or does not deserve. The answer is nothing, obviously, which makes the question useless. Earned is more compelling, more fair, but the matter of being deserving feels like an inaccessible alternate dimension, a question for people who aren't him, subject to higher judgment. There has, however, been a kind of jealous rebellion in his occupation of Daniel's focus.
And here, it eases, as Daniel touches him, as Armand's skin tingles in the wake of stroking fingers. Daniel, feeling his heart beat, his lungs inflate and deflate. Touches his mouth, and they kiss each other again.
Isolating. It feels good not to be tethered to a bunch of fucking people, and no one he has to manage. His fledgling is a terrible student in the best way.
Considers that little hesitation he had sensed, sharply attuned. There is a pleasing strip of bare skin above Daniel's waistband, and now he gets his fingers up under the hem, lets the fabric catch against his knuckles and wrist and draw up a little more as he smooths a flat hand over Daniel's belly, to his sternum. The faint scratch of nails, followed by gentler palm.
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A hitch of breath at those touches, the contrast between nails and softer. He slides one hand from Armand's face to his shoulder, lower, over his criminally expensive bland t-shirt to the cuff where it breaks into skin. Loops his arm around so it's not squished, and touches him. Exploring like everything, even boring parts like the inches tucked under a shirt sleeve, is hypnotic and worthy of investigation and anointing. Light touch of nails, echoing the sensation he's enjoying, smoothed over with immortal skin.
Also fun: aimless making out. Fucking great, actually.
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Doesn't rush, still. Basking in this attention, for all that basking in attention is an experience not without its baggage. Daniel's attention. Different from anyone else's. Interested, and curious, and borderline permissive and deferential, and that is its own thrill. That diverts blood in his body, and it's pleasing to feel something as mundane as lust stirring in him. Not the first time, no, but the most dedicated, the most obvious.
Aimless making out, long minutes, time slipping past without definition, until Armand shifts. Reorients until he is sitting up, straddling Daniel, a hand planted on his chest, rucked up shirt. In the dimness, his eyes show off bright rings of orange—thin, around black pupils.
"I desire you," he says. Easy and barely conscious to settling on him, an intimate press of weight and warmth. "I have for a while."
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Okay—
Don't say 'okay', that's weird, though the plainness of what Armand tells him makes arousal spark through him. He squeezes his hips, presses in against the meat of his muscles with slow pressure of fingertips.
"What have you been thinking about, specifically?"
As tempting as the idea of just going with instinct is, Don't kill the mood, Daniel needs to know. If Armand tries calling him 'maitre', he's kicking him out and they get to work on rebuilding from this, to.
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"That I wish to know you better," he says. Honesty, then. He lets it tumble out. "I want to know what you like and then give you that."
No mind reading, no cheating his way past verbal description. Louis might say, now, that he didn't enjoy the roles they had shared, but Armand would not have encouraged it if he didn't think it was what Louis needed of him, if he didn't in part need it in return.
He doubts, at least, that Daniel wants to be his master. He thinks he would be disappointed to find out if he did.
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Daniel sits up just enough to kiss Armand, a light press, a silent thank-you for answering. He's slow to lean back down, just looking up at him.
"I like a lot." He strokes over Armand's thigh, following the strong line of it to his knee, back up. "It's been a long time since I've been with another man, so you'll have to put up with some fumbling. I.. don't want to hurt you, or hold you down, or anything like that."
He's been into plenty of harder shit. And following, plenty of that has been voluntary and unrelated to purchasing drugs. But is feels wrong for Armand— nothing to do with wanting to be subservient to his maker (right? right), instead, a more mundane instinct. One that finds the idea of contributing to certain patterns to be a turn-off.
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A little smile for the topic of fumbling, and it fades but doesn't freeze at the rest. A flicker of a look down, acknowledgment, and back up.
"It's been a long time since I've been with anyone different," he says. "So we may find ourselves fumbling together."
And that might be nice, says his tone. Different kinds of potential clumsiness, granted.
"I won't ask that of you," to address the rest. Humour present when he adds, "And I suppose my reminding you that it's not possible for you to truly do those things is beside the point."
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So far.
Daniel lifts a knee up to jostle him slightly, a little teasing motion.
"I know you can kick my ass no problem," he says. "It's the dynamic I don't want to get near. So, thank you." For saying he's not going to ask it of him. It's a relief. I want to know you better, too. Learn what you like."
Nice to be on the same page.
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Maybe later. Another time to consider the horrors of centuries of unlife ahead of them.
"The dynamic," he echoes. Not an affirmation that it's what he likes, just a thought, circled. "One without punishment." Fine. His hands ease up to find a place amongst the pillows on either side of Daniel's shoulders, a different orientation of his hips. Answers that jostle with a less playful, or differently playful, rub of contact.
Watching him. The odd mercurial mix of eye colour, where it's currently settled. "You don't wish to be in charge of us," he adds, a question in a statement. More than just refusing to be a source of pain.
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Bitter arguing. Armand looking at Daniel's horrible doodles and possibly regretting his agreement to join in with life drawing classes— he tries earnestly for Armand's sake, but he's just awful. The times when Armand tries to get Daniel to do things without asking, the times when Daniel treats Armand like a subject to get an angle on. The complication of friendships. Remembering.
Plenty, without bringing it into this.
Daniel slides fingers around one wrist, slowly traces up and down Armand's forearm, allowing himself to be caged in. Watches him, shifts up just so into the way he flexes down.
"If it's something you're set on I'd be willing to negotiate, but overall, no, I don't want to." He nudges his knee up again, quirks an eyebrow at Armand. "Not here, anyway." More teasing, though this time it's a dare. Daniel isn't going to start being subservient in night to night life, but what's Armand interested in here?
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Less out of duty or celibacy or restraint so much as Armand staying completely out of the way of other vampires and having absolutely no desire to fuck a human. This is something that is slow for young ones to grasp, the way the difference between vampire and mortal can feel as profound as the difference between a man and a dog, or a man and a child. Different species, different conceptions of reality, empathy, reasoning. Something distasteful about the idea, to him, possibly part of the tangle of having never wished to work the Dark Trick.
Or maybe that isn't Armand's age. Maybe that's just Armand. He had been transformed and then found himself on a higher plane of existence to humanity, and was no longer subject to the things he'd been shaped to endure. Then, a fire, and he found himself on a lower plane of existence to humanity, beneath their feet, existing in their shadows, never to mingle.
This feels human, though. Pleasantly ordinary. "I don't want to hurt you either," after a moment, as if taking a second to decide that this is true. He doesn't want things to feel like San Francisco. Whatever joy he'd derived from making Daniel shake and cry isn't the kind of joy he seeks now. That had, anyway, been about Louis.
"But if you would want to indulge me, I'd enjoy using you. Sometimes."
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Daniel turns his head and presses a kiss to the inside of Armand's forearm, even as he continues to touch him there, sliding the tips of diamond-hard nails over his skin. Good, that Armand doesn't want to hurt him. That's a good boundary, even though Daniel might not deny him that outright. Again: he has indulged in harder, kinkier things than making out in the dark, and not all because they were transactional. It interests him that this negotiation has continued to feel as erotic as a physical act, too.
Eyebrows. Oh?
"Use me how?"
Daniel's not a virgin, he can make several educated guesses. He wants to hear Armand describe it.
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No. Not thinking of them. Just this, Daniel solid beneath him, that little spot on his forearm tingling after a kiss, the sparks induced by sharp nails drawing paths over his skin.
"Maybe I would hold you down," he says. "Focus on only what I need from your body. There will be," hm, a pause, considering his wording, before continuing after a fractional pause, "times I wish to do it the other way. To serve you. It would please me."
Another slow shift of his body, a heavier way of his breath leaving him. "But I've never had someone to myself this way. I've never felt ownership over anything. Anyone. I want to."
Is that bad? Maybe. Complicated. But here we are.
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Daniel takes stock of these ideas, imagining them, letting the potential wash over him. Impossible to miss the way his breathing ticks up a little, and the way he's only growing warmer. The idea of being served by someone with Armand's past threatens to string a stitch of unease through him, but he's a little foregone in the arousal department, and besides, Armand has had quite a while to unpack his own issues. If he has. But telling a survivor what they can and can't be turned on by is bullshit.
Ownership. His pulse speeds up, telltale. A horrible thing to know that in 1973, Armand described him accurately, and that a part of him in the midst of the most intense fear and shame he'd ever felt, thought it was kind of hot. That part of him seizes onto something now and says Yes, more of that, and has to take a slow breath.
Complicated. Yep. Here we fucking are.
"You're the only one," he says, and he's shocked at how affected he sounds. Uncharacteristically, he falls short on explaining what he means by that. Maybe it's clear. Armand is singular. In the world, and to him.
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catch it, there, in Armand's expression. Seeing through the dark, the subtle widening of his eyes, some near-nervous set to his jaw. A drawn breath in, slowly let out.
"Yes," he says, on a delay. "As you are for me."
No other fledglings, no other immortal lovers. He had turned Daniel because he wanted Daniel to live forever, because he wanted a companion, and here it is. Almost embarrassing, how simple it has all turned out to be.
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His own breath is nervous. This is a lot.
"Please kiss me."
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New ones are so fragile. Armand knows this better than most. The amount of times he has flicked a glance at one, focused in on the core of them, and set them ablaze like they were made of tinder and dry straw—scarcely effort on his part.
And now there is this one, immortal but fragile. He has never cared for one. He can't begin to fathom the idea of the true ancients waking, so he can at least take some comfort that by the standards of the active vampire populace, his presence is armor enough.
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He kisses him with intent, learning the taste of him, what makes him press back the most intently, and he forgets everything about kissing in his life before, even his unlife before. They don't strictly need to breathe, he doesn't have to hope nothing turns sharp in his mouth and give him away; it's different, an endless heated loop of sensation. Armand feels so good on top of him. Dangerous and safe and erotic and sweet. Someone who might hold his hand for hours, someone who might try and keep him in a fucking cage. Either way, forever.
Daniel shifts up to rub against him, then touches his face, his chest, and slips a hand between them to press a hand where he's growing hard. As easy as decades ago, though really, the only thing that had finally made a major dent in his libido had been disease. Still, this too is a little different; blood pressure feels just that little bit more euphoric when you are all blood inside. He hitches them together so it's hard on hard, layers of fabric teasing separation.
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But willing to tease himself with it, satisfy instead in the warm weight of himself bearing down, at the way Daniel shifts them even closer together. Armand has no shame at all about another and much more precise roll of his hips, the specific slide of blood-filled flesh, mutual interest.
This, for a moment. Wiling away seconds and minutes like this, where the occasional, languid shifts of his body against Daniel's feels less like he is attempting to evoke, provoke, but more what he said already: seeking his own satisfaction while Daniel is caged beneath him, between his knees, his hands, beneath his weight.
The kiss breaks, and Armand kisses up under his chin. Down to his throat, a scraped open mouthed feeling across his adam's apple, the flick of a tongue, and then finally tilting up so he can insist Daniel's shirt off of him. Gets as far as helping it up around his shoulders before abandoning Daniel to that task, occupying himself with a blunt-toothed, gentle bite lower down on bare chest.
:E
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He almost laughs, almost pulls up something dark and terrible (Armand might shrug it off, tell him You were fine, which would also be funny, be infuriating), because if he isn't anything more than an eager hole, then maybe that's what Armand wanted in the first place. Projecting more than just insecurity onto the half-dead boy in that apartment. Would you have fucked me then, while Louis was in the other room? Would you have wanted it for more reasons than making him feel worse?
Pleasing, that the fucked up thing in Daniel interlocks with the fucked up thing in Armand.
He lifts enough - easy, like he's weightless, like Armand is, too, just hovering his spine over the bed, moving this way is still a marvel after mortality, after aging, after disease - to finish sliding his shirt off, peeling the sleeves away, letting it drop mindlessly beside him. He's going to reach back down and tangle fingers in Armand's hair, but then there's that bite, which makes him flinch. Good flinch, the rest of him twitches, he lets out a faint, unbidden 'Oh', and it's not anything with fangs, no blood, but it opens up a desire that sends a searing rush through him. Motherfucker. Daniel pets over dark curls but doesn't stay there, reaches down his back instead and starts tugging at his maker's shirt in turn.
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Something a little unearthly about the golden tones stubborn in his skin, even under the distant blue light of idle electronics. Something charming and ordinary in the peppering dark hair across his chest. Not much time to appreciate, when the T-shirt is tugged clear of him and Armand lowers his head to bite again.
This time, little pinpricks of pressure, barely enough to draw a smear of blood, but a taste is all he is after for the moment, giving a throaty sound for the sting of copper on his tongue.
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Another bite, just sharp enough, and that fucking noise Armand makes. Everything is so small and it nearly makes him gag with how much it turns him on.
"Armand," nothing else, just his gasped name, hands clasped at his shoulders and scrambling at his back. Encouragement, frustration, desire. Daniel hitches up into him, rubbing together restlessly.
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But Daniel hitches up against him. Makes a good case for exactly that.
Armand gets his fingers in Daniel's waistband and drags the fabric down, just dexterous enough to make it a smooth enough process, a sudden baring. Panting, a little bit, with the desire to taste, and his hand captures Daniel's cock, a feeling and assessing kind of contact, memorising his specific dimensions, a fingertip questing over the head of it.
His, his, his. At this point, requesting permission would be an overly polite show of manners, but Armand thinks he would have asked or found a way to extract it before he slides further down and tastes him with an open mouth. Does not, clearly, his cupping hand and the hot-wet of his tongue sudden things in the dark, hungry too for the sounds Daniel is making, the shape of his hands on his back and shoulders.
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A hand around him, then more all at once, and Daniel's breath catches in his chest on an expletive. A dizzying view of the ceiling as what's happening sinks in, the impossible velvet heat of Armand around him, elegant fingers, the threat of teeth that cranks everything up. Then, hands engaged again, scraping through his hair to cradle his skull and touch his shoulder, before Daniel is up enough on one elbow to do this and watch him.
Is this really happening? Jesus Christ. Apparently. This is his life, and this is Armand, and Daniel is more into this than he's been into maybe anything. He thinks to reach into his mind and to the bond between them, and shudders.
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And that brings about a flush of warmth, as does the tasting touch of his tongue at the tip of him, at the desire to encourage him deeper, just that little bit, and tip his head so Daniel can watch. Little fangs present, still, but kept out of the way enough that if there is the slight sense of them scraping sensitive flesh, it should mainly encourage stillness more than anything else.
Service, possession, both things can be true and complicated in the simple act of taking Daniel into his mouth in contemplative strokes of movement. His hand, flattening against his abdomen.
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Every now and then, the faintest touch of teeth. He holds very still in his propped-up position, trying not to squirm despite ragged breathing and the clench of his hand against Armand's hair, his shoulder, attempting not to dig claws into him during moments of too-good near-flinching. He's not sure if this Armand is serving him by doing this or if he's the one offering it up, held here to give Armand whatever he wants.
Good thing, actually, that Armand can't read his mind. He wouldn't find anything useful in there, no roadmap for better pleasure, just deranged shit like It wouldn't be the worse if he actually bit me here, okay yes it would, okay stop thinking about it.
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Sinks a proper bite into the meat of Daniel's thigh, blood quick to rise, coaxed beneath a languid swallow that draws golden threads beneath the surface of his skin, the blood-thick flesh in fluttering abdomen muscles, reaching for his heart.
Hand, squeezing. Service, possession, some ideal thing between the two when there will be times maybe either of them will crave one more than the other. Armand's eyes slide closed under the taste of hot blood in his mouth. It's been a very long time since he's really itched for exactly that.
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Daniel goes weak for a second before he's clawing at his shoulder, the back of his neck, his other hand grabbing at Armand's on his abdomen. He doesn't think about heroin. He feels and goes to some fucking other dimension. Everything is blood, connected, a glowing conduit made of nerves and magic. There's desperate, aborted pleasure in his dick where it's still hard practically pressed to the side of Armand's face, feeling his silky hair, there's mind-melting pleasure in his thigh where he's bitten into him, and everything runs head to toes like a shock from something deeper that holds the note instead of sparking and moving on.
He knows better than this - this, sitting here, not reciprocating - he's always been pretty good (no complaints at least) (how's your head), but he's caught too expertly in Armand's claws and teeth to do anything besides gasp, in this moment.
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It's enough. Just this one mouthful, two mouthfuls, and then his fangs withdraw and go blunt and he keeps his mouth against the wounds he's made to catch the oozing run-off, giving the flesh time to close.
Returns to himself. The feeling of a hand at his shoulder, a hand on his hand, and he tangles their fingers together. His own arousal, now aching between his legs, and Daniel's, and he has to decide if he wants to finish him that way, feels himself salivate for it, but finds himself wanting differently. Finds himself not thinking as clearly as usual. Louis, bless, had to do quite a lot of work to ensure Armand was at the level of empty-headed pleasure that he occasionally craved.
Daniel's blood still gathered between his teeth, beneath his lips, small smears at the corners of his mouth. With inhuman grace and speed, Armand returns to pressing the full length of himself down against Daniel, snaring him in a kiss.
Impatiently pushing his own sweatpants down, to gather low and out of the way.
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He squeezes their joined hands, pulls them back so Armand is pressing down and pinning him there by his head, holding on. He pushes into the kiss, tasting his own blood, tasting Armand, and the only thing that keeps teeth from growing too-sharp is the knowledge that Armand isn't receptive. That's his right, Daniel thinks; boundaries, all that shit. His maker. Daniel said It's yours, and he meant it. Anything, everything.
"Can I touch you?" he pants, against his mouth, other hand grasping at his side and his hip, pressing between them. He thinks Armand is going to say yes, that if asking at every step needed to be a thing then Armand would have done so before sucking his cock into his mouth or biting him, but he doesn't think he has any blood left in his brain. "Can I, can I—" begging, even fingers splay out to cradle Armand's erection, desperate to feel him even if not for long. Electric, right on the edge.
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Armand, reaching between them, a clumsy arrangement of appendages between the close press of their bodies, but not for long. His wraps his fingers around Daniel's knuckles, encouraging that press, gathering themselves together. "Like this," he encourages, like he has managed to work his way to the one articulate idea of what he might want beyond a formless ache.
All the more intense for it without cloth to mitigate, blood-hot flesh fitting together, beneath the squeeze of their hands. A little slickness between them, enough friction to satisfy, but none of this is particularly purposeful, chasing desire as it comes.
Strangely satisfying in the midst of different intensities: the feeling of his bare thighs on either side of Daniel's, the slight tickle of body hair, the warm softness of muscle, the hot line of bare contact from knee right up to where Armand kisses him again.
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Another kiss, like he's desperate for it. He is. The feel of his mouth, the taste of it, of everything there. They feel so tangled despite doing nothing but this, clawing and rubbing like teenagers. Gripping each other's hands, panting, sweating, wrapped up on his stupid bed in his stupid basement.
"How do you want to come?" grated out so close to him, mouth to the corner of his.
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"Like this," sounds like a confession, almost, like perhaps he should have retained the ability to do more, make more of this, but also he wants it fiercely as it is, rutting through Daniel's hand, against his cock.
A messy kiss against Daniel's cheek, his jaw. "With you." Whoever is first, permission is granted.
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Sweat and precome make it easier, the heat off the both of them too much for two people who are dead, Daniel keeps pressing messy badly-aimed kisses against him as he strokes them both, somehow falling easily back into muscle memory he'd tried to make himself forget. Years of I'm not, and now it feels like I was just waiting. He rasps nonsense out, that it feels good, that Armand feels so good, all of him, his hands, mouth, his teeth, he says please, please, and he doesn't know why.
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Good, murmured. Nonsensical. Good and like that and keep going as if Daniel were in need of instruction and praise, and perhaps he is. Either way, Armand gives it between short breaths.
Then, inevitable: fangs again, pressing into Daniel's shoulder. Not a deep draw of blood, just a sharp clench of pressure and a louder groan, maybe as loud as Daniel has ever heard Armand when he isn't yelling, muffled there, pressed into skin and muscle as he comes in hot pulses. Doesn't freeze through it, wringing every bit of pleasure out of the feeling of Daniel's palm, his cock, low against his stomach.
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Same mind, same blood, maybe it's supposed to feel like this when they fuck. (Does this count as fucking?) (Yeah.)
He feels his fangs in his mouth, a spiral of hunger getting its hooks into him with the rush getting his maker off brings, but he doesn't bite down anywhere because he doesn't have permission to, and inspecting why he needs to figure that out first is too difficult right now. Instead he touches himself, quicker, more desperate, using Armand's come to make everything slicker and easier and faster as everything winds tighter until he fractures and follows him off the ledge with a choked sound.
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which is a hilariously human thought to have, acting as if there is any limit to that 'sometime', a finite amount of sex acts they might perform before the heat death of the universe
so he can remember to admire them when they're held together and thick with want. But half an aftermath and watching Daniel attend to himself is gratifying too, lifting his focus up in the moment that the other vampire begins to come to then observe his face. Armand's eyes go hooded, and he ducks down to kiss at those choked sounds, almost sweet.
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Armand, Armand, Armand. His weight on him still feels good. Daniel still isn't thinking exactly clearly - though it's still done purposefully - when he raises his hand to his mouth to lick it. Bloody, like he's almost gotten used to, which feels free of anxiety in this moment and tastes better than a human's. By miles.
Fuck.
He repeats it, out loud.
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Settles against him, head resting on his chest as if they were still watching cartoons or settling in to sleep, although Armand isn't certain he feels tired.
Satiated. Rare that a vampire ever knows that sensation. His mind feels heavy, like a sponge, like it might be impossible to second guess, to fret, synapses too sluggish.
And pleased, that's also what he feels. Experience a marriage of the better part of a century in which all love, romance, gratification slowly drained from the bed, watch your companion fuck a thousand men and dream of his former lover while sleeping a foot away from you, and it doesn't matter how much you have done before: you may start to believe you could never elicit this response from a person again. Shivering and desperate and choking and gasping.
No. Too much reflection. Too much past. Armand wishes to be present. Draws Daniel's hand to him, and tastes their mingling as well with a touch of his tongue to the heel of his palm.
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More, somehow, when Armand licks his hand too. Daniel lets him have it, splaying fingers for him, once more captured, everything laid out and permissive. Diamond nails, exposed wrist. He still feels shivery from climax and from the blood drained from him. He wonders if Armand likes the way he tastes, or if it was just an instinct at the height of sensation.
He tucks his other arm around him, encouraging him to settle like he so often does. No pajamas or blankets between them this time, and staying still will be disgusting when it all cools down, but Daniel's never been particularly put off by that sort of thing. Bodies and their mechanics are an interesting part of existence, living and undead. He pets over Armand's hair, his shoulder, down his spine. Covetous, a little greedy still. Who knows. His maker might decide this was a bad idea and bolt, abandon Daniel to a dark chamber he can't leave for fear of being immolated if he ran after. He'll enjoy what he can.
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Bolting is not off the table, but the spark of that impulse doesn't surface, not while they attend each other in this way, not while it feels there is nowhere else for Armand to be.
Eventually, a kiss to inner wrist, to forearm, and then settling again. They will need to get clean, but the animal in him doesn't particularly care, nor the vampire, nor the figment of a person caught between these extremes. Silence, then, and Armand says, "Say something," as he rests his chin on Daniel's chest.
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Like sunset in fall. The only sun he gets.
"That was really good," is what he says. He slips Armand's hair back and trails his touch down his neck, his shoulder, then back up again. "A pretty big change, for us."
One that feels easy, despite the danger.
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There would likely be no The Vampire Daniel to begin with, but he needn't venture all that far back. Reflects that Daniel likely does not have this same reassurance, but then, he has never possessed the ability to read his mind to miss it. And has never really needed it.
"Yes," Armand says. It was really good. It is a pretty big change. "I hadn't intended it." He shifts so that they can speak a little easier, less cross-eyed blurriness, and he can also bring around a clean hand that can do its share of petting, laying on the cushion beside Daniel's head, toying with grey-white curls behind his ear. "There's been very little intentionality throughout."
Obviously. But this, too, is different. Perhaps he should apologise for the way that if Daniel is caught in some labyrinthine scheme after all, it's currently under construction, building itself from the centre as they explore it.
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"Mm." An amused sound. "We do seem to have been a series of land mines and trip wires for each other the whole length of this thing."
Life-altering explosions, one to fuck Daniel's head completely in San Fransisco, one to destroy Armand's relationship in Dubai. All the other smaller blowups and bloody stumbles in between. A very twisty pipeline from trying to hook up with Louis in 1973 to now laying in bed naked with Armand. Dead, bonded for eternity.
"Though that's a kind of wanting. The kind that takes over when something suddenly looks like it's within reach."
Be it blowing up Armand's web of manipulation, or bringing Daniel into the blood. Or a kiss.
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Something to think about. Daniel, so free and willing with his permission. Armand, who doesn't know what he is doing or will do at any time, these days. Land mines and trip wires.
The revulsion he had spoken of. The connection that tethers creator and created, the eternal imbalance of power. He doesn't feel revulsion now, that isn't the word any longer, not when he has now admitted to wanting something of it for himself. His fingernails play along pale skin, coarse hair, lines defined by bone and muscle.
"Is there any part of you that wonders at it?" His eyes, ticking back up to study Daniel's. "If what we are to one another creates the wanting."
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Impossible not to think about. It is so present between them. So much that Daniel thinks Louis was underselling it during the interview, and in turn, sometimes finds Claudia's actions to be repulsive and alien. (He might take that one to his grave.)
And yet,
"Kind of a moot point, though. Without it there's nothing to want, because I was dying. I could branch off from that, and think what if it was someone else, what if it was Louis, is there still this. Is there still any of the things before this."
He looks at Armand, and thinks of the way they would look at each other in Dubai. He thinks of the way that Armand held him in San Fransisco.
"I think it had to be you. I think it was always going to be you. Or not at all."
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Daniel is saying—things. This moment of resistance, failing to resist, is only a flicker, and he tunes back in in time for because I was dying and Armand slides his arm around him, over his side, fingertips trailing up along his back.
"I wasn't lying," he says. "When I said that we had planned to offer it. That Louis was going to be the one to give it to you, had you agreed."
Close their minds off forever from each other. This, Armand had told himself, would be his silver-lining. The interview would be written, it would forever immortalise the story in cement and steel, and then—
Grand plans that don't bear thinking about. Now, laying here, the idea of Louis having Daniel is enough to make his fangs itch. His.
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He can tell when Armand is lying. He was just mad at him, then, and various self-esteem issues have caused him to shy away from Louis whenever he's reinforced that the offer was going to be real. It's just a mess to think about, and he doesn't like doing it— he'd have said no. Trip wires, land mines. Does Louis accept 'no'? Does Armand make him say 'yes'? Doesn't matter.
Daniel slides a hand up over Armand's chest, his throat, so he can cradle his face and ghost a thumb over his mouth, thinking about the fangs in there, and how good it felt when he bit into him each time. Different, teasing at first, then serious, then in the throes of it. He wants to feel more of it.
"I just think you were going to be the one to kill me, one way or another."
Maybe he was going to lose his temper there at dinner. Explode his head then turn Louis into a shell. Or maybe: always this, always his maker. Maybe farther back. Maybe Louis never gets up out of the coffin in San Fransisco. One way or another, his heart was always going to stop under Armand's bite.
Editor's note, Daniel could probably stand to sound a little less like he thinks that's hot? Or not. Could be fine, considering they just did what they did.
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Daniel's hand at his face. Being admired, being wanted. His eyes don't go huge, as established, but gleam what may become a familiar shade of wanting amber. And so it all probably reads perfectly clear in Armand's expression, and made all the plainer when Armand settles in closer to nudge past Daniel's hand and kiss him again.
He could worry at it more. Would he have said 'no' to Louis? What would he have said, if Armand had allowed him the choice? Moot point, to use his parlance. And besides, it isn't as though Armand was fully conscious as to why he was doing any of it. He remembers, after, thinking of it like: it had given him something to do. A new, pleasing dimension to that turn of phrase, suddenly.
Telling on each other, maybe, when Armand's kiss insists itself a little more, warming up to it, and when the probability of him being thrown out of bed is low.
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(But maybe.)
Armand's eyes looks so beautiful. Alien, unlike anything else in this world living or dead. Daniel can see them in the dark, and he knows his own mirror their color. Amber-orange-smoldering fire of interest, a thing he used to think was about him being angry, and that being angry just happened to overlap quite often with thinking about Armand.
Daniel kisses him back. Lets him into his mouth, curls his tongue against his, presses one hand flat against his chest so he can pet him, uses the other to slide around his side and encourage him to press even closer. No, not about to kick him out. If he's honest with himself — and this seems like the day for it — he's wanted this for too long to let it fade into sleep so soon. He wants to taste the satisfaction he saw in Armand's eyes, and gloat to himself about being the one to put it there.
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His hand at Daniel's cheek, thumb stroking along against soft skin, and then around to his chin to force the kiss to break as he pulls back a crucial half-inch.
"Say what you would like," he bids. "And I may give it to you."
Will give it to him, of course. But what's wrong with flirting.
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A shuddering breath, with that instruction. His hand flexes where it's clutching at Armand's side, venting restless energy in the face of flirting. What a fucking tease. But he had to know that was in there, surely. He did the same thing torturing him. Meticulously unspooling him.
"I'd like—" Fuck. "I'd like you to bite me again."
Shy? A smidge. He also wants the reverse, but he's keeping in mind Armand's boundaries.
"You're the only one who's ever done that, you know. I mean, since way back then. I never expected it to feel this way."
No blood sharing on the disaster road trip, at least not with Daniel. Armand, and only Armand, after Louis gored his neck.
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Thumb trailing down from chin to throat, gentle down the centre of it. A fond and gluttonous memory, as if the velvet texture of throatfuls of blood surpassed how extremely horrible everything else was about that moment—which, well, it did. This biting would not be the indulgence of that taking.
But it would be an indulgence. "You're going to be hungry tomorrow," he says.
No one else. Louis, briefly, but the taste muddied with drugs and poor memory. He's not sure he would have been capable of rending either of the other two apart for daring, what with his long habit of watching helplessly as the things he wants are scattered apart, but he can enjoy the fierce gladness of a thing that had scarcely even occurred to him.
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No blood bags in the fridge. Gross. NYC has an overpopulation problem, Daniel has no problem killing. Armand knows that. Daniel palms over his chest, his belly, slides fingers over the curve of his hip. Considers.
Decides that there's no reason to buck the trend on honesty.
"You've never indicated an openness to sharing your blood. I wouldn't want something that you're not comfortable with." A squeeze, where his hand is laying on his side again, obviously reluctant to stop touching him. Knees bumping, close enough to be oh-so-quiet. "I liked that you did it. I mean it: Everything's yours."
Important that Armand knows he has blanket permission to do what he wants to Daniel. And besides, nobody talks about fledgling blood like it's a tool to be bartered with and used as some kind of video game level-up, the way ancient blood is talked about. He doesn't want Armand to feel like some ... commodity. He'd want him to enjoy it.
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A mirror, almost, of the feeling of—no, not exactly after Dubai, when he'd found himself slingshotting himself around the world in search of nothing, too much freedom. More like that one last night in Paris, when Louis had taken his hand and proposed they fuck off to Africa, and the anxiety and the fear abated, momentarily, in favour of something hopeful. A blank canvas of a future.
"That's," he says, and then the sentence fails, and his eyes flick down. He should speak of where he stands on bloodgiving, but this sober reiteration is so consuming that he forgets about that for the moment.
Hands on Daniel, tightening, bodies pressed firmly together, insistent, still.
"That's a relief," he manages, finally. That Daniel liked it. (That everything is his.)
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Because it's Armand, and Armand is out of his goddamn mind, and as much as Daniel wants to help him, he just wants him authentically, too.
Which is insane.
Daniel nudges forward, bumping noses and pressing foreheads together. Here we fucking are, together.
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The concrete wall, cracking behind his back. Louis had never looked at him that way, not even in Paris. It was not the same way Lestat had looked at him, not the same way Marius had as well, but they all had some flicker, towards the end, that indicated to Armand that they found him lacking, or too much, or—
His nails, dimpling into Daniel's skin. Maybe this is why the past feels so close. Louis, a part of it, and it has barely been months.
Armand angles his head, kisses him. Sweet, brief. Back on task.
"I would like it," once he is sure his voice will come out level, "for you to take from me, sometimes. Perhaps if you ask for it. And don't mind if I tell you no."
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Boundaries. Important. Very important, if they're going to do this. Daniel had been mocking in Dubai, during the interview, maitre in the bedroom, maitre when it's hot or convenient, and it was deliberately unkind. He knew what he was doing, at least potentially, as he'd yet to be fully convinced of anything the odd vampire had asserted about himself. He was angry at Armand, he knew it would hurt if it landed. (Honesty is not a tactic.)
And so he's got the potential for it. He realizes that Armand is handing him yet more potential, and whether or not he trusts Daniel, he's trusting him with that. Boundaries that have been pushed. Daniel, with fingers laid on them.
"Think I'm clever enough to figure out when you'd like me to ask?"
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But Daniel is made of sterner stuff than all of that. Perhaps it's why he chose him. The question evokes a twinge of amusement in Armand's expression, and he says, "Yeah."
Yes he does.
He remembers his insistence, when he was playacting as mortal. Daniel refusing by pretending to prefer Damek. Armand, as Rashid, one of a selection. A certain kind of debasement that, had Louis pushed any further, might have brought out his fangs. Or perhaps it might not have. I serve a god, he had said, and there had been the too vivid imagining of draining a sampling into a glass, or something even more obscene, Molloy's mouth to his wrist. His neck.
Maddening.
He kissing Daniel again, pulling their bodies closer together. Daniel wishes to be bitten, and Armand thinks he wants to do it while they are fucking. It's been a long time since that specific configuration of sensations. His hand slides down his back, a grasping across his ass that communicates that desire, little pinpricks of claws drawing white lines in pale skin.
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Until he sets it aside. Being here right now is more important, especially with the way Armand is pawing at him. It makes him shiver. He nips his maker's lower lip, gentle and teasing, even as his own breath hitches.
(Daniel decides he's going to wait to ask, and pick a time when he's sure Armand is about to fucking kill him for not asking.)
"Yeah?"
Been decades since anyone's fucked him. No complaints (howsyour—) historically but he wonders if he's still, you know, got it. His dick is pretty interested in finding out, his pulse ticking back up with sharp excitement.
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Here, Armand would ask: may I? Do you want me to? But Daniel has been clear, the limits (or lack thereof) of his permission, and the idea of just having thickens the blood in his veins, makes his mouth sting bright in the wake of teeth. He thinks he can hear Daniel's heart beat quicker.
It has, likewise, been decades since he fucked anyone. Where the careful dynamic maintained itself between himself and Louis allowed for deviation, such instances were rare, and only became rarer. Armand hadn't minded (or cared), but he considers it now, his own want, an intrusion of desire.
They could talk about that too. Maybe they will. Not now.
"I want you on your back," he says. "So I can look at you."
Maybe his eyes will change a whole new colour.
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"I want that, too."
He's nervous about it, but it's not a bad kind of nervous. Settling into his skin all over again, peeling away things he thought he'd put to rest, and all of it quicker than he might have imagined— though of course he didn't, not in earnest.
"I have to grab something, though, unless you have some trick I didn't manage to interview out of anyone—"
Comedy fumbling to grab lube?
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He has jokes too. Just because they didn't appreciate the sunglasses bit—
Armand lets up, allowing Daniel to fetch what they need. His awareness expanding, permitting the edges of the bed, the room, back into his consciousness, as if he has been spending the last however long its been within a coffin-sized dimension, population two. He snags at the edge of the sheet to clean himself off a little, but distracted, preferring to watch Daniel.
Feels the next pulse come a little harder. Want. Desire. With more distance between them, he can look him over better, imagine where in the future he might feel him with his hands, or sink his teeth. The desire to dominate and consume, the desire to serve and to fawn, and maybe also, the desire to just be normal. To tangle in ordinary ways, and have affection, and—
Hm. Something in that sentiment like a sharp, broken off thing. Warrants further investigation or none at all.
Shifting to kneel up when Daniel returns, hands out for him.
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Every bitter argument, every awkward overture of peace, there was always something. Something. A deeper thread stitched somewhere unbelievable. Now this strange thing they've sewn together is being flipped over and exposed, and all the handiwork holding them together is right here, and Daniel is marveling at it.
Just a touch of cleanup while he grabs something. Kept in the bathroom, a half-guilty purchase. (Daniel is straight and he doesn't fuck men anymore, Daniel is single and even though both women he married were as adventurous as he was, he just isn't doing much anymore, he's content enough with is lot in life, Daniel is, is, is, a bunch of shit he should be embarrassed for pretending.)
Less guilt, when he returns. The sight of Armand waiting for him like that, reaching, makes heat and affection flood him like being dunked in hot water. He should run the other fucking way from an ancient creature with arms extended towards him, claws and fangs and inhuman amber eyes. Daniel's hands find his, back in the bed, climbing to meet him and press another kiss to his mouth, flickers of his expression as he goes both shy and elated.
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He had told Daniel that he often thinks about the fact that vampires should not exist. That he should not. The logical conclusion that he had drawn Daniel into the perversion of nature that is them. Punishment, anger, revulsion. A lot of complexity, philosophising, for something as simple as wishing he could cease to be, with only a duty towards persisting keeping him tethered.
Daniel as tether. As companion. (And there is a lurking essay about how Armand hated that notion, too, of a vampire forcing someone into this world just to make it more bearable for themselves, and on and on—)
He gets a hand under Daniel's chin and pushes it aside so he can kiss down his throat. Warming back up.
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Daniel sinks against him, hungry for it, but he tips his head back to let Armand have whatever he likes from him. It makes him shiver, and he slides hands over Armand's shoulders, letting the bottle drop down beside him. Pointy nails are a bit of a nervous-curious note around the prospect of anal sex, but also, intriguing on a kink level. He expects it'll be less racy than it seems, though. It's not like he's ever accidentally sliced a toe off while absently scratching an itch.
Thinking about existence, thinking about the exact mechanics of getting fucked. Duality of man, etc.
"Every little thing with you feels so fucking good," he says, his voice a breathy clash of appreciation and exasperation. How.
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So he asks, "Did you think of me like this," after his teeth leave blunt little marks in Daniel's shoulder, "before you knew what I was? Or only after?"
However Daniel might interpret that. Before he knew Rashid was Armand. Before he knew Armand was a monster, specific to him, specific to Louis. Before Armand was his maker.
Perhaps there was nothing, and it was Armand alone with his fascinations. That would be fine too.
Moving them, meanwhile. Urging Daniel backwards by invading his space, a hand catching the side of his knee.
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"Jesus, all that—"
Really, bringing up the psychosexual headgames going on in that penthouse? Daniel lets himself be manhandled, and thumbs over the sides of Armand's throat to feel his pulse, his breath, draws a hand down the center of his sternum.
"I had pages of notes about you as soon as I walked in the door." A wry confession. "I was embarrassed to think about you, some twenty-something, mysterious, beautiful but obviously bonkers butler. Being bothered all day by a creepy old man."
And yet.
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"You weren't meant to notice me," Armand says, and he can sound amused at himself, now, the kind of fucked up innocence of smiling fondly about the young human men Louis had flirted with his Paris, that Armand hunted for sport. But worse, probably. Insisting Daniel onto his back, kneeling between his legs. A hand, sliding up his thigh.
Looking at him as he adds, "I couldn't leave well enough alone, I know," and yes, they're talking about the strange happenings beneath the even stranger circumstance of him hovering over the interview i a bid to continue his long term control over his husband—
It's fine. Digs a thumb into the meat of inner thigh as he retrieves the bottle with his other hand.
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"You were setting up little interactive encounters and waiting for me to walk by instead of just engaging me in conversation," he teases. A funny memory now. Fake Rashid praying, or wandering around on the phone in a thin shirt, then big eyes when interrupted, oh, Mr Molloy, what a surprise, something something, weirdest speech patterns in the world. Of course he was distracting.
He shuffles a pillow behind his back, leverage for participating, one hand still petting down Armand's chest and questing between them to circle fingers around the base of his cock. He can't stop touching him, even if he's getting in the way.
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He was being in character.
And the next exhale comes heavier at the feeling of Daniel's hand, exploring, touching, holding. Rewards this act of reaching for him with the slightest insistent shift inwards of his hips, before following impulse, pressing the cap on the bottle to open. There, a casual spilling of liquid down onto his cock, Daniel's hand, enough for some to leak through, smear on abdomen, inner thighs.
"It was, in part, a game for myself and Louis," admittedly. Yes, utility, a means of monitoring the interview and preserve his anonymity while they got their bearings, but they didn't have to do all that. Armand, wrapping his hand around the top of the bottle, tipping it to fill his palm, grease his fingers. "But it quickly became something else."
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(What if they'd fucked in 1973? A horror story. But...)
"What'd it become?"
He can guess. Distractions in both directions, when Armand took off his disguise. He thinks the elder vampire was supposed to be keeping tabs on him, and instead found himself involved in checking in on Daniel's increasingly inappropriate curiosities. He was mostly focused on the interview, sure, a dogged workaholic who loves nothing more than the angle, but he would look up and find Armand staring at him.
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"Baiting your curiousity," he says. Gets his hand between them, smearing his palm broad along Daniel's cock. Momentary, before tucking in between his legs. "Your attention from the task at hand." From Louis. "It was stupid of me. You were going to start remembering."
But he wanted it, just a little, beneath the stone tower of certainty that he didn't want it, that it would be ruinous. Some part of him buried deep that wanted to be ruined.
The press of his fingers, gentle. No sharp bits, somehow. Not going slowly, just methodically.
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"You wanted me to see you."
There, in the present, in Dubai. In the past, in his mind. Even if it was dangerous and it was going to lead to a fucking nuke. It sends a shiver up Daniel's spine, to think of Armand risking his entire life collapsing just to get Daniel's attention.
"Didn't I always?"
Even at the fucking bar. Even all the way back at Polynesian Mary's. He looked up from laughing with Louis, struck by his looming partner. Easy enough in those days, typical of gay couples, everyone just having fun. Free love. But he was still caught for a second, like a fish on a hook. Another steadying breath, letting Armand do this.
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Asking Daniel if he thinks the vampire bond is what draws them together. Wondering if a week's worth of torture is what made him fascinating to the fascinating boy, even when he didn't remember it. Tonight, he is in the mood to enjoy these realities, and the attraction between them in spite of-because of. There will be plenty of time to pick at it, fret at it.
Or maybe not. Maybe he will distract himself with Daniel every time. Encourage scalding truths and affirmations both.
Working him, slowly but surely, gently but ceaselessly. The scrape of vampire claws a sensation that doesn't push past into pain and damage. He has practice. Thinks of a good place to score, I did what I had to, and asks, "Do you like that?" in the hush tone of bedroom talk, the intensity of curiousity.
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Does he like this?
He's not an incoherent mess. Despite the allegations he wasn't a closest twink shaking and gagging for it. Just a regular closeted weirdo. It was good sometimes and bad other times. He'd hoped it would happen with Louis, he wanted it even if it would have been bad. Be careful what you wish for, and all that. Since it went real fucking bad.
"Yeah." The real answer. Holding himself so still, hyper-aware of the intrusion into his body and the potential for harm. It makes him nervous, which makes it hotter. Long past the point of pretending fear isn't tangled up with sex, for him. It's the intensity, he thinks. Always looking for the inescapable, inevitable feeling. Never able to find it honestly, so looking for it through risk, instead. "You've got pretty good aim with those." A slight tremor in his voice; Daniel's eyes fall closed for a moment, face scrunched up. The deep ache slowly spiraling out from that point of connection, catching him suddenly in its current.
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But humanlike desire, forcing his mouth to part, his eyes to hood. Good, he thinks. Progress being made, on finding out what Daniel likes. In general, or with him. What he might learn he likes. If Armand had his fangs in him, maybe he could pick up on that little hint of nervousness.
Thinks he can, anyway, and it doesn't feel unwelcome. Maybe there will come a time when he no longer makes Daniel nervous. He should enjoy it while it lasts.
Slowly, easing his fingers out, letting himself be felt as he does so. That hand immediately straying to his own cock, squeezing himself near the base, a checking kind of action. Daniel, laying open and willing to him, letting him have it all. Strokes himself, and replaces that previous twinge of his fingertips with the blunter presence of the head of his cock, rubbing himself there as he shifts to balance over Daniel, a hand braced by his shoulder.
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Armand, shifting. Armand pressing against him, that's his cock, hard and so, so fucking present, all slicked up, Armand over him, pressing him back, caging him in. Daniel instinctively wants to participate but this position makes it difficult, gives Armand total power over him, and his thoughts flinch to 1973 again, and Armand trying to convince him that death would be better than routine, absentminded missionary sex with a someday-wife.
Ha ha. Maybe death is better. Even though this is still missionary.
"Yeah," he breathes. One hand circling fingers around Armand's wrist at his shoulder, not restricting him, just a point of contact, the other a mirrored hold on his shoulder. Yeah.
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Not quite bottoming out but close, pressing close, enough to satisfy the itch that had wanted so much to feel Daniel pressed around him this way. The alluring resistance of muscle, the appealing way it yields, has to yield. Breath caught.
His hand darts from the base of his cock to Daniel's hip, his thigh, then chest, little careless smears of slickness as he feels him, testing the different points of contact he may wish to grip. Palm smoothing down to his side to settle there, claws dimpling skin.
Doesn't begin to fuck him. Waits, then pushes in deeper, until he is buried. As keyed into the sensation as he is in watching.
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Armand sinks in further and Daniel's hand scramble to touch him, shifts then doesn't, tries to figure out where to arrange himself. Remembering, not remembering at all, because his brain is being re-arranged by a vampire's dick. (You're a vampire, too, remember?) (Right, sure.)
One knee up, restless, rubbing the inside of his thigh against Armand's side, hand flexing on his shoulder. A deep breath in, out. He stares up at Armand, and paradoxically feels like he's falling.
"It's been so fucking long I don't actually remember if this is what it feels like," is a weird thing to say, maybe? There's fuzzy logic. Not sure if he's making sense. "Or if it's just you."
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"It's just," he starts, panting already. Trying again. "It's just bodies, Mr. Molloy." A gleam of teeth, and maybe his canines are sharper now. Drawing back, pushing in, still adapting. "Just blood, just. Friction, and tension. Just neurochemistry, electricity."
Does he believe that? Probably he has, previously. He hasn't said Mr. Molloy since, when, possibly Dubai? Maybe a sarcastic echo later on.
It shouldn't feel like distancing. Not when he is beginning to fuck him this way, and his hand catches desperately at Daniel's hip, and his eyes are as bright as hearth coals. Teasing, perhaps. Challenging, even now. Being insane, as standard.
Fuck Daniel feels incredible. Made to be fucked by him, even.
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"Purely mechanical?" Breathless. Voice scraping deeper as everything coils in him, and he finds the ability to engage in something besides mindless grasping. "Yeah, I get it. Like that."
(Metronomic, my Rashid / Counting down your thrusts)
"You push in, and the pressure around your dick feels good, and it goes over all my nerve endings to reach the anterior position of a gland that feels good in me, and you pull back, and we both want to fucking die from the removal of it, so you push back in. Hormones change. The brain says, I like that."
Daniel's eyes are almost yellow. Sweat on his temples, his throat, his chest. He is a writer, but he's never tried erotica. Too blunt for it.
"Yeah?"
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Nothing wrong with mechanics. Blood pressure and nerve endings and secretions and the vacuum of pleasure with each withdraw, filling it again with a shift of muscle and bone that won't tire no matter how long Armand chooses to keep Daniel here, folded beneath him. Realises his gaze as wandered and reorients it towards golden irises and jetblack pupils, the shimmer of blood-tainted moisture on Daniel's brow.
This is better. Better than erotica, flowery prose, professions of love and passion. Dissection, revelation. No need to make something what it isn't when it is already good. At least, not today.
Armand's fangs pressing against his lip, visible when he curls it. No known reason to him why his never seem as wolfishly long as most others, even in the midst of a hunt rather than just love making, but they do the job. Probably hurts more, anyway.
Shifts his hands, or reaffirms them. A grasp at Daniel's hip, keeping him still. The one near his shoulder settles on it, bracketing him close. Like, let's test this theory, before moving—the slow, adjusting motions resolving into something real, and the initial earnest impact between them punching a sound of Armand even as he does it.
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Armand bears down on him and Daniel almost chokes with it, sensations he hasn't felt in ages raking through him like electricity. He squeezes Armand's wrist, rakes his other hand down his chest to reach between them and feel where his cock is pushing into him, obscene and slick, and then he has to grab his hip, nails denting skin. He's hard, which is a bit of a shock, feeling the weight and heat of it between them— good, ridiculously so.
He's going to say something else. Some mechanical, daring bullshit, but as he opens his mouth (tips of his own canines elongating, just a little) he becomes suddenly aware of the thing binding them together. How it feels. That silver thread and the way he can sometimes sense Armand's mood or his presence, and how fucking overwhelming it is in this moment.
"Yeah," another echo, the most coherent he can be. Armand is holding him still but he digs a heel into the bed and pushes into him, more, fuck.
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No, more. Not the quivering, sacrificial thing. Something else, something he has made, touching him intimately and clutching around his cock and only struggling so he can get more of it.
Armand does that, burying in and pressing down. Long arms sliding around, pushing in between bed and back, shoulders. Their proportions makes this easier, a vampiric tolerance for the strain of mobility and the demands being imposed on Daniel's body that allows Armand to have him like this as well as snake up a hand to find a handful of silver curls and coax Daniel's head back.
Because he wants to drink from his throat. Wants that sense of submission, of repeat, of demand. Armand pressing his mouth against the side of it, hot breath and warm tongue and lips felt first in open mouthed kiss.
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Nails dig into Armand's back, a kneejerk impulse, and he shudders and flattens his palms out, not sure if this hurts or not, if Armand would like it either way, if, if, if, fuck.
He tips his head back, sees Armand, the ceiling, some other fucking universe of sensation. A shudder when he kisses his throat, heart hammering. He was out of his mind and near death the first time, he did die the next time. He'd asked for this, and for Armand to decide to take it like this—
Yes. It's what he wants. He feels like he's high. He feels better than that.
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A far cry from the defeated acceptance of his prey. Of former lovers, even.
Fangs, piercing skin. As painful as that should be, as numbing as it swiftly becomes, and then as pleasurable as it had been before of blood gently coaxed through broken pathways under the force of a monster's appetite. Armand humming his pleasure at the taste of blood coating his tongue, filling his mouth, allowing it to well up messily beneath his mouth before more earnestly drinking it down.
And none of it detaches himself from what he is doing. From being buried deep in Daniel and holding their bodies pressed close together, feeling the shape of Daniel's cock pressing against his belly, the heave of his breathing. All of these sensations, amplified even, at the steady intake of warm blood.
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Pretty fucking cool, might be his eloquent writer's note about it later. Keeping himself from waxing too poetic.
But if there's any transfer of feeling in blood-drinking, now that Armand is doing it with such intent, Daniel can't hide from sentimentality whirling out of ecstatic control. Armand drives him crazy. As comfortable to be around as he is frustrating, fascinating, that lit dynamite word, Daniel sees him sitting cozily and sketching something, he sees him with eyes blazing as he drains someone, he envisions himself reaching out to him in the mist of the kind of horror that should break him and pressing into him for a kiss.
This post-life has been good. He's glad it was Armand.
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No, this is different, more specific. Addicting, addiction. Sentiment and lust together, something in Daniel that craves something more vital in Armand than just Armand's behaviours, his abilities, his tasks, his duties. Presentations, personas, names, faces. Down, down, to where he had felt there was nothing.
How it hurt, to feel each thing torn aside, and so ruthlessly. How good it feels.
Blood runs, escaping past his teeth, streaking down Daniel's neck, into his hair, over his shoulder, on his sheets. Vampire skin will knit itself together, and Armand kisses away the excess as if he would prefer to bathe in it. Hot panting against Daniel's cheek, in the moment he resumes fucking him, his breath shaking.
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Nothing damned could feel this good. No clearer proof to him that heaven and hell aren't real than his maker fucking him and spilling his own blood everywhere, hot and liquid and smelling like both of them— a part of him is always tainted just so with Armand, now, his life having filtered entirely through the ancient being in magic transformation.
Crazy that it's the bite that's going to do it. The feel of his blood, Armand re-arranging his insides, the fact that he can keep up with it and the only pain is from their sharpest edges. He wants to drown in it, choke in it. Daniel rakes claws down his back to grab at him, encourage him to take more, take what he wants, take everything. He is on the edge of shattering. When he kisses him, it's a badly aimed mess that scrapes the softest parts of his maker's mouth with fangs.
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If there is some removed part of him, it's barely a sliver, the rest of Armand too present for the kinds of dissociative analysis that he has often made room for, retreated to. This tiny part of him, observing the side this brings out in Daniel. Clawing and demand and desire, naked desire, unmediated. Not unfamiliar. They can be so cynical, sometimes, but honest too.
But enough of that. Armand has the briefest urge to tell Daniel he's about to come, some twisted up thing that is both seeking permission and giving apology, and ultimately too far gone to do anything but sink into this role of taking he has begun, that Daniel encourages with words, with hands and teeth. Grasps a hold at the base of Daniel's throat, the curve of his shoulder, kiss breaking in the moment, mouth red and wet with blood and spit.
Claws sinking in. Doesn't pause his rutting. Even the abstract part of him looking on doesn't give him a helpful reminder to see to Daniel's pleasure.
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It's rough and probably more than would be comfortable for a mortal, but none of that matters, because neither of them are human. It just sends him spinning higher, dragging in labored breaths, heart hammering, everything good, good, fuck, good, better, perfect.
Armand looks demonic. Like he did when he was torturing him. Daniel thinks he might climax from feeling him this way, looking like that. Clings to him, blood boiling, shuddering, holding him tightly through it. Hands slide up Armand's back, holding him, up to cradle his head and stroke his hair. Nerves twitch all through him, still hard, still right there. But hanging on the edge feels good, and knowing he brought Armand over feels even better.
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The scent of blood, sweat, sex everywhere, the whole world condensed down to the tangle they have made of each other. Aware of Daniel's hardness, still, and likes that too, the feel of it against his skin, signalling mutual desire, gratification.
In a moment. He wants to be held.
He doesn't think he wishes to cry, exactly, but this fullness of feeling resembles the urge. Pressing its hands against his ribcage from within, pushing. Catches his breath. Not quite his mind. Returns his mouth to Daniel's healing bite, kissing and licking away the last of the blood drying there. "Tell me," murmured. "Tell me how you want it now."
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A shivery sigh after that kiss, as Armand tastes lingering blood. Still pushed inside of him, even softening, makes everything light up. Armand's weight feels good, his dick feels good, his mouth, his fangs, all of it. Daniel licks blood-tinted sweat at his temple.
"My hand over yours," he answers. Nudges the side of his face, presses a kiss to half of his mouth. "Just like this."
They don't have to move. Wedge between their bodies, he just wants Armand to touch him. He'll even do the work, fingers wrapping over his maker's on his cock.
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Allows it, allows Daniel to do what he needs. His fingers make a narrow passage to fuck through, attentive in this way, but otherwise he settles where he is, nuzzled in against the side of Daniel's neck and face, eyes half-closed and out of focus. A very human feeling, this kind of daze. Unprofessional. Luxurious to linger in. He had always been fond of this part, the after.
Although not quite after, not yet. Lifting his head, eventually, watching Daniel now, hazily hooded but focused, burning gold. His face, first, then down, the configuration they make, the swollen-needy colour of his cock in their hands together, the press of lifted thighs, wiry silvered hair, the long line of muscle running from wrist to elbow. Every little detail, all of it, possessively collected.
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Something about it all feels so decadent. Too rich, overwhelming. Armand fucking him and finishing first, Daniel using his hand after. Fetishizing self-indulgence. He realizes Armand is looking at him, their folded-over hands on his cock which is leaking and desperate.
Fuck, he thinks he's going to say it, but his breath catches in his throat in some shattered half-sound. It hits him like something sharp, makes him flinch, orgasm shocking him with its intensity. One more experience lost to age, brought back again in death, ten times better, a hundred times better.
"Armand," gasped, grit out, instead of swearing. Maybe his name is an obscenity, though.
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That Armand doesn't reach for that indulgence is both that it skirts too far from his instinct to do so, but also that he wants just this. Breathing together, satisfied. Settled back down, now, head on shoulder.
He could ask, was that good? Was he good? Knows it would be childish, knows the answer already. It was good, he was good, Daniel made it all very clear. How tattered his own esteem of his performance had become, a slow and hopeless wearing down over years. Parceling out control in carefully considered portions, Louis doing nothing to him that was not pre-established, Armand doing nothing to Louis that he was not absolutely certain would be welcome, beneficial.
Daniel's mind sealed off to him. Silence that is full of the sounds of hammering hearts, stuttering lungs, churning blood. Dreadfully, he feels his eyes prickle, a deeply rare sensation, and he makes himself go still and silent, huddled in close.
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Armand, who he can feel draw into himself with a stillness that wasn't there before. Something he would notice even if he couldn't feel the bond that links them, ebbing and flowing with its intensity and feeling so present right now. He wonders if Armand feels it the same way, or if the lack of telepathy makes him struggle. Could be that Daniel just pays too much attention to it, fascinated by the way he's never felt alone since changing, and not in a way that crowds him.
A shift, heedless of how everything is sticky and bloody, so that he can wrap both arms firmly around his maker and hold him fully. He tips his head so he and press a kiss to Armand's forehead, his temple, catching dark hair. He should probably ask if this is okay, if maybe he wants to get up, let him leave. But something catches in his chest and he just— hopes.
"Stay with me," he asks, hushed. A pleading note. Please stay.
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Tactile, almost. Here, laying still, sinking inwards by some measure, Armand can do what feels like winding a finger around the thread that connects them, testing its tension. In answer, nearly, to the way Daniel holds him tightly, kisses him that way, says what he does—and only nearly because he is sure Daniel can't feel it. Right?
The bond between a maker and fledgling was flawed, he had said. He had believed. That they could never touch each other completely in the way two other vampires can meant that there was no true ability to trust and love and be united in the way that eternity had demanded. Another thing Lestat had disagreed about. Armand could play at vanity, and imagine his actions in New Orleans being done to prove him wrong.
"Yes," he says. Slightly movement, then, a creeping across of his hands to reset his hold on Daniel. "I'm here."
They hadn't, of course. But Daniel hadn't needed telepathy at all. Doesn't need it now, to put his arms close around Armand and bid him to stay.
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He does feel it, or at least he thinks he does. Maybe because he's young and every little difference is all the more obvious, maybe Louis primed him to be on the lookout, maybe there's just something about him. All of it, none of it. A hallucination. He wouldn't be able to articulate it if he attempted to do so out loud, but this tether is ever-present, and he can tell when there's tension pressed on it, like he can tell when Armand is in the next building over compared to three hundred miles away.
Armand pulls it a little and Daniel presses into it. Does it feel like anything to him? That phantom limb he thinks he feels, holding him alongside their physical ones, trying to reach into whatever made him go to still and wrap fingers around it, hold him close.
He nods, pleased. Yes, Armand says. Daniel has to believe him. He kisses the top of his head and cradles him. They'll really have to rinse off before they fall asleep, but not yet. He just wants to keep him in his arms for now and feel, connected like a circuit by something that only exists for the two of them.
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The ever present urge to, you know, bite him all over abated, satisfied, for having done that a little and then some. For the open display of affection, for the vocalised desire for him to stay. Soon, that great flood of feeling that had almost pushed Armand adrift, that too withdraws, and he breathe a little like a boot isn't planted on his sternum, pressing down.
Some undisclosed amount of minutes later, Armand shifts, brushes his lips against where he'd been resting his head. A matter of fact rearrangement of bodies into something less like they collapsed mid-fuck. Raises himself up a little, enough that they can see each other, if still pressed in close.
"I want to stay," sounds like reiteration, which he realises, adds, "For sometime. I want to cancel your plans for the week."
To start with, anyway.
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Daniel has a moment, too young for a forever-seventy-year-old, blinking up at Armand because for a second he thinks something laughable like, why, I didn't think you had a problem with any of the projects I have going. He has not spent the past lifetime locked in a loveless companionship, but he, too, has his hangups; even aside from the more shallow matters of disbelief around Armand being attracted to him, there are his divorces, his failures, his reckoning with being solitary. Passion aimed at him is fleeting. People get sick of him. That's just how it is. And so he stares at Armand, cancel your plans, a beat, and finally gets it.
Oh.
"Cool. Done."
A few nice things now and again about being this forever-seventy-year-old. A professional in his prime would have to make excuses and save face and reschedule. Daniel can just say The weather's getting to me, I have to cancel, and everyone is fine with it, because he's about to shrivel up and die anyway. Huh. A week. Locked away with Armand. Again.
He slides hands up his maker's back, along his spine, draws nails over his skin. Survived the first time. Roll the dice again.
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They are filthy and Armand doesn't care. Happy for them to smell of each other, of Daniel's blood. Feels his nerves spark eagerly under each stroke of Daniel's nails across his back, craving repetition. Settles in against him, arms insisting themselves around him, a vine-like cling.
He has no plans to cancel. Daniel has been his plans for sometime, now. No impatience in his body to find some other thing, outside the little hobbies (!) he's been encouraged to have. He can go a long time with nothing at all.
A week. A week and a day.
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Daniel exists in a strange state. It's comfortable and it feels correct, versus, the worry that it's temporary, that Armand is going to vanish when the timer's up and he won't see him for another fifty years. It makes him greedier for it, handsier, even through the jitters of getting used to being wanted. By anyone, but especially Armand. Fortunately he has little shame — done worse, humiliated himself a hundred times over, lived a life Louis called fascinating but was mostly a fucking trainwreck — and feels perfectly fine asking Can I suck your cock? and getting on his knees in the kitchen around all his sketches charcoal smudges.
Sooner are later Daniel will have to eat something. Maybe they can go out. Maybe they can play a game and see who'll show up at the back door and how drunk they'll be.
The cat carries one of Armand's slippers from room to room in clenched teeth, occasionally staring at them while holding it and then immediately scampering away when approached. Daniel has yet to decipher this behavior, though he does manage to grab Peanut later. He holds the cat up by his armpits (?) making it look far more elongated than it should, and asks it what the deal is. Peanut has no answer, and just stares back with his big, weird eyes, until Daniel sighs and cradles him in his arms instead.
He doesn't think about work. (He doesn't think about work much.) He thinks a lot about Armand.
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The changing shift of his eyes, for example. He doesn't know what it means. He will ask Daniel what he thinks it does, eventually, but it's good enough to observe it just for now—what hue they turn when Armand is inside of him, or when he wakes up as the sun sets and he awakes to find himself being observed.
Thinks about his hands, wrists, forearms, the appeal Armand finds in them—has drawn focus to himself by setting his teeth against the curve of muscle, just as he'd started all of this with gentle kisses. At one stage, sketches out Daniel's hands, the dance of them on his laptop or the angle he holds the TV remote, or the loose curl of fingers when asleep. Hides these away at first, and then leaves them out to be found.
Thinks about his cat and its fetish for his slipper.
Finds it under an armchair, Armand levering the whole thing back as he retrieves and inspects it. No discernible harm or biological nastiness, so he slips it back onto his foot. Goes and finds Daniel and sees him holding the cat to his chest, and thinks—he is still in a habit of observation. Perhaps that's fine. But it does mean there lacks a natural instinct to walk over, wind his arms around Daniel's waist as if they were romantic partners in a more traditional sense.
And thinks about it instead. Arms folded around himself instead, loose, easy, chin tucking in as he observes, "You're hungry," which isn't a commentary on Peanut's presence in Daniel's arms, probably.
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A sigh. Daniel pats his furry hindquarter, and looks at Armand.
Always good at reading people, and he thinks he's steadily getting better at reading his maker. He thinks he can tell that the elder vampire wants to walk across the room and touch him. Could be a million reasons why he doesn't, from 'cat in the way' to 'hundreds of years of screwed up issues'. For now, Daniel leaves the cat where he is, and even jiggles Peanut a little in his cradled hold. Peanut endures.
"We could go out."
Because he is hungry. Daniel has come to accept he's going to have to do a murder most nights— nobody talks about how the morality of it all isn't the worst part. The worst part is definitely the pain in the ass of not being able to just order take-out or warm something up in the microwave. And maybe he could, start committing to Louis' methods, but that sucks even worse. Pizza beats the absolute shit out of a blood bag. Alas, no longer an option.
"Or we could see if anyone feels like taking a walk. I've been working on it."
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A little flash of interest. Approval. An eyerolling kind of ego stroke, he thinks, for a maker to convince himself that his fledgling's gifts are some personal reflection on themselves when it's just a matter of a lottery mixed with a multi-level marketing structure—
He goes over there after all, if not to the aim he'd envisioned. A hand drifting out to stroke Peanut's ruff, although the cat is too dazed in his hold to go all squinty with pleasure.
"I'd like to see that." Eyerolling or not. "Ordering in."
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Pleased, to have that greeted with interest. To have Armand slip closer. Funny how these things are a marvel even after fucking. It makes it all the more real— existing with depth, applied to daily life, and not just explosive hours and grabbing at each other.
Also: this could be fun. Daniel does think that his aptitude probably comes from Armand, anyway, though the genealogy project to research that hypothesis is a ways away. He's saving his niche vampire ideas for when Daniel Molloy is legally dead, and he has to find things to do that don't involve mortals. He likes it. Of everything to have in common, he's glad it's this; interesting, useful, in line with his preexisting strengths, and he gets to talk shop with Armand sometimes.
He watches the ancient vampire's hand at his pets the cat. He likes his fingers. Elegant, pretty. Violent, sensual. His gaze ticks back up.
"Want to get them loaded?"
He knows Armand doesn't have to feed. But would he like to? For fun?
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Amusement, in that sound. Kind of. What is actually is is a pleased sound and just comes out that way, because Armand likes it when Daniel asks him to do things, like drugs, or watching a Netflix docuseries, or going for a drive somewhere, and of course, sex too, but there is a different appreciation for the things that are spending time beyond that, even if they lead to it. Drugs probably will. A bonus.
Skritches behind Peanut's ears, Armand tipping his head to study the cat's watery eyes, the positions of its ears. Now and then, he informs Daniel about Peanut's body languages and behaviours, because of course he did his homework. Here, see, the ears are alert but relaxed. The little tail flicks are, likewise, more content than agitated.
"Nothing that will have us climbing the walls," he says. "Or me climbing off the walls."
Five hundred and fourteen years doesn't beat out one professional junkie septuagenarian's constitution.
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He likes it when Armand plays along— though now, he sees he probably hasn't been giving either of them enough credit. Seems to have been a bit more than playing along, and he probably should have noticed before now, with the whole... occasionally holding hands, sometimes sleeping curled up together... thing.
An odd courtship. He wonders if it'll hold. Hopes so. Or at least, hopes they can come back together after, like they do already, after arguments.
Peanut finally tips his head into the scratch, bug-eyes squinting to enjoy it and Armand's artful application of nails. A little shiver after a moment, signaling a desire to escape, and Daniel obligingly sets him down. (Where Peanut will notice Armand is wearing his slippers, and begin to stare. Betrayal.)
No cat between then. Daniel closes the distance, presses a gentle kiss to his mouth. Hey.
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Does not, and doesn't feel like a missed opportunity. Look, he can be normal, at least until the next hard reset. Hey back, instead.
Peanut is not so brave as to try to get his slippers while Armand is wearing them, only barely manages it if Armand is not wearing them but insists on being in the same room, so there is a trill and a silent exit when the situation doesn't resolve itself. Off to do his own hunting.
Raises a hand, a touch that plays with curls behind Daniel's ear by the time the kiss breaks. "How do you intend to go about it?"
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Well—
No, no, come on. Things to do. Dinner, at the very least. Hand find Armand's sides, casually linking form to form. A strange ancient demon making himself comfortable in his house, his life, his chest cavity. Daniel wants to fuck him. He wants Armand to bite him again. He wants to watch him loosen into technicolor strands and spiral into relief and understanding of the universe.
"By giving it a go and then letting you take over if I fuck it up."
:)?
Daniel's not half bad. Better at identification and mind-reading than he is at control, he's found himself adept at picking out targets, but getting them to comply as artfully as Armand is a big ask. Tricky, sometimes, to make sure they land on the same target, unable to just sift it from the other's mind, but that, too, is something he's getting better at. Following a trajectory from an angled outside perspective instead of a point of view one. Good at angles, he makes it work.
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More than enough time to learn its limits. To pick at it curiously, see what's tender, what's calcified. In these early days, it's certainly enough that his fledgling eats, and is willing to enjoy himself.
"Ah," he says, fingertips mapping down along Daniel's nape, his other arm finding a closer place to settle around his waist. "So I shouldn't distract you while you work, given my role as contingency."
At some point, the ease of banter is going to flip on him, and he will convince himself that this is all playing pretend, and someone is going to say keep selling it, and he may need to set the house on fire, but until then—
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"Your whole deal is being distracting," Daniel accuses, though there's no heat in it. Just banter, playing along, swaying a little as Armand knits them closer.
Until then, until then. Daniel kisses him, and it's more than Hey.
What's the rush.
But eventually, they're sitting on the back deck, and Daniel is sitting with his elbows on his knees and thinking.
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Positioned off several feet, neatly bundled into outdoor furniture made of cosy wicker and a cosier blanket. It isn't a detailed sketch with the intent to complete a piece of art, and it's rare that any of what he does on paper is that, but little scribbly practice things. Hands, shoulder, light from the windows, darkness beyond. Details in the midst of abstraction, renderings in charcoal.
And patient. He has gotten being a distraction out of his system—somewhat. Likely, the occasional flickered glance up of an intent look is distracting.
"Don't think of them like puppets," he says, after a moment, "controlling every little movement. Particularly if they're in a moving vehicle. They can fill in the blanks themselves with enough motivation."
In case Daniel is struggling over there.
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A little absent, but better than silence; he knows Armand dislikes being ignored. He caught one, or he thinks he did— currently trying to ascertain the success of his bait, finding it slippery so far away with so many people. The city's dense population is helpful in one way, murders and disappearances happening all the fucking time, but challenging in another, diffusing targets and making it challenging to be precise.
For him, anyway, Armand seems to have little trouble. Letting him do it would save some time, Daniel will only improve through practice, and he likes hearing the little scratchy sounds of his maker doodling, and the way Armand feeling comfortable enough to be doing that makes him feel.
"I think..."
Squint.
"I think I got one. Yeah."
Maybe?? ... Medium confident. Fairly confident. Seeing clearer now, he thinks his struggle was primarily around instinctively avoiding the initial best candidate, who he has returned to. A woman in her early fifties— he still tends to prey on mostly men, trying to pretend he's too good to stoop to every mortal murderer's usual fare, but like the rest of his guilt, this, too, has ebbed away. The cutthroat executive heads to her car, following a sudden blooming instinct. Daniel isn't the Come to me type, it'll never flow correctly for him. Instead, I have the answer.
"It's nice, these winter hours."
Long nights.
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A figurative 'us', clearly, given the mediocrity of the local sun and all, but maybe also us as in them, as in more hours in which Daniel is not groggily lured away from him. Looking down at his page, there is a moment of considering what he's done to it, and a familiar lurch—dimensionless, rambling markings, little hints of skill and no imagination, a waste of material, too much effort for too much simplicity, the opposite of sprezzatura, and none of this brings about dramatic artistic ennui so much as it reaffirms what he knows.
Still. He will continue. Later, perhaps, sketchpad and charcoal set aside, and reaches for the little packet of wipes he'd brought out to clean his fingers.
"Tell me about them."
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But he looks good in the dark, too.
An itching distraction, when he hears the sounds of sketching being given up on. Daniel always wants to see, even when Armand bristles. He's sure his approval is not exactly flattering, given his less than expert eye, but still. Whatever perfection Armand searches for is beyond him; Daniel thinks all of it is compelling.
"Investment company manager," he says. "Formerly in real estate, churning into tech startups now. She lies about being progressive, hangs out with a diverse group of people in her spare time because she's been rejected everywhere else, but she self-harms by listening to nothing but alpha male podcasts and voting Republican. She blames her mother."
You've got it figured out, Daniel threads into her mind. It's right here. Down the turnpike. Just one more.
"Would the 24 hour cycle still be a drain, in like, Greenland, or Alaska?"
This workaholic does not need to go be someplace where he can get away with never sleeping, for the record. At least not for the rest of Daniel Molloy's legally recognized lifespan.
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A creak of furniture, and noiseless footfalls. Armand approaching, touching Daniel's shoulder when he nears. "But I've heard stories of vampires driven mad by an eternal night, and go into hibernation for the summer. I can't say the thought appeals to me."
How fortunate, to be kidnapped by a Satanic-Catholic cult, rather than some moon worshiping pagans from snowy wastelands. Without asking, he takes a seat in Daniel's lap, shifting just so that even his long legs only barely let his feet brush the ground in their slippers. Leans into him, a lean arm around his shoulders.
Would enjoy following along, so he does the second best thing, expanding his focus, seeing how quickly he can detect which glinting glow of a mind out there in the dark is the one that Daniel is reeling in for them.
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All roads, alive and dead, lead back to cocaine.
Though none is on the menu tonight— Daniel has selected mostly psilocybin mushrooms, a strain he knows to be reliably potent and stable for relaxation and mind expansion, and supplementary MDMA. The kind of cocktail that in fifty years may end up offered as utterly ordinary therapy, but is worth a lifetime in prison today.
A smile, as Armand situates himself in Daniel's space, on his person. He accommodates this and winds his arms around his maker's torso, lets him get comfortable. A mortal Daniel would have complained about being squashed, a Parkinson's-riddled Daniel wouldn't have been able to tolerate it. Being dead is fucking great, actually. Daniel noses near the arch of his shoulder. Pleased, as he keeps most of his attention on the fish he's caught, carefully reeling.
She is overwhelmingly bitter and desperate. Self-righteous and self-loathing. She wants her world to make sense, even if it means her world being over. She drives too fast, not because Daniel encourages her too, but because she's impatient and being angry at other drivers scratches at the itch that never goes away in her heart. She wants the answer, though whether it's because she wants a resolution or she wants it to shut up, is difficult to ascertain.
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And he can close his eyes, focus. Ah. There she is.
There's no cheating the veil that divides them. No ability to wave hello from within a third party's brain. The closest they get is the sharing of blood, blood being the substance that forms their connection. Armand just listens, and can guess at a sense of Daniel twisting around a neurotic kind of anxiety, hateful and quick to spark, exploiting synaptic pathways that already exist in pursuit of that answer.
Yes, good. He plays with the hair at the nape of Daniel's neck, feeling this flush of approval. "I'll entertain the idea of a vacation," he says, meanwhile. "I don't think the population of Greenland can sustain a vampire for more than a week or two, without that vampire going noticed."
He understands your tricks.
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Terrifying word, by the way. The R Word. Relationship. A mundane, yet daunting, tag on something that's been deeper (and worse) (and better) since its inception. Since they looked at each other in a bar for less than sixty seconds, with somebody else between them.
"Yeah, smart money probably picks off tourists in Iceland."
Vacation— someday. There's temptation to do everything soon, before it fizzles out, before Daniel fucks it up. But you can't rush when you can't die.
This woman should also quit rushing, and he encourages her, which sort of works. She parks in a commuter lot and heads to a rail stop, buys a hat (with cash) from a vendor that's starting to pack up for the night. Her phone is in her car, she drops her keys into a trash bin. Vanishing into anonymity, as she begins to draw closer to this neighborhood, where one of them will have to start precise control to avoid her being caught on anyone's ring door cams.
"I like this, though. Millennials call it a 'staycation.'"
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Foolish for him to give instructions. Daniel scarcely needs them. This could be an opportunity to feel redundant, but it doesn't turn into one. There is much more appeal for him personally in watching this fledgling he has made act upon the world, as he wishes.
"Millennials would," he says. "Justifying an absence of disposable income and a nice time spent at home in terms of capitalist productivity, or the willful lack thereof."
But, for the record, "I also like it."
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Eating rich people, finding everyone else tiring, reacting to an annihilated prime by making horrendous observations about older and younger generations alike. Mentally ill and kind of hot about it, kind of horrible. (Daniel has been fired from several newspapers before.)
In the not-quite-end, Daniel does need Armand's help with more finite control— he knows where she needs to go, how to path, but making her do it with precision is tough. He's not quite figured out how to get those intricate controls without either slipping or causing more damage than he'd like. Only a little annoying, meanwhile, because of course Daniel is the actual irritating distraction between them, but he can't lurk in Armand's head while he does it, so he wants pointers. Easier than ever to ask for them when Armand has foolishly arranged himself right in Daniel's grasp.
Deana, her name is, and she does eventually make her way to a hidden gate in the tall fence that separates their back yard from a neighbor's back yard — having a borderline Luddite neighbor who rejects all modern security and goes to sleep at 8pm is handy for smuggling in food without being tracked. Walks over grass, stops before them, has a funny contradiction on her face of a frown knitting her eyebrows over blank eyes.
Daniel kisses Armand's throat, just under the line of his jaw where he can feel his pulse, before they get up.
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And Armand is not yet tired of sweet little kisses. Of cloying behaviour. Eventually, maybe something will turn, curdle, and Daniel will kiss him in that way and he might feel like e has been set on fire or needs to remove his skin to escape whatever deception it feels like, from either of them, but for now—
A pleased hum, a reluctance to stand. But he does.
"Please, be welcome," he tells Deana, who doesn't respond to that like he actually said it, but some part of her brain receiving it, soothed by it. She moves inside, this known quantity who has turned herself into a corpse already, a missing person report filed in, let's be generous, twelve hours or so.
He picks up his drawings things, and goes to put them away. Does the rounds, ensuring curtains are drawn.
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She sits down on a sofa, slightly off-center, and waits. Passive thanks to mind-control, but still eager thanks to the part of her brain that Daniel hooked into when he decided on her. I'll understand soon. I'll know soon. Soon. Soon. Soon.
He encourages this, as he gets a glass of water. You're almost there. On second thought, he tries the fridge, and lucks out with a can of soda as well.
Mushrooms first. Nothing glamorous about it, eating spindly, gilled plants, sipping Diet Coke in between; she has done pills, a little bit of coke in university, but this is very hippy-dippy and her subconscious mind is at first riled in a bad way by the idea of raw dogging shrooms. Aspartame and carbonation help. There's no rushing this bit, it has to sink into her before Daniel decides to feed her more or stop, so he just sits back in a chair and looks over to Armand, hand extended. Luring.
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Content, tonight, to simply do as he wants. Within reason. For instance, he could play with their prey's mind like a cat with a yarn ball, but instead he says,
"Would a bad trip transfer, do you think, during the blood drinking?"
Less in the tone that he actively desires to fuck with their meal so much as speculative, and a little assumptive that Daniel will be informed on the topic.
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One hand, a literal one not a metaphorical one, slips up Armand's forearm to touch him, and slide fingers along veins, to the pulse point in the ditch of his elbow, and down again to his hand. Elegant artist's fingers, against his own broad ones. The predator nails look a little funny on Daniel, but on Armand, it looks like he was always meant to have them. Beautiful like the full spread of teeth in a tiger is beautiful.
"A 'bad' trip happens in the brain," he notes. "So maybe, but it wouldn't be about substance contamination in the blood, it'd be a psychological reaction to whatever you might end up exposed to while drinking from them. Depends on if freakouts during dinner unsettle you, I guess."
He tips his head back to look at his maker, curious about his thoughts. Deana is staring at her soda can. Slowly, she reaches for another little mushroom, and as she eats it, she begins pushing the tab on the can back and forth to weaken it, transfixed.
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"Separate things," agreeable, "the chemical we are taking in through the blood and our own physiological response to it, and our psychic sense of the person producing that blood, their feelings, their memories, their emotional state."
Turns his hand, tangling fingers with Daniel. "But I wouldn't be surprised if there's interference between the two. I'm given to understand that psychedelics produce powerful spiritual awakenings."
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Deana might be seeing some funny colors right now. She's noticed the ceiling.
"It'd be an interesting experiment. See if a vampire's reaction can be deliberately curated by selecting a donor experiencing what they'd like to experience in turn."
An interesting experiment that would require a truly staggering amount of drugs and worrying number of vanished mortals. Daniel's pretty sure he could easily get volunteers if they thought they'd live - people are freaks, he's one of them - but asking an impaired monster to refrain from draining a victim to the point of death isn't practical.
"You know, for the vampire scientific digest I'm eventually going to publish."
Imagine.
The woman ends up consuming all of the mushrooms left to her with little prompting— much less effort than it had taken to direct her here. She's eager to sever herself from her own mind and turn off the torrent of stress. There's an answer in here. Daniel eventually sits next to her, and she asks quietly what the pills are. He tells her, and she takes them without prompting. There is a serenity to her that wasn't there when she arrived. She fantasizes that she'll wake up on the other side of this as someone completely different, and the drugs tell her that she will. She'll understand any minute now.
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No peer reviewed, control tested, exhaustive study required, mock assurance before Armand is letting Daniel up. Stands where he is, a partial lean on the back of the chair. Watches Daniel and his prey, listens to her mind, the circling the drain rationalisation that is keeping her fixed on the couch.
Fingers wandering along the arm of it as he moves in closer, coming to settle on her other side. The spell might break if he intervenes too much, but also, it's too late for her. Riding high, now, spiralling into coloured streamers of consciousness. He strokes her hair back away from her ear. Her neck.
"Who will you be, Deana?" he asks.
She shakes her head. Doesn't know. But there are little flickers of notions. Herself, with more money. A man, with a wife. Her teenage self, running a marathon, never stopping.
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"It can be a surprise," he tells her, nudging this and that in her head. Lacking in Armand's light touch, centuries of experience, and so he compensates by being conservative with his moves. Makes sure she doesn't realize she's in some stranger's house, flanked my men she's never seen before, being plied with drugs and told that she'll be reborn in just a second.
The intoxicants make it easier. She wants to be someone else, and as the flush of sensation overtakes her, she mentally reaches out to take the hand guiding her towards the door at the top of a hill. All she has to do is open it.
"Do you want to go first?" Daniel asks Armand, quiet. Away from the woman's attention. "I can keep an eye on you if you don't like it."
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A pause, which is a drawing back, lifting his eyes to consider Daniel across her, eyes violent orange already. Pupils normal, naturally. "Yes," he says, an agreement.
Maybe he won't like it. He is willing to experience that too.
He settles his hand on the back of her head, and Deana falls her skull back against his palm without much coaxing. When he parts his mouth, shows his teeth, it is both the mechanics of the thing as well as wanting Daniel to watch him, see his fangs drop and sharpen. (Fun fact, the cat with the biggest kill rate is the black-footed cat, which is an especially diminutive predator, little teeth and big eyes.)
"Soon," he promises her, before leaning in, and setting his teeth to her neck, sinking them in.
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Armand looks incredible. His eyes, his fangs. Daniel gets to watch unabashed— not that he didn't stare before, now and then when he was actually able to observe his maker drinking, but it's different now. Now, he can raise a hand and stroke over the ancient vampire's hair to make sure he can see all points of contact. Now, he can cradle him gently, and silently encourage him to take as much or as little as he likes. They've had the Don't just keep doing more if you don't feel the high right away talk before about the substances Daniel fucks around with, so he trusts him to make an appropriate call on when to stop.
It's erotic. He had thought so before (so long ago?) in Dubai. He'd thought so as he learned to do it himself, though he rarely allowed himself to look at it that way. He has the freedom to, now. It's safe to watch Armand, the flex of his throat as he swallows, the seal of his mouth to the mortal's flesh, and think: it's just fucking beautiful.
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Long and slow and tender, his swallowing down of poisoned blood. It had hit her quickly, he'd noticed, which means the blood will be close to instant. As soon as he begins to feel something a little like a warm undercurrent flow beneath his thoughts, a sense of floating, Armand retracts his fangs, keeps his mouth sealed just to stem the precious flow.
She is not dead, but she is not lucid, she is gone from this realm, a limp thing on the sofa with a stubbornly beating heart.
Armand lifts his head, a glimmer of blood-stained teeth. Tips head, eyes opening to slivers as he presses his cheek to Daniel's hand.
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He cradles Armand's face, thumb sweeping low near his mouth; he wants to push inside and touch the sharp curve of a fang, feel the remnants of blood, maybe lean forward and kiss him. Instead, he behaves. Starting off as a trip-sitter. No funny business until he's sure Armand is alright.
"Here you are," he murmurs. "Just like you're sitting with your feet in a stream. Watch it go by."
Sometimes it's just charming hallucinations. Psychedelic inspiration, and he thinks Armand will like that on principle, even if the euphoria and mind expansion never kick in. But if they do, Daniel will be mindful to only ask positive questions, and try to keep his attention relatively present. The ecstasy should help with that, and make it extremely difficult for him to end up going down any dark self-examination paths.
"Feeling good?"
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Amber eyed, blue eyed. A twenty-year old with fear and an unwavering focus in his eyes, a busy and distracted thirty-something power walking down a city street, a sixty-nine year old saying you're not from Dubai, I thought you were a native, as if he was the story.
He had smiled then too, as he does now, a fleeting and rare thing. Blood flecked, still, but human otherwise. "Yes," he says. He likes that analogy. Likes to watch the water go by.
Externally, it isn't quite the sleepy softness that Daniel has had some exposure to, since they began some co-habitation. Dreamy, maybe, but just as much from a satisfying draw of blood as the effects of the drugs. A sense that Armand is looking at him very intently, all of a sudden. A deliberate focusing.
"Now you," he invites.
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His own eyes are overbright, starting to turn demon-yellow in anticipation of the blood. He looks back at Armand for another moment, a lopsided smile on his face that's entirely too fond for the situation, committing what amounts to a ritual murder together like it's romantic, before he moves to take up that invitation. The hand touching Armand's face slips down, though he stays connected, resting it on his maker's knee instead. Gives him better leverage as he leans in to Deana's other side, and opens his mouth for the sizeable fangs that extend from unremarkable canine teeth.
He bites down, covers the wound, and drinks. Deana shivers, her head falling back on the sofa, and Daniel holds her steady without letting go of Armand's knee. This isn't just the high, for him, he's also taking sustenance, and this will be the last of her life, walking through the door in her mind. A big hit, for Daniel, but he'd calculated what he might take on his own for a casual trip added the tiniest bit more, eyeballing the split between him and Armand. He's done this before, and he trusts his experience just fine; there's all kind of shroom etiquette these days, extensive communities throughout the world and dedicated tutorials on Reddit that emphasize the danger of tripping alone. But Reddit wasn't around when Daniel started using, and he's been a solo traveler long enough to know he can look after the both of them.
Her heartbeat, into his, and into his maker's (always seeming to sync when they sit next to each other for long enough). He swallows blood, psychedelics, life. Deana walks on, euphoric, and she lets go of any hand guiding her to do so. A joyful crossing as Daniel finally withdraws, letting her fade on her own. Pinpricks at her throat remain— they'll heal quick, but not instantly, like Armand can facilitate. Still a babypire.
Daniel looks at him. Made of black lilies, haloed like a saint, like the devil, ceiling moving above his head and opening up into galaxies of pastel planets.
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When he reaches out, his fingertips are very gentle. Aware of this fragility. He strokes down along Daniel's cheek, his jaw, flexed enough to keep his claws away. For a moment, he thinks, that's it, it's ruined, and he swears that the paint parts to reveal layers of white, red, stained canvas.
But no, Daniel is still whole.
Armand turns his hand, checking his fingertips. Nothing has come away. This is good. And when did he ever last touch paints? This is hallucination.
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Armand is a deep well, deep enough to drown in. Daniel might like to see what's in there, all the way. It seems like it would be easy, from this vantage point— not simple, not safe, but he could reach inside of him and find the coldest parts and at least acknowledge them. Would Armand like that? Would he tolerate seeing Daniel's hands, frostbitten and damaged, offering comfort to the worst of him?
"Can I touch you?"
Making sure. Overwhelming, sometimes, all this.
He's not going to reach in anywhere. He just wants to touch his wrist, feel his pulse, think about blood and intimacy.
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The moment passes. He decides: yes, Daniel can, he would like it very much, and wonders if he would smear apart beneath him instead.
"Can we," he starts, and then looks to Deana, who is no longer Deana, but a garden, compost, ready to sprout. If he looks at her much longer, he will convince himself that the odd unfurling shapes that have begin to grow past her lips are real. Armand looks back to Daniel, casts him a smile.
White teeth. Blunt, human. "A change of scenery?"
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(Maybe Daniel should have said May I.)
"Anywhere you want."
Daniel offers his hands to his maker, allowing him to guide them wherever. Hopefully not into, you know, an incinerator or something, but he's not actually worried. High enough to be enjoying himself and be seeing into other dimensions, but not high enough to be totally lost. Still keeping half a foot into the real world to maintain focus on Armand, in case he takes a bad turn.
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(Oh, starvation? Vampires don't die of starvation, not really, perhaps not even the young ones. Feed their brittle corpses with enough blood—)
Not the theatre. It was good that Louis burned it. Everyone always does what his heart desires, until they don't.
These thoughts, sparking between stars, and he thinks he would prefer his imagined ocean than anything he remembers. But between fantasy and memory, there is reality, the present, and he finds he has led Daniel to the floor, merely a room away. "I want to be here," he explains, his hands now reaching for Daniel's face. "I want you to touch me."
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"All right."
Daniel turns his head enough to press a kiss to one of Armand's thumbs.
"Here. Me and you."
He keeps one hand grounded on Armand, stays where he is just next to him, and then reaches with his other. Reaches down to his feet. Starts there, touching his toes, stroking over them and the flat tops of his feet, pressing lightly on the tendons there and sliding up, careful. He watches Armand's face as he does this, waiting to see if this is actually too weird and maybe he meant a hand job.
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But Daniel touches his feet, keeps a hand on him, both of them half-huddled on the rug, and Armand has to remember the long moments they've spent touching that had little to do with any of that, even if it becomes it, or comes after. Laying against Daniel, fingers playing where his hair gets finer at the base of his neck.
And now this. He watches Daniel's hands with hooded eyes, head tipped. Not weird, not too weird. He thinks he can feel every fine little mammalian hair reach up to greet him. Electric.
Shifts a leg, encouraging that journey, after a glance of assent.
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Which would be fine. There's no hardship to touching him, mapping him out, his fingers with careful claws finding bare skin and clothed flesh alike. He slips his touch under the hem of his trousers, but doesn't push anything up, because Armand is just as pleasant to feel that way, too. Kneecaps, the little divots where everything connects, tendons that rarely get any attention unless you bump into something. He wishes Armand wouldn't toss all the drawings he doesn't love instantly. Daniel loves them all instantly.
"Sometimes I think of you like a plant," Daniel tells him, even though this is something he had planned on not telling him, on grounds it's stupid. But the drugs have decided otherwise.
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Not Daniel's, not always. Here, he can relax. He has to. No ability to wind through his brain, to monitor very much at all except for what he can observe the usual way.
Draws his focus up at this. Expression opening, amused. "How am I like a plant," Armand invites. There are a lot of plants with many different temperaments. Maybe he will teach Daniel this. But, for now—
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Everything is dreamy and beautiful. The paint on the ceiling has floated down to blanket them in violet and gold.
He looks up. Daniel's expression turns sheepish, a little half-smile, expressing that he feels silly about what he's going to say.
"Bear with me," he requests. Sliding his touch over a calf, seeing if Armand wants to extend a leg, or keep it propped up. This might be sensual, but it isn't really sexual. Just touching him, because they're both here, real, now. "Plants hibernate. Some of them. Sometimes all they are is just a seed in the ground all winter. Or they go dormant for years, or they're just something people think is inert, like... when everybody went nuts for tulips and were buying and selling their bulbs, passing around these rock-like things. Tulip Mania. Maybe you were there."
It was in the 1600s. Maybe he was. Daniel has a hand on a thigh, now, but his touch remains slow, not aiming anywhere saucy.
"And you might think, plants need the sun, nobody like us can be like a plant. But you hibernated away from the sun, and now you can see it again. You say, sometimes, you're not sure if we should exist, and you don't feel like you're a part of the world. But I think you're like a plant." He's said this already. Look. Go with him. "Because you were hibernating. And who knows the world better than you, now? Someone that's been a part of it for so long? Who else would understand the way it's changed, the ways it could be healed? I just.. think it's beautiful."
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"I like plants," and he doesn't remember if he said that or just thought it, when Daniel had challenged him that one time, if there was anything real in him at all. Challenged him to think about it, at least, if not the notion itself.
He is watching Daniel's hands, which he also likes, and the world which is an odd rendering of layered cellophane layers aglow has skewed rosy, and that's because his eyes are wet. Which so rarely happens. Looks back at up Daniel's face, a flutter of a blink.
Says, "I think you will be disappointed," and that sentence was more full, but ends there.
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"It's not that kind of a thought." Still touching him. He sees painted stars, even though there aren't any on the ceiling, drift down to illuminate them here on the floor. "It doesn't come with any expectations. You just are, and that's what I think."
Finally, Daniel glances up, and sees Armand's face.
He wishes he had some endearment for him. He can't think of any that wouldn't sound patronizing, though. Babe? Honey? Boss? The free hand that's been used just for grounding slides up a bit, settling over the center of his chest.
"We're still right here."
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In case this is in question. Daniel is being attentive, and they've done this kind of thing before, and so Armand understands their roles. He might even say that doing this, sharing these experiences, entering these theatres that Daniel knows better than Armand, is almost worth doing for the purpose of being led along through them, as well as for the experience itself. For Daniel to look up and see him and put a hand on him and tell him where they are.
He is alright. They're right here, still. Daniel, who sees him as something like no one has described him as before, like something alive, whose out-of-placeness is a beautiful thing. Of course, there's the impulse to argue. Daniel will be disappointed, it's only a matter of time, unless he is different, and Armand wouldn't have made him if he wasn't different.
Like with the corpse they left behind, there are shapes sprouting out from the rug, but these don't have him recoil. Watches as they curl around them, like they are still in a thick garden of wild flowers.
"I remember not really understanding that the world could change." Now with Daniel's hand wandered up further, he can touch at this contact, a trailing of fingertips across the back of his hand, to his wrist. "I didn't consider that the world was round and that it existed in a greater space or spun in circles. I didn't relate the way that I could learn things, that humanity could also learn things. I thought I was joining in with a song already written. I didn't know there was more to discover and imagine than already had been. And then I was immortal."
Up to Daniel's elbow, feeling towards the tender skin inside of it, slipping beneath his sleeve. "And a hundred years pass. Two hundred. You wish you could go back. It's too much, too fast. I think it's why the Children embraced the dark underground the way they did, but it doesn't work. We still need the blood. We'll always still drink of the world."
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Tied together with it.
But free, here. In colors, and paints, and growing things.
"You never got to rest." Daniel lets Armand's fingers climb his arm. He turns it gently, whenever it's helpful to that questing touch. Rest. What a word, like a bell. "The current pulled you along so quickly."
A hand on Armand's chest, the other resting light against his belly. They are connected. All the time, connected, a silver thread. He wonders if Armand feels like he can put his feet in the water and watch, now, or if he always feels like he might drown. Daniel wants to hold his hand and make sure he doesn't get swept away.
"Everything that lives in this world takes something. You know that." Daniel walks fingers across his soft middle. "Vampires and plants. I know it isn't simple. But it could be, for a few minutes."
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That would be like drowning. Armand is conscious of his breath from the way Daniel's hands are on him, and does so slowly, with consideration.
"That would be nice," he confesses. The constant tightrope walk between survival at all costs and an annihilation, a floor that gets lower and lower, vanishing away from him, with every passing second. He could just be a plant for a while. Grounded.
He pushes Daniel. Gently, ish. The aim is to lay against him amongst the grasses and flowers.
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"I like being here with you."
A confession for a confession.
He means the broad spectrum: Armand's fleeting visits, his presence in the house, the times he stays in his own room, the times he crawls into bed with Daniel. This past week, carving it out just for the two of them, fooling around and sinking into each other. Right now, on the floor, in the grasses and flowers, making shapes in charcoal and the sky.
It's always true, but it feels especially obvious tonight. They're supposed to be tied together.
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Sort of feels like drawing. Maybe later.
He is told, I like being here with you, and accepts it in its simplicity. "I like that I can," he offers back. That he is welcome. A bed, a room. Art supplies. A cat who steals his slippers in such a way that it feels flattering.
"I like that I made you," for free.
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Daniel smiles. It makes his face do funny things, because he's already got so many deep-carved lines. His eyes disappear with it, but the impression of the look in them is sincere and sparkling, because what else is there in the whole of the Earth that he might like to hear?
Existence is a fucking mystery. No one will ever know he meaning of life. There isn't one. But Armand likes that he made him, and Daniel likes that Armand is his maker. What a luxury, to have one puzzle piece to hold and guard like the precious thing it is.
He still has places to touch him. Slowly, he continues, angled against his maker. Vines will stitch them together.
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Remembers what it felt like, to be in terrible possession of Daniel's body, of at least some of his mind. Of course, overwhelming humans in that way is nothing new, was nothing new, but had he ever indulged in cruelty that way before? He doesn't think so.
Feels it now, a little, that sense of entangled physiology, except he can no more exert his will than he can convince his own pain receptors to fire or go numb.
"I like drawing you," after a moment of drifting, of feeling Daniel touching him.
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But it does, somehow, right now. Most things do make sense when you're high as fuck on mind-expanding mushrooms, Daniel notes with some measure of serene satisfaction. Just kinda nice.
"I like it when you do." A thumb, over a pulse point. "I like when you draw anything, actually. It's nice having you there, when we're both doing something. Listening to the way you move a pencil or a charcoal over a surface. Or when I come back and find something you've done, that you're working on."
Alone, together, he just likes that Armand draws.
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A selfish reason to feed someone the gift, maybe, but an unchanging reality, and they are trading words about the things they like, and Armand has already confessed to liking it. To doing this selfish thing, and the results thereof. He could say something about Sartre, his definitional suppositions of love, but he would rather not. That comes after the mind-expanding mushrooms, not during.
"Drawing you isn't drawing anything," he says. Shifting so that as they lay against each other, they can see each other, and it immediately feels like an application of gravity. Less drifting. This is fine. Armand sketches his fingertips along Daniel's jaw, his chin. Studying him here, at this close range. "Drawing anything is practice."
Like if he can capture the way the light hits the bend of a leaf of a potted plant, he can replicate this skill then depicting the glow of light through the thinner part of Daniel's ear.
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"What's different about drawing me?"
Could be a self-important question. But the light tone of his voice, the curious crinkle of his brow, exposes a laughable innocence. He definitely does not understand the appeal of himself as a subject— though he does like it, very much, because he enjoys the way Armand's gaze slides over him, like a soft, liquid thing; he enjoys the fact that Armand is obligated to sit in the same room with him, and let him hear his small thoughtful sounds and light scrapes and scribbles, his sighs, his occasional deviations to pet the cat.
(Hopefully the cat will not start eating their guest. Like it's fine if so, but.)
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Armand has insisted on this turn of conversation, he knows, but still acknowledges the beat of self-consciousness in himself. Daniel, as flippant and sarcastic and deflective as anyone Armand has met, and so maybe it's justified, some fear of verbalising the vulnerable for what will become of it after. Laughed at, ignored, dismissed.
But it hasn't really been that way, particularly not when Daniel settles on asking him a question. So, alright. He considers the answer, the usual suspects of why a person may find an older man attractive. Age as virtue, as signs of experience, as authority and frailty in one thing, and isn't all that true anyway? Puts it aside, opens his mouth to speak.
"Because you're handsome," he says. "Because I like the way you're put together. I like your body and the way you move it. Even when you were mortal, ailing, you seemed strong to me beneath it. I liked to watch your hands when they weren't trembling. I like it even more now that I've made you stronger."
He can imagine this litany being a little unbearable. He hopes so. Words beneath the skin. "I like that you've been turned at the age that you are. I'm bored of the ones turned young, kept that way, of youth like that. I don't think I could touch one and feel something, anymore."
They were talking about drawing. But also not. Also talking of preservation. Of having. Still, to answer the question, "I want to show you. The things I see."
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What does he expect? Something about studying Daniel like a bug in a jar. Scientific diagrams. Something strange and otherworldly, a screwed up aspect of their connection that Armand indulges in and Daniel enjoys. That it could be as simple as Armand liking how he looks stuns him, for some reason. He has thought that Armand finds him at least not intolerable-looking, but figured it was a little bit 'fucked up kink' and mostly 'despite', when it came to sexual attraction.
Maybe it is some of that still. I'm bored of the ones turned young, that's very Armand-specific, fixing him in this place that Armand likes, keeping him for himself. But does Daniel mind? ... Not really. Not as much as he should.
And it isn't that he thinks of himself as ugly. He was always alright, he figured. He got by. But looking the way he does now, the full physical manifestation of his age, is not attractive. He's come to terms with it, has had decades to come to terms with it in realtime, every change happening outside of his own control, his health slipping out of his hands along with everything else. Maybe, if they were sober, he'd feel a flutter and huff about it, because a few pretty words can't undo all the scaffolding he's built to cope with aging.
But they aren't sober. Armand's words are perfectly sincere, and they undo some little knot in Daniel, and begin to stitch something else.
Still. He looks positively shy, hearing all that. It is unbearable, in its way.
"No one's ever... I mean, even when I was younger, and looked alright." Fumbling. Like he's still the kid he's referring to. "Did you know, you have this ability to make me feel things that are completely new."
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"We've run quite the gamut," he says. "Of feelings."
He shifts. Folds an arm on Daniel's chest, rests his head there. A habit for liking being on top, in the most basic sense of the premise. "There's a school of thought about mood. And beauty. Where it is located, the relationship between the feelings of a person, the thing they have a feeling towards. The existentialist says that these moods are the subjective lens through which we view the world, rendering it real that way.
"I find it compelling." The patch of carpet he is watching is rippling, warping. Swimming creatures beneath. He extends a hand, touches the pile. His senses contradict the vision. It's pleasing. "A world that is empty of mood and beauty and love until someone deigns to perceive it that way. Objects, people, places. Compelling but not convincing. I think beauty has locations. Manifestations. I think feelings can be transmitted."
Stops short of reflecting on God, His part in it all. Easy to do. All of it buried.
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His head drops back, and he slides one hand up and down Armand's spine, slow and rhythmic. He thinks he can feel all the charcoal he draws with. He wonders if Armand will draw anything he remembers from this trip. If Daniel looks different here. If they've transformed.
"Like how we don't really know what anything looks like," he supposes. "Just light bouncing off things, and... imaginary colors, like magenta." Daniel wrinkles his nose. "Is it magenta?"
Maybe it's cyan. Armand's the artist, not him.
"Beauty probably does have locations." Like wherever Armand happens to be. Very good paintings. Perfect sunsets. "What are you transmitting, right now?"
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Mumbled in place.
Thinking about the existentialists he has evoked and quantum physics, whether their emergences betray some overlap, but narrowly avoids launching into a ramble down this path. Mostly, Armand makes note to himself to look up some books, and otherwise—
Considers the question. Imagines the way they are tangled together, physical limbs and his own strange impression of clinging vines, growing roots. He doesn't know too much about the vampire bond, such as it is, but he knows that what he experiences of it, what he thinks he experiences of it, is unlike anything he has heard. Maybe they just don't speak of it; he wouldn't. Or maybe it's different.
He winds around that shivering, metal thread that exists between them, that sometimes he thinks he can feel even better when they are physically apart, but can feel it now anyway. Pulls against it. The sense of Daniel bound to him, forever. The sense of Daniel belonging to him.
His. His fledgling.
"That depends on the receiver."
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Maybe that's why the sex is so good. Less about sex (though, a lot about sex, still), more about the sledgehammer complement to this beautiful thread.
Daniel winds his arms around Armand. A sense of possession, a sense of wanting to be possessed. This monster made him. Armand looked into him and saw that he had accidentally been born a person, and fixed him. By making him a monster, too.
Oh, that's kind of a question, huh.
"Yeah?"
Everyone's favorite word. There's a smile in it.
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"Yeah," nearly voiceless.
Maybe some time goes by. Armand can't be certain. Tripping the light fantastic as they exist as one organism, in the way a well planned and curated garden is one organism, or the untamed sprawl of woodland is one organism.
"Would you ever do it?" is asked, somewhere in this warm pool of time, before it occurs to him that they are not so enmeshed that he doesn't need to clarify, so he adds, "Make one?"
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Daniel is drawing something on his maker's back. Trying to mimic his favorite sketchy shapes, the ones he thinks look the most satisfying, and that make the nicest scratchy sounds when he's working. He sees patterns on the ceiling, figures getting up to become constellations. It's pleasant. Hypnotic. Relaxing. Will Armand want to sink like this with him again? Will he want to stay, even after this night? Will forever feel this way, at least now and again? It'd be really, really good, if so.
That question is... interesting.
Daniel hums to acknowledge hearing, and gives himself some more of that time in their comfortable pool to consider his answer.
"I don't have any interest in it," he says eventually. "Maybe I'll change my mind someday, like you did. But that potential is so far off I can't see the shape of it."
A touch to the back of Armand's neck, swirling shapes through his hair.
"I like that it's just us."
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Daniel, drawing shapes along his back, into his hair. Armand has the sense of them both being charcoal sketches, shaped by each others smudged fingertips.
"As do I."
He wonders if he would kill this hypothetical, unlikely fledgling, or if he would stand frozen at the sidelines of the thing as yet another tectonic plate shifted, formed a new ocean. Or if he would decide on the latter and one day snap and do it anyway. If Daniel would mind very much.
So far off, Daniel says. Armand thinks he is quite good at seeing to that distance, even if his past feels like smudged charcoal.
"I thought I knew you well," he says, as he thinks these things. "I thought I'd seen the depths of you before that moment. I suppose I had. But it's different. It's like a last flood of information before you become a black box. It's like I had you inside of me before I fed you yourself. And I did it very slowly."
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He doesn't know if he'd want to commit to that with anyone. Armand didn't give him a choice, and as fucked as that was, he thinks he prefers it. Which does not bode well for his prospects on making one.
No. Content with just them. He likes being Armand's only tether (ignoring the lurking maybe-maker back down the line behind Amadeo). He likes not having any flowing out of him. He hadn't really wanted to be a parent, he hadn't really wanted to be a husband. This is better.
"Do you think about it?" he asks. "Turning me?"
His memories of it have become clearer, over time, but it's still a bloody, disorienting mess.
"I do. For a second, I think I heard you in my head. Did I?"
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A strange period of time. Armand was not subject to the same utter disorientation that he dragged Daniel through, but still disoriented. Out of body, a little. In this moment, he thinks of Peanut, lamp eyed beneath the shadow of a chair, claws dug into the wooly interior of a slipper. Curious about what is happening in his little cat brain.
Hard to decipher what was going on in his own, on reflection. A series of actions, words, impulses, curiousities. And he was so—
Angry? He supposes so. A tree alight in a gallery.
"And yes," to answer the other question. "I didn't know if we would see each other again soon. I knew I couldn't be around you then. I tried to understand why I'd done what I'd done by explaining it." Amusement in his tone, lifting his head again. "You turned it back to me. As you are wont to do."
Daniel, somehow seeing through half a millennia, straight to the soul of who Amadeo was when he become immortal.
"It was selfish of me," he adds, but there is something warm in his tone. Pleased with himself, for doing the selfish thing.
(Yes, certain other vampires might scoff at this idea, that this is a change in behaviour for Armand. Perhaps they are right to.)
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Daniel's just a black hole. Dragging in light, experiences, information. Answers to his questions. He was interested in Armand in Dubai, even when he was telling him to shut up. He was interested in Armand while he was being tortured, because every psychopath has a motive. He was interested in Armand even in the bar the evening before. A beautiful, strange man, a thousand miles out of Daniel's league, and his boyfriend was stepping out on him.
Why? How fucking nuts must that guy be, for Louis to be looking elsewhere?
Pretty fucking nuts, it turns out. Daniel combs his fingers through his hair. Selfish. Yeah, he can see that. He can see the way Armand rationalizes and makes excuses. But there isn't one for Daniel, is there.
"Something for yourself," he observes. Him, that's the something. "You said one hundred years, but then you missed my annoying ass, huh."
Also pleased with himself.
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Amused. Warming to banter, to the tone in Daniel's voice. It is a reductive description of the stressors that led to him finding Daniel again, but not completely inadequate for it.
"You were out of your mind during your turning," Armand adds, tipping his head as he loos at him. Shifting to settle comfortably like this on top, arms folded. "You were in a different country. You thought I was someone you'd picked up. That you'd done rather well for yourself."
There'd been little moments in the interview that, if Daniel wasn't busy internally retching at the happily married routine, were potentially a little funny. Both of them with a habit for fondly recounting horrifying things. Hunting guys for sport, both of them with separate kinds of reminiscing smiles.
Some of that energy, speaking fondly of Daniel dying and delirious.
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Daniel continues to slowly move his hand up and down Armand's back, his elegant spine, the column of his neck, the base of his skull. He rests there sometimes, rubbing near his hairline. Thinking about stars, and vines, and how beautiful Armand is. How much like an interesting, dangerous insect, or like an alien, an HR Giger drawing. Beautiful, but horrible.
Funny, sometimes. Stupid sunglasses. Mean comments. Veering between nerdy and cutting. Daniel is leagues past shouldn't find it charming.
"Sounds like me." He'd have been baffled, indeed. Punching way above his weight. "A little spike to my dumbass ego before putting me into the craziest tailspin, that's nice of you."
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Floating, a little, but still pressed close. In a funny way, it feels like they're standing against each other.
"And how's your ego faring now?"
Little peeking hints of fang, a lazy hooded look to his expression, but still, eyes of sunset orange as slivers of their own light.
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A soft laugh, at the question. He sees flowers growing around Armand.
"Oh, inflated to the fucking moon." Armand called him handsome. Said he likes his body, likes drawing him, is happy he made him. Daniel is flustered and smug and happy and curious and all of it, all of it. He smiles and it distorts his face, aged as it is, but it's clear the mood is genuine. "You're so... you're the prettiest plant. And cool. The floating, it's cool..."
Hearing himself. Daniel scrunches his nose and closes his eyes, sigh. Still laughing. He knows he sounds like an idiot with a crush, not an old man talking to his own maker.
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Or maybe there is. This thing they share now is young. Daniel is still getting his bearings, learning. Armand, too, a new maker. Maybe that's all what it is.
"I'm cool," Armand echoes, as if pondering this assignment. Teasing. Even more unlikely than being a pretty plant. Even more likely than being called a seed with all of its potential. Endearing for it. Daniel's eyes are closed, so Armand uses his hands to touch at his face, guide him into a kiss.
A proper one. He isn't sure what sex will be like on the drugs they are on, how quick they are to fade, but he is in the mood to pursue the things he wants.
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Doubling down, despite being embarrassed at himself. Daniel murmurs it, smiles at the way Armand's fingers are on his face, and then smiles more at the kiss. Tangible beneath Armand's mouth before he reciprocates.
Mostly mushrooms, but there'd been some ecstasy too in the cocktail of the dead woman— mostly to fortify against paranoia and bad trips, build a buffer around Armand staring too long into the void. This is the other benefit: everything feels extra good, extra easy, ready and waiting to slip over into the warm water of sensuality, pleasantly wrapped in the heightened sensory experience of it all.
Terrifying, cool, a monster, his murderer, the prettiest plant. A person he likes to make out with.
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And it does all feel good and easy, settling with his thighs on either side of Daniel's, a pleasant alignment of their hips, letting a more human sense of gravity pull them together. His body feels extra alive and receptive, as if all these little grasping hallucinated fronds and leaves and petals are reaching out, tangling, rooting together in the barely-any-space between them.
A fair chance he could be content with just this, where sex is barely the transaction interlocking of parts but some extra-planar sharing, strange and romantic. But he can feel all the mechanical things beginning to shift, blood flow and flesh, and he indulges in a shifting movement, hips pressing, rubbing just a little as they kiss.
Or make out.
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with both.
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Swaddled in vines and stars. Daniel kisses him, and kisses him, and one of his roaming hands moves down lower on its path, and incorporates squeezing Armand's rear into the equation. He feels comfortable, he trusts that this kind of touch is alright for him to do, and he hopes that's still the case. He likes fooling around with Armand. It's fun, and profound. Hints of something kinkier lurking, while being some of the most emotionally significant encounters he's ever had.
The most? Maybe. Probably.
The thread that binds them seems to wind closer. Like it, too, is wrapping around them with everything else. They can't read each other, but they can feel each other. One heartbeat.
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Which is always true, but complicated, snarled up enough that it takes work to untangle, work he doesn't always wish to do. Now it is simple.
So: an encouraging, satisfied sound for the feeling of Daniel palming over him, a shift of his body back into this touch, and then back down into where he is settled. He wishes they didn't have any clothes in the way, and as he wishes it, there is an odd sense that Daniel might pick up, of fabric being tugged in a few different directions. Pulled taut, then loose again.
Not simply clumsy telekinetic grasping, but also, a seam weaving itself apart, threads furling out into the air like ink in water. Buttons skittering aside, a closed zipper unmoored from the stitching. As if nothing is very real, or everything is temporary, and can be disassembled once it is made aware of itself.
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You know. Night swimming. Funny movies. Flowers.
Life sucks, but sometimes: worth it.
"Is that..?"
He thinks he's imagining it at first. Or rather, he thinks it's a part of a hallucination that's perfectly merged with the reality of their current circumstances. But something really is unstitching his clothes, and only one person present is capable. Daniel lifts one hand to observe this process, the way his sleeve detaches itself at the shoulder, thread spooling away, fabric lifting.
"Yeah. Told you so."
Cool.
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"I like that you like it," he says, as they are undressed in this way. Shifting a little to let fabric slither and split apart between them. "That you don't fear it as you should."
(A little unfair to Louis, maybe, who came into things with a whole mess of perfectly valid hang ups and worries about the balancing of power, overtuned to it, watchful of it. Armand did what he could. He limited his reminders.)
He lays a harmless bite to Daniel's chin.
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And it's neat. Armand is very powerful, and he's very skilled. Anyone who can move things with their mind could drag a sofa across a room. His maker is unspooling all of their clothes, leaving skin on skin, and Daniel's back on the luxury rug in this room.
Neat, and impressive. It's very Armand. Detailed and precise and unusual. It's an expression of how sees the world, and it always surprises Daniel. He likes it. He does sometimes think of being crunched repeatedly into the floor, or his tapes being turned into shiny black noodles of their own accord, but those terrifying memories are things to be dissected now. Interesting that he's had them for fewer years than they've existed. Interesting that they met in such a deranged fashion.
"It makes me happy that you feel comfortable doing it. Letting me see."
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And maybe vampiric death is different, the kinds of promises Armand makes, the kinds of mental states he can coax a mind into, but none of that occurred in the Dubai penthouse. Just fire, fangs, a sense of wishing to see the thing that happens next.
A compass that points to danger. Points to Armand.
He moves to press now naked bodies together, the subtle misalignment of proportions just encouraging movement. He is not actually desperately hard or anything, but not disinterested, blood flow coaxing him along slowly, the way petals turn or leaves rise. Around them, the remnants of their clothing settle and collapse, strange unmade shreds, stray buttons, the last shivers of motion writhing snake-like until they go still.
"Spook, then," is his belated amendment to his statement. Writers.
He kisses Daniel, not a sudden clash but a swift rise in pressure, intimacy, intention. He feels a little like they could just wriggle together in this strangely sensitive state of sharing and find some kind of conclusion that way, but he also wants this. Wants the friction of coarse hair, the neutral tang of saliva and the glossy bite of fangs against tongue. Wants all those base physical things. Wants to be greedy.
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Particularly when all of that is naked and pressed against him, kissing him, rubbing and shifting and finding nice ways to braid their limbs together. He hums something into Armand's mouth, not really an answer; easy agreement. Yeah, he doesn't spook. No more nerves around Armand, except for when it's adrenaline, like being on a rollercoaster just before the drop. Terror, excitement, fucked up glee. Louis would be disappointed to see all the souvenir pictures of Daniel stuck in Armand's Wild Ride, smiling over and over with each rotation.
Sensual and cozy, erotic, strange. Daniel lets his hands roam, petting wherever their enmeshing movements take him. His initial concerns with bringing sex into their complicated disaster of a connection, his stubborn insistence that there be no foundation of the curse of maitre, seems insignificant. None of that matters, because none of that's here. It's just skin, warm from blood, mouths and the prickle of hair, of teeth. Daniel's fangs are there for a few moments, then not, indecisive, but he's barely conscious of it.
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Armand wonders: does he miss it? For a moment, he doesn't know. It had been satisfying to bare his neck to Louis, to feed him his blood, to be the supplementary course in his dining that had done as much to keep his lover functional as the Farm had, and wasn't that pleasing? It had felt like service, yes, an act of submission to sit obediently and tip his head aside, but something else. The feeling of his own essence snaking into Louis' body, strengthening it, slipping through his arteries, pumped by his heart, into his brain, into his cock.
And now there is Daniel. Much the same. No, more so. If Armand is a plant, then Daniel is sodden earth and he feels it like a tangled root system inside of his fledgling. His fledgling, his, a strange extension of himself, an additional nervous system intrinsically connected to his own, no matter how far it wanders. He rubs against him, presses up into roaming hands, thinks about Daniel's long fangs sinking into his throat, his blood saturated him, claiming him, claiming each other.
Some sober part of him says: no. Not yet.
"Make me come," he says, a murmur against Daniel's shoulder. An instruction, for all that it's so softly delivered. He can feel himself becoming calculated. He doesn't wish to be. Armand might have to make a note to feel embarrassed later, plastered and wriggling against Daniel and making this plea, but for now, it is what he wants too much for that to matter.
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"Mmn?"
Has he ever received a sweeter order? Daniel smiles to himself, and continues his appreciative petting. Stops only to press his index finger down on a spot at the base of Armand's spine. Playful. Hm? Oh? Does this work? Is there a button he can push?
Hands stroke up, down, the breadth of his palms, then careful, light trails of pointed claws. Thinks about how he might do that, even as they continue to shift and rub against each other. Daniel is hard, or at least halfway, a comfortable thing that's crept up on him. It feels more real, now that Armand has bid him do this, but still dreamy, high. He rubs Armand's hipbones, the curved muscle of his behind, and slides his touch into the cleft of his rear. Everything is easy and exploratory with clear appreciation to the way his body feels under his hands, and it's unhurried. When he begins to slide fingers (and the tease of nails) over hidden-away parts of him, it's mostly the tops of his inner thighs. Leisurely searching for places Armand likes to be touched.
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A favourable comparison: the way he can feel shy with Daniel, the way he had felt it on occasion with Louis, the way Lestat had to coax such feelings out of him, speaks to a certain amount of presence that he could choose to opt out from. He has had half a millennia with his own body, has run the gamut of thinking himself as grotesque, of believing he is beautiful, of caring about either thing, of feeling nothing at all. Has known how something like feeling embarrassment would be a luxury for what it means.
And Armand feels claws tease at such an intimate place and feels his body flush hot, has to urge himself to follow the impulse to skid his knees a little wider as Daniel's fingers make their unhurried exploration. Daniel touches him as if the experience of that alone is arousing, the feeling of his skin beneath his palms and fingertips, and he warms for that too.
His own hands make less work for themselves. One grips a shoulder, the other lingers over his ribs, an anchoring kind of hold for the time being.
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Everything is heightened, awareness zeroing in on physical contact. Armand's weight against him has turned his whole body into pleasant, easy nerves. He steals a kiss as he squeezes one globe of his ass, kneads it, and experiments with sliding fingers inward. Not seeking penetration, instead, seeking the soft skin tucked away there, where the right pressure will stimulate the prostate externally.
Daniel's enjoying this configuration too much to want to move, not even to wriggle a hand between them. Not yet. He wants to stay just the way they are, and he wants to touch Armand in a way that doesn't ask anything of his maker besides accepting the touch. He feels almost selfish, wanting Armand to just let him do whatever. But how often does he get to feel up his terrifying, beautiful maker, while he's a warm, high puddle draped over him?
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Scatters apart with each new thing, like here, the press of fingertips urging a soft, approving sound out of him. Flushes away that brief clawing feeling of embarrassment at himself, suffuses it into something simpler, and his hips shift back against this hand in needy response at that deeply rooted pulse of pleasure.
Kisses Daniel's neck. Shoulder. The bone and muscle leading back to the base of his throat, wild curls of hair tickling along against his face. A panting hot breath across warm skin as Armand catches himself with a rub of hardening length against Daniel's hip, low on his abdomen.
And overall, a tug of need pulls at Daniel's body, something like telekinesis or a shift of gravity that presses them closer together. Like Armand has command over local physics, impulses eking out into the air around them.
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When did he get so fucking sappy?
Probably the mushrooms. The universe expanding his mind, brushing away all the cobwebs of self-deprecation and hesitation. Daniel feels good, and Armand likes him, and he has no reason to be shy or insecure. He can slide his touch further in, find where he's questing for, rub at him. He can shift just enough let Armand feel that he's getting hard for him, too, and he can turn his head to kiss his maker's forehead and temple, breathe in deep the smell of his silky hair, and—
Feel that. Like a current pulling him. Reality bending to envelop just the two of them. Daniel lets it coat him, and he reaches for it with his mind, even as he continues to look for just the right angle to make Armand sigh.
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Armand sighs. Moves only as impulse directs, the lift of his hips back against Daniel's hand, and then back down to rub himself against soft skin, the sympathetic burgeoning hardness nestled against his own. Gravity is replaced by something more magnetic, trapping them together. Pulling Daniel's body against his own, off the ground by fractional degrees.
He has ruined the rug a little. More than a little. Patches have become thin and shabby through threads unravelling, twisting, making shapes and patterns of their shared, imagined garden, if not so artful, just wild, tangled. Daniel can reach out and maybe it feels like a series of invisible hands linking fingers, testing strength.
Armand is stronger, of course, but isn't interested in overpowering, showing off in that way. Just showing, demonstrating the texture of reality that creatures like them can appreciate.
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Arousal and curiosity and contentment. Daniel hopes Armand feels, if not the same way, then a way that's just as good.
Armand wants Daniel to make him come. He can do that. He did that semi-professionally for a while. He wanted to do that years and years ago, decades ago, even though Armand had terrified him. The memory isn't a bad one right now, not even when he's wrapped up Armand's spiderwebs. It's just an interesting one, and a link in the silver chain that binds them.
He pets and rubs the tender skin of Armand's perineum, pressing in as if to reach into his body from somewhere it can't be reached into from. He rocks up against him, gentle, but deliberate. One heel presses down into a bird's nest of pieces of luxury rug to give him a little more leverage. He feels fingers, or something like it, all along the undersides of his legs, and spine.
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And it's a relief. Otherwise, he might accidentally unravel Daniel in a way he can't easily fix. It would be harder to relax.
To make the sounds he is making, little urgent sighs and groans at the dedicated press of Daniel's fingers, and the by now somewhat slick alignment of their cocks pressed between them. Lifted inches off the ground, he can sense Daniel's bracing his heel back down against it for leverage.
Another push, a little further upwards. Gravity is each other. He winds his arms around Daniel's waist and shoulders, moving against him with hedonistic intent and lifting his head to kiss him with more intent than the wandering grazes of teeth and lips against his fledgling's neck and shoulder.
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Rocking gentle up into him, hard against hard with wet, sticky proof of enjoyment melting out of them both, pressing against him with intent. Intent, but not urgency; the idea of an explosive end is as seductive as the idea of being here, suspended, forever.
Aimless, indulgent almost-kisses, open mouths finding each other, or cheekbones, or earlobes.
"What colors do you see when you come?" What is this question. Incredible journalism. "You're like... the sky the first time I really saw it, in this life. So dark as to be bright again."
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And even with talk of skies that are so dark as to be bright again, the poetry is in the asking. Finding a question that no one in Armand's long life has asked him, would ever think to ask him. Poetry in the feeling this induces, as poems do. As journalism can.
Does he have an answer? He kisses Daniel, and a fang catches the other man's lip.
"I don't know," he says. He has enjoyed sex. He has gone into that internal and selfish space, allowed himself to receive pleasure. It has been a long education, with few educators. He is certain an answer exists, but he can't summon it now. Now, now, feeling himself desperate. "Show me."
He could come like this, too, but he wants more. Reaches back to grasp at Daniel's hand, presses, an urge, and invitation to use his hand properly. Unabashed in a way he can't recall being before in this direction.
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Show me, so much better than Rest. Daniel presses a kiss to Armand's mouth, all messy heat, and curls strong fingers around both of their erections, delves deeper with his other hand, following the way his maker guides him. He can do this, follow the artful lines of flesh, press into the tight clutch of him, careful with diamond-sharp claws but free from anxiety about them. He wants to feel Armand go tight then tip over the edge all around him, in his hands, against him, every shiver of his body and all the ways it's extended in the air, in the threads, in their woven, painted grotto of vines and stars.
Maybe he'll follow him over. It's a good night to be enamored, and lost in shimmering lust and affection.
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Currently. He lets out a coarse sound as Daniel does as requested, the crude burn and stretch of being entered. More for that than any articulated probing after nerve clustered, sensitive spots.
Kisses him rough, fangs down, liable to cut. Goes tight around Daniel's knuckles. Shudders, muffles a rougher moan into his mouth.
Daniel will feel the ground slam into his back, but it doesn't feel like falling. More like being pinned to a surface that may as well be a wall, the ceiling. A clumsy pursuit of friction as his orgasm is rung from him. Armand is still his centre of gravity—who knows where he might fall if he were to let go?
(No unlocked secrets of the universe, no spontaneous astral projection or elevated states of being. He comes and it feels good, better than it has in a long time, and sees colours.)
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It doesn't do anything to lessen the experience for him. Stray spiderweb thoughts all seize together, like Armand's body around the intrusion of fingers. So easy, to pull him into ecstasy this way? Or has it been hours, and has he been edging him? His own fangs have manifested, pearl daggers, nicking his own mouth, or Armand's, he can't tell, the smell of blood in his come is nearly as intense as tasting it. And he wants to, as the last warmth their free, dead bodies can produce pulses over his hand and the ground finds his back again. Like the force of his maker's orgasm has restuck them to the earth.
Good thing. They might spin away otherwise, join other planets and roaming asteroids in orbit.
Daniel feels suspended on an edge. It's good. Tense and satisfied at once. Armand is beautiful, Armand is horrible. He likes both of those things, and his teeth against his mouth, and the shivering grinding into his hand, and the mess of blood and frayed carpet.
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But not out of tune with the sublime. No sudden hit of sobriety. Focus, maybe, lifting his head to look down at Daniel, let out a heavy breath at the sight of him with a bloodied mouth and long fangs and orange eyes. Daniel, who he likes to draw because he is handsome, because his body is aged in a pleasing way, because he wants to capture in some external way the way he sees him.
He captures Daniel's jaw with a hand, a gentle but firm bracket of force. Wandering a thumb over his chin. Judging his current state.
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Head tips to try a playful bite at Armand's thumb. Hmm. What a nice time, all of this. He shifts his weight to feel how his maker pins him, and the pressure of his own hand against his arousal.
"What'd you see?"
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"Magenta," is a ready response, as he shifts in response, weight balanced across Daniel's hips, feeling the ball of his fist at the crook of his own thigh. A shift of his hips adds pressure, clumsy and broad.
Colours without names, like the gradient Daniel's eyes take on when they shift between blue and predator orange-yellow. He runs his hand back down from Daniel's chin, over his throat, his chest, relishing in the shifting texture of muscle and skin and hair and fat and bone, letting his claws leave white tracks behind, bloodless abrasions.
No objective beyond chasing whims, which has made for a nice night.
"Do you want to see colours too?"
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"Some kind of amber-magenta, that's what you are," he sighs. "On a spectrum people can barely see. I'm glad I can remember you in the sun."
A velvet-dark void haloed by the unimpressive star that Armand probably still think orbits the Earth. He rocks up into him, feeling more, more of his body, more of his nails.
"Yeah. I do."
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He reaches down, takes Daniel by the wrist, tugs his hand away from himself. The plan had been to then touch him, but whim dictates he look him over. His own spend glistens on his skin, rough grey hair, the thready dregs of annihilated cloth clinging here and there to both of them like persistent spider web.
"Do you recall what the sun feels like, still?" he asks, as he makes this study. Imagines it rendered in charcoal, decidedly pornographic, a frame that cuts Daniel off at the knees and neck, a needing cock rendered only in vague strokes and shadows.
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"I recall the first time I got really, really sunburned," he says, laying back to let his maker get his obscene fill. Daniel draws his hand up to his mouth, and licks the pomegranate-colored mess from them, and it makes his eyes shift, makes his cock twitch. "I moved to Los Angeles, after San Fransisco. July. Venice Beach, sitting in between the bodybuilder yard and the volleyball posts. Everyone was sweating, baking, it felt like needles all over my skin, I just had this shitty baseball cap and sunblock that had sweated off in ten minutes, hours behind me. I had burns," he moves his hand, down over his own chest, indicating some slutty, awful, early 1980s v-neck, "all the way down here, and here," lower, the top of his thigh, he must have been in sports shorts, or trunks, or raggedy cut-off jeans. "That's what the sun feels like, right? Do you sweat still, in the sun?"
Fingers trace what he can reach of Armand's chest, between his pectoral muscles, conjuring thoughts of rivulets of sweat, pink-tinted, shining.
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"Yes," he answers.
Armand feels out curves, dips, textures across Daniel's chest in return, down the centre of him. The highest of the high has been journeyed over, but some of it lingers, remains, and it only takes a little bit of intentional thoughtlessness to feel something like ash lifting off his touches as he goes. Coloured chalk. Pencil dust.
"I don't stay in it for long," he adds. "Relatively. An hour, two hours, and I can feel it. A sensitivity. Needles."
His fingers travel to Daniel's cock, stroking along the underside it volunteers. A gently applied itch of nails.
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Nicer, the teasing attention to his arousal, which makes him hiss. Ah, it's good, though.
"Do you like it?"
Sensitivity. Needles. The itch of nails. The initial poke of teeth.
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Armand gives Daniel the flat of his palm, a luxurious spread of warmth compared to light fingertips, but then also sets the tip of a nail somewhere sensitive, enough to bring a speck of blood to the surface. Hands go firm immediately, a pinning lean through the heel of his hand at the centre of Daniel's chest, the other wrapping fingers around his cock. Smear of bright red.
Colours. "I tested it about thirty years ago or so. I spent a day on a white beach by the Aegean Sea, watching the sky and the water, sometimes the people. By the time the sun went down," strokes Daniel long, slow, tight, "I couldn't feel anything. Numb all over, half-blind, thirsty."
Chooses not to relay what came next. What Arun needed of Louis that night.
"The night felt good."
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Armand looms over him, even as they just lay there together, like he's a unique moth being pinned. Free of thoughts like This shouldn't be interesting, it is what it is, with no second-guessing, and Daniel stares up at him with an expression that's startled, but awed. His blood, fresh, in with all else, and wants to bite Armand. He wants to fuck him. He wants to lay right here and watch pinwheels of colors, forever.
"Did it feel better than it had in years?" A light squirm, flex of his hands. They find Armand's arms, his sides, trailing, like he's drawing a touch over water's surface, making ripples. "Like sinking into cold glass? I think about—"
Pauses, to just feel.
"... That walk with you, after the diner. All the time."
Colors.
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@ "A"
Attached, the clearest headshot that Talamasca has of the female vampire labeled 'Eimear' — she seems to be frozen in time in her mid-thirties, medium height, slender build, a hard expression framed by long, straight black hair. The quality of the picture makes it difficult to see what color eyes she has, but Daniel remembers near-glowing pastel green.
Just assumes tabs are being kept. Does not explain. Sends it, along with:
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Not personally. Marked for death on the British Isles for sedition, drew focus as one of the earlier and more authoritative voices under the Conversion movement some years back. Is she still at large?
He is not far. A block or so down, keeping his own tabs after all that noise. Mostly lurking about the minds of Louis' security detail, his assistant, rather than being too direct about it. He is also not calm, replying quickly, but at least the medium of text message affects a kind of neutral monotone.
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Pretty sure she's a chunky paste in several different parts of the river, so, no, not at large. As far as I'm aware there's no more active threat from her, or anyone who was with her. Best guess is they were all her fledglings. I counted six, five were for sure dead when I left the scene, and the last one was in a critical state. Talamasca says they finished him off, but I can't confirm that.
Who else was talking to her about the Conversion, do you remember? This can be a question you come back later to, for the record, I'm not launching an investigation this second.
Well.
Yes he is, but he's also going to sleep soon, so. Hypothetically, anyway, there's every chance he'll be awake in his coffin until night returns, nerves shot, attention skittering away and desperate to cling onto anything but what he's feeling. He does not send And I'm fine, not because he isn't (he is, he's fine) (he's definitely fucking fine), but because... because. Because it's Armand. Armand is comfortable putting him in fucked up situations, whether or not he's fine is a whatever.
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She would talk to any who would listen. I recall some pontification while she was active in Kazakhstan and so I presume had the permission or the apathy of the elders from that area. I would guess at the latter.
Not one for allies. Mainly underlings. You're concerned about reprisal?
He should ask. Is Daniel alright. A dimmer voice, is Louis alright. Pure curiousity, is Lestat alright. Glimpses of the three of them sneaking into their makeshift lair, blood spattered but on their feet. Some urgent feeling in him to know more, where knowing serves no other purpose but itself.
How weakened is this little unit? How shaken by the events that occurred? How protected is Daniel, really, if the other two are going to be insufferably self-involved?
But he has already asked a question. He will wait.
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Kazakhstan. Pulls up anything related in the ill-gotten files he has, opening a dozen windows to read and dig through. Doesn't matter what this connective tissue means, or if he's just putting up a conspiracy board with miles of thread. He just has to do something, think about something, besides the unsettled pit that's still open in his stomach.
Not specifically, but it would be stupid not to assume it's a real possibility. Either from her community or anyone who doesn't like what happened on principle.
I have a hunch there's a third party interested in the conflict, too, based on something that popped up.
And so, another photo is attached. Cuffs, like fucking manacles, popped open and with evidence of chains having been snapped off of them.
Flaming bottles, a stolen van, really shoddy terrorist threats, and then a single piece of extremely sophisticated anti-vampire equipment.
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Another message, swiftly after this one;
Or vampire hunters. Why they would work with someone like Eimear, I'm not sure, but perhaps they were stolen from.
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Interesting x2. He might have to shove a fork into the Talamasca laptop he has now and see if he can dig out exactly who was trying to block the book's publication. A couple oligarchs being literal bloodsuckers would be on the nose, but flow well enough. Track two diplomacy has always been unorthodox.
I have a few vampire hunter leads. They sound bogus, but there might be a trail of something legitimate hidden in there, so I'll run them down and see what shakes out. Can't really speculate anything with how little I have at the moment.
I assume no one's tried anything with you over it, but just to confirm: has anyone messed with you?
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Many reasons why this might be so. Armand had, of course, participated in the interview, and falls somewhere between Louis' outright heresy and reckless challenges, and then Daniel's penning of it, and continued promotion, and the fact that he is a vampire is sure to spread in time. And then there is Armand, something of a hapless villain, lending word to the narrative but undermined by its truth.
He expects his status is nearer to Lestat's in relation to the text, more so than Louis or Molloy. But perhaps the ones who are anxious for war are young, or younger. The old ones, those who could meaningfully punish him, still sleeping.
It isn't about him. But Daniel is concerned. Or trying to gather information.
You're going to continue your tour?
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Maybe Daniel has just fucked up enough of Armand's life. Satisfied with the degree of destruction, and not looking for further proverbial blood.
Might as well. It's almost over and it'll get me out of NYC for a bit.
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I can do some listening, to see if there are any reactions amongst the Many to her death.
Yes, he does consciously type that into a device with a capital M.
Word will get out soon enough, even if they killed all of them.
It doesn't occur to him that Daniel might have cleaned up as well.
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Relief in it, too. Armand wasn't so closely observing that he saw every little thing like a creeping Talamasca snitch, wasn't stewing in loneliness just on the sidelines, choosing to stay apart even when shit kicked off. He hadn't even thought about the possibility until now, but—
Maybe they're alright, in a way. Maybe they aren't as fucked up as they could be.
Thank you.
I know. It's not a surprise that something finally happened. You were nearly right on the money with it. Scaling the tower, and all that. I think most vampires are just like most people, and there's an ocean of difference between threatening to do something and actually doing it.
So. No total deluge of attacks, because most of the ones talking shit aren't willing to move past that stage for one reason or another, but there will be more attacks, and maybe a more dangerous, organized effort, if they don't make their own push to discourage things.
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He expects there will be a narrow window of time between now and their departure from the city, so he texts,
Were any of her spawn left alive that you know of?
He won't be shocked to know that the other two salted the earth, but if one managed an escape, that might be a fun way to wile away the evening.
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just the bond fucking with them, and they'll be alright, they just have to not act too weird. Remember that you disgust him, that you ruined his life, that you hate him.
Just the one whose death I couldn't confirm. Hold on.
A couple minutes as he takes some screenshots of the seemingly mile-long list of the Irish vampire's known fledglings. It's sorted by who Talamasca thinks have stayed with her, who they think broke from her permanently, and Daniel has made notes about who he thinks died tonight.
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If it lives, I can extract whatever information she decided it needed to know.
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Hell of a way to spend an afternoon.
Nothing, for a minute, but the silence suggests something more is coming— unlike Daniel to not finish a thought, and this is clearly unfinished. Bitterly wondering at himself that the language concerning fledglings is not actually killing off the instinct to articulate the following sentiment.
I don't want to be insulting.
Uh-oh.
Blame my fucking ignorance. It's not dangerous for you to do any of that, is it?
He's soooooo fine about everything that happened tonight by the way, it's all fine.
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Stares at this message a moment, the two sentences worth of run up, the query itself.
In what respect?
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Don't... like, don't make him admit he has the capacity to be worried about Armand, man. Come on.
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They will find it very difficult to do me harm that matters.
Terrible. He sends it anyway.
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Fine. Great. That works for Daniel. For a few minutes, anyway, as the rollercoaster not-conversation with Louis clunks around. Contending with the reality that he's going to spend the next eleven fucking hours locked in a tiny box, and there is no possible way he's ever falling asleep.
I have another line of questioning, if you have a minute. Impersonal hypothetical stuff.
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?
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Most people are either mostly blood or mostly water. So. What was that sensation, he still wonders.
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Vampires are more susceptible to burning than humans, but in practice, it is a matter of will more than science. It would take a powerful vampire against a substantially weaker one to cause combustion directly.
The function of this hypothetical is ?
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Is there a reliable method to counter it? Just breaking the concentration, or will, of whoever's thinking maliciously toasty thoughts?
Interesting use of question marks. Daniel notes it.
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Eimear made this attempt?
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Because it hadn't, in the end.
I'm not sure.
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She made a threat, and I felt something warm in my chest. It was brief and I'm not sure if it was real or my imagination because it scared me. I tried to 'push' the sensation away, and it stopped. But she also moved on not long after anyway.
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and Armand stops and looks at this half-written message, and has to wonder at himself, but completes it anyway,
I could demonstrate the feeling, next time you can get away.
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Demonstrate it, like he's demonstrated all else he can do, to Daniel, on Daniel, chthonic psychic tentacles in his brain sifting every cruel thought and revolting teenage scam, controlling his body, controlling his mind, transforming him, feeding him to repair him like a fucking broken car who needed an oil change, and Daniel is going to say, what, yeah, sure, test this on me, I trust you not to go all the way, I trust you to stop, even without Louis there to demand you let up before it's too late? I trust you, and the ringing in my ears right now has nothing to do with terror?
Sure.
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Make it useful. Point out its virtues. But Daniel has already said, Sure, and Armand toys with his own as he considers through extrasensory perception the movement of bodies in the building that the three of them have made their home. He deletes this message. If Daniel needs virtues, he can come up with them himself.
When are you leaving?
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Depends on how quickly they can get things together. If it were just him, whatever, but it's three vampires and Louis' staff. He's pretty sure the soft plan a week ago was that they were going up, household would stay behind, but now?
No idea.
And Armand? Daniel stares at his phone, and thinks about burning.