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.