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?"
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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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