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They make home in New York. Together. Daniel’s not officially dead yet, and they’ve decided on a couple years before handling that, so Daniel lets Armand loose on Zillow and starts packing up his old place.
He’s vaguely expecting another penthouse number, something sleek and modern and dripping with the sort of lack of personality people pay millions for. But no.
When Armand shoves his iPad under his nose, Daniel finds himself staring at a unit in an unbelievably beautiful row house. Old, solid brickwork, the industrial era kind where all the bricks are slightly different shades. Two floors. Functionally sized rooms in a compact layout. A tiny fenced-off garden out back. Old trees. Little shops and bars. Public transit connections. Peace, quiet, winding narrow streets, bicycle racks, and not a single SUV in sight.
It’s one of those interwar era walkable neighbourhoods, the ones that are illegal to build now because of fucked-up zoning laws.
“Fuck yeah,” is all Daniel says, and then they make out on Daniel’s lumpy old sofa, knocking half-packed boxes off it and giggling about it like idiots.
“What do you think, beloved?” Armand asks, holding a box in his arms, as they stand across the street from their new home.
Daniel, setting down a box of his own, looks at the row house.
“Don’t fish. It’s ridiculously perfect, and you know it.”
Armand beams smugly.
They carry their boxes across the street, unlock the door.
“Shall I carry you over the threshold?”
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” Daniel says, then sprints inside, just in case.
Armand laughs, bright and beautiful.
It’s not the sort of area where people welcome you into the neighbourhood, and thank god for that, because Daniel really doesn’t feel like doing the whole “I’m Daniel, this is Armand, and he’s older than he looks, I swear” thing.
Instead, it’s pretty artsy and occasionally bohemian here, despite being on the expensive side, so there’s probably some government programme going on in some of the units. Armand really went all out to woo Daniel with this nest, didn’t he. (Do vampires fucking nest?) Daniel feels it’s only right to reward him for the effort, and they fuck in the bedroom before the actual bed even gets delivered.
(Another benefit of proper, olden-days construction work: the solid brick walls are so thick the neighbours wouldn’t hear a grenade go off, let alone two maniacs fucking multiple times a night.)
They move in. They bicker about furniture and décor. Armand buys kitchen appliances neither of them needs, Daniel turns his brand new office into a pigsty within 72 hours.
They also lay down a few house rules. For example, no servants, because Daniel instantly turns into a rancid asshole whenever class differences and social hierarchies are involved; in exchange, Daniel promises to pick up after himself outside of his office. In exchange for that, Armand is not allowed to clean and organise Daniel’s office like the anxious, feral little raccoon he is. (Armand takes offence to the simile; Daniel latches on and keeps teasing him; they end up having sex on the floor of Daniel’s office.)
The place feels like home almost instantly. It’s a little weird, but everything about Daniel-and-Armand has always been weird, so. That’s on brand.
Daniel keeps up his social media presence, does occasional interviews and livestreams, starts working on that sequel at his publisher’s tearful begging.
Armand? Armand takes a break. Decides to find out who he actually is. Currently, he’s doing that through experimenting with fashion styles and taking apart every household appliance and electronic item that Daniel doesn’t actively guard with his body.
Things are going well.
The package is addressed to Armand Molloy.
Daniel, thankfully home alone at the time, has an emotional reaction that registers in his chest as a solid 8.5 on the Richter scale. It’s a pretty potent cocktail of possessiveness, hope, a dash of horny and a wave of horrifyingly sappy love.
(He might finally understand what the kids on the internet mean with that ‘screaming, crying, throwing up’ reaction tag.)
Once he’s done reacting, he brings the massive box into the apartment (he can sort of tell it’s supposed to be very heavy, but he doesn’t actually feel it) and proceeds to spend an embarrassing amount of time shifting it from one surface to another, trying to make it look welcoming but causal, all ‘whatever’ about the name on the address label. Then he realises how fucking stupid that actually is, and he leaves it on the table and proceeds to work on that book sequel by staring at the text and not comprehending a word of it.
(He goes back to push the box to a different spot on the table twice.)
Armand turns up after either five minutes or an eternity. He waltzes in, the way he tends to when he’s just fed or made a good deal (they hunt exclusively together these days, so it’s the latter), having left late in the day while Daniel was still asleep.
“Ah, good, it’s arrived,” he says lightly, like he can’t hear Daniel’s heart slapping about in his chest.
“What’d you get?” Daniel asks, leaning back in his chair and looking so fucking casual, for sure.
(They won’t talk about the name on the address label; not tonight and probably not for a while yet, but their bond thrums with a sense of acknowledgement anyway.)
“You’ll see,” says Armand coyly. “But I invite you to a movie date in a few hours. As soon as I’ve set everything up.”
“Uh-huh,” Daniel says, unbearably fond. “That’s okay, be mysterious.”
“I shall be, thank you.”
He’s so fucking beautiful when he’s all dainty and smug.
Two hours of zero constructive work and getting into fights with people on Twitter later, Daniel is officially invited to step into the spare room. The spare room tends to be whatever they need it to be at any given time (like Armand’s appliance-dismantling mad scientist lab or Daniel’s bonus file storage space); currently, it’s transformed into a cinema that seats two.
A large, high-quality screen is dropped from the ceiling to cover one entire wall, two plush chairs are pushed together a comfortable distance away, each with an actual cinema cup perched on it, plastic lid and straw and everything. And by the opposite wall, shining and expensively restored and maintained, is a vintage film projector — obviously the contents of Armand Molloy’s mysterious package, and easily 100 years old at a glance.
“Okay,” Daniel says, grinning, because Armand looks like he’s about to start vibrating. “I’m really fucking impressed.”
Armand preens, then goes to the elegant, small table housing the projector and fiddles with a reel of ancient film. A few minutes later the lights are dimmed, two vampires sit sipping blood from their trashy cinema cups, and images begin to flicker across the screen.
The movie is silent, but Armand has hooked up the original music accompanying it to a set of speakers; it sounds crackly and vintage, and Daniel can practically feel Armand’s pleasure.
“Wait,” Daniel says, five minutes in. “Wait, no, hold on. Is that— is that fucking Cleopatra with Theda Bara?”
“Yes,” Armand says brightly, like he’s not showing Daniel a priceless piece of lost cinematic history. “She was very good, and it was her performances that popularised the use of the term ‘vamp’ to describe a sexually dominant woman. Did you know that the production scale was impressive even by today’s standards? The film hired over 15,000 extras, and—”
“No, hang the fuck on, that’s all really interesting, babe, but — you have fucking Cleopatra? An actual, full, extant copy?”
“Yes,” Armand sighs, looking a little put out at having his infodump cut short; Daniel will make it up to him later, because right now all he can think is:
“Holy shit!”
Armand looks thoroughly unimpressed. “If you’re done having a reaction, rewinding the film and the score to resume in sync is quite an ordeal, so might we keep watching?”
“Yeah, no, sure,” Daniel says and takes a sip from his blood cup to somehow get a grip on the fact that Armand is casually treating him to a viewing of one of the most famous pieces of lost film in history.
It’s a hell of a date.
They watch the film through to the end, and it feels surreal, being the only two people in the world able to watch it; makes it feel ethereal. Armand occasionally chimes in with factoids and observations. Normally, Daniel wants to strangle people who talk during movies, but Armand’s gentle, glassy voice keeps reciting really interesting things, little snippets of buried, extinct historical knowledge, and it works with it being a silent film.
“Okay, that was incredible,” Daniel says when the movie is over, buzzed on both blood and the surrealness of it all.
“I’m glad you liked it,” Armand says to that, and he’s all radiant and quietly pleased.
Daniel nods at the box of old reels behind them. “What else you got there?”
Armand’s eyes are wide and bright.
“You want to watch another one?” It’s both a question and a shocked statement of fact; no one’s ever really been into his passion for films, the weirder the better. He’s hesitant, unwilling to let himself go full, happy nerd.
Luckily for them both, Daniel’s answer is honest and simple:
“Hell yeah.”
Armand’s smile is so fucking bright it almost hurts to look at, except it also feels like a balm on Daniel’s cranky old soul.
“What would you like to see?”
“Surprise me. Gimme some other piece of lost cinematic history that would be worth millions to museums and private collectors but you’ve been keeping it squirrelled away in a moth-eaten box in the corner of your closet.”
“That box is not moth-eaten, it’s air- and temperature-controlled to ensure the best preservation,” Armand grouses as he gets up from the chair to pick through the selection.
Daniel gets up from his chair as well, grabs the cups. “I’ll get us a refill.”
When he comes back, Armand treats him to London After Midnight, probably the most valuable lost film in the world.
Un-fucking-believable.
Sometimes, Armand gets paranoid. That’s what Daniel calls it. Armand calls it ‘realising how reckless they are in brief moments of lucidity’ — and that phrasing alone kinda makes Daniel’s point for him.
“This is too dangerous!” Armand is pacing nervously, his classic black Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers (his latest fashion obsession) wearing a groove in their tiny garden, where he’s stepped out to calm down; it doesn’t seem to be working for him.
(Armand religiously puts his shoes on when he goes out into the garden, even for a moment. It’s cute. Daniel is amassing a whole collection of adorable Armand quirks. Meanwhile, Daniel is standing there with him, barefoot — touching grass and all that.)
“Look, babe—”
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“What ‘we’, I’m the one writing the second book. Wrote the first one too.”
Armand stops to give him that mildly disgusted frown, the one he gets when he thinks Daniel is being slow; a pinch between his eyebrows, tips of his bunny teeth showing.
“Do you seriously think the other vampires will assume I was unable to stop you? And, more to the point, do you seriously think I would let you bear the consequences alone?”
Now, see, that’s so sweet it kinda steals the wind from Daniel’s argumentative sails here.
(It’s so sweet, in fact, that Daniel won’t mention the whole initial abandonment thing. They’ve talked about it multiple times already, and also he gets the feeling it wouldn’t be the most productive move here, what with Armand acting like a cat that’s just been surprised by a cucumber. Except, you know. More tiger than cat.)
“I love you too,” he says, because that’s what Armand meant, “but those guys need a reality check! None of the humans think it’s real anyway, it’s a non-issue!”
“It isn’t!”
Daniel takes him by the hand and tugs him back inside, because their neighbours to the right and up actually have a pretty decent view of their garden from their windows. Also, it’s like 3 a.m. and they’re both starting to yell.
Armand is already on a roll by the time Daniel closes the back door.
“Perhaps they do need this ‘reality check’, as you say, but they will not take it! To them, all that matters is the Great Laws, and—”
“Oh, fuck the Great Laws,” says Daniel, feeling fed-up but also cocky, because the angrier Armand gets the more he proves Daniel’s point for him, even if he doesn’t know it yet. “Do those guys not have any bi-centennial sit-downs where they can consult with reality and update this shit? Even the fucking Vatican does it!”
Armand is pacing, body taut yet mobile, as if trying to bend itself at odd angles; as if there’s something greater, even more dangerous on the inside that vengefully wants out. His eyes are like fire.
And then he stops and fixes all of that fire on Daniel.
“None of that matters! Not their ideas or their blindness! The only thing — only thing — that matters to me is you! I would watch the world burn before I let anyone harm you!”
His voice is doing that chill-inducing thing where it breaks into an almost inhuman, rasping tone, like someone who just got choked out but still screams, defiant, against the world.
“If they touch one hair on your head, I will use fire to rend the very flesh from their bones!”
“Okay, settle down, Ra’s Al-Ghul.”
Armand looks at him reproachfully, and yeah, okay, Daniel has to tone down the snark-as-defence-mechanism shtick, but at least the look in Armand’s eyes is more present. Like he’s actually here, back with Daniel, in their living room.
His feet are touching the floor again.
“Come on, babe,” says Daniel, reaching out to tug him closer and make amends. “You know I love it when you get all fierce and protective, but… you know, take it easy. No one’s breaking down our door yet.”
Armand is still frowning. “I have to make sure. I have to make sure you’re safe, I have to be vigilant, in case they want to hurt you.”
“Oh, they definitely want to,” Daniel says flippantly. “But they’re not gonna. I mean, look at you.” He brushes the tousled hair off Armand’s forehead, in awe of the blaze in his eyes; like twin doorways to hell. “You’re fucking terrifying. You’re an insanely lethal, powerful old being, and I’m your precious Daniel. I think my odds are pretty good.”
“My Daniel,” Armand repeats, like a mantra; he says that a lot, and Daniel gets a shot of sugar and heroin in his blood every time he does.
“Uh-huh,” Daniel says, nuzzling in for a kiss. “Yours.”
He can feel a few ridges smooth out in Armand, but not nearly enough; he’s still sharp and jagged, with that fear he turns into a weapon like a broken bottle. Daniel’s not stupid, he knows the whole control thing is rooted in a deep, terrifying sense of helplessness Armand experienced as an abducted and sexually abused child, then a teenager, then barely an adult. And then death. Exit human stage left, enter vampire stage right. A quick costume change, but that’s all it is: a costume.
But there’s power in that too, he thinks, kissing Armand again, deeper this time, languid and steadying. Armand is so, so fucking powerful, and he will be even more so when he breaks the cycle playing on repeat in his own head.
When he wields the power as a thing of its own, not a pre-emptive attack out of worry and fear.
Daniel wishes Armand could still get in his mind, or that he could get in Armand’s and just show him.
“You may have… too much faith in me,” Armand says, pulling away gently, and this is important, this is Armand showing his vulnerable underbelly, looping back to the idea of love being conditional when it applies to him.
Not on Daniel’s fucking watch.
“I don’t,” Daniel says easily. “I know exactly who you are.”
“Care to clue me in?” Armand jokes, weakly; he’s been picking up humour as a deflection from Daniel, and there’s something about it that Daniel loves, a mark of his own left on Armand. “No, what I meant was… there is still much you don’t know about the others. The politics of it all.”
“Hey, I’ve built my entire career on pissing off politicians and almost getting suicided by regime leaders and dictators.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it? I think it might be more similar than you think.”
Armand purses his lips, chin lowering, eyes turning a little dour; this conversation is ending here, Daniel can tell that instantly, but only for now. They’re both like a dog with a bone — they’ll be back in the exact same spot, picking up where they left off, soon enough.
“I would never have you stop being who you are,” Armand speaks up, and Daniel knows it’s the truth, because it feels like a thousand-pound weight being simultaneously laid on and lifted off his chest. Armand’s truths are always weighty, breathtaking things. “I need you to know that.”
“I know, baby,” Daniel replies, gathering him close, pressing a kiss into his hair. “I know.”
So: Daniel’s next work isn’t going to be a vampire sequel; it’s going to be a scathing exposé of the printer industry and corporate greed.
“Fuck. You.”
Error. No toner cartridge detected.
“Nuh-uh, it’s in there.”
Error. No toner cartridge detected.
“It’s in theeeree…” Daniel sing-songs as he clicks around on a few options, following advice from a Reddit post. “Aaaaand…” He clicks ‘print’.
Error. Cartridge cannot be used until printer is enrolled in HP Instant Ink. HP Instant Ink subscription offer: 20% off!
“Fuck you, I’m not buying your overpriced, under-filled crap.”
Error. No toner cartridge detected.
“Shut up or I’ll feed you to Armand.”
The fucking printer beeps at him.
“All right, that’s it.”
Daniel rips the cable out, picks up the whole damn thing (he braces himself to lift with his knees to spare his fucked-up old man spine, and then the printer weighs nothing in his arms; he’s still getting used to this) and marches over to the living room, where Armand is lounging on the sofa, iPad in elegant hands and buried in his latest Wikipedia rabbit hole. Daniel fondly wonders what random factoids he’ll be subjected to at daybreak, when they’re getting ready for bed, as this seems Armand’s preferred infodumping time.
He slams the printer down onto the coffee table, at which Armand finally looks over.
“Here,” Daniel says, lifting Armand’s obscenely perfect legs to sit next to him, then drapes them over his lap. “Got you a present.”
“Yes, I heard you arguing with it,” Armand says with gentle amusement.
“Yeah, cause it’s fucking stupid.”
“Seventeen minutes, beloved. You argued with an inanimate object for seventeen minutes.”
“It was sassing me. Anyway, I’m done.” He gestures at the printer. “Go to town. And I wanna watch.”
Armand laughs at that, happy and wide-mouthed, the way he never did in Dubai but sometimes did in San Francisco; his eyes are bright, his fangs are showing. He’s beautiful, even more so than his usual brand of arresting beauty — there was always something sealed off and untouchable about that. Something of a pinned butterfly behind a glass case. But this? This is real. A little gangly, occasionally terrifying, oddly adorable. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Taking time to work out who he actually is is a good look on him.
Daniel props his feet up on the vast coffee table and watches Armand gut the fucking printer with glee and gusto.
Suck it, HP. You’re no match for a manic gremlin with a screwdriver and knowledge-hungry doe eyes.
(When putting it back together, Armand somehow ends up fixing the printer; Daniels’ heart may technically be dead, but it squeezes hard as fuck at that, because there are way too many metaphors in there that he’s refusing to contemplate right now.)
Okay, so Daniel is kind of retroactively mad at Louis.
He just had to go and try to become a lousy photographer, carrying his camera everywhere, taking endless pictures of Armand where he was never in the centre, where he never mattered, and now that Daniel is feeling nostalgic and wants to get a Polaroid and take pictures, actual pictures, of Armand, he can’t. Because he’ll remind Armand of the whole… thing.
(You know, the whole not-being-important, being-repeatedly-re-traumatised, subsequently-plotting-and-executing-a-murder thing.)
It’s stupid, but Daniel remembers the 70s now, remembers him and Armand prowling city after city like hyped-up idiots (at least one of them frequently high, while the other occasionally second-hand high on drug-infused blood), trying things, going places… and fucking, so much fucking.
And he remembers taking pictures of Armand. Like, all the time. In bed, looking like sex incarnate; in the streets, looking like the smug predator he is; up on ferris wheels with his fangs showing in a wide smile. Street corners. Landmarks. Piers and ice rinks and arcades.
They’re so much better this time around, the two of them. Daniel-and-Armand 2.0, new and improved, with better communication skills and power balance. And Daniel wants to document that, wants to… oh, fuck it, he’s lovesick and hopped up on their bond, okay, he wants to take cutesy pictures of Armand and both of them together just for the sake of it.
He makes do with his phone for now. There’s a metric shit-ton of filter apps these days, and he has unlimited time on Earth now, so he’s free to waste it dicking around with vintage effects, trying to make his pictures look like Polaroids or Leicas.
(They don’t. They suck, as far as the imitation is concerned. But Armand looks happy in all of them, and that’s a win.)
“Are you filming me?” Armand arches an eyebrow.
“No,” Daniel says too quickly, hitting ‘stop’ on the recording. See? Technically true.
Armand hmms, unconvinced, and goes back to what he’s doing.
He’s going through a bit of Zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-repair phase right now; he’s bought a Vincent Black Lightning in a slightly ailing condition, which still cost a small fortune (a cool $1 million, fucking hell), and is currently spending almost half as much on renting a garage and fixing the bike up himself, with only the best parts and tools on the market.
You’d think he’d go greaser with it, but no. He’s gone grunge. And he looks so fucking hot Daniel has no words for it. What he has is a hi-res camera on his phone though.
Armand reaches out to grab a wrench from the work station, and Daniel quickly snaps a picture of that, all baggy flannel shirt, combat boots and a faded band t-shirt stolen from Daniel’s side of the closet.
The damn shutter noise goes off. So much for being a two-time Pulitzer winner journalist.
Armand tries to give him a dour look, but there’s a smile in the corners of his lips.
A couple months later, when he’s finished the repairs, Armand takes Daniel out for a ride. It’s a fucking exhilarating experience.
Tearing through the neon-lit night on a roaring machine, arms wrapped around Armand’s narrow, steel-spined waist, wind blowing through their hair, carrying the crisp promise of encroaching fall through the air. Speed, roar, meandering turns. People. Dragging smudges of streetlights. The night itself pungent with promise.
They don’t hunt, even though the rush of the ride leaves their blood fast and hot. Instead, they park on a hill somewhere in the outskirts, where bits and pieces of nature persevere, and Armand takes Daniel for a different kind of ride; namely, Daniel rides Armand under a dried-up old tree that, much like the two of them, somehow keeps on living.
Later, they lie on a blanket, Armand in Daniel’s arms, their shiny mechanical beast parked beside them. Armand’s hands on Daniel’s skin, Daniel’s hands in Armand’s hair, the night bursting with life all around them. Insects, distant cars and occasional trains, the obligatory drunken shout from somewhere far away.
Daniel’s blood is still revving pretty hard, and Armand looks beautifully inhuman, a sharpened edge to his satisfaction.
Take a picture, it’ll last longer, goes Daniel’s cynical brain, and yeah, asshole, that’s kind of the point.
Armand sighs. “Beloved?”
“Yeah?”
“Just buy that camera.”
So much for the alleged tragic inability to share thoughts between fledgling and maker.
Baiting Lestat into doing an interview was almost too easy. All it took was strongly suggesting that Daniel was planning to write the sequel about Armand, and Lestat turned up in a flurry of French sputtering and asshole clothing, demanding to tell his story first.
And Louis, of course, turned up with him. So much for staying out of relationships and figuring out how to be on his own.
On the flip side of that coin, Louis and Armand are talking again. They’re as bloodlessly polite in their post-divorce life as they were in their marriage; they mostly talk about nothing and occasionally remember they aren’t done dividing up their assets.
“Louis, I have found your Gallé lamp in one of my storage units,” Armand informs him one day, presenting him with the carefully wrapped antique.
(He also says “storage unit”, but Daniel’s been there, and it’s a house. An actual fucking house, somewhere in the $1.4 million range, that’s just full of accumulated eclectic crap, a lot of it priceless. Unbelievable.)
“Oh, thank you. I still have your de Lempicka, by the way,” Louis says, taking the lamp from him, and they talk about some antique Queen Anne writing desk both of them are reluctant to let go of.
Now, Lestat… Lestat has a weird relationship with Armand. He’ll shit-talk him constantly, but as soon as anybody else tries to do it, he’ll grab them by the throat and punch out their teeth. And that’s not an exaggeration, Daniel actually saw that happen once.
Initially, Daniel was hesitant about doing some of the Lestat interview sessions in their home, because Louis was right — Armand and Lestat are not compatible, not for longer than forty-five minutes. Daniel figures it’s inevitable. Put two psychotic rivals in a room together, one probably bipolar, the other probably autistic, and you won’t get a good result.
It works out though. Daniel voluntarily spends time one-on-one with Lestat, while Armand and Louis sit in another room and sip warmed-over blood like old ladies at a tea party and have meaningless conversations about beige shit that occasionally loop back to the Queen Anne writing desk. It’s good for them, Daniel thinks.
He’s currently parsing through Lestat’s nonsensical babble, congratulating himself on his journalistic professionalism that stops him from throwing the nearest heavy object at him.
“It all became a hurricane, blurring time into one streak, life and death into each other. And I gave myself to it, body and damned soul, and I let it devour me, the way a spider devours a fly caught in its web — completely and without mercy.”
“Uh-huh. And then what.”
“And then I… drifted.”
He pauses melodramatically, breathing in a fluttering way that suggests he’s about to sob. Daniel nods at him and writes down a note to himself.
He’s just beginning to enjoy this shred of peace and quiet when Armand and Louis suddenly appear in the doorway.
“What is it, cher?” asks Lestat, instantly recovered from his fit of the vapours, while Daniel finishes making his notes.
“It went quiet,” Louis says significantly, like this is an explanation.
“So we naturally assumed one of you had murdered the other,” Armand fills in seamlessly.
“You know, since neither of you is capable of shutting the hell up.” A volatile divorce and a lukewarm reconciliation later, those two can still finish each other’s sentences.
“Gee, thanks,” Daniel says, while Lestat scoffs something in French.
“My money was on Daniel being the survivor,” Armand says with that coquettish tip of his head and mild smile.
“Oh, my god,” Louis says, rolling his eyes.
“Come, Louis, there’s no need for that. Just because Daniel will be more powerful than you, given only a century or so…”
“I’m not saying anything!” Louis holds up his hands. “I’m not the one who has a gigantic ego thing about this…!”
“It’s not an ego thing, it’s a fact,” Armand says, in a voice so smooth it’s like the verbal equivalent of brushing lint off one’s sleeve. “You were made by Lestat, Daniel was made by me. Lestat is a less powerful vampire, therefore—”
Lestat jumps to his feet, shouting in French; Armand responds, also in French, but with that infuriating calm he pulls off like no one else, and Daniel thinks it’s kinda funny to watch some other poor schmuck get baited by this glossy veneer, for once. Louis exchanges a look with him, then attempts to mediate, because he’s determined to be the world’s biggest martyr.
Daniel, very happy he repeatedly flunked French at school, has another sip of blood from his reusable steel water bottle.
Speaking of languages…
Armand doesn’t need as much sleep as most vampires, let alone Daniel. He usually spends the day gaming on his laptop while Daniel is passed out next to him in bed or goes about some random Armand business. Sometimes Daniel wakes up to an insane in-app shopping haul being delivered, sometimes he does not. His life is now a wonderful mystery.
Still, sometimes, when Armand stays up for too many days in a row, he crashes in a way that shouldn’t be this adorable on a centuries-old apex predator: sleepy eyes, kitten-fanged yawns and everything.
Crashing is also the only way Daniel gets to wake up before Armand; normally, Armand is up at the crack of dusk, pestering Daniel awake (often the pestering involves sucking Daniel off in one way or another, so he won’t complain too much). Right now, though, Daniel wakes up freely, on his own time, when the dusk has laid itself heavy over the city, the sky only vaguely lit with greyish blues and almost-greens.
Fucking bliss.
His sweet gremlin is still knocked out next to him, legs tangled with Daniel’s. He looks like a Renaissance painting even when asleep: lithe body somehow posed in the sheets, ink-dark hair spilled on the pillow, eyelashes fanned in black crescents. Lips parted. A hand curled in a delicate gesture worthy of Mayan art. He’s so impossibly beautiful it almost makes Daniel irritable.
Almost.
Daniel reaches out, brushes a crisp, twisted strand of hair off his face. Armand hums, stirs just a bit.
Pushing down the petty instinct to start pestering him awake (see how he likes it), Daniel carefully shifts to sit up; his legs slide out from between Armand’s, and Armand stirs, mumbling, then says—
Something. He says something.
The words are strange but beautiful, with a vague kind of melody to them. Daniel can’t place the language, but… Hindi? (Well, shit...)
He tries to sit up properly, and Armand speaks again, words a little clearer this time, and he finishes it with, “Daniel.”
Daniel sits, frozen, not really sure what to do, when Armand’s eyes finally blink open; they’re a little bleary, but land on Daniel soon enough, and something in Armand seems to relax when he sees him.
“Good evening, beloved,” he says, hooking an ankle over Daniel’s again. “I see you’ve slept well.”
“Yeah. You?”
“It was nice to catch up on sleep.”
“That’s great. Hey, uh… you were talking. In your sleep. Little bit. Just now.”
“Was I?” Armand is either deflecting or too sleepy to pick up on Daniel’s obviously hedging tone, because he smiles lightly, pushing a hand through his hair, then stretches in the sheets; his eyes look so dreamy Daniel sort of wants to forget the whole thing and just kiss him and spend all night getting lost in his body. “What did I say?”
“Not sure, I don’t know the language, but… it sounded like it could have been Hindi?”
Armand goes very quiet and very still; a bit of light dims in his eyes, and Daniel sort of hates everything about this. A moment passes, stretching interminably. But Armand needs this, and Daniel is determined that this is the relationship, the marriage he will not fuck up, so. He stays quiet, lets him process. They’re not doing the interview any more.
“I don’t remember how to say much. Can you… repeat what I said?” Armand asks finally, voice quiet but not as small as Daniel worried it would be. And he wants to engage with what happened. That’s a good sign. (Right?)
“Yeah, uh… hang on.” Daniel takes a moment to focus; the Dark Gift comes with a weird boost of mimicry skills, and he rewinds the tape (always the tape), tries to zero in on the sounds, forget that they were supposed to be words. He repeats as best he can. “And the last sentence ended with ‘Daniel’. You said my name there.”
Armand’s eyes are big and watchful, a crease between his eyebrows as he listens intently. “Say it again.”
Daniel does, more confident in the words this time. Armand is quiet, pensive except for his eyes, which are frantic and quick; he stays silent though. Daniel lets him, gives him the space to process everything, which, by the way, makes him boyfriend of the year, because he’s medically incapable of shutting up.
Eventually, Armand shifts, breathing out a tense sigh; Daniel strokes his hair, continues to be quiet.
“I spoke to you,” Armand confirms, which Daniel already knew — he fucking felt it in his dead heart. “I said…” He frowns, in that slightly feral, unsettled way he does when he feels something slip out of his control. “I only understand part of it. I asked you to come back to bed. I think I said it’s still early, but the rest…” He frowns again, then lifts those wide, broken eyes to Daniel. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand the words I said, how can I— how is it possible that I said them, in my sleep, and meant them, but I don’t know what they mean?”
He looks so desperate, teetering on the edge between longing and anger.
“How can I remember but not remember?”
Daniel strokes his cheek, threads a hand through his hair; in comfort, in compassion.
“Memory is a monster,” he says, then presses a slow, gentle kiss to Armand’s forehead.
It loosens something in Armand, a breath he wasn’t able to let all the way out. Now he does, sinking into Daniel, and Daniel rolls onto his back, pulling Armand with him, to lie on his chest as he continues stroking his hair.
“You could… learn again,” Daniel suggests, a little lamely.
He knows it wouldn’t be the same — Armand last navigated the world in his birth language over five hundred years ago; it’d be like if Daniel last spoke English in Shakespeare’s time and was now trying to pick it back up again. But it would be something.
Armand hums, and that’s encouragement enough.
“You could,” Daniel repeats, going back to stroking his gremlin’s hair. “You’ve got time to kill. And there’s all kinds of apps for that now, you like apps.”
For a minute he wants to suggest Duolingo, because the thought of Armand interacting with that AI-crippled nightmare and subsequently writing a piece of malware to wipe it off the face of the planet is tempting, but… yeah, this is about Armand right now. Not Daniel’s First World anarchism.
(Later. He’ll somehow unleash Armand on the Duolingo destruction path later.)
“I do like apps,” Armand repeats, thoughtfully, like he’s turning a piece of his own personality over and examining it from all angles, which, to be fair, is probably exactly what’s happening right now.
“Yeah,” Daniel confirms. “Want me to add it to the list?”
They have a list of things Armand can do to figure out who he is. It’s in Armand’s nightstand drawer, because he tends to come up with ideas when Daniel really, really just wants to sleep, and he also gets brainwaves after sex. Turns out, post-nut clarity is a thing for vampires too.
Armand lifts his head. “Please,” he says.
“Sure.”
Daniel sits up, reaches across Armand to retrieve the notepad with the list on it, and flips to the most recent page. It’s a blend of both their handwritings, which… yeah, it makes Daniel feel things.
“Learn… Hindi… again,” he says as he writes it down, then flips the notepad shut (it’s a Moleskine; Armand isn’t the only one who’s pretentious). “There. Added.”
Armand is looking up at him, from where he’s half-buried in the sheets. “Thank you, beloved.”
“No problem,” says Daniel, because he’s not a complete Boomer, okay.
Armand reaches up, touches Daniel’s cheek. He rolls over onto his back. There’s a change in him, that broken fragility pushed to the side, something much easier taking its place. He sighs, almost content.
Then he speaks in Hindi again, repeats what he said on the edge of sleep: he asks Daniel to come back to bed, beautifully and confidently, with a smile. And then he pulls Daniel back down into the sheets with him.
Armand takes up art.
He makes things, sets them on fire, then puts them out when it’s just about done, and takes pictures of the final result. He gets discovered on Instagram almost immediately.
His charred remnants of sculptures, paintings and installations begin raking in millions of clicks, then start selling for five figures in art galleries within six months. Unbelievable — the amount of starving artists who would give their left tit for half that kind of success, but Armand, already a multi-millionaire, gets to have it.
Then again, as much as the art world is about blind luck and unfairness, a persevering part of it is still about what you have to say. And Armand has five hundred years of bottled-up, unsaid things he desperately needs to let go of. And it really shows in his work. His pieces are burned but somehow still hauntingly graceful and brain-shatteringly beautiful; as far as Armand’s artistic metaphors go, this is probably the crudest one, but also the most important. Daniel’s not stupid, and even then it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together here.
Daniel is also insanely and completely proud of him.
The thing about that is, Armand gets popular on his own. And it doesn’t take long for the media to connect the dots and start interviewing the two of them together, trying to make them into a B-list power couple.
“So, Armand,” the latest TV anchor is saying, leaning forward while one of Armand’s charred art pieces sits on the table between them. “Your art: so evocative, so poignant. Tell us: why the fire as a medium?”
“I like fire,” Armand says with concerningly visible honesty.
“And what’s the message behind this piece?”
Armand shrugs. “The same as behind all the others, I suppose. That damage, even irreparable, doesn’t have to be the end.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” the anchor tries, and Daniel’s always hated that fucking saying.
“No,” Armand says easily. “What doesn’t kill you makes you different. Not necessarily better or worse. And the other part of the message is that broken things can still be valuable. Beautiful,” he corrects himself, but he’s still not fully nailing the meaning of his own art there, so Daniel decides to help him out.
“Loved,” he says, laying his hand on Armand’s out of the camera’s frame. “They can still be loved.”
It’s sappy, and he says it in front of around 300k viewers (and later 10 times that online, in the form of clips and gifs and quotes), but he doesn’t care. Armand is more important.
The anchor makes a thoughtful sound, but at least he doesn’t try for a cutesy comment, so maybe Daniel won’t drain him next week after all.
“Now, Daniel— may I call you Daniel?”
“No.”
“How do you think your partner feels about having the villain in your book named after him?”
“I didn’t name anyone, that’s literally him right there,” Daniel says, pointing at Armand.
The anchor laughs, with a slightly forced cheerfulness, because what else can you do when your studio guest is either stoned on air or displaying dire signs of dementia.
“Also, he’s not the villain,” Daniel carries on. “The whole book is a cast of villains. Everyone in it is a villain in one capacity or another. Armand, Santiago, Lestat, Louis… It’s all perspectives.”
“Even Claudia?”
“Did you miss the part about her keeping a diary with her victims’ last words? Like I said — perspectives.”
“Well, I suppose that’s a fair point, if a somewhat cynical one—”
“It’s not cynical, the whole book is about the fact that shit still matters.”
“—Now, about your upcoming second book…”
The interview’s mention of the second book triggers Armand, just as Daniel knew it would, and he’s prepared for it. It’s delayed, like most reactions Armand has, but Daniel can see it rotating in his brain like a rotisserie chicken, and he’s keeping an eye on the temperature.
What he’s not prepared for is the direction in which Armand takes it.
“No. No.”
“Armand…”
“No. This is wrong. I shouldn’t— you’re better off without me, I should remove myself.”
“Okay, one: remove myself? Who the fuck talks like that, do you think you’re in a Jane Austen novel or something? And two: the hell I am! Yeah, I took to being a vampire disturbingly quick, I had a disturbing amount of fun, but you know what else? I was fucking miserable! I missed you like a severed arm!”
Armand paces like a distressed tiger looking for an opening in his cage.
“It was the freshness of the bond between maker and fledgling. It wouldn’t affect you as much now,” he says dismissively.
“Hey, fuck you!”
“For your own good I think—”
“Jesus, why do— you always do this! You always stay, you stay put in your own mess until someone else destroys it for you and frees you of it, but with me? You run. You leave. Why did you leave me, Armand?”
Armand is breathing so quick now, his pacing frantic, eyes distressed.
“I have to— I have to stop controlling everything, because I suffocate things, I suffocate everything, and I don’t want to suffocate you, I love you, I— I needed you to be free, I wanted— I couldn’t— Daniel I absolutely couldn’t—”
“Yeah, but the answer to that wasn’t abandoning me, Jesus!”
Armand shuts his mouth with an honest-to-god click. His eyes are a mile wide. He’s scared and fragile. Daniel’s heart screams to fix it, while an ugly part of his brain wants to nitpick and question it, look for the crocodile behind the tears.
Thing is, they’re both trying not to repeat the same stale, stagnant past mistakes. Right? So Daniel reins in both of those impulses and reaches out to tug Armand closer. Not mindless comfort, not pre-emptive rejection. Armand goes to him.
Look at them. Two old men finally trying to get their shit together.
“Hey,” he says. “Deep breath, yeah?”
Armand looks at him with narrowed eyes. “We don’t actually need—”
“Yeah, whatever, humour me, okay?”
He does. Look at that. He goes all in, too, taking that breath slowly and as deeply as it will go, then letting it out when Daniel guides him through it. He looks so serious and focussed that it’s unbelievably adorable; Daniel sort of wants to kiss the tip of his nose. He files that for later.
“Okay,” he says slowly, firmly. “There we are. Now: which one are we gonna talk about? The right-now thing, or the back-in-Dubai thing? Because I gotta be honest, baby, I think I can only take them one at a time.”
Armand frowns, thinking about it for a while. “I think they’re both the same thing,” he finally says.
“Yeah,” Daniel says slowly, because that’s fair. “But let’s try to… I dunno, chop it up. Wait, no, that sucks…”
“I actually liked it,” says Armand, smiling a little.
“Okay, then let’s go with that. Chop it up. Manageable pieces and all that stuff. You know?”
“I think so.”
“Great. So. Control this: which one will it be?”
Armand gives it some more thought; they may be locked out of each other’s brains for all eternity, but that doesn’t mean Daniel can’t still read him. There’s a different kind of bond, and Daniel has no idea if it’s a thing or of it’s just all in his head, but it does exist somewhere. And Daniel can tell exactly what Armand will choose.
“The back-in-Dubai thing,” Armand says, with the calm determination of someone facing a firing squad.
“Okay. So. Back in Dubai.”
“Back in Dubai.”
“You… left. Me.”
They’ve already been through this, several times even, but each time they lap the groove they make it a bit deeper. Scratch off another layer. And something Armand has just said in his spiralling ramble feels like they’re finally getting to the big one.
“Yes,” Armand whispers, a shameful confession. Daniel rubs a thumb over his knuckles where they’re holding hands; relax.
“I’m not mad any more, I swear. Think I was pining, really, but it was easier to be angry.”
Armand peers at him from under his lashes.
“Well, okay, I was angry,” Daniel concedes. “But not as much as you think. And there was pining. So. Let’s go back to that night. You leave — what’s in your head?”
“Love,” Armand answers without hesitation. “And terror. And… and disgust.”
“Hey, not my fault your little kitten fangs can do way more damage than they look.”
“No.” Armand shakes his head, frowning. “No, not disgust at you. You were… you were beautiful. Incandescent. Bathed in our blood, in new life. I couldn’t look away.”
“So…” Daniel prompts, ever the journalist, even though he already knows the answer.
“I was disgusted with… with myself.”
Yeah, so that’s an unfortunately common state of affairs for Armand, and it breaks Daniel’s dead heart, okay, but: one step at a time.
“Because you broke your vampire-making vow of celibacy?” See, Daniel knows how to work here; give him just a bit of a scrape, just a touch of friction, something he’ll have to push back against. This is what gets him talking. Makes it easier for him.
Armand scowls. “No. Because I realised the consequences, the implications, were exactly what I feared they would be.”
Implications. Here we go. This is the big one. Don’t fuck this up, Molloy.
“You keep going back to fear,” he says, trying not to sound too gentle, too coddling. “Even disgust has fear in it, fear of wrongness. So what scared you? What was the thing that pushed you out the door?”
Armand’s hands clench around Daniel’s, hard like steel. Daniel keeps going.
“You said you couldn’t, just now. You told me that you love me, and that you absolutely couldn’t. What was it, baby? What scared you?”
Thing is, Daniel has a pretty good inkling. A hunch, if you will. It’s just that Armand needs to say it.
“That I would… I couldn’t… I couldn’t mould you, Daniel. You’re… you’re perfect.” He looks up at him, fierce like the sun. “You’ve lived a life, and I absolutely wouldn’t break you into pieces to fit some mould I had ready for you. I couldn’t bend you and twist you and paint over you how I saw fit. I couldn’t own you.”
Daniel allows silence to linger, tries to swallow down the thing lodged in his throat.
“Because that’s what was done to you,” he finally manages, voice unsteady.
Armand nods, like he’s unwillingly letting go of his darkest sin. “Yes.”
Daniel has long had the feeling that, in Armand’s abuse-scrambled brain, the act of turning and the act of grooming, of abuse, became one. Which, sure, a lot of hallmarks there, but they absolutely do not have to be synonymous.
He takes a deep, steadying sigh.
“Yeah,” he whispers, perhaps resignedly, and pulls Armand close, hides Armand’s face in the crook of his neck. “We got there in the end.”
Armand clings to him, like he’s terrified to let go. He was ready to pack just a minute ago.
“Okay, so listen, and please go easy on me, because I’m not a mental health professional, I’m just an idiot asshole. You’ve definitely got control issues, not gonna lie, but you’re working on that. And I’m proud of you, by the way. But. That thing you said. No, Armand. The thing between us is nothing like what your maker did to you. Nothing. And just because you became a maker it doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly start doing the same thing that was done to you. It’s all choices, sweetheart. He made his, you’re making yours.”
“I love you,” Armand says wetly into Daniel’s neck.
“I know. I love you too.”
“He loved me too.”
“Nah. Maybe he thought he did, that’s the best case scenario. But you? Listen, you were so terrified of doing wrong by me that you left. That’s the opposite of owning someone. And yeah, you leaving hurt as fuck, because you could use some communication skills, but you know that thing about loving something and letting it go? Yeah, you did it, babe. You: theatre director, string-puller, web-weaver, control freak. You broke the cycle.”
Armand lifts his head off Daniel’s shoulder. His eyes are bright.
“There you are,” Daniel says, awestruck, pushing panic-swept hair off Armand’s face. “There you are.”
“I like being with you,” Armand confesses earnestly. “And I like who I am when I’m with you.”
(Armand never called Louis the love of his life. The whole “my love” sentiment was only said one way. Daniel listened carefully, you see. Even back then. Already back then.)
“That’s great. But remember that thing you said to me, last time we talked about this? You said you’d never have me stop being who I am. Thing is, it goes both ways. I would never have you change yourself in some way you might not like just because you think it will please me or whatever. Okay?”
Armand takes a moment to think about it, which sort of dangles Daniel’s heart over a precipice, but then he nods.
“Okay,” he agrees. “And while we’re on this topic — I regret hurting you, causing you pain, damaging your trust in me. But I refuse to regret giving you the chance to live a full life. You’ve lived it so well, beloved. You were a fascinating boy when we first met, but now? Now you’re magnificent. I could never regret you.”
And yeah, Daniel gets what Armand means. He even agrees. Looking back at himself in the 70s, he wouldn’t want to be stuck like that. Sure, it sucks that Armand brainwashed him and stole his memories, and no wonder Daniel fucked up two marriages when a buried, marrow-deep part of him knew what he was missing, was echoing confusedly that all-consuming love he had for Armand. Because how could he ever fully forget something like that.
But he got to live and grow up. The thought of being stuck forever as an idiot twink, like Armand, Lestat, Louis and the rest… yeah, Daniel can’t regret this either. No wonder Armand feels like he doted on Daniel by giving him what he himself never had. What he desperately wishes he had.
“Yeah,” he says, soft. “l don’t either. I mean, the way you did it still sucks, because again: communication skills. But I don’t regret this either.”
Armand smiles. Daniel won’t be able to see the sun for centuries yet, but who needs it. Armand’s smile burns a thousand times brighter.
A few years later, Daniel Molloy is dead and buried. A great loss for journalism; groundbreaking reporting; unhesitating challenge of authority; possible dementia there towards the end. Whatever.
“This is weird,” Daniel says, looking at the fresh tombstone with his name and dates stamped on it. Even a few kind words from his daughters; he made an effort at the end. He’s glad he gave them a couple decent memories to hold onto, even if they definitely thought he’d lost his mind.
(They liked Armand; Armand liked them. They were careful not to let them get too close, so they wouldn’t expect Armand to frequently stay in touch after.)
Beside him, a shovel across his shoulders and a hip cocked, Armand hums. “I thought the ceremony was lovely.”
“Yeah, it loses a bit when attended from inside a box.”
Armand pouts. “I thought you liked the coffin I picked out for you.”
“It was great, babe. But it’s kinda hard to kill time at your own funeral.”
“Hmm, point.”
They fill in the hole. Lay the flowers back down. Daniel incinerates a ribbon with his mind, just to show off; he’s got Armand’s gift for fire, it seems. Armand kisses him, a little dirty, because he always gets horny when Daniel is being a prodigy.
“So,” Daniel says as they walk away into the night, hands linked and swinging between them idly; Daniel has never felt more free. “Where to now?”
“Wherever you want,” says Armand, eyes and teeth bright in a smile. “The world is ours, beloved.”
He’s so happy, so ready to take the world and lay it at Daniel’s feet. It’s a fucking thrill just to see him like this.
“You choose,” Daniel tells him, tugging him closer until they’re wrapped together like in an old-fashioned dance. “I picked New York, now’s your turn.”
Armand hums, chest pressed firm against Daniel’s, their bodies swaying, his hair stirred by the night breeze.
“How about…” he says, eyes dreamy, and Daniel gets to keep him. “How about we get an island?”