Chapter Text
Armand stares at the boy. And stares and stares, his face tilting slightly to the right.
The boy is seated, in a chair this time, shoulders slumped, being stared at. His gaze is down, not meeting Armand's, who stands, a stone watching a living thing.
His eyes, the boy's, are red from endless weeping, wet eyelashes fluttering as he raises his face, facing the demon. The boy smells of blood and sweat and tears. Armand wonders if he should wash him before returning him to his world.
Would that be natural, a clean thing in a trap house? A well-cared-for boy where humans accumulate like trash, motionless and stinking?
Maybe Armand shouldn't clean him, for doing so would make him reluctant to throw him away in that godforsaken place, and there was no more appropriate disposal for fascinating Daniel Molloy.
“What is it?”
Daniel's voice is a crack in his ears. Scared, anxious.
What's he gonna do to me? His lips quivering, yet again on the verge of tears.
“I'm sorry. I di- I didn't mean to...”
Speak. Exist.
Armand hears his instant regret as much as he sees it on his agonized face, in the posture that suggests a desire to shrink to insignificance.
Foolish boy who thinks he can be invisible. Armand knows from experience that there's no disguising natural prominence like that. Desperate soul, gaining attention by trying to avoid it. Oh, he's been there.
“Do you suppose I haven't attempted this?” Armand utters, but Daniel doesn't know what he's talking about. It's unfair when only one of them has access to what's happening inside the other.
He doesn't want Daniel to hear him in his mind—which leaves the kind of impression that persists—since his intent with the boy is to be a turned page, soon enough. A burnt one.
“You cannot hide, at will, how supposedly fascinating you are,” he explains, jaw clenched, capturing Daniel's chin in his hand.
Armand recognizes it sounds like human sarcasm, but it's merely an observation made more irritating by not being false. It's true because Louis has the eye, he knows how to find the exceptional.
He found it in Lestat, found it in the photographs of people he carries when he and Armand jump from one address to another. He found it in Daniel, whose impatience now grows beyond his control because emotion blooms in Daniel in an unmistakable way.
And it's no longer because of the drugs, Armand discovers.
He just is that way.
Daniel holds his gaze, though terrified. Armand feels remnants of the wall and dried blood on the skin beneath his fingers.
He will end up cleaning him, after all.
They drag him to a drug den the next night.
An unusual trio, the three of them. Louis still marked under the hood, Daniel compelled and unconscious, and the vampire Armand.
Another night already, and loneliness has him.
Louis has fallen asleep early because of the wounds, and the sun is about to rise judging by the light static that clouds his senses.
For a vampire of Armand's age, it is not Louis’s inescapable sleep, but more like a stupor. Not that different, he imagines because it's all he can do, from the pulse of drugs in human senses.
Thus, he finds himself thinking about the boy. Whether he has already gone home or if, a day later, the chemicals in his own body still prevented him.
Louis and Armand set him on a path, but there is a limit to the power of the vampire. They may have given direction to the young journalist's life, but it is considering that said life does not end this week, whether due to the substances or the hand of another beast.
One of the human ones, who spill blood they won't even drink.
Either way, his Louis wouldn't be pleased.
Armand closes his eyes and searches for his mind.
Daniel is not awake, as he feared, for his frequency is low.
By waiting he realizes his rest is natural, as a dream unfolds.
Armand opens his eyes. Should he go to him?
He does.
Daniel sleeps, his sore body rolling on the bed, in light clothes, his leg sticking out of the sheet, inches and inches of skin and navy blue shorts bunched at his ass.
Daniel sleeps with his body minimally bent, a silent suggestion to be grabbed by the hips. In his dream, he escapes through endless corridors, a labyrinth made of concrete.
His heart beats a little faster each time he thinks it's the end, but there's some excitement in it. An erotic dream without consummation, where the pleasure is in the chase.
From the corner of the room, Armand watches the dream as much as he watches him sleep.
It is not the last time.
Daniel dreams frequently, compared to other human men.
He moves a lot, starts the night in one corner and almost rolls off the bed as the hours pass. He messes up the sheets, tangles his clothes, wakes up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, drink water, see what's in the fridge. Sometimes he writes, sometimes he writes about dreams.
Sometimes Armand reads, compares the version on paper with his own memory. An odyssey. Daniel always leaves details out, erases the faces of the demons he dreams of.
More often than not, it's Armand and Louis.
Even more often, just Armand.