Chapter Text
Daniel wakes first.
In his life, his internal clock was shit, destroyed by too many late deadlines and corresponding benders.
In his death, he wakes a perfect three minutes after the sun sets, without fail. It’s been an early autumn that dragged into a miserable winter, one that even the hygge of Christmas in New York could not combat. January has been sleet-filled, its short, dark days dragging into long, dark nights. Suits him well enough.
He blinks awake to an inky blueness and soft breath on his cheek. The coffin lid is closed and Louis is pressed against him from shoulder to ankle.
Daniel studies him for a long while, tracing over the jut of his nose and the lines beneath it that curve toward his mouth. Louis looks exhausted even at rest. There’s a furrow between his brows, a slackness to his mouth that still isn’t relaxed. Daniel keeps his touch light, and Louis relaxes a little bit and nuzzles into Daniel’s hand, unthinking.
His mind is wide open in his sleep; Daniel wonders if that was on purpose. Louis had mentioned being a poor mental block in his earliest days, but his past seven decades with—in his life, must have taught him better.
Grab that, Daniel thinks absently, the careful way he’s wording things even in his own thoughts. Doing a little blocking of his own. It’s pointless. He needs to learn from Louis, properly, and soon.
But that’s for later. For now, he closes his eyes and lets himself see what Louis sees:
Lestat. Of course.
Daniel realizes this is the first time he’s seen him. He’s much bigger than Daniel imagined, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. He wonders if Louis’s memory embellishes the gold in his curls, the raw beauty of the man, but the image feels true in the way dreams do. There’s a sliver of a scar on the corner of his mouth, something real in his eyes.
The dream is full of warmth and color and Daniel lingers in it, nosy bitch he is—this must be their parlor in New Orleans. He takes in the pattern of the sideboard, the rich textiles of their bespoke gay little suits as Louis and Lestat sit close to one another.
Rain pounds at the window, a hurricane, torrential, and there’s a high, girlish laugh a room over. Lestat leans over a piece of driftwood and delicately touches on grooves worn like keys. Something swells, poignant, aching. Daniel swears he hears music.
He only leaves Louis’s memory when the real world intrudes with a gentle rap on the door. When Daniel clambers gracelessly from the coffin, he slams his shin in the process and curses, but Louis stays asleep.
Rubbing at his eyes, he walks down the hall and through the kitchen. When he checks the oven clock, it’s ten ‘til five. Early, early dark.
He takes his shirt from where it ended up discarded on the floor last night and buttons it hurriedly. Daniel tries to rack his brain for who it could be; the building is good about not buzzing in solicitors—if it is a solicitor, maybe he’ll drain them, call it a public service—but then again, the board of the co-op has too much time on their hands. Bunch of busybodies. Daniel didn’t go to building meetings before, and that was pre-getting got. No shot of it now.
For a moment, he imagines some weirdo mortician behind the door, Louis waking at noon in a dead sweat, groping for his phone to rush-order a new coffin. It makes him snort a laugh. Damn, but he feels good. It’s not just the morning—night?—after kind of feeling. It’s having company, the promise of Louis and his waiting, warm dreams across the apartment.
He’s still smiling when he opens the door.
“Hello,” Armand says in a wavering, small voice.
Daniel’s brain has stuttered to a halt. Good thing he’s dead, or his heart would follow. Stop right in his chest. “Oh my god. He’s gonna kill you.”
Armand’s lips, thinned into a frown, curl for just a moment, a silent snarl before he smooths over his expression. A human might have missed the micro-expression. “He might try.”
“He will try. What the fuck. What the fuck.” Daniel fights the urge to turn his back and see if Louis is already there, up and ready, but he cannot tear his eyes from his Maker. If does, he’ll disturb the mirage of Armand before him, scatter his heat waves, the bending of light rays passing through the pocket of his breath until he burns off for good.
Daniel reaches back mentally instead, grasping for Louis—still under, still in the parlor in New Orleans.
Armand doesn’t move. It’s like he’s abandoned the charade of being a human, reverting to the ancient stone truth of himself. His only movement is in his left hand, his fingers tapping against his thumb, a quick, featherlight five count.
“Why are you here?” Daniel asks.
Armand takes a moment to respond. His eyes are crawling over Daniel’s body, from the crown of his head to his feet. He lingers on Daniel’s neck; Louis hadn’t healed his bite wound before they slept. The rest took care of the worst of it, but Daniel’s sure the puncture marks are still visible. Especially if you know what to look for.
Daniel studies him in turn. It’s the first time he’s Armand dressed down—he’s wearing a strange green squared-patched hoodie with a thick black zipper and a ballcap: I ❤ NYC. His hair flips up beneath it, curling around his ears.
He looks like a boy. Seventeen, if a day, and he looks…brittle, almost. Like a stiff breeze would knock him down. His eyes are heavy in his beautiful, stupid head, ringed with dark bruises of exhaustion.
“This is the worst disguise I’ve ever seen, and I endured the full servant act," Daniel says instead of Are you eating? “Aren’t you supposed to be a theater guy? What are you, going method?”
He says nothing. Just stares with his fingers twitching at his side.
Daniel can’t fucking stand it. "Answer me. Why are you here?”
Armand takes another wavering breath. “You will not believe me,” he says, tepid.
Sharp pain starts to wrack up in Daniel’s temple. Can vampires get migraines? “If you were here in a jealous rage, I feel like you would’ve scaled the building.”
Armand attempts a smile. It’s garish. He really looks like shit. “Not a…rage.”
“We have to—you have to—“ Daniel rubs at the bridge of his nose. “You have to leave.”
“Is that what you want?” Armand says. He barely keeps disbelief from his voice, in the twitch of his brow; Daniel can’t believe he thought him hard to read, once.
“Like you give a solitary shit,” he hisses, finger flying out to poke his chest, “What I want.”
Even that brief contact, just the tip of his finger to Armand’s elegant clavicle, is good enough to send his brain spinning. The Maker’s bond, he tries to remind himself, All that bullshit. It’s white noise. It’s nothing.
He ignores the truer, smaller voice saying, It’s everything, actually.
Armand doesn’t rise to the challenge. He wilts before him. It’s infuriating. Daniel wants to kill him. Daniel wants to wrap his hands around his slender neck and squeeze, thighs around his waist, squeeze, there, too—
“Okay. Okay, okay.” Daniel runs his hands through his already disheveled bedhead and spins in a stupid little circle, finally letting himself peek down the hall. “Wait by the elevator.”
Armand doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.
“Go,” Daniel snaps, “Or I’ll wake up your ex-husband and he’ll chew a hole through your sternum. Wait, where are your shoes?”
Armand seems surprised he’s barefoot. “I suppose I hurried.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
Daniel steps back inside, and Armand stays outside his door. Not invited in, Daniel thinks, and a hysterical little giggle escapes him. He steps into his boots and digs around in his coat closet for the slides he bought two summers ago when he was optimistic enough to attempt swimming laps.
He grabs his keys, finds a mismatched pair of socks for his dumbass Maker, and scribbles on a Post-it that he leaves on the pillow beside Louis. Not the good morning he deserves, not by half, but what else can he do?
Going for cigs. I recognize the irony. Back soon.
With only a moment’s hesitation, Daniel grabs Louis’s coat and shrugs into it. It smells like him: the lingering vetiver and sandalwood of his cologne, and something clean and close that is just Louis. Daniel’s probably bringing some mothball, bargain-coffin smell into the mix but can’t make himself care. He needs the visual barrier, the comfort. Firmly under Louis’s wing and protection. Real fledgling shit.
Armand is staring down the hall at the elevator, but seems frozen in place, unmoving but for the flick of his fingers. He turns and stares again, scanning Daniel’s face over and over. If he recognizes the coat, he says nothing.
Daniel shoves the slides and socks into Armand’s chest and turns to lock up. His hands are shaking; Parkinson’s didn’t magically disappear with his vampiric transformation. It’s locked into him, dormant, frozen, but it only really pops up when he’s under a lot of stress. Like right about now. He barely gets the key in the lock, but he manages, and when he turns back, Armand is wearing the socks and sandals.
He forces himself to walk at a human pace—he likes living here, damnit, would not like to have to kill all his neighbors and move—and Armand walks with him.
Daniel jabs the button for the elevator. They step inside it silently, and he has to stop himself from chewing the inside of his cheek bloody because there’s a good chance he wouldn’t stop. The close proximity makes his head spin, the smell of Armand, the honey-sweetness of him, the blood slugging slow through his veins—Daniel can feel it. Feel him for the first time in half a year.
When they reach the lobby, he glowers at the doorman—traitor, even if he was almost certainly hypnotized—and pushes out into the biting cold. Before Armand can say anything, Daniel grabs his hand and interlocks it firmly in his own. It’s half to prove he’s actually here, not some love-lorn Maker-shaped hallucination, and half to prevent him from running away again. Never mind that he could split Daniel in two in a second if he wants. Never mind that he could tear him to shreds.
Armand flinches at the touch but doesn’t pull away. The point of contact is searingly, disturbingly good. The bond between them thrums, yes, yes, yes. It’s sick.
When he gives him a sidelong glance, Daniel is surprised to see Armand’s eyes trained on the ground. He looks frightened, skittish and wan. Daniel wonders why he bothers with the performance and rages at it at the same time. He’s got to keep it under wraps, though—the optics aren’t great. He picks up the thoughts of people passing them on the sidewalk on the way over, wonder and curiosity that tip into concern for the young man and Daniel’s vice-like grip on his hand.
He grits his teeth and schools his expression. They still don’t speak as he leads them past his favorite bodega, the Walgreens, a tiny pocket of a park, until they reach a shitty corner diner that got Daniel through many, many hangovers.
He stops before reaching for the door. “You gonna answer my questions?” he asks. “If we’re doing this.”
Armand gives him a wide-eyed look. It’s really pissing Daniel off, how beautiful he is even so wrecked. Maybe especially like this. Despite it all, Daniel wants to hunt down whatever troubles his Maker, take those problems between his teeth, and shake until they stop moving.
“I will…try."
“No, you fucking won’t try. You will answer me, or I’ll go back home and you’ll…go back to wherever you crawled out of.”
“I can’t tell what you’re thinking.” Armand blurts. He sounds mournful.
“Now you have to rely on what I say like every other shmuck. Tragic.”
It’s a tragedy to Armand, clearly, but he amends: “I’ll answer your questions. You might not like the answers.”
It’s more than he’d expected. “Wonderful.”
Daniel stomps into the diner, its bell chiming, and leads them to a corner booth. Armand sits and begins picking at sugar packets from the dispenser and shredding them in quick succession, his fingers working fast. He’s keen on making a mess however he can, apparently.
He asks the first thing he can think of: “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Ripping a packet with particular gusto, Armand says, “I…received Louis’s message.”
Daniel feels a grim satisfaction. A flush of guilt, too, which pisses him off. “Oh. yeah?”
“I could not bear it.”
“Too bad,” Daniel says hotly. “He’s not your husband anymore. He doesn’t belong to you.”
“He doesn’t,” Armand says. His expression is inscrutable.
Daniel feels himself go still. Ignores the thrill of the implication, of what is unsaid. “You’ve got some nerve,” he says, and his voice is entirely too low, laced with that thrill. He can’t hide it. He feels like he can’t hide anything.
Armand shakes his head. Dips a finger in the pile of sugar he’s created on the diner table. “I didn’t know.”
“Know…what, exactly?”
“The weight you’re carrying. Your…misery.”
This is an angle Daniel was not ready for. He’d thought, in the throes of passion…but it had been when he was drained. Weak and wanting. Fuck. He’s shown his belly.
He won’t do that again. “Like you don’t get off on it.”
Armand looks up. He looks…Daniel can’t press words to how he looks. “You think I relish in your pain?”
“Uh, yeah. Very specifically, you do. You did.”
He shakes his Botticelli head. “Only when I am its source.”
“You are,” Daniel says. His anger spins into incredulousness. “You are right now. You did this to me.”
The waiter, a greasy little teenager, takes that moment to step up. “Hey, uh. Hi. Welcome in.” He only seems to realize the tension at the table post-greeting. Daniel skims his thoughts; he forgot to put in the side of hashbrowns for the couple at the counter, he took a generous hit of his vape in the walk-in, which scattered his already-scattered focus, he recognizes Daniel, remembers he tips well, he recognizes—
“Nice Creeper hoodie, man,” he says to Armand.
Armand, against all odds, manages a shy little smile. “Thanks.”
It’s absurd to be jealous of that smile. Daniel’s absurd, then. He’s all over the place. “Black coffee,” he snaps.
The kid takes it in stride. Being high helps with that. “You?” he asks Armand.
“The same.”
“You got it.”
He goes. They’re quiet again. Daniel feels like he’s lost momentum. He feels everything and everything roars under his skin.
“I don’t know how that kid clocked your vibe so fast,” he mutters eventually. “Took me a week in Dubai.”
Armand gives him a look. “It’s from—never mind.” He seems, for a moment, amused, before he remembers himself, and his expression clouds over.
The waiter’s back before they can say anything else, placing two steaming cups before them, then says he’ll give them a minute. Gonna need more than that, Daniel almost says.
He takes a swig: hot chalk. He savors the coffee's burnt, shitty acrid smell, at least. It's a comfort. Familiar. “How long have you been here, anyway?” he asks. “You said you hurried. Hurried from where?”
“Hoboken,” Armand says mournfully.
Daniel avoids a spit take, just barely. “You’re in New Jersey.”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“To keep an eye on it all.”
“It all? ”
Armand looks away, resuming his tracing of the sugar.
“How long? How long have you been lurking—”
“Two months.”
Daniel wants to scream. He considers the logistics of ripping their booth out of the wall or throwing Armand through the window. “How am I not feeling you through the bond? I thought—”
“I…have been trying to hide my presence.” Armand stumbles over the explanation. He draws squares through the sugar, smaller and smaller. “Use the Mind Gift to dull the connection. I didn’t know if it was working.”
Daniel slams his hand on the table. “Why?”
He looks up, surprised. “I…as to not… disturb you.”
Throwing him through the window seems more and more viable. “You piece of shit.”
“What are you—”
“You didn’t give a fuck about disturbing me when you were teeth-deep in my jugular, or watching me piss myself in San Francisco because you’d locked my body in place too fucking long, or…you…”
Armand looks baffled. “You don’t want anything to do with me. You hate me.”
I love you.
He’d said it first, of course, the fucking idiot he was, twenty-four and high as fuck on Armand’s blood and delirious after an afternoon of pleasure that reduced Daniel a crying mess.
Armand was tortuous, pleased with him, licking the tears from his cheeks, stroking his head as Daniel wept through the aftershocks. Cloudy light leaked in through the blinds. The hotel was far nicer than anything he could afford.
“I mean it,” Daniel insisted, tears unrelenting. “You don’t believe me. You need to believe me.”
“I believe you think that,” Armand said. It was as gentle as he’d ever been with Daniel. It scared him.
“Armand—”
“Shush, now.”
They were in New Mexico, but he can’t remember why. It rained that night. The air was drenched with creosote.
A cold hand closes around his wrist.
Daniel has crumpled back into the booth. Back in New York, in his new life and new body. The memory sits thick in his throat. His head might split down the middle.
“Daniel,” Armand says, and it’s clearer now, as if he’s repeated himself multiple times. He’s halfway across the table, lurching towards him.
“You’ve tried not to disturb me,” Daniel says through clenched teeth. “And look where I’m at, ‘cause of it.”
“What just happened? Where did you just go?”
He skews his eyes shut. “Just tell me the truth,” he says. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s asking for, and he hates how it comes out as a plea. He hates that he has to plead for his life back, his own mind.
“Fine, the truth,” Armand says. He speaks quickly, clipped. “I went back to Venice after Dubai.”
That’s enough to make Daniel squint his eyes open. “Oh, shit. Why?” He’s read every file from the Telamasca enough times that the words are burned into the backs of his eyes. Marius de Romanus. Forced Prostitution. Venice was not a good place to Arun. To Amadeo. To whatever was left of those boys that then became Armand.
“It felt…fitting, to return to my place of origin.”
Daniel lets his head tip back against the booth. “You went to punish yourself.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” Armand bursts out. “What I did was disgusting. It disgusts you.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You are miserable, Daniel. It disgusts me.”
Where is his infuriating calm? The cold poise of the predator? Armand sounds wobbly. The least convincing he’s ever been, even worse than the interviews when he sat primly in Louis’s lap and claimed to have never harmed him.
When Daniel laughs, it’s a flat sound in his own ears. “You bastard.” You poor bastard.
As he loses energy, Armand seems to gain it. A frantic momentum. He keeps talking. “I held vigil in Venice,” he says. “I remembered…what I needed to remember, and then, I…a few other places. Naples. Greece. Like we’d always said.”
Ruined columns. Cool breath on his neck, cool hands on his body, the same hand that still clutches at his wrist. Daniel’s head aches.
“I thought you might come for me,” Armand says.
“How would I know where to go?”
“We always said…” he repeats. He stops, then tilts his head, birdlike. “You wanted your turn playing hunter. I thought this would be it.” His frown deepens. “Do you withhold to …make me say?”
“Really rich to talk about withholding, fake Rashid.”
Then Armand says nothing, long enough that Daniel forces himself to really look at him. His eyes are, somehow, wider. He looks like something just clicked into place, the tumbler turning in the lock. “Tell me what you remember.”
“We’re not doing this now.”
The grip around his wrist tightens, enough to hurt. “What do you remember?” Armand repeats.
“We…you found me after San Francisco. We hooked up a few times, and we traveled.”
“You traveled. I followed you.”
“Okay, sure, you followed me. Sounds like something you’d do. Are currently doing.”
The lock turns fully. Armand looks like the diner’s checked floor has been ripped from under him. Like he’s tumbling through a void. “You don’t remember,” he says faintly.
“I don’t know if I do or don’t, you asshole. That’s the problem.”
He shakes his head. “I gave them all back,” he says. “All your memories.” He speaks faster. If Daniel didn’t know better, he’d say he’s panicking. Maybe Daniel doesn’t know better.
“You don’t know what you did,” he says. “You tried to, maybe, but who knows how many holes you left up here.” Daniel gestures at his temple, spinning his finger in a loose circle. “When I was human, it hardly mattered, did it? It was all shutting down anyway. The end in sight. Who gave a shit if I was fucking haunted by these weird… fragments. But you decided I’m here forever. So, I’ve got forever to fucking wonder.”
“I made sure—”
“You made sure to wipe me well enough that I forgot two decades of my life. An entire love of my life.”
And now he’s said it. It’s spoken between them. What he’s just remembered. What he’s known, somewhere in his shitty bones, tugging at the back of his mind.
Armand looks like he’s been struck.
Daniel is getting really sick of the wilted flower act. Of the way it’s not an act at all.
Can he be both? The predator who took his life? The man who gave it back? The boy, still chained in the hull of a ship?
He chugs the rest of his coffee for something to do besides cry. The sludgy taste of it scorches his throat. Goddamnit.
“I can fix it.” Armand’s eyes flutter, a fast blink, a deer in the high beams. “I’ll fix this. I will ensure they all return to you—”
“You want me to let you in my fucking head again?”
“I,” Armand stutters. “I—I’ll—I—”
He looks like a bomb counting down. A robot, self-denoting. Daniel wonders if the building will hold when he does. He has never seen him so at a loss.
It’s jarring. Horrible. Some awful, soft animal part of his brain wants to run his thumb across Armand’s knuckles. Talk him down. Another memory pulses behind his eyes, a similar meltdown, just once, a conversation that lasted two days and two nights. A comedown.
Daniel gets to his feet.
“Bad news for you, I hold a mean grudge. And you gave me an eternity to do it.”
Armand barely moves but for his chin tipping up, eyes desperate and wet. “Daniel,” he says simply. His voice breaks.
He’s seen this look before, and returned it, across the dining room table in Dubai. While Armand pleaded for Louis. While Daniel ruined Armand’s life.
The thought strikes Daniel: now he’s ruining both their lives.
He slaps down a twenty on the table and leaves before he does something worse. Like forgive him.