Daniel stops arm's length in front of him, expression hard and furious.
"I'm not going to take a swing at you like some fucking neanderthal," he says, still hostile, "and unlike the repressed freaks you've lived most of your too-long-to-be-acting-this-way life with, I have the capacity to be both calm and pissed off at you at the same time."
Armand has the fucking gall to tell him to calm down after sending a psychic trap with no regard for the blast radius. Are you kidding him.
Little claw marks being made. He can feel them at a remove, like he is standing outside of himself—not very far, really, breathing down the back of his own neck.
At the confirmation that violence is not incoming, Armand turns his back, wanders further into the more expansive living room, away from the zombied real estate agent and the open door. The hardwood floor is nice, recently refinished to a lovely sheen, and Armand turns on the overhead light—the power temporarily connected to accommodate viewings, especially ones at night.
"You've led Louis to believe that our communications have been both one-sided and unwelcome," he says as he goes, the neat click of shoe heels on the floor. "So much so that he reached out to me in an attempt to command me to stop."
His tone implies, in subtle notes, that the audacity of this could not go unchecked.
Maybe there should be violence. Daniel isn't above it, obviously, having asserted himself in his own bodily autonomy the only way he felt he could after Louis had punished him. But it wouldn't serve any purpose, applied to Armand, no matter that he might spiritually deserve to get suckerpunched.
"When you walk away and refuse to look at me, this is more avoidant behavior," Daniel says, following him. Still angry. He's going to continue to be angry until further notice.
"I haven't done any of that. I told Louis what was going on, including that I had gone out of my way to communicate with you. I told him that I didn't feel threatened by you, and I even made a pitch that your presence was goddamn beneficial to me."
The floor is fine.
"Louis is fucking pissed at you, and probably will be indefinitely. I don't love that he tried to speak for me, but I get why. I also get why you did not respond well to him telling you to fuck off. Shit is justifiably very bad between you two. But how you followed through on it was not okay."
Armand doesn't turn back to Daniel when he might have done. Walking away, refusing to look, being avoidant—very well, he shall continue it, tipping his head to consider the ceiling fixtures. The smooth off-white surface has been, unfortunately, infected with a rash of tiny little flush lights, even though the ceiling is tall enough for something more dignified.
A matter of tedious but, he thinks, necessary renovation. Daniel is angry. He considers indulging in that too.
"Louis didn't speak on behalf of you," he tells the ceiling. Now, turning, looking at him, a narrow sidelong silhouette. "He spoke on behalf of himself. As though my turning you was yet one more personal torment directed at him alone."
As if Armand spends his days, has spent the past eighty years, dreaming up ways of tormenting Louis de Pointe do Lac.
"Would you like to know what I thought of his command that I was not to touch you? How I reconciled it?"
Contrary, defensive? Difficult for him to read Armand right now, because he's so annoyed. He wishes he'd crack a little, even if it ends up being dangerous. Doesn't know why. No good reason. Maybe he's just fucking exhausted feeling like he's managing so much around Louis and Lestat. At least with Armand, he knows for sure he's dealing with something that could turn on him at any second.
"His guess is as good as anyone's," Daniel needles. "Nobody knows why you turned me. I certainly don't fucking know. I'm not convinced that you know."
Telltale resignation in his tone, hidden under his anger. The fascinating boy, batted back and forth between the two of them. Whatever. Daniel is happy about being a vampire, no matter how damned it makes him, and he'll take it. But it does rankle when he thinks about it too hard.
Daniel isn't wrong. Armand has not really known, perhaps still hasn't settled on a definitive answer—but ask any vampire why they made one, and the answer is simple: because someone wanted them, for love or for horror. At least, in most cases. Armand is, as ever, an exception.
"What I thought of his command was that it was noise that had nothing to do with me," he says, and maybe his eyes are too unblinking, maybe the calm is too calm. "I didn't imagine what he would think of my actions towards you because I didn't think of him at all."
Just Daniel, Daniel who had looked at him, who had seen him, and seen something other than an act, and other than a void. The desperate desire to preserve the first person, he thinks, who had ever done so.
"Whatever you told him," he says, and there, a concession to the possibility that Daniel has not misrepresented him, "he didn't listen. I wanted to make myself clear."
Armand goes a little too still. Different from the way he holds himself when he's lying. Not gathering himself as if to weather a blow, like he did before trying to spin the trial, or insist Louis asked to have his memories erased. Not the confused hostility of being fed off of in the dining room, or the serene nothingness when blowing past inconsequential retellings of Claudia. Something else, it's like—
Is he afraid Daniel won't believe him?
It's just intuition, not a superpower. Vampirism hasn't helped him read Armand any deeper. For a too-long moment he stares back at him, silent, gaze intense and searching.
But ire remains.
"By showing him something that would hurt him?" And violate Daniel, though he doesn't say so. He decided days ago, that should there ever be a confrontation, he wasn't going to frame it around himself. Daniel shoved his proverbial hand into the trap on purpose. Owning his agency is the most grace is can give Armand in the situation, deserving or not. They're all making choices. "By forcing him to him relive a sense-memory of sunlight?"
If Daniel doesn't believe him then Armand is very much prepared to freak the fuck out and discover in real time what that looks like.
But Daniel appears to believe him.
And now there is this question, and Armand imagines the lies and excuses he can spin. He could tell Daniel that Louis did it to himself, that he invited the sunlight in subconscious response to Armand's invasion. He could say it was an unintended side effect of his own harmful intrusion. A terrible and perfect storm of Louis' trauma, Armand's influences.
"I showed him what I was feeling and experiencing when I turned you," is how he starts. "What I have felt and experienced in the wake of it. I wanted him to understand what he was trying to interfere with."
But. He tips his head, considering Daniel.
"And I harmed him," he says. He does not sound pleased with himself. "He got in my way of you by trying to lay his claim, and so I harmed him on purpose."
Freaking the fuck out is still in the cards, because Armand appears to be the only person involved in this disaster who's offering Daniel a full and honest answer to a question, which means he might be losing it any second.
Daniel looks at him, and breathes slowly, still watching him closely and reckoning with the things Armand is saying and his own emotions. Anger remains difficult to purge, so wrapped up in being offended on Louis' behalf, and the fact that memories of himself were used in the harm. Frustrated that it ended up putting him in a position to worry that Lestat might drop Louis from the stratosphere again. In his silence he ends up coming to the conclusion that going in circles about who has a right to speak to whom, to do what, to speak to who, about what, is fucking stupid, and that the best way to make progress - despite being angry - is going to be continuing as before. Which is: positive fucking reinforcement.
He asked Armand, and Armand answered him, apparently honestly. Daniel may scream.
"Alright," he says. Just a little strained. "Thank you for telling me."
Pissed off but sincere. His eyes shift, indecisive between green and amber, out of his control. Was Armand really thinking of ... just him?
"I don't like how you did it. Sure, dramatic and impactful, and I fucking hated that guy anyway," like FYI, no complaints about Roy Travis, "but I hated the experienced and it put me in a bad spot."
Armand, on the high of radical truth, maybe. He put Daniel in a bad spot on purpose too, but it's altogether possible that he doesn't understand exactly what it meant. It's altogether possible that he didn't really care, in the same reckless way that Daniel had flung a script with his notations on it down in front of Louis.
It might be very possible that Daniel's perspective, of being the battlefield between two older vampires (and a third guy who is also there), is a false one. While Louis had been flipping through pages with near panicked hands, they had looked at each other.
"Perhaps you would like to imagine the current arrangement from my perspective."
Deadpan. Daniel is just letting him fucking know. Armand doesn't like Louis asserting a claim (fucking whatever, fucking vampires, fucking bullshit), but it's fine if Daniel is scorched earth in the process of telling Louis to fuck off about him.
I didn't think of him at all. Maybe Daniel doesn't actually believe him. Maybe nothing Armand says means anything.
Snapped. Is he angry at Daniel? Not in the same way Daniel is angry at him. Armand is the transgressor in this equation, he understands that well enough, but regardless: a little flicker of something fiery.
"Why should I have to explain to you the obvious? You surround yourself daily and nightly with those who I can't coexist with. Perhaps you can explain it to me instead."
There we go. He's almost happy about it. What's Armand going to do, kill him? Torture him some more?
Maybe. High chance. Oh well.
"You chose to ditch me in Dubai and fuck off for months. And I did look for you. I tried to dig up whatever contacts I could scrounge off of your shared assets with Louis, but it was a brick wall then when you were still too entangled. I made a nuisance of myself asking about you, over and over, every time I spoke to Louis, any time I got anyone else on the fucking vampire radio. But there was nothing. You were just gone. I don't know what you mean by coexisting."
Comfortable with putting him into bad spots. Yeah. Again: not a surprise. He knows. Bit of a vent, in this. Despite everything, he'd have liked to get to know his maker, and he'd have liked help and guidance. Tough shit and too late, now. He figured it out. He survived. No one was thinking about him, no one wanted him for love or horror, he just was. And he made it work. Alone.
"Louis didn't come running to my rescue. But he picked up the goddamn phone. He's my friend. Sometimes we're going to spend time together."
Most of this is listened to with a still and guarded posture, a cautious kind of reception. An interest, in spite of himself, in spite of the anger leveled his way. Not quite the same as big looming eyes studying a bug in a jar—no, this is Armand's own behaviour being put on display, just as much as Daniel's. The last of it gets a small tic of tension at narrow jaw.
His focus dulls, wavering down. Considers, again, spinning it. Knows, with a hint of relief, that there is truly no point in doing so around Daniel Molloy. That said, excavating the truth feels like a different kind of fabrication, an interpretive act of attempting to recall the mess of feelings and motivations, a blur. It may still be falsehood, whatever comes out of his mouth, but at least he doesn't have to control it.
And so, "Yes," first. "Okay."
Refocuses. "I did all of that and I left you behind. I needed distance from what happened and what you'd done to me. I wanted to be alone. I," and he stops this litany of I-statements before he can sound more profoundly self-absorbed than he already does. "The idea of being near you," starting again, "made me feel uncontrolled in a way I couldn't stand."
Distance. Prey with broken legs left in rooms, tasting of shock and little messages transcribed into grey matter. Emailed updates, notifications, his fledgling a moving spot on a map.
"And you certainly cared nothing for what I would do, after your grand gesture," a pettier point of order. "Save that you probably hoped it wouldn't be snapping your neck."
"I can accept that." Armand leaving, needing to get out. There's no world where they had a calm, mutually supportive conversation after Daniel destroyed his life and Armand lashed out by doing something he hated in response. "Everything still happened the way it did, but I get it. We didn't exactly go into it as friends."
And even though Daniel's got some bitterness about being abandoned, it's not as bad as it could have been. He knew what was happening to him. He had somewhere to go, he had something of an education. Being alone with it, despite everything unpleasant, was actually a viable option.
"I'm just saying, you've never appeared and said, 'Hey Molloy, I'd like to actually try getting to know you and I'd like to be able to visit you without worrying about other people who hate me.' You've left me crippled victims, followed me around a bit. I don't know if you have a phone, or an email address. So— what am I explaining? From your perspective?"
It's not 1850, they're not going to stand on balconies and night and send out psychic lures. Armand can just fucking text him.
"From where I'm standing, what you did last week could mean a lot of things. Maybe it was about me. Maybe it was about Louis. Maybe it was even about Lestat, because he's somehow the emotional north star for too many fucking vampires. You apparently blew up some old apartment of yours, I don't know what that's about either. The only thing I know for sure is that you did this and it hurt Louis badly, and everything else is guesswork."
Unmoving rings of orange flame around inky pupils that never tell on themselves, never expanding or contracting in rudimentary displays of emotion except when he gives into a real hunt and he doesn't care at all about what his eyes might be doing. Considers this scenario. What would have needed to happen, for him to ask Daniel to forge a relationship with him. If not a relationship, then a connection with some amount of stability. Armand would have had to know that he wanted that.
An obstacle.
There's a breath out at the rest. "It was for all three of you," dismissive, like this is no grand mystery. If he wanted to target any of them individually, he would. "That's how it began. It changed. I improvised.
"And what do you wish for me to say now?" is sharp. "That I won't do it again."
It's very strange to observe Armand right now, because his body language says one thing but Daniel's instincts say another. He appears to be being honest, but Daniel's head says: bullshit, there's no fucking way. He can't just be doing things on a whim, especially not things this destructive. But even as he thinks that, logic crawls back up and says Let what's obvious be obvious, idiot.
Daniel nuked all his plans. Armand is alone for the first time in his centuries-long life, no owners (Jesus fuck, that thought), no cult, no coven, no companion. Lashing out, spinning his wheels, haunting the only connections he does have left, no matter what state they're in.
Is that it? Fuck. Fuck.
"Ideally I would like to go about my business without the worry you could be launching a missile through my window at any moment, yeah." Annoyed, but honest. Hostility remains present in his voice, perhaps comically at odds with his following words. "But I don't wish anything of you, or from you. I'm not going to set expectations or make demands. Maybe we could fucking talk about it and figure out where to go from here, though?"
Maybe an expectation, a demand, would be an interesting thing to negotiate. Something to lawyer or even respect, a single rail to rattle along as time hurtles them all forwards at a rapid pace. Louis' command had not gotten its hooks in him, but Daniel probably could. To probably mixed results.
It could feel like rejection, the precursor to fuck off forever, until that last thing, and Armand is momentarily off-balanced. Swings a look around the room. There's an accent wall that probably inspired a few thousand dollars in property value markup, but the wainscoting consistent from the foyer into the living room is quite nice.
He really does hate these can lights, though. Cheap, ugly, and no private room needs to be bathed in wall to wall brightness like an open floor plan office. He had been rather pleased of the lighting design of the penthouse, which had been cool, sedate, with a little artistic gloom. He'd overseen it himself.
He should probably answer.
"Alright," he says, and looks back to Daniel. "You should finish your viewing."
Daniel isn't stupid. He noticed the way Armand (and Armand-as-Rashid) had responded to being ordered around. But he's not going to repeat Louis' mistake and attempt to leverage it, especially not when he knows barely anything about his maker. He wants to know more. More than Armand is comfortable (or perhaps even capable) with sharing. So Daniel needs Armand to bite back a little more. Like a competent but not-quite-genius homicide detective on the trail of a serial killer, he needs a few more bodies to drop so he can collect data. Except he's pretty sure he could crack an active serial killer case in a bored weekend, and Armand is worlds away in complex difficulty.
He's sure he hates him. He tells himself that like a mantra. Like he'll forget if he doesn't.
Finish—?
Daniel's expression does something. Real estate had been forgotten entirely. Fucking Christ.
"Sure."
>:(
"Can you have him sit down?" A thumb over his shoulder to the poor agent back there. "I know how much that sucks. You said the basement was, what, mediocre?"
Armand tips his head, and after a moment, the scuffing sound of the agent lowering himself down to sit, resting against the wall.
"That it needs work," Armand supplies, "to be made comfortable."
It's a good house, his personal pet peeves around lighting fixtures aside. Elegant and big and ridiculously well situated. He had come here because he assumed it would be Daniel's favoured option, but who knows. He folds his arms and will tail Daniel around, not quite taking over where the real estate agent left off, but he will provide a little commentary, asked for or otherwise.
Even for him, this does feel strange—but it would be stranger if it didn't. There is nothing that feels normal anymore. No routines, no demands of him, an amount of administrative and financial management he can either do in his sleep or delegate to various lawyers and accountants and property managers. The fire had been an occupying project, as had the kidnapping of Roy Travis, and he lacks a new one.
No rush. Right now, he looms in Daniel Molloy's periphery and considers if he could get away with absconding with him across the country, or further out. He has considered buying an island. He has considered lots of things.
A quick 'thanks' for the sentencing upgrade on his realtor, and then: extreme weirdness, commencing. Daniel isn't entirely sure they need to actually pause to do this, they could have just kicked out the third wheel and continued to talk, but it's so surreal he decides to see it through. And besides, he does need to tick this house off the list of things he's viewed.
Armand's commentary is ... something. Strange because it's Armand, because he's here. Daniel makes an effort to actually draw him into proper conversation about this or that, though it's obvious he's doing so— the ancient vampire just creeping about in the corners of his vision is unsettling. Armand is here, he might as well participate.
The basement has promise. The yard, not so much. A little cramped, but that's life in the big city.
"Needs a remodel," he says eventually, hands braced on a too-small door to the kitchen, which he leans into and observes for the second time. "I fucking hate the overhead lights."
A gesture, to the barrier between foyer and living room and stairwell. Drops his hand. Anyway.
"I'll wait outside."
And he's leaving, the brisk clip of neat shoes on shining wooden floors, passing by the real estate agent who doesn't appear to see him, but is standing up, hands pinching the bridge of his nose. Disoriented, some muscle strain from even a comfortable but unmoving position twinging down his back, headache raging, but does not appear to think much else is strange, or clock that he just stood up from a seated position on the floor.
And Daniel is a vampire. He can do what he wants with the guy, be it discuss the house or send him obliviously on his way with muddled memory or death. But here, Armand (on a delay, granted) invites that bit of distance, recalibration. He will head off the property, he will move to the street. He imagines this area will be quite loud during the day, but it won't matter when Daniel commits to sleep.
Considers that Daniel's house hunt is not his concern. Considers that this is simply a part of his brain he has a difficult time switching off. Considers the lack of stars in the sky, and waits.
The house seems unimportant. Just some insignificant blip. But of course he needs to progress his fucking (un)life, and so Daniel gets a grip once Armand is out the door, and reconnects with his agent. They chat a little, and the man is happy to believe they've already done a walk through. Getting late, and he seems to remember having been driving his client around, but Daniel reminds him that they met here.
It doesn't hurt. Gives him a mild twinge that's more discomfort than pain. On the mend.
Realtor turns lights off, locks door behind them. Into his car, and away, as Daniel takes his time down the front steps, so that he can stop and turn and look at it from the sidewalk. It's not a fortress in Dubai. But that's not his style.
Stands there for too long, maybe. He tells himself he's giving Armand space, and he's doing that, too. Mostly he's trying to figure out what the fuck is going on with him, why he's entertaining this at all, why he isn't saying I've changed my mind, fuck off forever. He holds up I was comfortable with doing so next to I didn't think of him at all, and tries understand.
Eventually, he is standing beside his maker.
Well. Here they fucking are.
"Do you have a bug in my email, or something, by the way?"
Daniel finds Armand standing ramrod straight neat a streetlamp, hands slid into coat pockets. The chill is bracing, but not unwelcome. It never got cold like this in Dubai, and even less for the amount of time he wound up spending in their perfectly temperature controlled penthouse.
He doesn't turn to greet Daniel, and he ignores his question.
"You did well in shutting me out."
It doesn't sound like a dig. He elaborates, "You, diving to Louis' defense after I opened the door to his mind. It was unexpected." And it does sound like a compliment, mildly delivered though it is.
Less a matter of brute force so much as finding a weakness, a blindspot, and pulling the trigger. Just like him to do so, Armand thought.
No response, though this time Daniel refrains from meanly nitpicking about that. Instead, he just notes it, and thinks: probably just means he's stalking him. Which is at least charming in a fucked-up way. Old fashioned. The manual transmission of haunting someone.
What Armand says instead catches him off-guard. Huh?
Daniel feels like he fumbled that, and badly. Still mentally tender from it, something that felt so small that hurt so fucking bad. He'd do it even if he knew it was going to hurt, he'd do it even if he knew it was going to be worse, but it was still embarrassing to be so wounded from so little. The compliment (?) bolsters him a bit, though it, like much of their interactions, feels perversely-won.
"I didn't know what I was doing."
Obviously.
"I guess you're ... familiar-shaped, already, even if I can't see in."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Daniel stops arm's length in front of him, expression hard and furious.
"I'm not going to take a swing at you like some fucking neanderthal," he says, still hostile, "and unlike the repressed freaks you've lived most of your too-long-to-be-acting-this-way life with, I have the capacity to be both calm and pissed off at you at the same time."
Armand has the fucking gall to tell him to calm down after sending a psychic trap with no regard for the blast radius. Are you kidding him.
"Why," let's go again, "did you do that?"
no subject
At the confirmation that violence is not incoming, Armand turns his back, wanders further into the more expansive living room, away from the zombied real estate agent and the open door. The hardwood floor is nice, recently refinished to a lovely sheen, and Armand turns on the overhead light—the power temporarily connected to accommodate viewings, especially ones at night.
"You've led Louis to believe that our communications have been both one-sided and unwelcome," he says as he goes, the neat click of shoe heels on the floor. "So much so that he reached out to me in an attempt to command me to stop."
His tone implies, in subtle notes, that the audacity of this could not go unchecked.
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"When you walk away and refuse to look at me, this is more avoidant behavior," Daniel says, following him. Still angry. He's going to continue to be angry until further notice.
"I haven't done any of that. I told Louis what was going on, including that I had gone out of my way to communicate with you. I told him that I didn't feel threatened by you, and I even made a pitch that your presence was goddamn beneficial to me."
The floor is fine.
"Louis is fucking pissed at you, and probably will be indefinitely. I don't love that he tried to speak for me, but I get why. I also get why you did not respond well to him telling you to fuck off. Shit is justifiably very bad between you two. But how you followed through on it was not okay."
no subject
A matter of tedious but, he thinks, necessary renovation. Daniel is angry. He considers indulging in that too.
"Louis didn't speak on behalf of you," he tells the ceiling. Now, turning, looking at him, a narrow sidelong silhouette. "He spoke on behalf of himself. As though my turning you was yet one more personal torment directed at him alone."
As if Armand spends his days, has spent the past eighty years, dreaming up ways of tormenting Louis de Pointe do Lac.
"Would you like to know what I thought of his command that I was not to touch you? How I reconciled it?"
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"His guess is as good as anyone's," Daniel needles. "Nobody knows why you turned me. I certainly don't fucking know. I'm not convinced that you know."
Telltale resignation in his tone, hidden under his anger. The fascinating boy, batted back and forth between the two of them. Whatever. Daniel is happy about being a vampire, no matter how damned it makes him, and he'll take it. But it does rankle when he thinks about it too hard.
He looks at Armand, meeting his gaze.
"Yes. I would."
no subject
Daniel isn't wrong. Armand has not really known, perhaps still hasn't settled on a definitive answer—but ask any vampire why they made one, and the answer is simple: because someone wanted them, for love or for horror. At least, in most cases. Armand is, as ever, an exception.
"What I thought of his command was that it was noise that had nothing to do with me," he says, and maybe his eyes are too unblinking, maybe the calm is too calm. "I didn't imagine what he would think of my actions towards you because I didn't think of him at all."
Just Daniel, Daniel who had looked at him, who had seen him, and seen something other than an act, and other than a void. The desperate desire to preserve the first person, he thinks, who had ever done so.
"Whatever you told him," he says, and there, a concession to the possibility that Daniel has not misrepresented him, "he didn't listen. I wanted to make myself clear."
no subject
Is he afraid Daniel won't believe him?
It's just intuition, not a superpower. Vampirism hasn't helped him read Armand any deeper. For a too-long moment he stares back at him, silent, gaze intense and searching.
But ire remains.
"By showing him something that would hurt him?" And violate Daniel, though he doesn't say so. He decided days ago, that should there ever be a confrontation, he wasn't going to frame it around himself. Daniel shoved his proverbial hand into the trap on purpose. Owning his agency is the most grace is can give Armand in the situation, deserving or not. They're all making choices. "By forcing him to him relive a sense-memory of sunlight?"
no subject
But Daniel appears to believe him.
And now there is this question, and Armand imagines the lies and excuses he can spin. He could tell Daniel that Louis did it to himself, that he invited the sunlight in subconscious response to Armand's invasion. He could say it was an unintended side effect of his own harmful intrusion. A terrible and perfect storm of Louis' trauma, Armand's influences.
"I showed him what I was feeling and experiencing when I turned you," is how he starts. "What I have felt and experienced in the wake of it. I wanted him to understand what he was trying to interfere with."
But. He tips his head, considering Daniel.
"And I harmed him," he says. He does not sound pleased with himself. "He got in my way of you by trying to lay his claim, and so I harmed him on purpose."
There. Now what.
no subject
Daniel looks at him, and breathes slowly, still watching him closely and reckoning with the things Armand is saying and his own emotions. Anger remains difficult to purge, so wrapped up in being offended on Louis' behalf, and the fact that memories of himself were used in the harm. Frustrated that it ended up putting him in a position to worry that Lestat might drop Louis from the stratosphere again. In his silence he ends up coming to the conclusion that going in circles about who has a right to speak to whom, to do what, to speak to who, about what, is fucking stupid, and that the best way to make progress - despite being angry - is going to be continuing as before. Which is: positive fucking reinforcement.
He asked Armand, and Armand answered him, apparently honestly. Daniel may scream.
"Alright," he says. Just a little strained. "Thank you for telling me."
Pissed off but sincere. His eyes shift, indecisive between green and amber, out of his control. Was Armand really thinking of ... just him?
"I don't like how you did it. Sure, dramatic and impactful, and I fucking hated that guy anyway," like FYI, no complaints about Roy Travis, "but I hated the experienced and it put me in a bad spot."
no subject
It's fine. Daniel can still be mad at him.
Armand, on the high of radical truth, maybe. He put Daniel in a bad spot on purpose too, but it's altogether possible that he doesn't understand exactly what it meant. It's altogether possible that he didn't really care, in the same reckless way that Daniel had flung a script with his notations on it down in front of Louis.
It might be very possible that Daniel's perspective, of being the battlefield between two older vampires (and a third guy who is also there), is a false one. While Louis had been flipping through pages with near panicked hands, they had looked at each other.
"Perhaps you would like to imagine the current arrangement from my perspective."
no subject
Deadpan. Daniel is just letting him fucking know. Armand doesn't like Louis asserting a claim (fucking whatever, fucking vampires, fucking bullshit), but it's fine if Daniel is scorched earth in the process of telling Louis to fuck off about him.
I didn't think of him at all. Maybe Daniel doesn't actually believe him. Maybe nothing Armand says means anything.
"I'm listening."
It'S mY jOb.
no subject
Snapped. Is he angry at Daniel? Not in the same way Daniel is angry at him. Armand is the transgressor in this equation, he understands that well enough, but regardless: a little flicker of something fiery.
"Why should I have to explain to you the obvious? You surround yourself daily and nightly with those who I can't coexist with. Perhaps you can explain it to me instead."
no subject
Maybe. High chance. Oh well.
"You chose to ditch me in Dubai and fuck off for months. And I did look for you. I tried to dig up whatever contacts I could scrounge off of your shared assets with Louis, but it was a brick wall then when you were still too entangled. I made a nuisance of myself asking about you, over and over, every time I spoke to Louis, any time I got anyone else on the fucking vampire radio. But there was nothing. You were just gone. I don't know what you mean by coexisting."
Comfortable with putting him into bad spots. Yeah. Again: not a surprise. He knows. Bit of a vent, in this. Despite everything, he'd have liked to get to know his maker, and he'd have liked help and guidance. Tough shit and too late, now. He figured it out. He survived. No one was thinking about him, no one wanted him for love or horror, he just was. And he made it work. Alone.
"Louis didn't come running to my rescue. But he picked up the goddamn phone. He's my friend. Sometimes we're going to spend time together."
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His focus dulls, wavering down. Considers, again, spinning it. Knows, with a hint of relief, that there is truly no point in doing so around Daniel Molloy. That said, excavating the truth feels like a different kind of fabrication, an interpretive act of attempting to recall the mess of feelings and motivations, a blur. It may still be falsehood, whatever comes out of his mouth, but at least he doesn't have to control it.
And so, "Yes," first. "Okay."
Refocuses. "I did all of that and I left you behind. I needed distance from what happened and what you'd done to me. I wanted to be alone. I," and he stops this litany of I-statements before he can sound more profoundly self-absorbed than he already does. "The idea of being near you," starting again, "made me feel uncontrolled in a way I couldn't stand."
Distance. Prey with broken legs left in rooms, tasting of shock and little messages transcribed into grey matter. Emailed updates, notifications, his fledgling a moving spot on a map.
"And you certainly cared nothing for what I would do, after your grand gesture," a pettier point of order. "Save that you probably hoped it wouldn't be snapping your neck."
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And even though Daniel's got some bitterness about being abandoned, it's not as bad as it could have been. He knew what was happening to him. He had somewhere to go, he had something of an education. Being alone with it, despite everything unpleasant, was actually a viable option.
"I'm just saying, you've never appeared and said, 'Hey Molloy, I'd like to actually try getting to know you and I'd like to be able to visit you without worrying about other people who hate me.' You've left me crippled victims, followed me around a bit. I don't know if you have a phone, or an email address. So— what am I explaining? From your perspective?"
It's not 1850, they're not going to stand on balconies and night and send out psychic lures. Armand can just fucking text him.
"From where I'm standing, what you did last week could mean a lot of things. Maybe it was about me. Maybe it was about Louis. Maybe it was even about Lestat, because he's somehow the emotional north star for too many fucking vampires. You apparently blew up some old apartment of yours, I don't know what that's about either. The only thing I know for sure is that you did this and it hurt Louis badly, and everything else is guesswork."
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An obstacle.
There's a breath out at the rest. "It was for all three of you," dismissive, like this is no grand mystery. If he wanted to target any of them individually, he would. "That's how it began. It changed. I improvised.
"And what do you wish for me to say now?" is sharp. "That I won't do it again."
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Daniel nuked all his plans. Armand is alone for the first time in his centuries-long life, no owners (Jesus fuck, that thought), no cult, no coven, no companion. Lashing out, spinning his wheels, haunting the only connections he does have left, no matter what state they're in.
Is that it? Fuck. Fuck.
"Ideally I would like to go about my business without the worry you could be launching a missile through my window at any moment, yeah." Annoyed, but honest. Hostility remains present in his voice, perhaps comically at odds with his following words. "But I don't wish anything of you, or from you. I'm not going to set expectations or make demands. Maybe we could fucking talk about it and figure out where to go from here, though?"
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It could feel like rejection, the precursor to fuck off forever, until that last thing, and Armand is momentarily off-balanced. Swings a look around the room. There's an accent wall that probably inspired a few thousand dollars in property value markup, but the wainscoting consistent from the foyer into the living room is quite nice.
He really does hate these can lights, though. Cheap, ugly, and no private room needs to be bathed in wall to wall brightness like an open floor plan office. He had been rather pleased of the lighting design of the penthouse, which had been cool, sedate, with a little artistic gloom. He'd overseen it himself.
He should probably answer.
"Alright," he says, and looks back to Daniel. "You should finish your viewing."
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He's sure he hates him. He tells himself that like a mantra. Like he'll forget if he doesn't.
Finish—?
Daniel's expression does something. Real estate had been forgotten entirely. Fucking Christ.
"Sure."
>:(
"Can you have him sit down?" A thumb over his shoulder to the poor agent back there. "I know how much that sucks. You said the basement was, what, mediocre?"
Fine. Fine!!
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"That it needs work," Armand supplies, "to be made comfortable."
It's a good house, his personal pet peeves around lighting fixtures aside. Elegant and big and ridiculously well situated. He had come here because he assumed it would be Daniel's favoured option, but who knows. He folds his arms and will tail Daniel around, not quite taking over where the real estate agent left off, but he will provide a little commentary, asked for or otherwise.
Even for him, this does feel strange—but it would be stranger if it didn't. There is nothing that feels normal anymore. No routines, no demands of him, an amount of administrative and financial management he can either do in his sleep or delegate to various lawyers and accountants and property managers. The fire had been an occupying project, as had the kidnapping of Roy Travis, and he lacks a new one.
No rush. Right now, he looms in Daniel Molloy's periphery and considers if he could get away with absconding with him across the country, or further out. He has considered buying an island. He has considered lots of things.
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Armand's commentary is ... something. Strange because it's Armand, because he's here. Daniel makes an effort to actually draw him into proper conversation about this or that, though it's obvious he's doing so— the ancient vampire just creeping about in the corners of his vision is unsettling. Armand is here, he might as well participate.
The basement has promise. The yard, not so much. A little cramped, but that's life in the big city.
"Needs a remodel," he says eventually, hands braced on a too-small door to the kitchen, which he leans into and observes for the second time. "I fucking hate the overhead lights."
All about the location, though.
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A gesture, to the barrier between foyer and living room and stairwell. Drops his hand. Anyway.
"I'll wait outside."
And he's leaving, the brisk clip of neat shoes on shining wooden floors, passing by the real estate agent who doesn't appear to see him, but is standing up, hands pinching the bridge of his nose. Disoriented, some muscle strain from even a comfortable but unmoving position twinging down his back, headache raging, but does not appear to think much else is strange, or clock that he just stood up from a seated position on the floor.
And Daniel is a vampire. He can do what he wants with the guy, be it discuss the house or send him obliviously on his way with muddled memory or death. But here, Armand (on a delay, granted) invites that bit of distance, recalibration. He will head off the property, he will move to the street. He imagines this area will be quite loud during the day, but it won't matter when Daniel commits to sleep.
Considers that Daniel's house hunt is not his concern. Considers that this is simply a part of his brain he has a difficult time switching off. Considers the lack of stars in the sky, and waits.
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It doesn't hurt. Gives him a mild twinge that's more discomfort than pain. On the mend.
Realtor turns lights off, locks door behind them. Into his car, and away, as Daniel takes his time down the front steps, so that he can stop and turn and look at it from the sidewalk. It's not a fortress in Dubai. But that's not his style.
Stands there for too long, maybe. He tells himself he's giving Armand space, and he's doing that, too. Mostly he's trying to figure out what the fuck is going on with him, why he's entertaining this at all, why he isn't saying I've changed my mind, fuck off forever. He holds up I was comfortable with doing so next to I didn't think of him at all, and tries understand.
Eventually, he is standing beside his maker.
Well. Here they fucking are.
"Do you have a bug in my email, or something, by the way?"
Like how did you know to be here, pal.
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He doesn't turn to greet Daniel, and he ignores his question.
"You did well in shutting me out."
It doesn't sound like a dig. He elaborates, "You, diving to Louis' defense after I opened the door to his mind. It was unexpected." And it does sound like a compliment, mildly delivered though it is.
Less a matter of brute force so much as finding a weakness, a blindspot, and pulling the trigger. Just like him to do so, Armand thought.
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What Armand says instead catches him off-guard. Huh?
Daniel feels like he fumbled that, and badly. Still mentally tender from it, something that felt so small that hurt so fucking bad. He'd do it even if he knew it was going to hurt, he'd do it even if he knew it was going to be worse, but it was still embarrassing to be so wounded from so little. The compliment (?) bolsters him a bit, though it, like much of their interactions, feels perversely-won.
"I didn't know what I was doing."
Obviously.
"I guess you're ... familiar-shaped, already, even if I can't see in."
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