"Perhaps I'm here for the best seat in the house."
No joke is too soon, according to Armand, joyless as his delivery is.
He is here because his fledgling is here. Does Daniel expect him to say it out loud? He's been exercising honesty, and perhaps if it tasted of revelation, Armand would indulge it. But it feels obvious, and therefore a little pathetic for its obviousness. Where else is he meant to be?
Even on the other side of the world, a part of him had been tethered to Daniel's activities. Drawing him closer and closer. To circle back instead,
"I ask myself that all the more pointedly when you make shitty jokes about barbecuing people who were inconvenient to you."
A scathing tone, which is still crackling a bit for the immediate follow up of, "It's like you know when I'm starting to ease up on being mad at you, and you very helpfully remind me. Are you fucking doing that on purpose, somehow."
If Talamasca is listening in as well as watching, Daniel thinks he will just kill them. It's too personal and he's had enough with being stalked. They can cough up an easier walk to talk to Literally Samuel Beckett or they can go die.
He takes a breath, lets it out in a huff. Fine. He's fine.
"Because you showed up." It does feel pathetic for its obvious, doesn't it. Because you're my maker. He hates it. There's more to it than that, he thinks. He's pretty sure if Armand vanished in a puff of smoke in Dubai with no further incident, Daniel would still want to talk to him again, even just to irritate him on purpose. "I want to get you. I want to understand. I wasn't lying."
Something to file away: an impulse to snap. It was your shitty joke, Mr. Molloy. Needling the whole time, picking at the frayed edges of things, sarcasm and dismissal.
And the only reason he doesn't is because the idea of getting into that back and forth feels tantamount to nail pulling, and Armand isn't in the mood. Bickering about the interview, can you imagine? And Daniel would round on him, say something to make him feel foolish and grasping, more than he already does. So, just a little flex at the jaw, a continued moderate walking pace, his shoulders settled in a relaxed line.
Silence for a beat as they walk. Absorbing.
"You seemed to have a decent grasp of it, at the end of things."
Armand, Amadeo, Arun. A con artist, a liar, a monster deserving of the detonation playing out in front of his stupid face. If Daniel cares as deeply for Louis as he appears, what room is there for Armand?
It being his joke is precisely why he knows it's shitty. Daniel says things to provoke reactions. He asks stupid questions, he pushes at illogical buttons, he's insensitive and inflammatory, and after so many years, he struggles to stop doing this when he's not interviewing someone. Given everything he's experienced with Armand, he assumes Armand is re-using this joke for the same purpose. To be a dick.
It's a real fucking mystery why Daniel has no friends and has alienated all of his partners and children, huh. Alas, turning him into a vampire (against his will, to spite someone) has not made him a nicer person.
"Self-effacement doesn't look any better on you."
Here they are. Maker and fledgling. Great people. At least I haven't tortured anybody, Daniel might say, of his own personal assholery. But he's ruined plenty of lives. Armand's included. And yet, Armand threw a very painful tantrum over being told to leave Daniel alone.
A few beats of silence, as Armand considers at passive remove the way the potential for coherent explanation, truths and lies, spin wildly out around him, as disconnected as shattered debris blasted into the void of space. What he wants could probably be fitted together from those things.
It feels as easily articulated as reaching into the night sky, through the city smog, and rearranging the positions of the stars to spell it out for them both.
"I don't know," as a result. It feels reckless, honesty. Like handing someone weapons to injure him with, but Daniel, of all beings, scarcely needs the assistance. Self-effacement doesn't look good on him, but what other language is available? The defeated vampire, he'd described himself as in his mythmaking of the past. Prophetic.
The stars would probably spell something cloying. 'Companionship', just like any vampire. An unwieldy word. It would take several constellations.
"But I sometimes liked our conversations," he adds, instead. Cleaving closer.
Defensive and angry, oscillating between being a dick about it and attempting positive reinforcement, Daniel waits and listens. This is not altogether his best performance handling Armand, but perhaps he can be forgiven, between the timing and the surprise of it all.
And then. I don't know. Something about it makes him unwind.
Believable. He looks sidelong at Armand, and thinks it's perhaps the most honest he's been all night. This or the thing about not thinking about Louis, which is something that Daniel is still turning over in his head and contemplating. Yeah. Armand not knowing makes sense. And there's a kind of relief in hearing him say it. That he recognizes it. This boat they're both in is a fucking weird one.
Footsteps, night birds, distant traffic, distant lights.
"Me too."
Months ago. You were fascinating and you still are. I don't believe you're empty.
Moments ago. I wasn't lying.
"We have shit to work on, you and me." Quieter, now. "How do you feel about cautious optimism?"
They have being pedantic assholes in common, certainly. Dear, this is a Stein. At least here, it's knowing, and Armand doesn't allow the statement to sit in place for long. Daniel's tone, gentler. Maybe he's right and there is something of an instinct to aggravate when afforded some leeway, maybe Armand is doing it on purpose.
Here, something more schoolyard in tone than ruthless alienation. "But," but, "one I'd entertain. If you think your friendships can bear the strain of it."
Dovetailing character flaws. Daniel has the thought that Armand in a real argument would be fun, and then has to take a moment to stare at himself in incredulous disbelief. He can't even blame that on the mystique of the vampire bond— he's always liked trouble.
This is a lot of fucking trouble, though.
"Maybe they can't. I just hope so."
Daniel would like to think that Louis would still speak to him, still see him. This situation isn't ideal, but he deserves to explore ... whatever this is, with Armand. It's permanent, and they're immortal. He can feel him. He wants to be able to figure it out and not worry about fighting, or fucking psychic bombs.
"It'd help if I didn't have to worry about you trying to fry Louis' brain for overstepping. I know trusting each other is a long way away, if it's possible at all, but do you think you can believe me when I say I'm not asking you to leave?"
A tip of his head, like working loose some tense muscle—
"Alright."
If Daniel is willing to extend him some faith, given everything, then it seems only fair that Armand do the same, also given everything. "Give me your cellular device."
He will continue to sound like a huge dork until morale improves.
Which it won't. Louis will not let this go, he thinks, among the most stubborn of men that Armand has ever met in his long (and admittedly cloistered) life. Maybe he will afford Daniel his agency in fucking around and finding out, given his own recent hobbies, but Armand's sins against him are thorough, stacked tall.
Armand has to decide that it won't be his problem any longer. It will be Daniel's. And it will only become his problem again if Daniel can't manage it himself. (Kidnapping not off the table.)
Coping with the delayed realization that he's implied he'll pick Armand over Louis and Lestat if it comes down to it (fuck fuck fuck fuck, is that true, but Louis knows he'd been looking for him, asked about him every time they spoke, is it just this fucking bond in their stupid fucking heads), Daniel can't even come up with a bitey comment about cellular device.
So he just takes out his phone and unlocks it, before handing it to Armand.
Fine.
Hitting the finding out stage is inevitable. Daniel is, unfortunately, the type to invite too much fucking around. If Armand wanted a fledgling who wasn't a pain in the ass, maybe he should have thought about anything at all before he went through with.
"The slumber party routine won't last forever," he mentions as an aside, while Armand is loading a Trojan onto his phone, or whatever.
Bugging the device would be sensible, and Daniel might even allow for it when he inevitably notices. Another time, perhaps, when Armand is better prepared. For now, a direct line that will allow for more efficient communication than coded messages implanted in the brains of human sacrifices or emails bounced through lawyers. He puts the letter 'A' as the contact.
"It's gone on longer than I'd have expected," does not sound, at least, like a complaint, or a dig. Wry. Lestat is annoying at the very least, never mind that Daniel seems to value his own space. Armand offers back the phone.
A quick zigzagging once over.
"I'm choosing to believe your interest in open communication doesn't only extend towards mitigation," he says. "Or hope for a sequel."
Daniel lowers his head to give him a look over tinted lenses, which he continues to forget to remove. What was that. Felt an awful lot like some of the odder moments in Dubai. Why did you make me. Why are you angry Louis asked you to stay away. What the fuck am I to you.
Hmph. He holds his hand out to receive his phone, and accepts it.
"If I wasn't eminently tolerant of weird bullshit I'd have left that tower in the desert after twelve hours," he points out. Some arguments, some awkwardness? He'll survive. Lestat hasn't tried to kill him, yet, but even if he does, it probably won't be as screwed up as what Armand's put him through. It'll be fine.
"And I'm choosing to believe your presence isn't only because you think it's funny to try and scare me."
Meeting halfway, or something like that. Look at them go.
"Since we're being honest tonight: I don't know, exactly. But I'd like it if we were used to each other. In whatever shape it takes. I'm too fucking old to remember how to hang out, which means you definitely are too, but I have faith we can puzzle through it."
What sounds like Daniel verbalising something he has been circling, of wanting conversation, open communication, is met with some internal amount of resistance. Like being handed an adorable kitten and feeling the urge to clench your hands tightly, and only not doing so because the end result would be the opposite of what motivates the action. His jaws itch with the desire to close around flesh.
"We're walking down the sidewalk," he says. "Having a chat."
This constitutes as hanging out, doesn't it? Look at them go.
"Perhaps you can choose where we next cross paths. Less chance of my appearing to want to scare you."
One of the strangest things about the interview — maybe the strangest — was watching Louis with Armand, and the way Louis regarded Armand as a presently kind, previously slightly pitiful, ancient-like-an-antique creature, while Daniel sat across from him and thought That's a fucking megalodon. He thinks it now, looking at him.
If Armand tortured him again, would Daniel stay lucid through it? Could he ask him questions? Would Armand answer? Would the answers be different than ones he might offer while walking down the sidewalk, chatting?
"I haven't minded all of it."
For the record. Messages in sacrifices were alarming, but—
You know. Interesting. And he'd poked back, when he knew he shouldn't have. (Didn't care. Told himself it was investigating, learning, and it was, but Louis' right and Daniel's become a cold killer, and morality is negotiable at best, because he doesn't actually like people very much.) The book signing was nice, in a genuine way. He might not even hate this, because of the honesty.
"Coffee shops? Bars? Mini golf?" Public places with witnesses. What a little bitch move. "My apartment?"
A breath out of Armand that might say: yes, I know you didn't.
Because he wasn't aiming to scare Daniel, not exactly. He didn't mind the idea that it was a possibility, sure, but to scare something is, in nature, to warn it away. This was another kind of provocation. Not so coherent that Armand could explain it all in grand detail, the way he might sit down and justify his actions around the trial, his relationship with Louis, if someone were to convince him to rationalise his behaviours and his actions.
No, this had been different. Premeditated actions, carefully planned and crafted, borne of impulse. An apartment building on fire, for Louis, for himself. A radio shockjock grinding his teeth as he drives out of Florida, for Daniel. Gifts. Indulgences.
Then, a sharpening of focus. He might ask Daniel to repeat himself. Clarify.
"Okay," he says, instead. A beat, then, "Did you like any of them?"
This psychic shit is something else. Luring him into thinking Armand seems so vulnerable. Is he just getting suckered into it? Or is this honesty from a creature who has no memory of being human, who is operating the best it knows how? Daniel thinks of an appeal to emotion, perhaps asking Louis for insight, but he thinks that Louis would be 1) angry that this interaction is happening and 2) disappointed to find out that Daniel's first attempt to contact Armand did not involve tracking down his lawyer, but burying a note in the body of someone he knew Armand would regard as annoying. Nexts that, and thinks of an appeal to reason instead, and the books he's been digesting about adult CPTSD survivors and cult deprogramming.
Armand is something else. Beyond any navigable experience. The devil, Lestat called him, who Daniel managed to trick once. He probably shouldn't give the devil an inch, even if it's a true inch.
"Everything except involving them."
This feels like baring his throat. I liked all of it, the dead people, the victims, the uncanny visitations, tracking him down. Unnerving but fascinating. Challenging. It made him angry, it made him interested. He learned more disposing of a body that Armand brought him than he did shuffling away one he chose himself. The hitch being that psychic bomb, a shitty mouse trap, hurting somebody else.
Stupid. But he's given Armand too much of his fear already.
It doesn't alleviate that desire to enclose. With his hands, with his teeth.
Not even a little. Maybe some of the anxious urgency of it feels soothed, but not the sentiment as a whole. Armand, certainly, has felt possessiveness before. Felt its itch, felt the satisfaction in scratching it. But it had felt like thievery. Stealing someone from someone else, stealing someone from themself.
Still feels it, here, but now he can tell himself: no, his fledgling. His, his, his. No one can deny that, no one can change it, not even Daniel, not even himself.
See? He liked his gifts.
Outward sign of this processing: a breath drawn in, a flick of a glance down towards their feet and the pavement.
"Were you going to hunt tonight? I'd like to watch if you were."
Daniel has to be going crazy. Armand seems like he's relieved, pleased to hear he did well by bringing him the most fucked up trinkets. He reminds himself that he's mad at Armand, that Armand tortured him, that no matter what they're working out now, the best case scenario is that Armand killed and transformed him to prove a point to Louis, and he personally doesn't actually matter.
Perspective. They're working on this, they're figuring out how to coexist, how they're going to relate to each other. Armand said one hundred years, seems to have changed his mind. But maybe he'll go back to it. Maybe Daniel will.
"Ah." That. Puts him off-guard, for more than one reason. One: why the fuck does it feel intimate. More: his kneecapped state is Armand's fault. "Yeah, but my head is killing me, so it's going to be a less than graceful affair."
A catch-22; he feels exhausted enough to not want to try and murder someone for the complications that could arise from sloppiness, but knows if he doesn't consume the blood, he'll heal slower, feel worse, compound the problem.
A flicker, off-guarded in return. One: why is his first response concern, because for all that he may feel possessive of this monster he made, Daniel is certainly more than capable of taking care of himself after pulling the trigger on Armand's present existence. Two: what?
"Why," he says, the word coming out flat in the way it is surprised from him. "Are you injured?"
A hasty and searing looking over, but there is no sign of visible wound. Still, it would be like a vampire to heal the external layers while sustaining a brain injury.
"Hundreds of years of shepherding other vampires as the law-abiding coven master and you pull that face," he says. Doesn't have to remind himself he's mad at Armand. He is mad at Armand. "Don't. You're comfortable with putting me in bad spots, remember?"
It's unbelievable to Daniel that Armand can't figure it out. Believable that he's not considerate enough to have thought of it before now, but not stupid enough to truly have no idea. He put his hand in the trap Armand left in Louis' head, the one meant to hurt him, and following that, he got hurt. Louis caught the brunt of it, but Louis is over a century old and weathered it with far more grace. They'll both be fine, it's just taking Daniel a little while, seeing as it's baby's first psychic ouch.
A subtle jaw clench. Defensive. Bad to miss something, worse for the implication that he's missing something he should not have missed, for playing stupid.
"I was comfortable with forcing a conversation," Armand says, snippy. "You injuring yourself in the process wasn't my intent."
And what are they doing. Louis' blood should be of decent potency for a fledgling, at least, to benefit from, never mind Lestat's. "This way," is a command, a rare but practiced bit of stridency as Armand begins their walk again with more purpose. If he's going to bleed into Daniel's mouth, he'd rather a venue more private than the sidewalk.
"You thought the bad spot was going to be a conversation?"
Daniel's voice goes up. Real anger, like when he first walked into the house and saw Armand. He does not immediately follow his maker as the elder vampire takes off. Stands there for a while instead, glaring a hole into the side of his head and wrangling his temper back into place.
Nobody should need telepathy to figure out that he's still pissed when he does start walking, though. Better in control, but no less mad for it.
Lestat's outburst replays in his head like a film reel. Louis stepping away. Daniel's real fear that something was going to happen, really happen, that evening while he was still too injured to do anything about it. Not that he could anyway, he doesn't know what he thought. What might happen. The only vampire he knows that might be able to do something about it is fucking Armand.
"Maybe some other night, for hunting," he ends up saying, a pace and a half behind him still. "I don't mind critique, but a fair shot would feel less stupid."
"Yes," Armand says, without looking back, raising his voice to be heard—not necessary. "A conversation of the kind that you excel in."
Daniel had managed himself just fine, Parkinson's-addled hands unshaking as he drew an old script and its notations from its envelope, deposited them on the table. All steel, no fear-scent in the air. Adrenaline, maybe. Had Louis heard Daniel's heart, in that moment? Armand had. Probably, Louis' hearing was filled with his own.
Beside the point. The point is— "But I had no intention of injuring you. Like I said, it was a surprise that you were capable of doing what you did. If you weren't, there'd be nothing to injure."
"If Lestat decides I'm secretly your spy, he's not going to feel bad about killing me, and I'm not going to be able to talk him out of it. Sure, Louis might be upset for a little while, but Louis' been upset with him before, and Louis did leave me with you and then forget to follow up on it for weeks, so chances of him getting over it are pretty high."
Daniel does not actually have conversational superpowers, no matter how bamboozled Armand feels now or felt in Dubai. He chose not to drop Daniel off the side of the penthouse, just like he chose to leave him alive for fifty years despite being a loose end. Daniel didn't talk him into any of that shit.
"But hey, fine. Now you know. Of course I'm going to stick my hand into a bear trap you set. I want to fucking understand it."
And he wanted it to stop hurting Louis. He's still his only friend, it doesn't matter that he thinks the other vampire wouldn't miss him that much. Daniel hated seeing it.
"If you're luring me away because you've changed your mind on my existence, just tell me, it's not like I can outrun you."
It's true that Armand has sometimes enjoyed their conversations, but could Daniel shut the fuck up for a moment so he can think—
No, obviously. That's not part of it. Armand considers biting down on a few of those things, quibbling after the likelihood of Lestat deeming Daniel a spy anymore now than he might have before, some snarky stupid thing about how well Louis might appreciate Daniel's stellar review of his capacity to form meaningful friendships or ability to withstand Lestat's charm offensive, and on and on.
He would sound insufferable to even himself, talking about them. Louis, Lestat, Louis, Lestat. Burning a bright sunlit hole in his brain when he allows them to, just by existing. That Daniel is so tangled with them in this present moment, a source of irritation.
So. Fuck them, and the situation Daniel has made for himself.
"I'm luring you somewhere that I can assist in your restoration," still snippy. "Given you find it so hard to believe that I hadn't intended to inflict lasting damage because your current roommates might tear out your spine at any provocation."
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No joke is too soon, according to Armand, joyless as his delivery is.
He is here because his fledgling is here. Does Daniel expect him to say it out loud? He's been exercising honesty, and perhaps if it tasted of revelation, Armand would indulge it. But it feels obvious, and therefore a little pathetic for its obviousness. Where else is he meant to be?
Even on the other side of the world, a part of him had been tethered to Daniel's activities. Drawing him closer and closer. To circle back instead,
"Why haven't you told me to leave you alone?"
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A scathing tone, which is still crackling a bit for the immediate follow up of, "It's like you know when I'm starting to ease up on being mad at you, and you very helpfully remind me. Are you fucking doing that on purpose, somehow."
If Talamasca is listening in as well as watching, Daniel thinks he will just kill them. It's too personal and he's had enough with being stalked. They can cough up an easier walk to talk to Literally Samuel Beckett or they can go die.
He takes a breath, lets it out in a huff. Fine. He's fine.
"Because you showed up." It does feel pathetic for its obvious, doesn't it. Because you're my maker. He hates it. There's more to it than that, he thinks. He's pretty sure if Armand vanished in a puff of smoke in Dubai with no further incident, Daniel would still want to talk to him again, even just to irritate him on purpose. "I want to get you. I want to understand. I wasn't lying."
Armand's never been boring.
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And the only reason he doesn't is because the idea of getting into that back and forth feels tantamount to nail pulling, and Armand isn't in the mood. Bickering about the interview, can you imagine? And Daniel would round on him, say something to make him feel foolish and grasping, more than he already does. So, just a little flex at the jaw, a continued moderate walking pace, his shoulders settled in a relaxed line.
Silence for a beat as they walk. Absorbing.
"You seemed to have a decent grasp of it, at the end of things."
Armand, Amadeo, Arun. A con artist, a liar, a monster deserving of the detonation playing out in front of his stupid face. If Daniel cares as deeply for Louis as he appears, what room is there for Armand?
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It's a real fucking mystery why Daniel has no friends and has alienated all of his partners and children, huh. Alas, turning him into a vampire (against his will, to spite someone) has not made him a nicer person.
"Self-effacement doesn't look any better on you."
Here they are. Maker and fledgling. Great people. At least I haven't tortured anybody, Daniel might say, of his own personal assholery. But he's ruined plenty of lives. Armand's included. And yet, Armand threw a very painful tantrum over being told to leave Daniel alone.
"What do you want out of this?"
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It feels as easily articulated as reaching into the night sky, through the city smog, and rearranging the positions of the stars to spell it out for them both.
"I don't know," as a result. It feels reckless, honesty. Like handing someone weapons to injure him with, but Daniel, of all beings, scarcely needs the assistance. Self-effacement doesn't look good on him, but what other language is available? The defeated vampire, he'd described himself as in his mythmaking of the past. Prophetic.
The stars would probably spell something cloying. 'Companionship', just like any vampire. An unwieldy word. It would take several constellations.
"But I sometimes liked our conversations," he adds, instead. Cleaving closer.
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And then. I don't know. Something about it makes him unwind.
Believable. He looks sidelong at Armand, and thinks it's perhaps the most honest he's been all night. This or the thing about not thinking about Louis, which is something that Daniel is still turning over in his head and contemplating. Yeah. Armand not knowing makes sense. And there's a kind of relief in hearing him say it. That he recognizes it. This boat they're both in is a fucking weird one.
Footsteps, night birds, distant traffic, distant lights.
"Me too."
Months ago. You were fascinating and you still are. I don't believe you're empty.
Moments ago. I wasn't lying.
"We have shit to work on, you and me." Quieter, now. "How do you feel about cautious optimism?"
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They have being pedantic assholes in common, certainly. Dear, this is a Stein. At least here, it's knowing, and Armand doesn't allow the statement to sit in place for long. Daniel's tone, gentler. Maybe he's right and there is something of an instinct to aggravate when afforded some leeway, maybe Armand is doing it on purpose.
Here, something more schoolyard in tone than ruthless alienation. "But," but, "one I'd entertain. If you think your friendships can bear the strain of it."
no subject
This is a lot of fucking trouble, though.
"Maybe they can't. I just hope so."
Daniel would like to think that Louis would still speak to him, still see him. This situation isn't ideal, but he deserves to explore ... whatever this is, with Armand. It's permanent, and they're immortal. He can feel him. He wants to be able to figure it out and not worry about fighting, or fucking psychic bombs.
"It'd help if I didn't have to worry about you trying to fry Louis' brain for overstepping. I know trusting each other is a long way away, if it's possible at all, but do you think you can believe me when I say I'm not asking you to leave?"
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"Alright."
If Daniel is willing to extend him some faith, given everything, then it seems only fair that Armand do the same, also given everything. "Give me your cellular device."
He will continue to sound like a huge dork until morale improves.
Which it won't. Louis will not let this go, he thinks, among the most stubborn of men that Armand has ever met in his long (and admittedly cloistered) life. Maybe he will afford Daniel his agency in fucking around and finding out, given his own recent hobbies, but Armand's sins against him are thorough, stacked tall.
Armand has to decide that it won't be his problem any longer. It will be Daniel's. And it will only become his problem again if Daniel can't manage it himself. (Kidnapping not off the table.)
He holds out his hand for the phone.
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So he just takes out his phone and unlocks it, before handing it to Armand.
Fine.
Hitting the finding out stage is inevitable. Daniel is, unfortunately, the type to invite too much fucking around. If Armand wanted a fledgling who wasn't a pain in the ass, maybe he should have thought about anything at all before he went through with.
"The slumber party routine won't last forever," he mentions as an aside, while Armand is loading a Trojan onto his phone, or whatever.
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Bugging the device would be sensible, and Daniel might even allow for it when he inevitably notices. Another time, perhaps, when Armand is better prepared. For now, a direct line that will allow for more efficient communication than coded messages implanted in the brains of human sacrifices or emails bounced through lawyers. He puts the letter 'A' as the contact.
"It's gone on longer than I'd have expected," does not sound, at least, like a complaint, or a dig. Wry. Lestat is annoying at the very least, never mind that Daniel seems to value his own space. Armand offers back the phone.
A quick zigzagging once over.
"I'm choosing to believe your interest in open communication doesn't only extend towards mitigation," he says. "Or hope for a sequel."
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Hmph. He holds his hand out to receive his phone, and accepts it.
"If I wasn't eminently tolerant of weird bullshit I'd have left that tower in the desert after twelve hours," he points out. Some arguments, some awkwardness? He'll survive. Lestat hasn't tried to kill him, yet, but even if he does, it probably won't be as screwed up as what Armand's put him through. It'll be fine.
"And I'm choosing to believe your presence isn't only because you think it's funny to try and scare me."
Meeting halfway, or something like that. Look at them go.
"Since we're being honest tonight: I don't know, exactly. But I'd like it if we were used to each other. In whatever shape it takes. I'm too fucking old to remember how to hang out, which means you definitely are too, but I have faith we can puzzle through it."
no subject
What sounds like Daniel verbalising something he has been circling, of wanting conversation, open communication, is met with some internal amount of resistance. Like being handed an adorable kitten and feeling the urge to clench your hands tightly, and only not doing so because the end result would be the opposite of what motivates the action. His jaws itch with the desire to close around flesh.
"We're walking down the sidewalk," he says. "Having a chat."
This constitutes as hanging out, doesn't it? Look at them go.
"Perhaps you can choose where we next cross paths. Less chance of my appearing to want to scare you."
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If Armand tortured him again, would Daniel stay lucid through it? Could he ask him questions? Would Armand answer? Would the answers be different than ones he might offer while walking down the sidewalk, chatting?
"I haven't minded all of it."
For the record. Messages in sacrifices were alarming, but—
You know. Interesting. And he'd poked back, when he knew he shouldn't have. (Didn't care. Told himself it was investigating, learning, and it was, but Louis' right and Daniel's become a cold killer, and morality is negotiable at best, because he doesn't actually like people very much.) The book signing was nice, in a genuine way. He might not even hate this, because of the honesty.
"Coffee shops? Bars? Mini golf?" Public places with witnesses. What a little bitch move. "My apartment?"
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Because he wasn't aiming to scare Daniel, not exactly. He didn't mind the idea that it was a possibility, sure, but to scare something is, in nature, to warn it away. This was another kind of provocation. Not so coherent that Armand could explain it all in grand detail, the way he might sit down and justify his actions around the trial, his relationship with Louis, if someone were to convince him to rationalise his behaviours and his actions.
No, this had been different. Premeditated actions, carefully planned and crafted, borne of impulse. An apartment building on fire, for Louis, for himself. A radio shockjock grinding his teeth as he drives out of Florida, for Daniel. Gifts. Indulgences.
Then, a sharpening of focus. He might ask Daniel to repeat himself. Clarify.
"Okay," he says, instead. A beat, then, "Did you like any of them?"
More than just not minding.
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This psychic shit is something else. Luring him into thinking Armand seems so vulnerable. Is he just getting suckered into it? Or is this honesty from a creature who has no memory of being human, who is operating the best it knows how? Daniel thinks of an appeal to emotion, perhaps asking Louis for insight, but he thinks that Louis would be 1) angry that this interaction is happening and 2) disappointed to find out that Daniel's first attempt to contact Armand did not involve tracking down his lawyer, but burying a note in the body of someone he knew Armand would regard as annoying. Nexts that, and thinks of an appeal to reason instead, and the books he's been digesting about adult CPTSD survivors and cult deprogramming.
Armand is something else. Beyond any navigable experience. The devil, Lestat called him, who Daniel managed to trick once. He probably shouldn't give the devil an inch, even if it's a true inch.
"Everything except involving them."
This feels like baring his throat. I liked all of it, the dead people, the victims, the uncanny visitations, tracking him down. Unnerving but fascinating. Challenging. It made him angry, it made him interested. He learned more disposing of a body that Armand brought him than he did shuffling away one he chose himself. The hitch being that psychic bomb, a shitty mouse trap, hurting somebody else.
Stupid. But he's given Armand too much of his fear already.
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Not even a little. Maybe some of the anxious urgency of it feels soothed, but not the sentiment as a whole. Armand, certainly, has felt possessiveness before. Felt its itch, felt the satisfaction in scratching it. But it had felt like thievery. Stealing someone from someone else, stealing someone from themself.
Still feels it, here, but now he can tell himself: no, his fledgling. His, his, his. No one can deny that, no one can change it, not even Daniel, not even himself.
See? He liked his gifts.
Outward sign of this processing: a breath drawn in, a flick of a glance down towards their feet and the pavement.
"Were you going to hunt tonight? I'd like to watch if you were."
He hasn't yet had the pleasure.
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Perspective. They're working on this, they're figuring out how to coexist, how they're going to relate to each other. Armand said one hundred years, seems to have changed his mind. But maybe he'll go back to it. Maybe Daniel will.
"Ah." That. Puts him off-guard, for more than one reason. One: why the fuck does it feel intimate. More: his kneecapped state is Armand's fault. "Yeah, but my head is killing me, so it's going to be a less than graceful affair."
A catch-22; he feels exhausted enough to not want to try and murder someone for the complications that could arise from sloppiness, but knows if he doesn't consume the blood, he'll heal slower, feel worse, compound the problem.
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"Why," he says, the word coming out flat in the way it is surprised from him. "Are you injured?"
A hasty and searing looking over, but there is no sign of visible wound. Still, it would be like a vampire to heal the external layers while sustaining a brain injury.
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"Hundreds of years of shepherding other vampires as the law-abiding coven master and you pull that face," he says. Doesn't have to remind himself he's mad at Armand. He is mad at Armand. "Don't. You're comfortable with putting me in bad spots, remember?"
It's unbelievable to Daniel that Armand can't figure it out. Believable that he's not considerate enough to have thought of it before now, but not stupid enough to truly have no idea. He put his hand in the trap Armand left in Louis' head, the one meant to hurt him, and following that, he got hurt. Louis caught the brunt of it, but Louis is over a century old and weathered it with far more grace. They'll both be fine, it's just taking Daniel a little while, seeing as it's baby's first psychic ouch.
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"I was comfortable with forcing a conversation," Armand says, snippy. "You injuring yourself in the process wasn't my intent."
And what are they doing. Louis' blood should be of decent potency for a fledgling, at least, to benefit from, never mind Lestat's. "This way," is a command, a rare but practiced bit of stridency as Armand begins their walk again with more purpose. If he's going to bleed into Daniel's mouth, he'd rather a venue more private than the sidewalk.
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Daniel's voice goes up. Real anger, like when he first walked into the house and saw Armand. He does not immediately follow his maker as the elder vampire takes off. Stands there for a while instead, glaring a hole into the side of his head and wrangling his temper back into place.
Nobody should need telepathy to figure out that he's still pissed when he does start walking, though. Better in control, but no less mad for it.
Lestat's outburst replays in his head like a film reel. Louis stepping away. Daniel's real fear that something was going to happen, really happen, that evening while he was still too injured to do anything about it. Not that he could anyway, he doesn't know what he thought. What might happen. The only vampire he knows that might be able to do something about it is fucking Armand.
"Maybe some other night, for hunting," he ends up saying, a pace and a half behind him still. "I don't mind critique, but a fair shot would feel less stupid."
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Daniel had managed himself just fine, Parkinson's-addled hands unshaking as he drew an old script and its notations from its envelope, deposited them on the table. All steel, no fear-scent in the air. Adrenaline, maybe. Had Louis heard Daniel's heart, in that moment? Armand had. Probably, Louis' hearing was filled with his own.
Beside the point. The point is— "But I had no intention of injuring you. Like I said, it was a surprise that you were capable of doing what you did. If you weren't, there'd be nothing to injure."
All delivered at a clip, still moving.
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Daniel does not actually have conversational superpowers, no matter how bamboozled Armand feels now or felt in Dubai. He chose not to drop Daniel off the side of the penthouse, just like he chose to leave him alive for fifty years despite being a loose end. Daniel didn't talk him into any of that shit.
"But hey, fine. Now you know. Of course I'm going to stick my hand into a bear trap you set. I want to fucking understand it."
And he wanted it to stop hurting Louis. He's still his only friend, it doesn't matter that he thinks the other vampire wouldn't miss him that much. Daniel hated seeing it.
"If you're luring me away because you've changed your mind on my existence, just tell me, it's not like I can outrun you."
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No, obviously. That's not part of it. Armand considers biting down on a few of those things, quibbling after the likelihood of Lestat deeming Daniel a spy anymore now than he might have before, some snarky stupid thing about how well Louis might appreciate Daniel's stellar review of his capacity to form meaningful friendships or ability to withstand Lestat's charm offensive, and on and on.
He would sound insufferable to even himself, talking about them. Louis, Lestat, Louis, Lestat. Burning a bright sunlit hole in his brain when he allows them to, just by existing. That Daniel is so tangled with them in this present moment, a source of irritation.
So. Fuck them, and the situation Daniel has made for himself.
"I'm luring you somewhere that I can assist in your restoration," still snippy. "Given you find it so hard to believe that I hadn't intended to inflict lasting damage because your current roommates might tear out your spine at any provocation."
Just the normal, fleeting kind of damage.
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