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."
It doesn't matter what Armand intended to do. It still happened. He didn't consider anything past his actions, or he didn't care, or both. Something Armand seems to struggle with on a chronic level. I could not prevent it.
Yes you could have.
And Daniel hates shutting the fuck up.
Despite that—
He does. Full stop, which includes physically, watching Armand walk away. On a delay, he finally says something:
"You don't have to do that." And Armand might protest that he's aware, so Daniel continues, "I'm mad at you but you're not a medication dispenser, it's fine. I'll be fine soon enough."
Armand gets a few stubborn steps away before Daniel's words prompt him to stop, rather than stress-test the theory that Daniel would follow him anyway. Turns back to him, defensiveness maintaining, a certain guardedness.
The suggestion, implicit, that this offer is repentance, or punishment. I'm mad at you, but. Forces a moment to consider the motive. Does that match it? It sounds endemic to his behaviours. Isn't so sure, anyway.
"I want to," he corrects. Not gently. A neat little backhand at the notion that he is behaving in obligation. Some subservient performance. (This isn't that. Yes?) "It seems something that a maker would do for his fledgling."
If that maker were not Marius. Not Magnus. Not Armand, maybe, but look, here he is.
The look Daniel gives him is hard, but it's a glare that's more wary than angry. He struggles to pinpoint what Armand looks like he's feeling, which makes him think that Armand isn't sure. But Armand isn't a normal person, Armand is fucking five hundred years old and carrying horrors Daniel probably can't actually comprehend, and trying to read him like this is always going to be flawed.
"Does it?"
Maybe he means it to be more hostile, carrying the thread of his displeasure, but it comes off genuine. Does it. Does any of this seem like shit we should be doing. Daniel doesn't know any more than Armand does. Invisible puzzled question marks over his head.
I want to. Does he. Armand seems pissed about it, which suggests it's more likely to be true. Right? Maybe.
"Eating people is one thing. I haven't unpacked the rest of that."
A tangle. Daniel is finally not dying, for the first time since his symptoms kicked in he has the freedom to tell people to fuck off when they offer him aid. The only examples of vampires feeding from each other - that he's seen, setting aside all the erotic drug examples of Louis' stories - are Fake Rashid's sex game dinner theater and Armand drip-feeding a half-burned Louis while he screamed in a coffin. And Armand is a person, and it just is a thing he hasn't thought about.
Armand had every awareness of what he could do for Louis, back in 1973. Should have done. Take him to his coffin immediately, let him drink from Armand long and thoroughly, encourage his rest in the close darkness beneath his own power and the draw of the vampire's daylit coma. It had even been the morning. Come that evening, the very worst of it would have been lifted.
He doesn't know if Lestat knew this too, after he shattered Louis on the ground. Probably. Probably knew how long the recovery would be, with only animal blood to see his recovery through, or only the blood of an equal, a very small fountain.
And Lestat had stayed away. Here Armand is. The thought makes him second guess himself. Is it selfish, to fix the hurt you did yourself? Seems ludicrous. Lestat, a coward, fearing this exact rejection. Armand is great at rejection. Very practiced.
"Vampires drink the blood of vampires all the time," he says, voice flat and light together. An authority. "In love making, in battle, and in the event of healing injury. You're familiar with the mechanics of your own making. The older the blood, the better the healing, and no, I'm not offering because I believe you have some right to it."
The way Armand describes it is clinical and factual, and Daniel understands, but it all still sounds — feels, maybe, which is fucking stupid, feelings should have nothing to do with it — intimate. Daniel has rejected the intimacy of blood. There is a clear divide between disposable mortals and what he is now, and he hasn't been what he is now for very long.
(Do you know that you're dead yet?
Maybe.)
"I don't have a right to it."
Affirmation. This is important, and he's still staring at Armand, this time with an intensity meant to convey instead of just observe. Daniel thinks plenty, about Armand, much of it unflattering, but he wants to be clear that he doesn't have any fucked up entitlements about him, his personhood, his autonomy. Armand doesn't owe him in any way besides arguing about it. His time is enough. Daniel isn't interested in service, or a pound of flesh. Just yell at him, get yelled at, that's fucking fine.
"I don't know if I'm trampling on something by hesitating," he says. "I don't want to be insulting, I just want to be sure. And you have to know you've given me some pretty fucking mixed signals about your comfort levels."
Armand's regard sharpens, and it's probably a familiar kind of pressure, usually followed by something that implies a rifling around within Daniel's skull—but of course, there is none of that, only what he can see, only what he remembers.
And he does remember, and his expression shifts a little, a flicker to his eyeline.
"If you're referring to the last time it came up in conversation," a little wry, so much of this has been left out of anything that could be described as conversation, "that was different."
Don't think he couldn't tell even in the moment, you little freak. (P...ositive????)
But ribbing aside, Daniel really does have something to get across — that is part of it, yes, factored in, hostility coupled with unsettling subservience, but there's a bigger picture, too.
"I think I can mostly check bullshit on you, but more than that is rough. You're as frustrating as you are interesting, and it's hard to read you, sometimes. If you want to— great. I think. Unfortunately you'll have to deal with me unpacking my own issues, but if you mean it, I do believe you."
Or he will. He will make himself, because he's aware of how fucking irritating it is to have someone constantly doubt an offer made in good faith.
He does want to. It is an offer made in good faith.
These are two things that Armand pauses over for a moment, feels their contours and flaws. Maybe there is something innate in it, the impulse of a maker to mother their progeny in this way—he has never seen a consistent set of instincts, has never experienced it before on either end of it. It would, however, make sense as a kind of bypass for more rational reasons why he shouldn't want to open a vein for Daniel Molloy a second time.
Daniel says he is interesting and Armand feels himself defend against it, an internal flinching back. No, he can't let that trick him into thinking it means anything. Daniel loves a puzzle and has yet to realise there are too many missing pieces in this metaphor to make for a satisfying result. Daniel will get bored of it, in time.
But Daniel also has the sharpest mind of any human, and as Armand rapidly sifts through impulse and instinct, he decides: he hates the thought of that mind taking damage so purposelessly, so negligently.
"I mean it," he summons, and feels sure of it. "And as experienced as you might be with illicit exchanges in dark alleyways, perhaps I should take you up on your invitation." A head tip. "Your place."
This is going to go so bad. Say no, he tells himself, Who cares if his asshole feelings are hurt.
"I'll call a cab."
Close enough.
It's not the weirdest taxi ride of Daniel's life — no one is having a bad acid trip or currently vomiting — but it's putting in effort towards the podium. But they survive, and Daniel's apartment building is still there, along with his overstuffed mailbox (last time he asks Jessica next door to pick it up for him, he was even paying her), which he empties before leading Armand up the stairs to his door.
Nothing out of place inside. No overhead lighting anywhere but the kitchen, but also none of the lamps match, warm yellow paint on the walls, blue skies and clouds on the ceiling, an oddball collection of 'art' decorating here and there that runs the gamut between 'actually art' and 'something neat Daniel found'.
Feels good to be back, he finds. There's an itch in him suddenly, the desire to sleep in his own bed, even though that life is behind him.
"Not a penthouse," he says, tossing his keys towards a dish on the table out of muscle-memory habit, "but better than a shithole in Divisadero."
Of course he has. Has moved like a ghost through Daniel's apartment, ignoring the overflowing mail, ably avoiding lurking alarm systems. He does not recall it in great detail, having not turned on any lights and skulked around with vampire vision. Opened this or that cabinet, inspected wall hangings and books and the overflowing storage closets, sat crossed legged on a patch of floor and contemplated destroying just everything in reach—
But he hadn't looked up, or if he had, maybe he just didn't remember. Now, as lamps cast warm light around, Armand's focus draws up to the ceiling. Blue skies, fluffy clouds, daytime and summer.
"Did you have that done after the fact?" is dry, not a real question. Vampire joke.
A strange feature for any civilian home to have, the kind of thing that's reserved for a gimmicky lounge or a deeply upscale museum, nothing as unremarkably in between as some writer's Brooklyn apartment. If he's renting, he definitely didn't have permission, if he's owning through a co-op, he's hilariously devalued the property, for corny decor.
But he likes it, and the ceiling's high enough that it works well. So. Whatever.
"The painter was cute and wanted the practice. I developed a temporary sinus condition in response to inhaling fumes and had to stay in a motel in Long Island for two weeks while it dried."
This sounds like a story about a pretty girl; the painter was a 45 year old Belarusian man, and Daniel convinced himself he was practicing his rusty language skills and helping somebody out, not staring like a repressed psychopath. Honesty is not a tactic. He doesn't know why he tells Armand, other than he tells Armand because he's stalling, and he knows that, and he knows Armand knows that, even though neither of them can read the other's mind.
"A rudimentary di sotto in sù fresco," skips past that So, uh... along with an effortless flex of Italian. "More charming than architecturally convincing, but the dimensions are limiting."
Armand has seen enough cute murals in his life, flipped enough properties with ill-considered decorative elements, that he isn't immediately transported to the Renaissance by egg shell blue, swirling clouds. But still. Funny. There is, within him, an entire world of painted ceilings, of lurid colour, old world maximalism and perspective from half a millennia ago, and it is all contained at the bottom of an ocean, a trench within that ocean, where it is crushing and black and cold.
Amusing. He moves through the space, back turned to Daniel. Just as he'd left it. Both he's. "I don't particularly want to involve glassware or novelty mugs." Maybe if it's very fitting. World's Okayest Maker. "How neat are you?"
Daniel watches Armand move, the way he looks at things, and it takes a second, but he can tell the difference between 'looking to discover' and 'looking to check'.
Oh, you motherfucker.
But why say anything. He knows Armand has been in his spaces before, coming into his hotel rooms during the day, leaving things, people. A breath in, a sigh out. Doesn't explain his exasperated expression. World's Okayest Maker content is fine motivation for it anyway.
"It's been a few months since I've accidentally ended up with a horror movie blood fire hose," he deadpans. "I tend to want to avoid putting myself in situations where someone's going to ask why I look like I've murdered someone."
Answers, from cantshutthefuckupguy, before he fully thinks through what Armand is saying. The admission of wanting to avoid that step of removal strikes him as odd.
"I don't know how much you'll need, but you will, only once you've had it. I'd prefer to be efficient."
Rather than opening a vein into cup after cup. The injury is not large but it is delicate, and it feels reasonable to Armand to explain rather than have to muddle through protest as to the intimacy of the thing—even less dignified than a novelty mug. The problem being, he does like this. He hadn't been pretending for Daniel's sake, across the table. Performing, sure, but it had felt good and satisfying to serve in that specific way.
To sate a hunger, that time. To heal, this time. Maybe it will feel the same. Maybe it won't. They hate each other.
And so, unease threads up Daniel's spine, even as something else - an animal instinct he's never experienced before, but that he recognizes as being from the part of himself that didn't exist a year ago - tells him to shut the fuck up and say yes, that he wants it, that it'll be good, that he doesn't understand how good, his transformation was disorienting, but he's not disoriented now.
"Will I?"
A real question. Curiosity instead of stalling.
"Will I know, I mean. I've never stopped except to keep from accidentally killing myself on dead blood. I'm sure you'll have no problem stopping me, I just. Uh. Do you think I'll be able to tell?"
Or will he just try to consume Armand like a wild animal until he's shoved off? The thought is unsettling.
It's a real question, so Armand treats it thusly, considering it.
Meanwhile, shrugging out of his coat, laying it over the back of a chair. "You're young," is true, and there is no irony in saying so. "Unpracticed. Perhaps not. But I imagine you should feel slightly better, which you can take as a sign you've had enough. If you have the discipline, you can stop then. The rest of the healing occurs when you bed down for the day."
Unbuttoning a sleeve cuff, rolling the fabric back to expose a perfect plane of unblemished skin. A kind of funny visual reversal—the dealer, exposing his forearm for the junkie, the tempting ridges of arteries showing themselves when he turns his wrist.
"Otherwise, yes, I can stop you. Are you asking because you'd like to use a vessel?"
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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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Yes you could have.
And Daniel hates shutting the fuck up.
Despite that—
He does. Full stop, which includes physically, watching Armand walk away. On a delay, he finally says something:
"You don't have to do that." And Armand might protest that he's aware, so Daniel continues, "I'm mad at you but you're not a medication dispenser, it's fine. I'll be fine soon enough."
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The suggestion, implicit, that this offer is repentance, or punishment. I'm mad at you, but. Forces a moment to consider the motive. Does that match it? It sounds endemic to his behaviours. Isn't so sure, anyway.
"I want to," he corrects. Not gently. A neat little backhand at the notion that he is behaving in obligation. Some subservient performance. (This isn't that. Yes?) "It seems something that a maker would do for his fledgling."
If that maker were not Marius. Not Magnus. Not Armand, maybe, but look, here he is.
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"Does it?"
Maybe he means it to be more hostile, carrying the thread of his displeasure, but it comes off genuine. Does it. Does any of this seem like shit we should be doing. Daniel doesn't know any more than Armand does. Invisible puzzled question marks over his head.
I want to. Does he. Armand seems pissed about it, which suggests it's more likely to be true. Right? Maybe.
"Eating people is one thing. I haven't unpacked the rest of that."
A tangle. Daniel is finally not dying, for the first time since his symptoms kicked in he has the freedom to tell people to fuck off when they offer him aid. The only examples of vampires feeding from each other - that he's seen, setting aside all the erotic drug examples of Louis' stories - are Fake Rashid's sex game dinner theater and Armand drip-feeding a half-burned Louis while he screamed in a coffin. And Armand is a person, and it just is a thing he hasn't thought about.
Murder is easier to grapple with.
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He doesn't know if Lestat knew this too, after he shattered Louis on the ground. Probably. Probably knew how long the recovery would be, with only animal blood to see his recovery through, or only the blood of an equal, a very small fountain.
And Lestat had stayed away. Here Armand is. The thought makes him second guess himself. Is it selfish, to fix the hurt you did yourself? Seems ludicrous. Lestat, a coward, fearing this exact rejection. Armand is great at rejection. Very practiced.
"Vampires drink the blood of vampires all the time," he says, voice flat and light together. An authority. "In love making, in battle, and in the event of healing injury. You're familiar with the mechanics of your own making. The older the blood, the better the healing, and no, I'm not offering because I believe you have some right to it."
...right??
"In the spirit of reparation, Mr. Molloy."
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(Do you know that you're dead yet?
Maybe.)
"I don't have a right to it."
Affirmation. This is important, and he's still staring at Armand, this time with an intensity meant to convey instead of just observe. Daniel thinks plenty, about Armand, much of it unflattering, but he wants to be clear that he doesn't have any fucked up entitlements about him, his personhood, his autonomy. Armand doesn't owe him in any way besides arguing about it. His time is enough. Daniel isn't interested in service, or a pound of flesh. Just yell at him, get yelled at, that's fucking fine.
"I don't know if I'm trampling on something by hesitating," he says. "I don't want to be insulting, I just want to be sure. And you have to know you've given me some pretty fucking mixed signals about your comfort levels."
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And he does remember, and his expression shifts a little, a flicker to his eyeline.
"If you're referring to the last time it came up in conversation," a little wry, so much of this has been left out of anything that could be described as conversation, "that was different."
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Don't think he couldn't tell even in the moment, you little freak. (P...ositive????)
But ribbing aside, Daniel really does have something to get across — that is part of it, yes, factored in, hostility coupled with unsettling subservience, but there's a bigger picture, too.
"I think I can mostly check bullshit on you, but more than that is rough. You're as frustrating as you are interesting, and it's hard to read you, sometimes. If you want to— great. I think. Unfortunately you'll have to deal with me unpacking my own issues, but if you mean it, I do believe you."
Or he will. He will make himself, because he's aware of how fucking irritating it is to have someone constantly doubt an offer made in good faith.
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These are two things that Armand pauses over for a moment, feels their contours and flaws. Maybe there is something innate in it, the impulse of a maker to mother their progeny in this way—he has never seen a consistent set of instincts, has never experienced it before on either end of it. It would, however, make sense as a kind of bypass for more rational reasons why he shouldn't want to open a vein for Daniel Molloy a second time.
Daniel says he is interesting and Armand feels himself defend against it, an internal flinching back. No, he can't let that trick him into thinking it means anything. Daniel loves a puzzle and has yet to realise there are too many missing pieces in this metaphor to make for a satisfying result. Daniel will get bored of it, in time.
But Daniel also has the sharpest mind of any human, and as Armand rapidly sifts through impulse and instinct, he decides: he hates the thought of that mind taking damage so purposelessly, so negligently.
"I mean it," he summons, and feels sure of it. "And as experienced as you might be with illicit exchanges in dark alleyways, perhaps I should take you up on your invitation." A head tip. "Your place."
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This is going to go so bad. Say no, he tells himself, Who cares if his asshole feelings are hurt.
"I'll call a cab."
Close enough.
It's not the weirdest taxi ride of Daniel's life — no one is having a bad acid trip or currently vomiting — but it's putting in effort towards the podium. But they survive, and Daniel's apartment building is still there, along with his overstuffed mailbox (last time he asks Jessica next door to pick it up for him, he was even paying her), which he empties before leading Armand up the stairs to his door.
Nothing out of place inside. No overhead lighting anywhere but the kitchen, but also none of the lamps match, warm yellow paint on the walls, blue skies and clouds on the ceiling, an oddball collection of 'art' decorating here and there that runs the gamut between 'actually art' and 'something neat Daniel found'.
Feels good to be back, he finds. There's an itch in him suddenly, the desire to sleep in his own bed, even though that life is behind him.
"Not a penthouse," he says, tossing his keys towards a dish on the table out of muscle-memory habit, "but better than a shithole in Divisadero."
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Of course he has. Has moved like a ghost through Daniel's apartment, ignoring the overflowing mail, ably avoiding lurking alarm systems. He does not recall it in great detail, having not turned on any lights and skulked around with vampire vision. Opened this or that cabinet, inspected wall hangings and books and the overflowing storage closets, sat crossed legged on a patch of floor and contemplated destroying just everything in reach—
But he hadn't looked up, or if he had, maybe he just didn't remember. Now, as lamps cast warm light around, Armand's focus draws up to the ceiling. Blue skies, fluffy clouds, daytime and summer.
"Did you have that done after the fact?" is dry, not a real question. Vampire joke.
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A strange feature for any civilian home to have, the kind of thing that's reserved for a gimmicky lounge or a deeply upscale museum, nothing as unremarkably in between as some writer's Brooklyn apartment. If he's renting, he definitely didn't have permission, if he's owning through a co-op, he's hilariously devalued the property, for corny decor.
But he likes it, and the ceiling's high enough that it works well. So. Whatever.
"The painter was cute and wanted the practice. I developed a temporary sinus condition in response to inhaling fumes and had to stay in a motel in Long Island for two weeks while it dried."
This sounds like a story about a pretty girl; the painter was a 45 year old Belarusian man, and Daniel convinced himself he was practicing his rusty language skills and helping somebody out, not staring like a repressed psychopath. Honesty is not a tactic. He doesn't know why he tells Armand, other than he tells Armand because he's stalling, and he knows that, and he knows Armand knows that, even though neither of them can read the other's mind.
"So, uh..."
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Armand has seen enough cute murals in his life, flipped enough properties with ill-considered decorative elements, that he isn't immediately transported to the Renaissance by egg shell blue, swirling clouds. But still. Funny. There is, within him, an entire world of painted ceilings, of lurid colour, old world maximalism and perspective from half a millennia ago, and it is all contained at the bottom of an ocean, a trench within that ocean, where it is crushing and black and cold.
Amusing. He moves through the space, back turned to Daniel. Just as he'd left it. Both he's. "I don't particularly want to involve glassware or novelty mugs." Maybe if it's very fitting. World's Okayest Maker. "How neat are you?"
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Oh, you motherfucker.
But why say anything. He knows Armand has been in his spaces before, coming into his hotel rooms during the day, leaving things, people. A breath in, a sigh out. Doesn't explain his exasperated expression. World's Okayest Maker content is fine motivation for it anyway.
"It's been a few months since I've accidentally ended up with a horror movie blood fire hose," he deadpans. "I tend to want to avoid putting myself in situations where someone's going to ask why I look like I've murdered someone."
Answers, from cantshutthefuckupguy, before he fully thinks through what Armand is saying. The admission of wanting to avoid that step of removal strikes him as odd.
"Is a cup too tacky, or something?"
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Admittedly. But not the point.
"I don't know how much you'll need, but you will, only once you've had it. I'd prefer to be efficient."
Rather than opening a vein into cup after cup. The injury is not large but it is delicate, and it feels reasonable to Armand to explain rather than have to muddle through protest as to the intimacy of the thing—even less dignified than a novelty mug. The problem being, he does like this. He hadn't been pretending for Daniel's sake, across the table. Performing, sure, but it had felt good and satisfying to serve in that specific way.
To sate a hunger, that time. To heal, this time. Maybe it will feel the same. Maybe it won't. They hate each other.
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And so, unease threads up Daniel's spine, even as something else - an animal instinct he's never experienced before, but that he recognizes as being from the part of himself that didn't exist a year ago - tells him to shut the fuck up and say yes, that he wants it, that it'll be good, that he doesn't understand how good, his transformation was disorienting, but he's not disoriented now.
"Will I?"
A real question. Curiosity instead of stalling.
"Will I know, I mean. I've never stopped except to keep from accidentally killing myself on dead blood. I'm sure you'll have no problem stopping me, I just. Uh. Do you think I'll be able to tell?"
Or will he just try to consume Armand like a wild animal until he's shoved off? The thought is unsettling.
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Meanwhile, shrugging out of his coat, laying it over the back of a chair. "You're young," is true, and there is no irony in saying so. "Unpracticed. Perhaps not. But I imagine you should feel slightly better, which you can take as a sign you've had enough. If you have the discipline, you can stop then. The rest of the healing occurs when you bed down for the day."
Unbuttoning a sleeve cuff, rolling the fabric back to expose a perfect plane of unblemished skin. A kind of funny visual reversal—the dealer, exposing his forearm for the junkie, the tempting ridges of arteries showing themselves when he turns his wrist.
"Otherwise, yes, I can stop you. Are you asking because you'd like to use a vessel?"
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