It's late by mortal standards, but with plenty of time before the winter's sunrise demands a parting of ways. He has spoken to Louis, tonight, and speaking with Louis has not left him with gaping wounds but a kind of tactile irritation. Friction burns, oversensitivity. The sun will rise, Daniel will scuttle back to the den he and the pair have made, and Armand
will, of course, be alone, how maudlin. He has spent many sunrises alone, anyway. No vampires, barely any humans. Alone isn't as bad as vampire histrionics make it out to be, he would like to believe.
Yet, here he is, in Daniel Molloy's apartment.
There is still a faint trace of scent that a human lived here. A dusting of flour within a cupboard that hadn't been properly swept up, the insides of the coffee machine, the impressions of a fraction of human life committed to the soft couches in front of the television. It is a clean but cluttered place and so, inevitably, the remnants of mortality cling like dust.
It shouldn't appeal. Armand would say, it does not. Yet, he's come here before on his own. He comes here before Daniel has a chance to be here first. Perhaps it's just different. He has never known a mortal who then became a vampire. Even Lestat, mortality still warm on the skin at their time of meeting, a monster already.
He has an impulse to lay on the floor and look at the painted ceiling. Once Armand realises he has this impulse, he does it, finding a decent stretch of rug to accommodate his long limbs. There he waits.
Human things: getting his mail, saying hello to a downstairs neighbor on her way to a bakery job, closing the door behind him, tossing his keys in a basket from muscle memory. Inhuman things: only turning a third of the lights on before he decides that's more than enough to see by, having unplugged the fridge the last time he was here, stopping his phone conversation downstairs from having sensed company already present in his apartment.
"Yeah," sounds like agreement from nowhere, as he moves to the kitchen and starts digging through the junk drawer for something. "That's in the top three spots for it."
Another minute before he walks over to the patch of floor Armand has pancaked himself on. Pause—
"You okay?"
Something. A feeling, the barest instinct towards something off-kilter, though he could be projecting. It's been a stressful 24 hours. Daniel has something in his hands, just some little thing that jangles slightly as he sits down cross-legged on the floor. He's passed hours here, more than bear thinking of, sometimes with a little alcohol and a joint, sometimes with prescription drugs, sometimes with nothing. You don't paint your ceiling this way then never lay there and stare at it. But he's not asking because of that.
With vampiric vision, even in dim light, and as low as one can get from the ceiling, Armand can make out the texture of the brush strokes, where the hand was heaviest. It is a kind of art he likes, finding a blank space and filling it, an art that does not have to do anything or say much. He, of course, enjoys the other kind, but after a long career mastering art dealership, there's a relief to staring at something devoid of meaning.
"I'm fine," obviously.
He tips his head enough to look at Daniel. Considers telling him he can smell Louis on him, but it's the barest trace, they aren't fucking, and even if his new agenda is radical honesty, he's not sure what the point would be. Daniel and Louis are best friends. Conversely, Armand drank all of Daniel's blood out of his body and replaced it with his own.
It's not nothing, is it? "Did the blood take?" Speaking of.
Daniel looks at him, looks at Armand looking back at him. Assessing whether or not he thinks it's true (doesn't), and if it's wise to press him (no). Whatever. Door's open. When's the last time someone asked Armand if he was okay, and Armand said something honest? ... When's the last time someone asked Armand if he was okay, and would have actually listened to the answer?
Vampires are fucked. They're still just people, though, aren't they.
"It did." Not lost on Daniel, that this is the first time they've seen each other since things almost got out of hand. "Next nightfall, it was like nothing had happened."
Like magic. So,
"Thanks."
Covers a lot. For helping him feel better, for being patient as Daniel worked through being able to accept it, for... biting him in return. Sharing it. A split burden of having gotten too into it makes it less mortifying, somehow, though he's not sure Armand would agree. And meanwhile, sitting here, Daniel appears to be fidgeting with something— no, turns out he's inching a key onto the metal loop of a keyring, which in itself is attached to a keychain. A round thing, like an Oreo cookie. Two circles of polished wood sandwich a thin piece of colored 'glass'; can't be much more than an inch and a half across.
"So you don't have to keep telekinetically jimmying the lock, or floating in a window, or whatever you do," he says about that which must be a spare key to the apartment. "You'll have to tell me if the glass works. Iphone light wasn't cutting it."
Dichroic stained glass, whatever that means. A young woman was selling them on the street alongside mostly jewelry. It's an imperfect little bangle, hand-made as it is, but he didn't feel like grabbing an I Heart NYC one. Armand can take it or not, use it or not. Up to him.
For this, Armand curls up out of his pancaking, receiving the key and bauble onto his palm. He is in the mood to think that the keychain is a mocking touch, but enough presence of mind to identify the impulse as stupid and self-indulgent, aggravating a shitty mood on purpose. He should treat these gestures like the painted ceiling, appreciate them without sifting around for meaning.
Should. He holds the glass up to discern some of its colour against the lamplight, permits an amused exhale. A sun charm. It might be a nice way to decorate, the next time he decides to set down some roots. Stained glass, skylights, dangling crystals.
"I'll keep you appraised," dry, but not cold. Slips a finger through the metal hoop.
Considers saying—
"They're going to get you killed," out of his mouth unchecked. "What we're doing here tonight, it'll buy you time. A means to defend yourself. But you're not at strength, not for another several decades."
And Lestat had understood, hadn't he, keeping Louis and Claudia a secret even from themselves? He must understand now and simply doesn't care. Louis understands very little, cocksure a century later from killing the Parisian coven. This is all so stupid.
No, Daniel, I'm not, I'm concerned about your safety and conflicted over that concern, which is putting me in an irritable mood.
That's probably not it, anyway. Or not all of it. There are depths to Armand that Daniel can't begin to understand, and some of them are horrifying, and some of them, he's starting to learn, are very mundane and petty and sensitive. Which isn't bad. Everyone has those. This is what he reminds himself as he works on formulating a response.
He could say,
I think about you in the sunlight. I thought you looked happy there. It makes me think about hibernating seeds. I saw it, in my head, after I drank from you. Maybe chill out, man.
"I'm not being held hostage," he points out. "I'd be doing the book tour anyway, alone. Someone showed up to kill me all the way back in Atlanta. I know that it's dangerous."
Arguably, so does Daniel. The book tour is a public affair by its nature, but it's a human kind of public. A far cry from flying through the streets, or engaging in immolation and murder. It just all seems messy, reactive, which is the kind of thing easily critiqued when you're standing outside of it.
As he's pointed out at least once tonight. "And then do as they will to protect you from that focus, I'm aware, but all the same. They're both arrogant in their own ways. Careless in that arrogance and possessing a habit for collateral. You're not held hostage, but you like them."
Far be it from him to accuse Daniel of being blind to flaws, but forgiving of them, maybe. After all, here is Armand, sitting on a rug in his apartment, fidgeting with a spare key.
They've established before that they each care, Because Reasons, so he can't ask that. Even though this feels far more personal and pointed, not just something that can be excused by perverse fascination over the bond. Armand, sitting on a rug in his apartment, fidgeting with a spare key, saying But you like them.
"Tell me what would work for you," he offers, hands splayed. "What the ideal solution is, for you. And we'll see where we get."
If Daniel has to say no, he'll say no, but there's no harm in hearing Armand out. Especially because there's a fucking bizarre animal part of his brain that says 'Actually, staying with your maker is correct,' and he's not sure how he feels about that, seeing as his maker has tortured him before. Daniel shouldn't want to be alone with Armand anywhere, but especially not an apartment with the lights mostly off.
Armand is silent for the span of a second or two, a little like his bluff has been called—not a lie, but not with a ready plan to offer as an alternative.
Still. Just a second or two. "You separate yourself from both of them," because this is all hypothetical, and people liking people is of no consequence. "As it stands, it appears your status as a vampire has yet to spread widely. Allow Daniel Molloy his death sooner than you were planning, and eliminate yourself as a target. Louis gets his war, and you can do as we all must, from time to time, which is wait out the era before seeking re-entry."
He knows there's a no, likely beginning with separate yourself from, at least as far as Louis is concerned. They have talked on this point. Perhaps Armand should have insisted more firmly.
"I can provide every protection you would require," he says, with a drawn in breath, "for however long you require it."
Everyone talks about the unbelievable fortitude of the human will to still be horny, but nobody talks about how you can still be surprised. Daniel shouldn't be. He pretty much knew, in that scientific theory way where theory means it's essentially proven. Hearing Armand give this answer, Daniel is forced to take a moment to step outside of himself and wonder why the fuck he asked.
But he knows why he asked, even as he finds himself (somehow) baffled to hear Armand give the answer Daniel knew was there.
Armand doesn't try and come up with something else. He doesn't try to weasel around it. Daniel asked, and Armand has told him, and he's done so plainly. Fact now, a step above theory, and Daniel turns this over alongside the experience of inviting Armand to share something with him and getting a completely frank answer. Okay.
Okay.
"So, big shift from the current setup." O b v i o u s l y. But Daniel is hearing him out, and not dismissing it out of hand, because he asked and Armand answered. "A tactic of starving out the problem versus grappling with parts of it as they pop up."
in the tone of someone who recognises the way that sounds. They have collaborated already on getting information, including directly after the incident itself, and so Armand can imagine what it is Daniel would prefer. But if he were to whittle all this down to which elements he gave a fuck about
which are few, it would, he knows, involve conserving Daniel. He does not want Louis to die, but he has let go of the responsibility involved in keeping him alive, a thing he spent the past seventy-seven years doing. And so, this.
"Your gift is time. You can use it to your advantage to protect yourself."
Daniel's expression does a thing, like Armand has said something whimsical, if a little strange. A small half smile.
"Still crazy to hear stuff like that."
Your gift is time. Daniel was dying. Does Armand understand, having been sick, too? His gaze darts away, slightly embarrassed shifting them into significance away from very real, present, constant danger. But he gets a fucking grip, looks back.
"I don't want to die." Wild, how often he's had to say this lately. "But I don't want to be ignorant of how things are going to change. Can I ask— well, I'm gonna, but you don't have to answer. If through whatever circumstances, we weren't connected, but everything else was happening the same. The book, angry vamp nation, whatever. What would you be doing?"
"I'm not claiming that you have a death wish," kind of tramples over this question. Armand would like to be understood, given how relatively infrequent (he thinks) conversations are, will continue to be. "But you run to danger. It's how you've survived this long, and so you think it will serve you now."
And away from safety, from comfort. Boring but ultimately safe and comfortable mundanity. He had felt his aversion to it even then, decades back. Is that what Armand has on offer? Again?
"And," because he was asked a question, "are you asking that to know if I'm behaving in response to my sense of vampiric responsibility?"
Hands up, okok, to the trampling. A silent I hear you. Between the two of them, the shit they've mutually witnessed, it's worth pointing out. In both directions.
(And if they weren't severed from each other's minds—
Armand being safety and comfort for Daniel "the boy's fine we're all fine" Molloy is full tilt bananas, you know, Crazy.)
"I'm asking because I want to know. It's a problem." The desire for knowledge, for revelation, more than blood, more than drugs. As Armand has just pointed out, he does run to it. He wants to fucking know. He wants to stick his fingers in, not because he hopes someday the chamber won't be empty when he plays the game, but because he has to know. He loves the truth more than he's ever loved a partner. Even when it's revolting. Maybe especially then. "And because it sounds like your pitch is centered around me. But you are here. You're in the book, you went on record. You're involved."
Fifty years ago, he really shouldn't have said picking lint off the sofa, what with Louis' incredulous echo still bouncing around the caverns of his mind, decades on. Better to think about: without him, I am nothing. More dignified.
Armand could say, I don't know, and it would be true. Disappointing, perhaps.
"Time would move differently," he says instead. "I would watch the tide draw in, the angry vamp nation," a glance, Daniel's words, "work itself to froth. They kill Louis or fail to. Nothing substantially changes. They fail to find me, and those that do, I terminate. Nothing substantially changes. Beyond that, I don't know what answer to give you."
They could also kill him, hurt him meaningfully, but it all seems so depressingly unlikely. His fear of the coven turning on him had had nothing to do with their threat levels so much as he had been afraid of its destruction, of having nothing when Louis finally dismissed him from their romance.
It just really depressing. Five hundred years and all his experiences, good and ill (mostly ill?) and he just wants to sit there and watch paint dry until the sounds coming from outside stop. Or does he want that. Maybe it's just that Armand doesn't know how to do anything else, without being directed to. Daniel watches him, listens, tries to decide if bluntness or therapy speak would be better, and if he actually has anything to say with either.
"That's your honest take, and so that's an acceptable answer. Best one, probably."
Five hundred years ago, the angry vamp nation burned down his maker, his studio, his canvases and paintings, scorched stone and velvet and silk in cinders, and what Armand learned was that this was not a radical change so much as the radical change he was a part of had, once more, been returned to the dirt. These aren't the Children of Satan, this is something else—
But they are all vampires, and vampires only know how to do one thing.
"Perhaps," Armand says. Why not. He can grant Daniel his perspective. He can choose not to get angry at being asked something that could only disappoint them both. He turns his focus down to the key, the key chain, fidgeting. "What changes do you foresee?"
Sorry. No keen insight on that. He shrugs, and the expression on his face is open, wry, a little apologetic. But this isn't the end of the conversation— still working on it.
Quiet for another little while. Just looking at Armand and thinking about saying what he's going to say, if it's worth the risk. If he's wrong it could be very bad. If he's right it could be worse. But here they are, and the ancient vampire is right about his fledgling. Daniel's always been served by running right into shit.
"You've been fucked over profoundly by change."
Doesn't coach it with an I think or as a question. He knows a bit about Armand, now, maybe more than Armand bargained for. Daniel is still not convinced Armand meant to transform him at all when he first bit him. Maybe he didn't decide until the last second.
"And this is a change. You and me. When you say you want to wait it out, I get why you have that instinct. I get that you're already shouldering a massive fucking change, and now there's this thing happening that might annihilate it."
Maybe he is being overly confident, but none of the voices of the Conversion have struck him as holding the gravitas of anyone beyond his own years. Armand is simply very difficult to kill. Occasionally, he is struck with the abject terror of the prospect of true immortality, and he remembers why he had never turned anyone prior to Daniel.
But maybe, maybe they could annihilate him as well. Despite everything, the thought doesn't appeal to him. It isn't an instinct he has, the one to die. Just survival at all costs. Pointless preservation.
Change. Fucked over profoundly by change. His gaze is intent where it sets on Mr. Molloy.
"The war escapes containment. The truth breaks through, finally. The world looks to a timely publication and reconsiders its message. You will find yourself, very quickly, at the centre of massive fucking change, no matter how much attention Louis thinks he can draw."
Armand, the sole survivor. Even if Louis dies, even if Daniel dies.
And isn't that a fucking nightmare?
"Maybe that happens. Maybe it's a lot smaller. Maybe it's just personal, the significant changes heading our way. Basically impossible for me to predict, given I don't have my own baseline for 'normal' yet. What's the world like, for vampires? What's my own undead life like? This shit, the book tour, the d-list celebrity nonsense, sleepovers with those two. Temporary. What does temporary feel like, to an immortal? I don't know yet."
What's the point. Getting them both out in the open, that's the point.
"I get what you're saying. I see the merit in it. But I don't think my psyche could take being put up and put away after this change. Not in a stir crazy way, in a ... bad way."
Armand doesn't say it. Maybe if his last sense of status quo had not been so roughly shaken apart, he would feel more confident in insisting that Daniel do things his way. And, if he could identify any coherent desire in his making, in his swift abandonment, hadn't it been that setting a vampiric Daniel Molloy loose on the world had its appeal?
All the same. "Alright," he says. "Then call it a last resort."
"We could take some time, after the book tour. It's almost over."
The thing is—
He's thought about this already. When his maker kept leaving things, then kept showing up, then stared at him with such unhinged intensity, daring Daniel not to believe him. Armand is not safe to be around, his proposition is hysterical. And yet. He feels insane, but he makes himself say it.
"Look at things from more of a distance. Show me how to set up a 'death' of myself, if I decide to pull the trigger. Maybe it won't work and we'll get sick of each other in an hour. We still have shit to unpack, you and me, and I can't imagine that won't get in the way sooner or later. But we could see how it goes, just... for the sake of seeing how it goes."
They have spoken of continuing their conversations, remaining in contact, and have done so. This being evidence of that, cemented all the more with the shape of the key Armand keeps caged in his palm. If 'we could take some time' has been what he's been wanting to hear ever since he started haunting Daniel's unlikely existence
well, it's probable he hadn't known it until this moment, until it's offered and there is a flash of anxiety for the prospect of reaching for it, taking it.
At least his expression is under his control, as far as he knows. A drawn out pause.
"Alright," finally. "After the tour." Relaxes a little, a shift in the way he sits. "I leave it to you to explain to the others that it isn't a kidnapping."
Daniel is almost shocked. Was it the right swing after all? The idea of it does something funny to him. This is what he wanted? Followed by a vicious thought reminding him of every other time he's taken time to be with Armand somewhere, the different kinds of torture, the attempts at manipulation, being killed. But that's part of it. It, being, aforementioned shit to unpack.
What the fuck is this going to look like. What is telling Louis going to look like.
And yet it feels correct. Daniel will have to establish further ground rules when the time comes, he's not volunteering to be packed away like last season's clothes for storage. Just visiting. Daniel is not safe with him. But Armand has been around forever, and Armand is connected to him, and they just.
Have to figure it out.
"Just don't treat it like one." He shrugs. "Take it one night at a time, and if something goes wrong, we just try something else."
Armand, also, does not know what it's going to look like.
Perhaps not as much like a remote island, or the multi-millionaire (not quite a billion) high security bunker in the mountains of god knows where that would only be overkill if Daniel's predictions work out accurate. Perhaps it isn't a place at all. They can be a moving target. They can burn through as much fossil fuel as required. There would be logistics, changing scenery, disorienting timezone shifts, distraction from the possibility of them eating each other alive.
Perhaps, perhaps. He will need to think on it.
"Agreed," he says, and then—something. Prickling sixth sense. Armand's attention does not grow more intense, certainly not less, but the world grows a little less vibrant beyond the scope of fire-orange eyes.
A sense like a shadow reaching past Daniel's ribcage, and then, a twinge of pressure. Warmth. Heat.
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will, of course, be alone, how maudlin. He has spent many sunrises alone, anyway. No vampires, barely any humans. Alone isn't as bad as vampire histrionics make it out to be, he would like to believe.
Yet, here he is, in Daniel Molloy's apartment.
There is still a faint trace of scent that a human lived here. A dusting of flour within a cupboard that hadn't been properly swept up, the insides of the coffee machine, the impressions of a fraction of human life committed to the soft couches in front of the television. It is a clean but cluttered place and so, inevitably, the remnants of mortality cling like dust.
It shouldn't appeal. Armand would say, it does not. Yet, he's come here before on his own. He comes here before Daniel has a chance to be here first. Perhaps it's just different. He has never known a mortal who then became a vampire. Even Lestat, mortality still warm on the skin at their time of meeting, a monster already.
He has an impulse to lay on the floor and look at the painted ceiling. Once Armand realises he has this impulse, he does it, finding a decent stretch of rug to accommodate his long limbs. There he waits.
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"Yeah," sounds like agreement from nowhere, as he moves to the kitchen and starts digging through the junk drawer for something. "That's in the top three spots for it."
Another minute before he walks over to the patch of floor Armand has pancaked himself on. Pause—
"You okay?"
Something. A feeling, the barest instinct towards something off-kilter, though he could be projecting. It's been a stressful 24 hours. Daniel has something in his hands, just some little thing that jangles slightly as he sits down cross-legged on the floor. He's passed hours here, more than bear thinking of, sometimes with a little alcohol and a joint, sometimes with prescription drugs, sometimes with nothing. You don't paint your ceiling this way then never lay there and stare at it. But he's not asking because of that.
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"I'm fine," obviously.
He tips his head enough to look at Daniel. Considers telling him he can smell Louis on him, but it's the barest trace, they aren't fucking, and even if his new agenda is radical honesty, he's not sure what the point would be. Daniel and Louis are best friends. Conversely, Armand drank all of Daniel's blood out of his body and replaced it with his own.
It's not nothing, is it? "Did the blood take?" Speaking of.
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Daniel looks at him, looks at Armand looking back at him. Assessing whether or not he thinks it's true (doesn't), and if it's wise to press him (no). Whatever. Door's open. When's the last time someone asked Armand if he was okay, and Armand said something honest? ... When's the last time someone asked Armand if he was okay, and would have actually listened to the answer?
Vampires are fucked. They're still just people, though, aren't they.
"It did." Not lost on Daniel, that this is the first time they've seen each other since things almost got out of hand. "Next nightfall, it was like nothing had happened."
Like magic. So,
"Thanks."
Covers a lot. For helping him feel better, for being patient as Daniel worked through being able to accept it, for... biting him in return. Sharing it. A split burden of having gotten too into it makes it less mortifying, somehow, though he's not sure Armand would agree. And meanwhile, sitting here, Daniel appears to be fidgeting with something— no, turns out he's inching a key onto the metal loop of a keyring, which in itself is attached to a keychain. A round thing, like an Oreo cookie. Two circles of polished wood sandwich a thin piece of colored 'glass'; can't be much more than an inch and a half across.
"So you don't have to keep telekinetically jimmying the lock, or floating in a window, or whatever you do," he says about that which must be a spare key to the apartment. "You'll have to tell me if the glass works. Iphone light wasn't cutting it."
Dichroic stained glass, whatever that means. A young woman was selling them on the street alongside mostly jewelry. It's an imperfect little bangle, hand-made as it is, but he didn't feel like grabbing an I Heart NYC one. Armand can take it or not, use it or not. Up to him.
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Should. He holds the glass up to discern some of its colour against the lamplight, permits an amused exhale. A sun charm. It might be a nice way to decorate, the next time he decides to set down some roots. Stained glass, skylights, dangling crystals.
"I'll keep you appraised," dry, but not cold. Slips a finger through the metal hoop.
Considers saying—
"They're going to get you killed," out of his mouth unchecked. "What we're doing here tonight, it'll buy you time. A means to defend yourself. But you're not at strength, not for another several decades."
And Lestat had understood, hadn't he, keeping Louis and Claudia a secret even from themselves? He must understand now and simply doesn't care. Louis understands very little, cocksure a century later from killing the Parisian coven. This is all so stupid.
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You okay?
No, Daniel, I'm not, I'm concerned about your safety and conflicted over that concern, which is putting me in an irritable mood.
That's probably not it, anyway. Or not all of it. There are depths to Armand that Daniel can't begin to understand, and some of them are horrifying, and some of them, he's starting to learn, are very mundane and petty and sensitive. Which isn't bad. Everyone has those. This is what he reminds himself as he works on formulating a response.
He could say,
I think about you in the sunlight. I thought you looked happy there. It makes me think about hibernating seeds. I saw it, in my head, after I drank from you. Maybe chill out, man.
"I'm not being held hostage," he points out. "I'd be doing the book tour anyway, alone. Someone showed up to kill me all the way back in Atlanta. I know that it's dangerous."
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Arguably, so does Daniel. The book tour is a public affair by its nature, but it's a human kind of public. A far cry from flying through the streets, or engaging in immolation and murder. It just all seems messy, reactive, which is the kind of thing easily critiqued when you're standing outside of it.
As he's pointed out at least once tonight. "And then do as they will to protect you from that focus, I'm aware, but all the same. They're both arrogant in their own ways. Careless in that arrogance and possessing a habit for collateral. You're not held hostage, but you like them."
Far be it from him to accuse Daniel of being blind to flaws, but forgiving of them, maybe. After all, here is Armand, sitting on a rug in his apartment, fidgeting with a spare key.
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They've established before that they each care, Because Reasons, so he can't ask that. Even though this feels far more personal and pointed, not just something that can be excused by perverse fascination over the bond. Armand, sitting on a rug in his apartment, fidgeting with a spare key, saying But you like them.
"Tell me what would work for you," he offers, hands splayed. "What the ideal solution is, for you. And we'll see where we get."
If Daniel has to say no, he'll say no, but there's no harm in hearing Armand out. Especially because there's a fucking bizarre animal part of his brain that says 'Actually, staying with your maker is correct,' and he's not sure how he feels about that, seeing as his maker has tortured him before. Daniel shouldn't want to be alone with Armand anywhere, but especially not an apartment with the lights mostly off.
Still. Here he is.
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Still. Just a second or two. "You separate yourself from both of them," because this is all hypothetical, and people liking people is of no consequence. "As it stands, it appears your status as a vampire has yet to spread widely. Allow Daniel Molloy his death sooner than you were planning, and eliminate yourself as a target. Louis gets his war, and you can do as we all must, from time to time, which is wait out the era before seeking re-entry."
He knows there's a no, likely beginning with separate yourself from, at least as far as Louis is concerned. They have talked on this point. Perhaps Armand should have insisted more firmly.
"I can provide every protection you would require," he says, with a drawn in breath, "for however long you require it."
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But he knows why he asked, even as he finds himself (somehow) baffled to hear Armand give the answer Daniel knew was there.
Armand doesn't try and come up with something else. He doesn't try to weasel around it. Daniel asked, and Armand has told him, and he's done so plainly. Fact now, a step above theory, and Daniel turns this over alongside the experience of inviting Armand to share something with him and getting a completely frank answer. Okay.
Okay.
"So, big shift from the current setup." O b v i o u s l y. But Daniel is hearing him out, and not dismissing it out of hand, because he asked and Armand answered. "A tactic of starving out the problem versus grappling with parts of it as they pop up."
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in the tone of someone who recognises the way that sounds. They have collaborated already on getting information, including directly after the incident itself, and so Armand can imagine what it is Daniel would prefer. But if he were to whittle all this down to which elements he gave a fuck about
which are few, it would, he knows, involve conserving Daniel. He does not want Louis to die, but he has let go of the responsibility involved in keeping him alive, a thing he spent the past seventy-seven years doing. And so, this.
"Your gift is time. You can use it to your advantage to protect yourself."
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Daniel's expression does a thing, like Armand has said something whimsical, if a little strange. A small half smile.
"Still crazy to hear stuff like that."
Your gift is time. Daniel was dying. Does Armand understand, having been sick, too? His gaze darts away, slightly embarrassed shifting them into significance away from very real, present, constant danger. But he gets a fucking grip, looks back.
"I don't want to die." Wild, how often he's had to say this lately. "But I don't want to be ignorant of how things are going to change. Can I ask— well, I'm gonna, but you don't have to answer. If through whatever circumstances, we weren't connected, but everything else was happening the same. The book, angry vamp nation, whatever. What would you be doing?"
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And away from safety, from comfort. Boring but ultimately safe and comfortable mundanity. He had felt his aversion to it even then, decades back. Is that what Armand has on offer? Again?
"And," because he was asked a question, "are you asking that to know if I'm behaving in response to my sense of vampiric responsibility?"
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(And if they weren't severed from each other's minds—
Armand being safety and comfort for Daniel "the boy's fine we're all fine" Molloy is full tilt bananas, you know, Crazy.)
"I'm asking because I want to know. It's a problem." The desire for knowledge, for revelation, more than blood, more than drugs. As Armand has just pointed out, he does run to it. He wants to fucking know. He wants to stick his fingers in, not because he hopes someday the chamber won't be empty when he plays the game, but because he has to know. He loves the truth more than he's ever loved a partner. Even when it's revolting. Maybe especially then. "And because it sounds like your pitch is centered around me. But you are here. You're in the book, you went on record. You're involved."
You. Armand. A real person.
"What's your take? If it was just you."
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Armand could say, I don't know, and it would be true. Disappointing, perhaps.
"Time would move differently," he says instead. "I would watch the tide draw in, the angry vamp nation," a glance, Daniel's words, "work itself to froth. They kill Louis or fail to. Nothing substantially changes. They fail to find me, and those that do, I terminate. Nothing substantially changes. Beyond that, I don't know what answer to give you."
They could also kill him, hurt him meaningfully, but it all seems so depressingly unlikely. His fear of the coven turning on him had had nothing to do with their threat levels so much as he had been afraid of its destruction, of having nothing when Louis finally dismissed him from their romance.
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It just really depressing. Five hundred years and all his experiences, good and ill (mostly ill?) and he just wants to sit there and watch paint dry until the sounds coming from outside stop. Or does he want that. Maybe it's just that Armand doesn't know how to do anything else, without being directed to. Daniel watches him, listens, tries to decide if bluntness or therapy speak would be better, and if he actually has anything to say with either.
"That's your honest take, and so that's an acceptable answer. Best one, probably."
Right? Right.
"I think something is substantially changing."
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But they are all vampires, and vampires only know how to do one thing.
"Perhaps," Armand says. Why not. He can grant Daniel his perspective. He can choose not to get angry at being asked something that could only disappoint them both. He turns his focus down to the key, the key chain, fidgeting. "What changes do you foresee?"
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Sorry. No keen insight on that. He shrugs, and the expression on his face is open, wry, a little apologetic. But this isn't the end of the conversation— still working on it.
Quiet for another little while. Just looking at Armand and thinking about saying what he's going to say, if it's worth the risk. If he's wrong it could be very bad. If he's right it could be worse. But here they are, and the ancient vampire is right about his fledgling. Daniel's always been served by running right into shit.
"You've been fucked over profoundly by change."
Doesn't coach it with an I think or as a question. He knows a bit about Armand, now, maybe more than Armand bargained for. Daniel is still not convinced Armand meant to transform him at all when he first bit him. Maybe he didn't decide until the last second.
"And this is a change. You and me. When you say you want to wait it out, I get why you have that instinct. I get that you're already shouldering a massive fucking change, and now there's this thing happening that might annihilate it."
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Maybe he is being overly confident, but none of the voices of the Conversion have struck him as holding the gravitas of anyone beyond his own years. Armand is simply very difficult to kill. Occasionally, he is struck with the abject terror of the prospect of true immortality, and he remembers why he had never turned anyone prior to Daniel.
But maybe, maybe they could annihilate him as well. Despite everything, the thought doesn't appeal to him. It isn't an instinct he has, the one to die. Just survival at all costs. Pointless preservation.
Change. Fucked over profoundly by change. His gaze is intent where it sets on Mr. Molloy.
"The war escapes containment. The truth breaks through, finally. The world looks to a timely publication and reconsiders its message. You will find yourself, very quickly, at the centre of massive fucking change, no matter how much attention Louis thinks he can draw."
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Armand, the sole survivor. Even if Louis dies, even if Daniel dies.
And isn't that a fucking nightmare?
"Maybe that happens. Maybe it's a lot smaller. Maybe it's just personal, the significant changes heading our way. Basically impossible for me to predict, given I don't have my own baseline for 'normal' yet. What's the world like, for vampires? What's my own undead life like? This shit, the book tour, the d-list celebrity nonsense, sleepovers with those two. Temporary. What does temporary feel like, to an immortal? I don't know yet."
What's the point. Getting them both out in the open, that's the point.
"I get what you're saying. I see the merit in it. But I don't think my psyche could take being put up and put away after this change. Not in a stir crazy way, in a ... bad way."
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Armand doesn't say it. Maybe if his last sense of status quo had not been so roughly shaken apart, he would feel more confident in insisting that Daniel do things his way. And, if he could identify any coherent desire in his making, in his swift abandonment, hadn't it been that setting a vampiric Daniel Molloy loose on the world had its appeal?
All the same. "Alright," he says. "Then call it a last resort."
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Uh oh.
"We could take some time, after the book tour. It's almost over."
The thing is—
He's thought about this already. When his maker kept leaving things, then kept showing up, then stared at him with such unhinged intensity, daring Daniel not to believe him. Armand is not safe to be around, his proposition is hysterical. And yet. He feels insane, but he makes himself say it.
"Look at things from more of a distance. Show me how to set up a 'death' of myself, if I decide to pull the trigger. Maybe it won't work and we'll get sick of each other in an hour. We still have shit to unpack, you and me, and I can't imagine that won't get in the way sooner or later. But we could see how it goes, just... for the sake of seeing how it goes."
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They have spoken of continuing their conversations, remaining in contact, and have done so. This being evidence of that, cemented all the more with the shape of the key Armand keeps caged in his palm. If 'we could take some time' has been what he's been wanting to hear ever since he started haunting Daniel's unlikely existence
well, it's probable he hadn't known it until this moment, until it's offered and there is a flash of anxiety for the prospect of reaching for it, taking it.
At least his expression is under his control, as far as he knows. A drawn out pause.
"Alright," finally. "After the tour." Relaxes a little, a shift in the way he sits. "I leave it to you to explain to the others that it isn't a kidnapping."
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Relaxes?
Daniel is almost shocked. Was it the right swing after all? The idea of it does something funny to him. This is what he wanted? Followed by a vicious thought reminding him of every other time he's taken time to be with Armand somewhere, the different kinds of torture, the attempts at manipulation, being killed. But that's part of it. It, being, aforementioned shit to unpack.
What the fuck is this going to look like. What is telling Louis going to look like.
And yet it feels correct. Daniel will have to establish further ground rules when the time comes, he's not volunteering to be packed away like last season's clothes for storage. Just visiting. Daniel is not safe with him. But Armand has been around forever, and Armand is connected to him, and they just.
Have to figure it out.
"Just don't treat it like one." He shrugs. "Take it one night at a time, and if something goes wrong, we just try something else."
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Perhaps not as much like a remote island, or the multi-millionaire (not quite a billion) high security bunker in the mountains of god knows where that would only be overkill if Daniel's predictions work out accurate. Perhaps it isn't a place at all. They can be a moving target. They can burn through as much fossil fuel as required. There would be logistics, changing scenery, disorienting timezone shifts, distraction from the possibility of them eating each other alive.
Perhaps, perhaps. He will need to think on it.
"Agreed," he says, and then—something. Prickling sixth sense. Armand's attention does not grow more intense, certainly not less, but the world grows a little less vibrant beyond the scope of fire-orange eyes.
A sense like a shadow reaching past Daniel's ribcage, and then, a twinge of pressure. Warmth. Heat.
Change of subject.
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