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.
It's probably only because of his current train of thought: Daniel isn't safe with Armand. He's confident that he's safe from everything else, but he's not safe from Armand. Frequently angry with him, and they've jumped the line on his maker's bitter belief that all fledglings will resent being turned by picking someone who was already primed to hate him.
They get on sometimes. And it's disorienting, and perversely enjoyable. But it's always work. Daniel is on alert, with Armand. If there's ever any comfort between them it's because Daniel isn't unnerved by freaks or psychopaths, not because he thinks there isn't very real danger.
So fast. It happens so fast he doesn't know what it is at first, doesn't have a conscious thought.
Later, he will dissect it. That Armand is quicker, more insidious, artful. It feels more real. Eimear hadn't frightened him because hew as focused on Louis, and because from his perspective, she played her hand too soon— someone who says they'll do the worst thing out the gate is easy to control. She didn't have anything else. But this isn't that. It's not the worst thing. It's just the tip of the claw, and something inside Daniel understands that before his brain does.
Things happen.
Daniel stares ahead of him, at Armand. They're talking and there's a sensation he doesn't know what to make of, but before he can even think of thinking of it, it has changed. He has changed. Eyes go back to over-dense pale green like someone's hit a light switch in his head, a split-second withdraw into himself, mechanical, immediate, defensive.
He doesn't say No, but he feels it. No, a solid command, a denial, not-quite-panic but getting here. Shoving away at the splinter of heat with the same phantom limb-like sense that he used to knock Armand's fingertips off the door he'd held open in Louis' head. The same sense he uses to read minds, map out humans, mentally call Louis, listen in to other vampires, turned up so high it strains him like shredding tendons.
Physical movement. The splinter sits along a thread. He goes to it—
"Stop," is louder than he means it to be. Or is it? Is it just echoed in his own head? Leaning forward, half scrambled, one hand shot out to grab Armand by his jaw. That's where the fucking teeth are, that's where the threat is. It all happens in the same instant. Shadow, staring, feeling, heat, No, move, Stop. Like double, triple exposed film.
Almost elastic, this sensation of snapping, and by the time Armand feels it like a white-hot twist through his own brain, there is a hand on his jaw.
But before that, in the frozen moments of time he had already been committing to careful study, he watches that change. Like a mask slipping—on or off, a matter of philosophy. Eyes that go from blue to violent green to burning red. Good, he has time to think. Good, and then no room to follow along after.
Armand's lips peel back and show fangs. Relatively small ones, but sharp. Daniel has felt them before.
Is Armand in danger? It doesn't really matter. All his self-assuredness in his own immortality flies out the window at any measure of threat, and with the same confusing blur of physicality that occurs after a cat jumps another—a sofa goes shuddering backwards from an errant shoulder, and Daniel may hear the sound of his own spine striking the floorboards before he realises he's been rolled.
A hand, gripping the clothing at his chest in a messy and harsh fistful of fabric, is the source of that leverage. But also: Daniel is not burning.
Quite a lot of this evening can be summed up with a meme. You know the meme. Guy from Arrested Development opens the paper bag.
Daniel looks up at his ceiling. Blue skies. Framing a creature.
On his back, to the sound of books falling off his the console table behind his sofa (also just called a sofa table or accent table, Daniel had learned, tediously), the past ten seconds finally catch up. He sees them happen in order, and understands what's gone on. In the moment there was nothing. In the moment he couldn't think, had no time to, just did.
A breath in.
"Okay."
Okay.
Everything hurts, like he's sprinted up a hill for an hour. What the fuck.
Armand is crouched over him like a gargoyle, barely touching save for that fist against his chest, wherever Daniel's hands have stayed or landed. Then, relaxing. A knee against the ground, next to Daniel's hip. The fist his hand has made relaxes marginally, making less of a strangling trap of his clothes.
So expressive sometimes. One strained syllable manages to convey No fucking shit what an incredible investigator you've become!!!
Daniel is still experiencing everything in his mind, having to replay it again and again to full grasp the entire incident. Armand, Armand, Armand, of course he's not safe with Armand, but this is why he came here, right, this is the whole point, not scheduling playdates he probably won't come back from.
He remembers he has a body and that it does stuff on a delay, and he raises one hand, to—
What? He seems like he might be reaching towards Armand's terrifying face. Diverts. Does not do that, instead rests his hand over Armand's on his chest. Thinks better, or just differently, of that after a moment, and just lets it drop back down to the floor. He can't tell if this all takes a few seconds, or an hour.
"She couldn't have done it," he says, at length. "She'd have never had the juice. I think you. I think you're the scariest thing walking the Earth, you know what."
Said while looking up at him, dizzy. Heart beating like a scared rabbit's, though he doesn't squirm away. No fear twisting his face. Just Daniel, aware, nerves all turned inside out again, observing him through the disorienting haze of, once more, doing a very tiny thing that is nevertheless too much for a vampire of zero years.
A few seconds, an hour. Armand watches this process, watches Daniel think. Watches him follow instinct, and then think better of it, and better again. Hears his heart and can feel the tension in his body but doesn't see fear, hear fear, even as he's being told he's the scariest thing walking the earth.
He shouldn't like that.
But he spent an awful lot of time convincing Louis he was harmless. Flexes of power, certainly, reminders here and there, but those were all part of a careful balance that means fuck all when Louis probably did not consider any of it when he threw Armand in a wall. Still to him, Armand's mind retreating, and he hauls it back. Daniel knows. Armand does not feel the impulse to walk this moment back.
The breath that leaves him is nearly human, in the way it has a trace of humour to it. Does he know what. Then, Armand bringing his own wrist up to slice open with a fang.
Daniel knows. Daniel has known. Maybe as far back as the bar in San Fransisco, looking up at Louis' boyfriend and feeling like he'd heard a dog whistle chime. Curiosity. What's going on there.
Foreshadowing. That's what was going on there.
No image to ruin. Daniel knew that Armand was an ancient monster made of hunger the second he looked at him floating over. Maybe sooner. How many names of god. Do you know them all, or just the number. Do you have an answer for everything, an excuse for everything. Why do you say electronic mailbox.
Daniel's head is spinning. He comes back to this plane of existence, or at least a little, when he smells blood. This time, he does rest his hand on Armand, against the knee bracketing him.
"That's starting to become convenient."
A funny joke about how Armand is always the one giving him the headache.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
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?"
no subject
(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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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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They get on sometimes. And it's disorienting, and perversely enjoyable. But it's always work. Daniel is on alert, with Armand. If there's ever any comfort between them it's because Daniel isn't unnerved by freaks or psychopaths, not because he thinks there isn't very real danger.
So fast. It happens so fast he doesn't know what it is at first, doesn't have a conscious thought.
Later, he will dissect it. That Armand is quicker, more insidious, artful. It feels more real. Eimear hadn't frightened him because hew as focused on Louis, and because from his perspective, she played her hand too soon— someone who says they'll do the worst thing out the gate is easy to control. She didn't have anything else. But this isn't that. It's not the worst thing. It's just the tip of the claw, and something inside Daniel understands that before his brain does.
Things happen.
Daniel stares ahead of him, at Armand. They're talking and there's a sensation he doesn't know what to make of, but before he can even think of thinking of it, it has changed. He has changed. Eyes go back to over-dense pale green like someone's hit a light switch in his head, a split-second withdraw into himself, mechanical, immediate, defensive.
He doesn't say No, but he feels it. No, a solid command, a denial, not-quite-panic but getting here. Shoving away at the splinter of heat with the same phantom limb-like sense that he used to knock Armand's fingertips off the door he'd held open in Louis' head. The same sense he uses to read minds, map out humans, mentally call Louis, listen in to other vampires, turned up so high it strains him like shredding tendons.
Physical movement. The splinter sits along a thread. He goes to it—
"Stop," is louder than he means it to be. Or is it? Is it just echoed in his own head? Leaning forward, half scrambled, one hand shot out to grab Armand by his jaw. That's where the fucking teeth are, that's where the threat is. It all happens in the same instant. Shadow, staring, feeling, heat, No, move, Stop. Like double, triple exposed film.
His eyes are red.
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But before that, in the frozen moments of time he had already been committing to careful study, he watches that change. Like a mask slipping—on or off, a matter of philosophy. Eyes that go from blue to violent green to burning red. Good, he has time to think. Good, and then no room to follow along after.
Armand's lips peel back and show fangs. Relatively small ones, but sharp. Daniel has felt them before.
Is Armand in danger? It doesn't really matter. All his self-assuredness in his own immortality flies out the window at any measure of threat, and with the same confusing blur of physicality that occurs after a cat jumps another—a sofa goes shuddering backwards from an errant shoulder, and Daniel may hear the sound of his own spine striking the floorboards before he realises he's been rolled.
A hand, gripping the clothing at his chest in a messy and harsh fistful of fabric, is the source of that leverage. But also: Daniel is not burning.
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Daniel looks up at his ceiling. Blue skies. Framing a creature.
On his back, to the sound of books falling off his the console table behind his sofa (also just called a sofa table or accent table, Daniel had learned, tediously), the past ten seconds finally catch up. He sees them happen in order, and understands what's gone on. In the moment there was nothing. In the moment he couldn't think, had no time to, just did.
A breath in.
"Okay."
Okay.
Everything hurts, like he's sprinted up a hill for an hour. What the fuck.
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Okay, and he draws a breath.
"And now you're in pain," he observes.
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So expressive sometimes. One strained syllable manages to convey No fucking shit what an incredible investigator you've become!!!
Daniel is still experiencing everything in his mind, having to replay it again and again to full grasp the entire incident. Armand, Armand, Armand, of course he's not safe with Armand, but this is why he came here, right, this is the whole point, not scheduling playdates he probably won't come back from.
He remembers he has a body and that it does stuff on a delay, and he raises one hand, to—
What? He seems like he might be reaching towards Armand's terrifying face. Diverts. Does not do that, instead rests his hand over Armand's on his chest. Thinks better, or just differently, of that after a moment, and just lets it drop back down to the floor. He can't tell if this all takes a few seconds, or an hour.
"She couldn't have done it," he says, at length. "She'd have never had the juice. I think you. I think you're the scariest thing walking the Earth, you know what."
Said while looking up at him, dizzy. Heart beating like a scared rabbit's, though he doesn't squirm away. No fear twisting his face. Just Daniel, aware, nerves all turned inside out again, observing him through the disorienting haze of, once more, doing a very tiny thing that is nevertheless too much for a vampire of zero years.
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He shouldn't like that.
But he spent an awful lot of time convincing Louis he was harmless. Flexes of power, certainly, reminders here and there, but those were all part of a careful balance that means fuck all when Louis probably did not consider any of it when he threw Armand in a wall. Still to him, Armand's mind retreating, and he hauls it back. Daniel knows. Armand does not feel the impulse to walk this moment back.
The breath that leaves him is nearly human, in the way it has a trace of humour to it. Does he know what. Then, Armand bringing his own wrist up to slice open with a fang.
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Foreshadowing. That's what was going on there.
No image to ruin. Daniel knew that Armand was an ancient monster made of hunger the second he looked at him floating over. Maybe sooner. How many names of god. Do you know them all, or just the number. Do you have an answer for everything, an excuse for everything. Why do you say electronic mailbox.
Daniel's head is spinning. He comes back to this plane of existence, or at least a little, when he smells blood. This time, he does rest his hand on Armand, against the knee bracketing him.
"That's starting to become convenient."
A funny joke about how Armand is always the one giving him the headache.
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