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.
The ninety-nine names for Allah are almost like wishes. The noble god, the compassionate god, the splendid god. Yes, Armand knows them all, one way or another.
Daniel's hand on his knee feels like it burns through the fabric, until it's gone, and they are touching flesh to flesh. He does not, for once, feel out of control, but in so much possession of it that it's intoxicating. The resurrecting god, the ever-watchful god, the nourishing god. Warm blood trickles from piercing wound down his wrist, his palm, follows a finger.
"Is it?" He's still in there. His tone is dry, has humour. Is this convenient? Daniel, wanting to taste his blood again?
He turns his hand. The wound glistens like rubies, and that thin stream of blood clings, circles around.
Daniel's whole body aches, and his head and various other internal soft parts feel like there's static and aluminum foil crunched inside of him. Extreme exhaustion. It wasn't like this after the attack at the Met, he was rattled, he was strung-out, but it wasn't fucking flattened. He has to assume that some of how he feels right now is a delayed response, that reacting to Armand's little test here (this fucking asshole) has tipped him over.
Oh right and he did a bunch of cocaine this morning. Maybe that's a thing. Whatever. His attention is already being fishhooked by wet, hot blood sliding over rich skin.
"Yeah."
Yeah. Their favorite.
"Does it still feel good for you, when it's from your wrist?"
It must. Armand had really gotten into it, the last time they saw each other. That time they haven't talked about, seem to not be talking about, with some weight to the avoidance. And here is Armand, now, going immediately to slicing himself open, like he can't fucking wait for it. Daniel's other hand has moved almost without conscious decision, sliding fingers around his maker's elbow as he looks at the crimson line trailing down.
Feels good enough? Or enough, Mr. Molloy, of trying to figure him out. It could go either way.
Nerves crackle and spark in the wake of fingers sliding along his skin. This is a long moment to find himself straddling another man after all this measured distance, but there is currently no room in his mind to second guess or wonder at what he is or is not doing and why. It's a long moment, equally, for Daniel to fail to tell him to shift aside, psychic injury or not.
He turns his wrist. An offering, hovered within range, Daniel's hand on his arm. Yes, it feels good. Yes, it feels different from simply offering his neck. It feels correct, here, it feels like benevolence, it feels different from recent intimacies and familiar to old ones.
The wound is closing already. Daniel will need to apply his fangs.
Could go a lot of ways. That's enough yapping, drink the blood, now, Molloy. Daniel stares at him. Maybe if he had the energy he'd push himself up and really cause an issue. But he feels like he's been flattened by a big roller truck, a big roller truck with big pretty eyes, and it's all he can do to touch Armand's arm (and his knee) and let the heady smell of his blood reach deep into him and get him somewhere animalistic.
Armand already knows that his fledgling, this mouthy old man he should have killed decades ago and been done with, is bad at reeling himself in. He doesn't need to warn him again. So he doesn't.
Daniel uses his hand on Armand's arm to shift him closer. Doesn't pull the little wound right to his mouth— off-kilter, but on purpose. He laps up the trail of blood that's wept and slid down his wrist, escaping towards his elbow. His tongue pushes up, then, finally, to where Armand has cut himself. Daniel gets there in perfect tandem with the way instinct fogs over his brain, and by the time he's hit that small wound, he's no longer thinking clearly, and he doesn't hesitate at all to open it back up with his own fangs. Fuck knows when they dropped. And then it's just blood, in his mouth, clutched there, his hand on the back of Armand's, the other clenching hard at his knee.
There is nothing very complicated or pathological about his response to a warm tongue against his skin. Human and base, really, the rush of heat it arouses, and it doesn't come as a shock whatsoever. Even more than that, he can imagine something undoing itself to permit this contact—the scent of blood, natural hunger, the kind of necessary inhibition lowering that sees a vampire put their fangs into the flesh of another.
A twinge of tension up the insides of Armand's thighs in the moment that his skin is rebroken. His hand curls into a fist, and he is patient and still as his blood feeds into Daniel's mouth.
Good lesson. Very educational.
Will Daniel keep coming back for more? Is that something he wants? It had been Daniel that had spoken to setting down boundaries, to make his position clear on the ways they could need each other, or make use of each other. Still, isn't that all talk?
His other hand is resting on Daniel's chest. Taking some of his weight. Pinning him without relaxing enough to properly straddle.
Like last time, it's so good it borders on euphoric. Unlike last time, he has half a degree of self-awareness— the recency of the pain, probably; with the migraines, he'd already had a few days to recover. Armand's blood doing more immediate work, versus just getting Daniel high on pure, liquid endorphins.
Tastes like nothing else. Feels like nothing else. Armand's pulse beats in his mouth, and his own heart keeps the same tempo. His gaze is unfocused but still there, still seeing Armand haloed by his kitschy painted ceiling. Once again, Daniel isn't going to be able to stop. Something in the back of his head tells him he should, but he finds no ability to do it. Instead, he tugs Armand closer. 'Free' hand curling in the fold of his knee, between thigh and calf. Armand won't crush him with his weight. He's a monster now, too.
Still hurts. Layer over layer of sensation. Feels bad, feels incredible. Was he sitting up, seconds ago, talking about the unknown future before them? Or was that hours ago? How long have they been here?
Armand settles as urged. Feels the bloodtaking like a golden thread drawn through his skin, heart to wrist. Thinks it would be nice to test that hunger, offer his blood after a couple of days, and it is perhaps the most clearly expressed desire he has spoken to himself since he first offered his wrist, at least as far as Daniel is concerned.
Aware of his body beneath him, of wanting it. Armand's hand sliding up his chest as Daniel drinks, curling around his throat to feel the shift of muscle with each swallow, thumb following the path of his adam's apple with the barest scrape of nail.
Daniel, not stopping. Armand lets him have it for some time before finally drawing his wrist down, a spill of blood glistening on the other man's chin. He wants—
He wants. Armand holds himself here, still, studying. He is a split second from acting on impulse, but a moment, first, to judge the reflection of himself in eyes that have gone—what colour?
Armand's hand on his throat. Always so gentle. He's never violent - it felt violent - what now? Different, soft sparks of feeling that describes a language not previously used between them. Private, this time, made up of accidentally created code words, expressed through Daniel's hand on his knee, and Armand's thumb over the cartilage over his larynx.
There's always a pang of regret when drinking blood must stop. He feels it in the pit of his stomach even when he does it himself, when he hits that point of This person is now dying and lizard-brained impulses finally kick in and allow him to detach. He feels it here, too, when Armand moves his arm. Disappointment followed quickly by intrigue, because as incredible as Armand's blood is, Armand is here, too, looking down at him. Looking at him with an expression Daniel recognizes, but not on this face. Certainly not directed at him.
Or—
Or?
Daniel's eyes are amber, shifting to bloody, warm and glowing. A mirror.
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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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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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Daniel's hand on his knee feels like it burns through the fabric, until it's gone, and they are touching flesh to flesh. He does not, for once, feel out of control, but in so much possession of it that it's intoxicating. The resurrecting god, the ever-watchful god, the nourishing god. Warm blood trickles from piercing wound down his wrist, his palm, follows a finger.
"Is it?" He's still in there. His tone is dry, has humour. Is this convenient? Daniel, wanting to taste his blood again?
He turns his hand. The wound glistens like rubies, and that thin stream of blood clings, circles around.
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Oh right and he did a bunch of cocaine this morning. Maybe that's a thing. Whatever. His attention is already being fishhooked by wet, hot blood sliding over rich skin.
"Yeah."
Yeah. Their favorite.
"Does it still feel good for you, when it's from your wrist?"
It must. Armand had really gotten into it, the last time they saw each other. That time they haven't talked about, seem to not be talking about, with some weight to the avoidance. And here is Armand, now, going immediately to slicing himself open, like he can't fucking wait for it. Daniel's other hand has moved almost without conscious decision, sliding fingers around his maker's elbow as he looks at the crimson line trailing down.
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Feels good enough? Or enough, Mr. Molloy, of trying to figure him out. It could go either way.
Nerves crackle and spark in the wake of fingers sliding along his skin. This is a long moment to find himself straddling another man after all this measured distance, but there is currently no room in his mind to second guess or wonder at what he is or is not doing and why. It's a long moment, equally, for Daniel to fail to tell him to shift aside, psychic injury or not.
He turns his wrist. An offering, hovered within range, Daniel's hand on his arm. Yes, it feels good. Yes, it feels different from simply offering his neck. It feels correct, here, it feels like benevolence, it feels different from recent intimacies and familiar to old ones.
The wound is closing already. Daniel will need to apply his fangs.
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Armand already knows that his fledgling, this mouthy old man he should have killed decades ago and been done with, is bad at reeling himself in. He doesn't need to warn him again. So he doesn't.
Daniel uses his hand on Armand's arm to shift him closer. Doesn't pull the little wound right to his mouth— off-kilter, but on purpose. He laps up the trail of blood that's wept and slid down his wrist, escaping towards his elbow. His tongue pushes up, then, finally, to where Armand has cut himself. Daniel gets there in perfect tandem with the way instinct fogs over his brain, and by the time he's hit that small wound, he's no longer thinking clearly, and he doesn't hesitate at all to open it back up with his own fangs. Fuck knows when they dropped. And then it's just blood, in his mouth, clutched there, his hand on the back of Armand's, the other clenching hard at his knee.
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A twinge of tension up the insides of Armand's thighs in the moment that his skin is rebroken. His hand curls into a fist, and he is patient and still as his blood feeds into Daniel's mouth.
Good lesson. Very educational.
Will Daniel keep coming back for more? Is that something he wants? It had been Daniel that had spoken to setting down boundaries, to make his position clear on the ways they could need each other, or make use of each other. Still, isn't that all talk?
His other hand is resting on Daniel's chest. Taking some of his weight. Pinning him without relaxing enough to properly straddle.
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Tastes like nothing else. Feels like nothing else. Armand's pulse beats in his mouth, and his own heart keeps the same tempo. His gaze is unfocused but still there, still seeing Armand haloed by his kitschy painted ceiling. Once again, Daniel isn't going to be able to stop. Something in the back of his head tells him he should, but he finds no ability to do it. Instead, he tugs Armand closer. 'Free' hand curling in the fold of his knee, between thigh and calf. Armand won't crush him with his weight. He's a monster now, too.
Still hurts. Layer over layer of sensation. Feels bad, feels incredible. Was he sitting up, seconds ago, talking about the unknown future before them? Or was that hours ago? How long have they been here?
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Aware of his body beneath him, of wanting it. Armand's hand sliding up his chest as Daniel drinks, curling around his throat to feel the shift of muscle with each swallow, thumb following the path of his adam's apple with the barest scrape of nail.
Daniel, not stopping. Armand lets him have it for some time before finally drawing his wrist down, a spill of blood glistening on the other man's chin. He wants—
He wants. Armand holds himself here, still, studying. He is a split second from acting on impulse, but a moment, first, to judge the reflection of himself in eyes that have gone—what colour?
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There's always a pang of regret when drinking blood must stop. He feels it in the pit of his stomach even when he does it himself, when he hits that point of This person is now dying and lizard-brained impulses finally kick in and allow him to detach. He feels it here, too, when Armand moves his arm. Disappointment followed quickly by intrigue, because as incredible as Armand's blood is, Armand is here, too, looking down at him. Looking at him with an expression Daniel recognizes, but not on this face. Certainly not directed at him.
Or—
Or?
Daniel's eyes are amber, shifting to bloody, warm and glowing. A mirror.
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