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.
Still bleeding at a trickle, so when Armand sets his palm down on the floor next to Daniel's head, it'll leave a mark. More of one, when he slides it forwards, as he lowers himself down, holding his fledgling by the throat so gently.
He would like to be wanted. He feels something familiar, that pull of his own wanting, the kind that doesn't seem to care how much wanting is returned to him. Not in the moment. Enough, for now, that Daniel has yet to tell him no. That he has keys to his place. Plans for something else. Plans he might be compromising, now, as he presses his mouth to Daniel's.
Warm, slick with blood, his own blood. A kiss that barely gets started before veering just slightly to kiss away the blood from his chin.
Staring at each other across a penthouse sitting room. Across a dining table. Combative, with an audience. Quiet, while everyone else was asleep. Daniel made jokes about it to himself, and maybe they were observed in his head, when it was still accessible, maybe they weren't.
Or?
Never thought any of it was serious. But then, this might not be either. The kiss is like an accident that Armand plays it cool about. Daniel tips his head back to give him access to where blood has slipped. Or was it not an accident. Is it not. Is it, instead, something like a thief in the night. Will Daniel even notice, dizzy as he is from pain and blood.
"You don't have to be afraid of stupid decisions here," Daniel tells him. Can't say why he tells him this. Also can't say why both hands are still there, still touching. "With me, I mean. We know the fucking worst of each other already."
What's the worst that could happen? Are they going to hate each other some more? Don't, he tells himself, but there's always this thing in him. This horrible black hole. He wants to know.
Very sober, these words. More cognizant than he might have anticipated. Still, Armand doesn't straighten up, doesn't recoil. Tips his head, says, "What does the scariest thing in the world have to fear?"
And maybe Daniel doesn't have to answer that. Not, at least, while he's being kissed, which he is, this time firmer, this time lingering. Does not have to say out loud that there is something assuring in the sentiment regardless, because maybe it translates in how the way he holds himself on top of and over melts down just that little bit more, the splay of his fingers at Daniel's throat relaxing.
Not just tasting himself there in Daniel's mouth, but questing for more.
No. That's cowardly. Only a little true, that he might say that, if not for being dazzled by blood, by the bond, by the strange spell this meeting has cast over him. But even if he said it, his insides would scream at him about it. I want to know, I want to know, I want to fucking feel.
Armand was supposed to give him something peaceful and safe, fifty years ago. He didn't. Stopped then carved even the promise of it out of his head. Daniel wouldn't have accepted, didn't accept, not really, but there's something in him still shaped that way. Shaped like Armand's hands, the tendrils of his mind, the points of his fangs.
A deeper kiss. Daniel's world tips to one side. What?
And yet, he returns it. He can taste remnants of Armand's blood, but more importantly, Armand. What does a five hundred year old monster taste like? Postwar cigarettes? Incense? Every human life he's ever taken?
Or just someone. Just a person. Just a kiss that feels good, because he's been wondering for a stupidly, embarrassingly long time.
Just a person. A vampire is very much like one, and by some metrics, even more like one than most people. Too much feeling, too much humanity, brimming with it, bleeding it.
At least, in some ways. Not all of them. But in this, it's familiar—a warm kiss, the pleasant and forceful weight of another human-shaped body on top of Daniel's. No cigarettes, these days, no nips of alcohol to wile away the evening, just whatever intrinsic and unique taste is carried through saliva and the lingering impression of iron from this recent exchange.
Tastes in return. Has not indulged in Daniel's innerworkings since being offered his blood, and chases this new intimacy with more eagerness than he would casually admit to. Long moments of just this, this contact, making out on the ground like teenagers who only just discovered that this sort of thing feels nice.
And then it's over. Armand, sitting up, orange eyed, hazy rather than sharp. But, a spell shaken off, in part. Whatever had come over him, after wrapping fingers around some vital and vulnerable thing in Daniel, threatening it.
Enough that he can say, "And this is where you say—"
"Did I push back against the immolation correctly?"
Is that it. Did he do it. Are they finishing each other's sentences yet.
Daniel's hand is still hooked against the bend of Armand's knee, and his eyes are still an uncanny mirror of his maker's. Hazy sunset colors, blood-drunk and confused and interested. He should shove him off. He should pull him back down. Armand owes him his story, his explanation, the devastating confrontation and blowout it'll be. They could do that after they fuck or something, maybe.
Daniel can blame the blood. The cocaine from earlier. The stress from the attack. What's Armand's excuse, for initiating a kiss with some screwed up old man he doesn't even like? Emotion slithers up Daniel's spine into the immediate forefront of his mind and he has to put effort into not letting half-panicked laughter escape. What the fuck are they doing.
It doesn't sound like it was the wrong answer, if there is even a right answer. There is blood on both their mouths, their eyes matching tones of coal fire, and Armand stays seated where he is as if he has captured something. A sense that he could continue this to its logical conclusion and he would not be turned aside, for whatever fucking reason. He will, later, imagine this configuration again, and be resigned to the imagining, because, of course.
Of course, he wants. Of course, sex is now involved, even when it's uninvolved. "You're not on fire," he says. "So I would call it a success."
Now, Armand moves, a languid rolling aside, drawing a leg back over, away, folding in. Resting his weight on his palms.
"The doing is still incapacitating, but you'll be spared some seconds in a fight."
Logically, he knows he'd have to try it a few more times. He thinks maybe he'd like to see Armand do it to someone else, so he can watch the completed mechanics of it. A mortal would do to start, but another vampire would be better. He doesn't expect there'll be a shortage of opponents, so, doable.
Daniel says nothing as his maker moves off of him. Watches a dreamworld, where he reaches out, makes him stay. But he can't make Armand do anything. He can just look at him, take in his profile, and wonder what the fuck. This is the end of this encounter, he knows that. Something about Armand is like it was the last time they met. Sliding away into himself.
Daniel will let hi—
"So,"
just kidding
"I won't pretend that last time we were in here, I didn't almost ask you to stay, with intent, or that you didn't seem like you might have wanted me to ask. You don't have the blood drinking excuse this time, though, it's just all those drill-into-your-brain stares in Dubai that I wasn't totally imagining after all, huh."
A moment of stillness, like a frozen frame of film, somewhere in the midst of this before movement returns. Fingers curling in, a shift in posture. As many times as they made glaring eye contact, Armand would also wander his look away—normally under moments of pretense, that heady mix of genuine shame and the pantomime thereof.
Doesn't, here, being asked something without the obvious question mark. Daniel won't pretend. Skill issue.
"You were an invasive presence in a contained environment," he says. Spiky barricades around this thing being addressed. This want. "And it's been a long time since the blood has influenced my decision making."
Blaring in his brain, a siren, almost ask you to stay, wanted me to ask. Thinks, Daniel gets his almost. This is stupid. He should kill him.
"Yeah," is agreeable. Daniel is still laying on the floor. He's probably a little bit high, but it's been many decades since being a little bit high has influenced his decision making. He can't use this as an excuse, either, but he is using it as help. Like a step-ladder. Shearing away anxiety about pulling the trigger on all these bad idea words, aware that the shearing is happening.
He thinks Armand looks terrified.
Predators are most dangerous when they're cornered.
Hm.
"You had a lot of years in which you could have just killed me, though. And now. You've ripped the bandaid off. You could make as many fledglings as you want. Younger, prettier, less irritating fledglings. I think about that. I think about how it's not me, not really, I'm incidental. I just happened to be the kid Louis was with. I think about the years I spent with a hole in the shape of something in me, and not knowing it was you."
An accidental piece of this puzzle. Daniel is just his job. What's Armand? The devil? Just a person, still?
Armand could laugh. Younger, prettier. Even 'less irritating' induces a sense of strange revulsion in him, like any fledgling than the one he has made would be unacceptable, but specifically, the bland creatures wandering the streets, as many fledglings as anyone could want, and Daniel may as well suggest he adopt a harem of children, even if he only means comely thirty-somethings. Children still.
He feels himself becoming angry. It is unclear to him as to what at, exactly. Words out of Daniel's mouth, each one striking a special and unique cord.
"Consider getting your story straight," he says. "Either you're a meaningless afterthought or I want you desperately."
Daniel continues to stare at Armand. The shape of him now is like the shape of him in San Fransisco, and in Dubai. Always looking at him from the fucking floor. Up, up, at the horrifying monster, the scariest thing on Earth. That kissed him tenderly, and is now asking him to choose from options that both seem insane. There's some part of him that says Oh I guess it's neither, but it's the part that's reeling over the potential truth. Most often, he knows what to do with answers then he gets them, even when they're baffling, or frightening. They're just not usually about him.
You what?
Daniel moves one hand. Near his knee.
"Stay for a while," is a question, offer, plea, demand, something. A dozen layers. Armand's profile. Armand's eyes. The ceiling. "I'll fall asleep anyway when the sun's high enough, and you can fuck off and I won't even be able to ask you why."
The reality is he won't, not when Daniel asks him in so many words to stay. Some part of him can pretend like it's an order, a directive, something to follow while he is spinning out anchorless in the void. His nails dig into the rug's pile, a flicker of a look away at this little excuse tossed his way. It appeals, of course it does.
"Why do you want me to?" Armand asks, because it's only fair. Daniel might say, I don't know, fucked up vampire reasons, and that might be a good enough reason to go.
There are folded up layers to it all. Fucked up vampire reasons are definitely a factor, and a big one, but I don't know would be a lie. He wants Armand to stay because he wants Armand to stay. Daniel feels raw and freaked out from the attack, he feels shattered from their practice awfulness, he feels... He just fucking feels, especially after that.
Armand scares him, and pissed him off. Armand is also turning out to make him feel safe, and he's sure that's a fucked up vampire thing. But Daniel is a vampire.
His hand moves again. Touches Armand's knee, creeping up like he'd held him before, now at this different angle. He'll have to let Louis know he isn't making it back to the hotel, but if he's honest — and we're being honest, tonight — he's not sure he'd be able to even without the incentive of Armand being here. He's exhausted. The blood dazzling and dizzying but he wants to crawl away somewhere and take a nap so it can do its work and his insides stop feeling so brittle.
Two thoughts, one after the other. A maker's instinct, maybe, preventing him from turning this request aside. The second thought is
not worth entertaining, too far in the past to reach, nearly half a millennia. He looks down at Daniel's hand, re-establishing a point of connection. Studies that hand, far from work rough, but not delicate without being indelicate. Remembers watching his hands in Dubai, ably dancing over laptop keys, or one gripping the other as it began to shake.
Armand will stay, of course. Daniel is still on the floor. Hackles lowering.
"You should rest," he says, and then, "I'll stay."
It occurs to Daniel, laying on the floor with one hand hooked against Armand's knee, that Armand is the only being in this world who cannot see into his head and whose head Daniel cannot see into, the only one that he can't be tempted to spy on, that he doesn't have to worry about slipping up around. It can be quiet, with Armand. And he can rest.
A profound emotion for a long, silent moment.
Finally he moves. Things to take care of. Executive decisions to be made, like coaxing his maker by the hand, and offering him pajamas that will be just too big for him. Overstepping, but Armand had kissed him, had said a shattering thing, and so this is the call. In a private moment, changing into sleepwear and brushing his teeth, he tells Louis (who is not happy), but at least he can be honest in how fucking tired he is and how he really doesn't think he'll make it back in time.
There is a coffin in his bedroom, but the windows are sealed. His regular bed his fine.
"Just throw a blanket over my head if you bail," he says. "There's no direct light path from the hallway into here, but the ambient light will probably wake me up."
He finds himself following along a path that Daniel has summoned into being through his request. Not quite going through the motions, too engaged for that, but feeling, perhaps, a little out of body as he gets changed into tartan pyjama pants and a loose T-shirt, hears the sound of teeth brushing, finds himself considering the sleeping arrangements. There should be some kind of succinct word for desperately wanting a thing that is currently happening.
A word for the thing he is wanting, while we're at it. Sex, except they aren't actually having any? Companionship? Ill-fitting, from what Armand knows about companionship. It is more of a feeling, similar to the way it feels to bite down, and feeling the skin break, just as the blood comes up.
Onto the bed.
Considers these words, still sitting. Posture manages not to add to any haunted doll vibes, a sideways slouch with his palm bracing him. Says, "Do you remember when I said that turning you wasn't about him," is only technically a question, continuing with, "You said you believed me."
Slightly Victorian-feeling, in pajamas. His exposed ankles. If Daniel knew Armand was thinking about the s-word he might give him shit for unpopular kinks, or more likely, just turn red. Running out of steam to be combative, this evening. A lot's gone on, and the sun threatens the seam of the horizon.
Words, a word. Daniel would pick from: validation, intimacy, comfort.
Are they both the same kind of lonely, he wonders.
Pillows get re-arranged, and Daniel finds himself on his side, negotiating with bedsheets that are thankfully clean, but tucked in very tight as he's mostly used his bed as a desk/filing cabinet/storage space now that he mostly sleeps in a glorified shoebox most of the time. White sheets, except for one that's light green because the extra topsheet on the nice set vanished a year or so ago, and a navy blue duvet. Unremarkable things, as he listens to Armand say this thing.
"You didn't sound like you were lying."
Interesting how little they actually need telepathy, in some respects. In moments where he thinks they may have only said the things around all that. It's as good as. Memory is not distorted, here. They heard each other.
"Do you know why you made me?"
It's fine if he doesn't know, his tone suggests. A hell of thing happened. Armand doesn't have to rewrite history if he's feeling a way, tonight. Love or horror or just lashing out. It's behind them, that incident. What it made them is significant, and will define the rest of their existences, but that incident was just... something that went on.
The question is asked and Armand sinks into silence. Daniel does not need telepathic access to his brain to suppose, maybe, he's wandering back in time, remembering the smell of smoke in the air, the hard floor beneath his knees, his fangs in Daniel's neck. The actions come back clear, but what of the roiling mess of feeling that was occurring beneath them?
And no, he doesn't want to make something up. Revise it into a neat narrative. A stitch in a bigger tapestry, as if all of everything he has ever done led up to the moment he bled into Daniel's mouth. Lestat-coded behaviour.
He has also had a lot of time to think about this exact question. Obsess over it.
"It was impulsive," after a moment. "I was angry with you. But if I was angry with you, leaving you dead would have been enough. I drank from you and I knew that you were the only person who walked the earth that could have destroyed me in the specific way that you did. You came to know something about my capacity for," evil? He tips his head a little. "My capacity."
And he wanted to keep it. Preserve it. Return to it. A hundred years might have been true, if not for that.
Daniel lets these thoughts sit in the dark of the room around them, between them; he can see Armand (and everything) plainly, familiar bookshelves, bits of decoration he should have updated ages ago, the door the can find with his eyes closed. No one's ever shared this room with him. A few people have shared the bed, over the years, but only for moments. Armand does not sit on anyone's side, takes up no previously occupied space.
Yes, these things feel true. Impulse, anger, and something else. Preservation. Creation. One hundred years.
"We saw rare things in each other," he offers quietly.
All of their worst parts. There is a horrible comfort in it.
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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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He would like to be wanted. He feels something familiar, that pull of his own wanting, the kind that doesn't seem to care how much wanting is returned to him. Not in the moment. Enough, for now, that Daniel has yet to tell him no. That he has keys to his place. Plans for something else. Plans he might be compromising, now, as he presses his mouth to Daniel's.
Warm, slick with blood, his own blood. A kiss that barely gets started before veering just slightly to kiss away the blood from his chin.
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Or?
Never thought any of it was serious. But then, this might not be either. The kiss is like an accident that Armand plays it cool about. Daniel tips his head back to give him access to where blood has slipped. Or was it not an accident. Is it not. Is it, instead, something like a thief in the night. Will Daniel even notice, dizzy as he is from pain and blood.
"You don't have to be afraid of stupid decisions here," Daniel tells him. Can't say why he tells him this. Also can't say why both hands are still there, still touching. "With me, I mean. We know the fucking worst of each other already."
What's the worst that could happen? Are they going to hate each other some more? Don't, he tells himself, but there's always this thing in him. This horrible black hole. He wants to know.
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And maybe Daniel doesn't have to answer that. Not, at least, while he's being kissed, which he is, this time firmer, this time lingering. Does not have to say out loud that there is something assuring in the sentiment regardless, because maybe it translates in how the way he holds himself on top of and over melts down just that little bit more, the splay of his fingers at Daniel's throat relaxing.
Not just tasting himself there in Daniel's mouth, but questing for more.
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No. That's cowardly. Only a little true, that he might say that, if not for being dazzled by blood, by the bond, by the strange spell this meeting has cast over him. But even if he said it, his insides would scream at him about it. I want to know, I want to know, I want to fucking feel.
Armand was supposed to give him something peaceful and safe, fifty years ago. He didn't. Stopped then carved even the promise of it out of his head. Daniel wouldn't have accepted, didn't accept, not really, but there's something in him still shaped that way. Shaped like Armand's hands, the tendrils of his mind, the points of his fangs.
A deeper kiss. Daniel's world tips to one side. What?
And yet, he returns it. He can taste remnants of Armand's blood, but more importantly, Armand. What does a five hundred year old monster taste like? Postwar cigarettes? Incense? Every human life he's ever taken?
Or just someone. Just a person. Just a kiss that feels good, because he's been wondering for a stupidly, embarrassingly long time.
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At least, in some ways. Not all of them. But in this, it's familiar—a warm kiss, the pleasant and forceful weight of another human-shaped body on top of Daniel's. No cigarettes, these days, no nips of alcohol to wile away the evening, just whatever intrinsic and unique taste is carried through saliva and the lingering impression of iron from this recent exchange.
Tastes in return. Has not indulged in Daniel's innerworkings since being offered his blood, and chases this new intimacy with more eagerness than he would casually admit to. Long moments of just this, this contact, making out on the ground like teenagers who only just discovered that this sort of thing feels nice.
And then it's over. Armand, sitting up, orange eyed, hazy rather than sharp. But, a spell shaken off, in part. Whatever had come over him, after wrapping fingers around some vital and vulnerable thing in Daniel, threatening it.
Enough that he can say, "And this is where you say—"
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Is that it. Did he do it. Are they finishing each other's sentences yet.
Daniel's hand is still hooked against the bend of Armand's knee, and his eyes are still an uncanny mirror of his maker's. Hazy sunset colors, blood-drunk and confused and interested. He should shove him off. He should pull him back down. Armand owes him his story, his explanation, the devastating confrontation and blowout it'll be. They could do that after they fuck or something, maybe.
Daniel can blame the blood. The cocaine from earlier. The stress from the attack. What's Armand's excuse, for initiating a kiss with some screwed up old man he doesn't even like? Emotion slithers up Daniel's spine into the immediate forefront of his mind and he has to put effort into not letting half-panicked laughter escape. What the fuck are they doing.
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It doesn't sound like it was the wrong answer, if there is even a right answer. There is blood on both their mouths, their eyes matching tones of coal fire, and Armand stays seated where he is as if he has captured something. A sense that he could continue this to its logical conclusion and he would not be turned aside, for whatever fucking reason. He will, later, imagine this configuration again, and be resigned to the imagining, because, of course.
Of course, he wants. Of course, sex is now involved, even when it's uninvolved. "You're not on fire," he says. "So I would call it a success."
Now, Armand moves, a languid rolling aside, drawing a leg back over, away, folding in. Resting his weight on his palms.
"The doing is still incapacitating, but you'll be spared some seconds in a fight."
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Logically, he knows he'd have to try it a few more times. He thinks maybe he'd like to see Armand do it to someone else, so he can watch the completed mechanics of it. A mortal would do to start, but another vampire would be better. He doesn't expect there'll be a shortage of opponents, so, doable.
Daniel says nothing as his maker moves off of him. Watches a dreamworld, where he reaches out, makes him stay. But he can't make Armand do anything. He can just look at him, take in his profile, and wonder what the fuck. This is the end of this encounter, he knows that. Something about Armand is like it was the last time they met. Sliding away into himself.
Daniel will let hi—
"So,"
just kidding
"I won't pretend that last time we were in here, I didn't almost ask you to stay, with intent, or that you didn't seem like you might have wanted me to ask. You don't have the blood drinking excuse this time, though, it's just all those drill-into-your-brain stares in Dubai that I wasn't totally imagining after all, huh."
And now Armand kills him, probably.
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Doesn't, here, being asked something without the obvious question mark. Daniel won't pretend. Skill issue.
"You were an invasive presence in a contained environment," he says. Spiky barricades around this thing being addressed. This want. "And it's been a long time since the blood has influenced my decision making."
Blaring in his brain, a siren, almost ask you to stay, wanted me to ask. Thinks, Daniel gets his almost. This is stupid. He should kill him.
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He thinks Armand looks terrified.
Predators are most dangerous when they're cornered.
Hm.
"You had a lot of years in which you could have just killed me, though. And now. You've ripped the bandaid off. You could make as many fledglings as you want. Younger, prettier, less irritating fledglings. I think about that. I think about how it's not me, not really, I'm incidental. I just happened to be the kid Louis was with. I think about the years I spent with a hole in the shape of something in me, and not knowing it was you."
An accidental piece of this puzzle. Daniel is just his job. What's Armand? The devil? Just a person, still?
"A hundred years, you said."
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He feels himself becoming angry. It is unclear to him as to what at, exactly. Words out of Daniel's mouth, each one striking a special and unique cord.
"Consider getting your story straight," he says. "Either you're a meaningless afterthought or I want you desperately."
This may help narrow it down.
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Journalism.
Getting answers.
Daniel continues to stare at Armand. The shape of him now is like the shape of him in San Fransisco, and in Dubai. Always looking at him from the fucking floor. Up, up, at the horrifying monster, the scariest thing on Earth. That kissed him tenderly, and is now asking him to choose from options that both seem insane. There's some part of him that says Oh I guess it's neither, but it's the part that's reeling over the potential truth. Most often, he knows what to do with answers then he gets them, even when they're baffling, or frightening. They're just not usually about him.
You what?
Daniel moves one hand. Near his knee.
"Stay for a while," is a question, offer, plea, demand, something. A dozen layers. Armand's profile. Armand's eyes. The ceiling. "I'll fall asleep anyway when the sun's high enough, and you can fuck off and I won't even be able to ask you why."
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The reality is he won't, not when Daniel asks him in so many words to stay. Some part of him can pretend like it's an order, a directive, something to follow while he is spinning out anchorless in the void. His nails dig into the rug's pile, a flicker of a look away at this little excuse tossed his way. It appeals, of course it does.
"Why do you want me to?" Armand asks, because it's only fair. Daniel might say, I don't know, fucked up vampire reasons, and that might be a good enough reason to go.
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There are folded up layers to it all. Fucked up vampire reasons are definitely a factor, and a big one, but I don't know would be a lie. He wants Armand to stay because he wants Armand to stay. Daniel feels raw and freaked out from the attack, he feels shattered from their practice awfulness, he feels... He just fucking feels, especially after that.
Armand scares him, and pissed him off. Armand is also turning out to make him feel safe, and he's sure that's a fucked up vampire thing. But Daniel is a vampire.
His hand moves again. Touches Armand's knee, creeping up like he'd held him before, now at this different angle. He'll have to let Louis know he isn't making it back to the hotel, but if he's honest — and we're being honest, tonight — he's not sure he'd be able to even without the incentive of Armand being here. He's exhausted. The blood dazzling and dizzying but he wants to crawl away somewhere and take a nap so it can do its work and his insides stop feeling so brittle.
And he wants Armand to stay.
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not worth entertaining, too far in the past to reach, nearly half a millennia. He looks down at Daniel's hand, re-establishing a point of connection. Studies that hand, far from work rough, but not delicate without being indelicate. Remembers watching his hands in Dubai, ably dancing over laptop keys, or one gripping the other as it began to shake.
Armand will stay, of course. Daniel is still on the floor. Hackles lowering.
"You should rest," he says, and then, "I'll stay."
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It occurs to Daniel, laying on the floor with one hand hooked against Armand's knee, that Armand is the only being in this world who cannot see into his head and whose head Daniel cannot see into, the only one that he can't be tempted to spy on, that he doesn't have to worry about slipping up around. It can be quiet, with Armand. And he can rest.
A profound emotion for a long, silent moment.
Finally he moves. Things to take care of. Executive decisions to be made, like coaxing his maker by the hand, and offering him pajamas that will be just too big for him. Overstepping, but Armand had kissed him, had said a shattering thing, and so this is the call. In a private moment, changing into sleepwear and brushing his teeth, he tells Louis (who is not happy), but at least he can be honest in how fucking tired he is and how he really doesn't think he'll make it back in time.
There is a coffin in his bedroom, but the windows are sealed. His regular bed his fine.
"Just throw a blanket over my head if you bail," he says. "There's no direct light path from the hallway into here, but the ambient light will probably wake me up."
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A word for the thing he is wanting, while we're at it. Sex, except they aren't actually having any? Companionship? Ill-fitting, from what Armand knows about companionship. It is more of a feeling, similar to the way it feels to bite down, and feeling the skin break, just as the blood comes up.
Onto the bed.
Considers these words, still sitting. Posture manages not to add to any haunted doll vibes, a sideways slouch with his palm bracing him. Says, "Do you remember when I said that turning you wasn't about him," is only technically a question, continuing with, "You said you believed me."
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Words, a word. Daniel would pick from: validation, intimacy, comfort.
Are they both the same kind of lonely, he wonders.
Pillows get re-arranged, and Daniel finds himself on his side, negotiating with bedsheets that are thankfully clean, but tucked in very tight as he's mostly used his bed as a desk/filing cabinet/storage space now that he mostly sleeps in a glorified shoebox most of the time. White sheets, except for one that's light green because the extra topsheet on the nice set vanished a year or so ago, and a navy blue duvet. Unremarkable things, as he listens to Armand say this thing.
"You didn't sound like you were lying."
Interesting how little they actually need telepathy, in some respects. In moments where he thinks they may have only said the things around all that. It's as good as. Memory is not distorted, here. They heard each other.
"Do you know why you made me?"
It's fine if he doesn't know, his tone suggests. A hell of thing happened. Armand doesn't have to rewrite history if he's feeling a way, tonight. Love or horror or just lashing out. It's behind them, that incident. What it made them is significant, and will define the rest of their existences, but that incident was just... something that went on.
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The question is asked and Armand sinks into silence. Daniel does not need telepathic access to his brain to suppose, maybe, he's wandering back in time, remembering the smell of smoke in the air, the hard floor beneath his knees, his fangs in Daniel's neck. The actions come back clear, but what of the roiling mess of feeling that was occurring beneath them?
And no, he doesn't want to make something up. Revise it into a neat narrative. A stitch in a bigger tapestry, as if all of everything he has ever done led up to the moment he bled into Daniel's mouth. Lestat-coded behaviour.
He has also had a lot of time to think about this exact question. Obsess over it.
"It was impulsive," after a moment. "I was angry with you. But if I was angry with you, leaving you dead would have been enough. I drank from you and I knew that you were the only person who walked the earth that could have destroyed me in the specific way that you did. You came to know something about my capacity for," evil? He tips his head a little. "My capacity."
And he wanted to keep it. Preserve it. Return to it. A hundred years might have been true, if not for that.
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What a fucking trip, tonight has been.
Daniel lets these thoughts sit in the dark of the room around them, between them; he can see Armand (and everything) plainly, familiar bookshelves, bits of decoration he should have updated ages ago, the door the can find with his eyes closed. No one's ever shared this room with him. A few people have shared the bed, over the years, but only for moments. Armand does not sit on anyone's side, takes up no previously occupied space.
Yes, these things feel true. Impulse, anger, and something else. Preservation. Creation. One hundred years.
"We saw rare things in each other," he offers quietly.
All of their worst parts. There is a horrible comfort in it.
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