Chapter Text
I made you mine, or so it seemed
Though he is dead he haunts your dreams
I might as well be two feet tall
You never will love me at allI gaze into your eyes of blue
But their beauty is not for me
You're thinking of someone who's gone
You're dreaming of the one you really love
You're dreaming of the one you really loveI gaze into your eyes of blue
But their beauty is not for me
You're thinking of someone who's gone
You're dreaming of the one you really love
You're dreaming of the corpse you really loveThe One You Really Love, The Magnetic Fields
2022
Having Daniel in the penthouse was a dream. Though Armand still didn’t know whether it was a nightmare or a good dream. The interview felt endless, and after revealing himself as Armand after playing Rashid to Daniel, everything seemed boring. Though his boy could never be boring. The way his beautiful green eyes found the truth in every movement Armand made was mesmerizing.
On the other hand, Louis’s green eyes shone for someone else, and Armand felt more and more… nothing. Waking up, listening to Louis talk about Lestat with a repressed love, watching Daniel piece together the puzzle Armand had given him, and then sleeping again. That was his life—Armand’s days felt stagnant. Five hundred years of living in a puddle, seventy years of feeling like he was drowning, never feeling free like the sea. Daniel was the sea.
Mornings were complicated. Lying in the same bed as Louis, in pajamas, pretending that at some point he would sleep. Armand slept once a month, sometimes every two months when the months were particularly dull. But because Louis loved the semblance of a routine, Armand pretended—he stared at the ceiling, then at Louis, then he dove into Louis’s dreams, then into Daniel’s dreams. Then he woke up, listened to Louis talk about Lestat with a repressed love, watched Daniel piece together the puzzle Armand had given him, and then slept again.
That day, Armand had opened the ultra-secret folder on his tablet, hidden among a few PDFs of shopping receipts from 1980. The year he walked away from Daniel. The year Daniel would forever recognize him as a stranger. The folder held photos captured by his beautiful boy. A memento of their love.
From the moment it was invented, Armand had thought photography was a stupid art, which was why he never supported Louis in his futile career. But with Daniel, he had learned to appreciate not the art of photography itself, but the act of capturing, like amber, a moment that otherwise would have been a fleeting thing—the act of saying, I treasure this moment. And Armand treasured every moment with Daniel.
Photos of them in Europe, photos of them at parties taken by strangers, photos of Daniel asleep on the couch of his old apartment, photos of Armand that Daniel had secretly taken. And before leaving him, Armand had to retrieve them from the bottom of his desk drawer, some from their picture frames. (The most ridiculously sentimental thing Daniel ever did was buy a single picture frame when he moved apartments in 1978. He put it on his desk—it held a photo of Armand walking through Paris) (Armand had the picture frame locked away in a safe, a secret Louis was unaware of)
Louis then began to stir on the other side of the bed. Armand stopped scrolling through the photos, pausing on one of Daniel reading poetry at an open mic in New York. Patti Smith was in the background, watching his Daniel intently.
In his dreams, Louis smiled. Armand entered his mind to confirm his suspicions, and yes, of course—Louis was dreaming of Lestat. It was a foolish dream. Lestat sat by the fireplace in his New Orleans home, drinking blood from a goblet and telling a story that made Louis and Claudia laugh. Claudia—her face, long dead, frozen in an innocent, joyful expression—unnerved Armand. Louis still dreamed of those corpses. Lestat and Claudia might as well have been in bed with them, filling the space between him and Louis. If he reached out, Armand could almost feel them. And he didn’t want to. So he left Louis alone.
Then he sought out his precious Daniel, who was just about to enter the deepest part of his REM sleep cycle. Armand’s dead heart stopped, then seemed to turn over. Daniel was dreaming about him. Or about what little he remembered of him. An afternoon in Pompeii, where Daniel recalled a shadow by his side, a feeling of boundless love that led nowhere. At the time, Armand had been the one to receive the tide of that love.
For a moment, Armand wished things were easy, simple—that he could be sleeping beside Daniel right now.
Lost in Daniel’s dream, Armand drifted off without realizing it. The tablet locked itself, fading Daniel’s image into black. But the image remained vivid in Armand’s mind.
His Daniel reading poetry. His Daniel with his critical eyes and precious smile. The feeling of being so completely loved.
A feeling of freedom.
When Louis woke up, Armand was asleep beside him, a smile on his lips.