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The first petal in forty years arrives in a violent hacking fit, landing in a sink that costs more than Daniel’s first apartment. He stands there, staring at the remnants of a rose and a bird of paradise, vibrant against stark ivory.
What a fucking day it’s been.
Yesterday, Rashid tells him that he’s actually Armand, the love of Louis’ life and blows up the story that Daniel had been building in his mind around the whole situation. Today, Daniel’s old ghost of a disease rears its ugly head again. He spent most of his youth running away from his problems. When he got sick the first time with an incurable disease, he’d taken the coward’s way out.
Cut it out, take it away, let me forget, he’d told the doctor. Hanahaki’s a bitch, especially when you’re a fuck-up like Daniel with a drug addiction to anything that feels good.
Of course he had to cut them out. It’s not like there’d been anyone out there who could love a fuck-up like him back.
So, facing down the impossibility of someone wanting him back or a sharp nip, he’d opted for amnesia. Now he doesn’t know who the hell managed to make him fall so goddamn hard in love that his body developed an incurable disease.
There’s a hole in his memory where the love belongs. Sometimes, Daniel thinks it’s why his marriages failed.
This feels like a horrific joke. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate between the Parkinson’s and this fucking interview. Now, he’s got to deal with this again. He spends a little more time cleaning up, leaving no evidence, and then Daniel starts working on dealing with it. He makes sure that he’s as far from the main room as possible, and calls New York – a doctor he hasn’t spoken to in years.
“Yeah,” he says, reluctant and glad he got his doctor’s voicemail. “So…”
Thank fuck for time zones.
“I think I’m gonna need to come in for another treatment. I don’t think we got it all.” He’s already tapping through his laptop for evidence of the disease resurfacing after long dormant periods, finding a few poorly-sourced articles, but enough to calm him.
How is it that in the middle of interviewing a couple of vampires about their life, he’s managed to pick up a problem that somehow overshadows the clear and present danger that exists in the room every time he’s with them.
“Give me a call. Let me know what my options are here.”
Daniel hangs up, staring at the petal in his palm. It’s beautiful. They always are. That doesn’t mean that beautiful things aren’t able to shred you to pieces.
Just ask Louis and Armand.
Here, in the tower, he’s always being watched.
It’s a goddamn nightmare. Orwell’s Big Brother has got nothing on the watchful eyes of the undead. He doesn’t even realize that someone’s watching him this morning as he gets dressed until Louis’ voice nearly gives him a goddamn heart attack.
“Who was it?”
Always with the vague questions. He’d go nowhere in the interviewer’s chair – case in point, look where they ended up, back in the 70’s.
It takes him a minute to realize that Louis is asking about the long scar along Daniel’s left side – evidence of the surgery that gave him back his life while partially lobotomizing him – the only option after his body had tried to destroy him from the inside. “That’s kind of the whole point of the surgery,” he reminds Louis. “Forgetting.”
If anyone should sympathize, it’s Louis.
They’re both missing memories. Louis’ have faded under the weight of time, pressed into dust and waiting for resurrection. Daniel’s will never come back – at least, not of the person he’d been so desperately in love with.
He’d stubbornly opted for the easy path. Instead of dying, he chose to forget the love of his life. It’s not like it matters, though. The whole point of the surgery had been that whoever he’d loved to the point of death hadn’t loved him back.
“Do you ever regret it?”
Daniel settles the shirt, grabbing his laptop and pointedly gesturing to the door. “Again, that’s the beauty of forgetting. No regret, all forget,” he says, impatiently trying to move them out of asking questions about his personal life.
Boundaries aren’t really something the denizens of this tower really get – physical, mental, or otherwise.
“Have you loved since, Daniel?”
Never mind what he’d said earlier. Louis is a vindictive and sharp reporter – one whose only tool is a scalpel meant to cut. “Honestly?” he says. “Not like I did the first time, apparently. Otherwise I’d still have the ring on my finger.”
“And still, no regret?”
It’d be a lie to say he’s never regretted it, but usually it happens in his darkest moments. It happens at the bottom of a bottle. It happens when the divorce papers finalize. It happens when Daniel thinks he’s never going to love anyone again the way he did the first time – the time it nearly killed him.
“I thought this was your story,” he says. “So. Tell me about Paris. Any regrets there?”
Louis is easy to distract with a promise of an odyssey of recollection and a gentle push towards the past (with its lovely blurred edges that makes it hurt all the less to recall).
Not so easy to distract is the other set of watchful eyes he’s felt on him all morning.
Armand, who’s been watching him while Louis asks his questions. Armand, whose gaze had fixed on Daniel’s scar like he’d intended to take those long nails of his and slit him open like a butcher just to see what spills out. Even now, Armand is staring at him, not blinking, and Daniel’s attention is split.
Paris, he tells himself. That shithole. Think of Paris.
(And try not to think about how many gaps exist in his memory about a city he swears he ought to know better than he does)
“Rashid tells me that you’ve been spending more time than usual in the lavatory.”
Daniel barely glances up from breakfast, watching as Armand literally glides into the room without his feet touching the floor. His face is a blank mask as usual, but when Daniel looks closer, there’s the tiniest twitch in his brow.
Well, well, well, someone’s mortal habits are annoying the vampire.
“Don’t worry, I’m still regular,” he deadpans, sipping his water as if that will somehow make the scratch in his throat vanish. “Just checking on my reflection, making sure I’m still as handsome as ever.”
This is all proving he’d made the right choice to flush the petals instead of throwing them out.
He’s always being watched.
Armand tips his head to the side, clearly not believing him. “Is there something you’re missing from the amenities?”
Daniel bites back a scoff of amusement. He doesn’t say, yeah, years of my life and the memory of the person I was stupidly in love with. He thinks it, though. Nice and loud, but it doesn’t do much. Armand doesn’t even flinch, only pierces Daniel with the unnerving stare he wields so frequently.
“Privacy,” Daniel says sharply, instead.
“I’ll see what we can do about that,” says the man who’s so far up Daniel’s ass with prescriptions and appointments and meals and reminders that he’s basically performing his next colonoscopy while scheduling the aftercare.
“Sure,” Daniel says.
He’ll believe it when he sees it. Strange that the concept of privacy in this place has become almost as fantastical as believing in actual vampires – and right now, the latter’s a lot easier to believe in than the former because they’re the ones right before his eyes.
“It’s like that time in San Francisco,” Louis says, in the interview. “Do you recall? When you told Armand that you felt utterly, completely, wholly swallowed up by something new – an emotion that you could never have put a name to before and a belonging you felt could make you weep to contemplate.”
It’s borderline poetic.
It’s also absolutely not a memory that Daniel has.
“I don’t remember Armand being there,” he says sharply, his eyes drifting to the older vampire. Now, it seems, he’s decided to look away. Daniel jots down a few more notes, adjusting his glasses. “Must have been some other intrepid young reporter you lured back to your apartment.”
“I assure you,” Armand says with a hint of a devilish smile, “none could compare to you.”
Daniel’s pen stops on the page, realizing that he has to confront this bullshit. “You’re telling me you were there?”
“Most of the time,” Louis confirms, staring at Daniel with a perplexed look. He’s glad they’re both trying to puzzle this one out.
Armand? Not so much. Then again, Daniel would put money on Armand having deliberately removed confusion from his repertoire of emotions. It doesn’t suit. Not attractive enough. Not controlled enough.
Then again, is there anything that would make him look less attractive?
He knows the mistake he’s made the moment he thinks it, because Armand looks smugly satisfied and Louis … well, Louis’ confusion has morphed to something new. It’s not quite shock, not exactly horror, and maybe it’s not delight, but it’s trying to be all three of those things at once.
“Paris,” Daniel says firmly. He’s not ready to think about the implication of Armand being there during the 70’s interview. It’s just another sign of how fucking scrambled his brain had been on the drugs. Maybe there’s even some kind of vampiric influence at play here.
Either way, it’s not something he wants to linger on.
“As I was saying,” Louis continues, always happy to go back to recounting the hazy blur of his past, “it felt as though Paris had swallowed me up and gave me a sense of belonging…”
Daniel barely pays attention, grateful for the laptop recording the session. His mind is on an odyssey of its own traversing dangerous waters and meeting strange creatures on the way. He’d babbled on about belonging and being swallowed whole to Armand? He’d met him before all this? Is that why the whole ‘Rashid’ bullshit happened?
Well, they can both relax. Drugs, time, and some degree of trauma has wiped the slate clean. There’s no memory of Armand. There’s nothing there.
“Louis, stop,” Armand says sharply, cutting into his story.
“What? Why?” Daniel asks, shifting in his chair uncomfortably.
“Your scar.” Armand has made it to his side, applying a cool hand to Daniel’s side without asking – fucking boundaries. “Why didn’t you say that it was beginning to ail you?” Even through the cloth, there’s a blissful coolness to the touch that Daniel’s trying not to lean into.
Why didn’t he say anything? Daniel glances rapidly between Armand (all caring worry) and Louis (all worrying suspicion), wondering when the hell he became the hot topic. “Because it always ‘ails me’,” he replies using air quotes and swatting Armand’s hand away. “I’ll put something on it later. Now,” he says, a little sharper as he focuses on Louis. “Paris.”
It takes a moment, but Louis gets back to the story.
They dive back into the past.
The whole time, Daniel’s scar screams at him like it’s trying to get him to remember and the scraping, scratching, screaming pain of the flowers inside him remind him of the next surgery to come. He hasn’t remembered a single worthy thing, but he’s ready to forget again.
He’s not supposed to eavesdrop.
(He does, anyway. They know he’s there. If they really didn’t want him to hear, they’d stop or go somewhere that he can’t hear)
“I thought you made him forget.”
“I never said that.” Armand, as ever, sounds infuriatingly smug and calm. Daniel kind of hopes Louis punches him. It’d be a real vicarious experience. Hey, maybe Daniel will get to do it at some point – it’s not too late to develop new dreams.
“You let me believe it all this time!”
“Yes, but I never lied.”
“When Daniel vanished, I thought you’d just done your little mind trick like you love doing and made sure that he wouldn’t come back, but that’s not true.”
“Let’s not talk about this anymore.”
“Oh, okay. Let’s not talk.”
Daniel’s clearly missing something from not being able to see their expressions, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that they’ve moved this little spat to the mental realm where Daniel can’t follow.
Shame. Daniel has been missing his soap operas – and this one was just getting juicy.
They’re always goddamn orange.
(He’d recognize the color if he could lift the veil of denial that he’s secured so firmly to divorce his head, his heart, and his eyes)
Birds of paradise, daylilies, tiger eyes – all of them beautiful and extremely fucking deadly when introduced to a human host.
It’s getting harder to hide how sick he’s getting. The flowers are getting worse. Now, he has to excuse himself mid-interview to go hack up evidence of an emotion he thought he’d cut out of himself years ago. All this suffering and nothing to show for it.
He hasn’t even got his memory of the person he’d loved back.
He coughs and hacks out a bouquet’s worth, staring at the bloodied evidence on the tiles of the bathroom. They’re going to smell the blood. They’re going to see the mess. Weary, but determined, Daniel decides that he needs just a little longer.
He’ll cut them away again. He’ll sharpen his knives and excise the little love he’s got left.
He just needs time.
And so, he cleans and he lies and he hides, just a little while longer.
“You’re trying to summon your doctor from New York.”
Daniel is in the middle of a coughing fit, hands shaking, and he whispers up a prayer to anyone listening to keep the flowers inside. Keep them trapped. “What can I say? Your guy’s good, but there’s something about the familiar that’s hard to resist.”
“Dr. Bhansali assures me that your disease has not progressed, though he has also complained about your reticence to offer blood samples.” Armand isn’t blinking. He’s been staring at Daniel since he walked in the room, which is annoying and somehow banal because it’s so typical.
Daniel busies himself with his notes to give himself an excuse to look away, blocking off his mind and shrugging. “You think I only have the one disease to worry about? I’m a buffet at this point, care of my shitty youth.”
It’s the wrong thing to say.
He can feel Armand’s gaze intensify. He can even feel the presence of him in his head, trying to knock down Daniel’s paltry walls and get inside.
It’s giving him a goddamn headache. “Stop that,” he protests.
“Why do you need your doctor, Daniel?”
“Why do you give a fuck, Armand?” he retorts, mimicking his speech patterns.
It seems to do the trick at styming him. Or, at least, there’s an answer that he doesn’t want to give. There’s a determination in Armand’s gaze that Daniel doesn’t like, but hey, he’s been a stubborn asshole all his life. Why’s he about to stop now?
“I will find out,” he warns.
Daniel knows he will. He’s just hoping that by that point, Daniel will have dealt with the issue so he can get this goddamn interview over with and live to see at least another year. He figures he’s owed the accolades, the jeers, and whatever else comes of writing this book.
“I know,” Daniel agrees. “It’s just a matter of time, right?”
Which he hasn’t got.
“I’ll see to it that you get your doctor,” Armand replies coolly, obviously annoyed and disapproving. Yet, still, caving in to Daniel’s whims. Well, at least there’s that. “Next time, please ask and we will make the arrangements rather than suffer through your furtive attempts at playing at subterfuge.”
He stomps out of the room like the bratty asshole he is.
Pinching his brow, Daniel spares a thought and wonders why he can’t forget Armand and his irritating, irrational, infuriating little displays. It’d make life a whole lot easier.
Right?
(And yet, he can’t fully agree with that thought without something in his gut turning over unpleasantly – a sensation Daniel recognizes as new flowers taking root and growing anew, ready to choke the life out of him before any vampire gets to suck it away)
“I don’t understand,” Daniel says roughly, cell phone on his chest. He’s slumped in the corner of the bathroom, blood-soaked petals on the tiles, the sink, the toilet, and his shirt. There’s no way he’s getting away with this murder scene, which is why he needs to fix it. “How the fuck am I about to get this surgery again? I guaran-fucking-tee that I’m not in love with anyone, let alone anyone who doesn’t love me back,” he says to the doctor on the other end of the line.
“It is rare,” his doctor admits, “but not unheard of. Perhaps we simply missed something and you came into contact with a reminder, allowing it to take root.”
The love of my life. That’s what took root, apparently.
He’s not sharp enough at the moment to recognize the cadence as something familiar, but said out of someone else’s mouth. He’s ventured beyond the bounds of the cutting and eagle-eyed reporter he’d once been.
Weary, exhausted, and ready to move on, Daniel’s past caring. “Then make sure you cut them all out this time. I’m already fighting for my life. I don’t need some goddamn old love affair hustling me off stage.”
“Your man asked me to come to Dubai, but I’d be more comfortable if you came to me.”
His man. Armand.
Daniel would laugh, but he can’t, because if he does, he thinks he’ll have to perform the Heimlich on himself just to survive the next few seconds. “I’ll be there,” he guarantees. “Bells on. Flowers out.”
His doctor doesn’t appreciate the joke.
“Keep in touch. Stay safe, Daniel. I’ll see you soon.”
Hopefully. Daniel hangs up, slumping back against the wall. He knows he’s meant to be having breakfast, but the idea of getting up is impossible. Between his shaking hands and the weakness from coughing up so much blood, he’s not going anywhere.
That means someone’s coming to him.
“Daniel.”
He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or furious that he’s been found out. He’s not sure whether he’s pleased it’s Armand. He just knows that this day has been coming for so long. “Yeah, yeah, I’m late,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “Take it out of my whore paycheck.”
His eyes are closed because he’s so goddamn tired, but he can see Armand’s shadow as he kneels beside him. There’s no sound of breathing, no motion, and finally Daniel gives in to his insatiable curiosity and opens his eyes.
Armand is carefully lifting each bloodied petal from off Daniel’s shirt and setting them in a pile on the ground. The jig’s up. He’s caught.
“Told you I had a whole slew of shit going on,” Daniel says, as if he’s somehow proud. He rubs at his eyes, exhausted and weary, and suddenly he doesn’t know why he’s spent so long fighting to keep it secret.
Armand takes the bloodied petals to the trash and when he returns, it’s with a cool cloth that he dabs against Daniel’s lips, gently swiping away droplets of blood.
“I must look like one hell of a snack right now,” he jokes, because he doesn’t know what’s good for him. Besides, how can he not? He’s got blood all over him, and the floor, and his clothes.
Armand’s stomach must be howling.
Still, he continues like he hadn’t heard Daniel at all. Instead, he asks a question: “Why didn’t you tell me that this was happening again?”
Again. Of course Armand has probably snooped in his files. He’s found the history Daniel has worked so hard to bury.
“None of your business.”
Armand fixes him with an intense stare. “I disagree.”
“You’re not my master,” Daniel says sharply. “No matter how much you so desperately want to be.” Reel him in, bring down the cage, keep him trapped. He’s doing all the right things, but Daniel is getting out.
Hell, at this rate, he’ll just die his way out.
“No, you will not,” Armand says sharply, overhearing Daniel’s fatalistic thought.
“Not sure you get a say,” is the last thing Daniel manages before he can’t fucking breathe. Here they come again. Tiger eye, daylily, bird of paradise. They’re more plentiful than ever, choking out of him, and soon there’s no fighting the darkness that comes from the lack of oxygen.
Maybe this is it. Maybe it will be quick.
Except, just as he thinks he’s slipping away for good, he feels the sharp pinprick of fangs sinking into his neck. It’s not pretty, but Daniel can breathe suddenly through the small holes near his trachea, and it’s just enough to give him the force to expel the last clump of flowers in his throat.
They fall out, bloodied and brutal – a gothic romance choking him to death.
“Tell Louis,” he rasps, “I’m taking a sick day.”
That’s all he’s got in him. He slumps back against the wall, and gives in to whatever Armand wants to do with him. The tiles are cool under him, his neck aches, his chest hurts, and his heart thumps along unsteadily.
Whatever’s happening, he hasn’t got much time left. Tomorrow, he’ll leave. Tomorrow, he heads back home to cut the love out of him again.
Now, though, he barely feels like he’s in the present. He drifts in and out of consciousness as Armand’s strong arms gently lay him in his bed. His mind is swimming, and every time he opens his eyes, he forgets where he is. Is he in Dubai? Or is he somewhere else?
Because this time when he opens his eyes, Armand’s hair looks different. He’s looking fondly at Daniel as they lay in a spacious and luxurious bed. It’s hot as hell, but humid and not dry, and there’s palm trees and golf courses just outside the window. Florida? He swears that’s Florida.
Where the hell is Daniel’s head?
He’s too exhausted to think too deeply about that mystery. Sleep is coming for him, and Daniel’s only too happy to let it claim his body.
As he drifts off, though, his brain can’t help one parting shot – one last taunt.
He saved your life. He could have let you go, but he saved you instead.
Should he be insulted that his agency had been taken from him or relieved that his number’s not up? Daniel’s not sure anymore, and maybe that ought to scare him more than it does.
“You’re not leaving.”
Daniel gesticulates broadly with the pair of socks he’s holding, on their way to going into the suitcase. “I really think I am,” he says. He hasn’t spoken without sounding hoarse for days. He nearly died in that goddamn bathroom. “Don’t know if you noticed, but pretty sure Hanahaki’s gonna end me unless I cut an echo out of my life and the doc doesn’t want to come here.”
Whatever’s happening to him, he needs to get back home and let them cut out the flowers before they rot in his chest and burst out of his human corpse like a premade funeral arrangement. He’s in the middle of moving his toiletry kit into the suitcase when Armand grabs him by the wrist.
Too tired to fight, Daniel lets him. Let him play at being his controlling master. One way or the other, Daniel’s getting out of here.
“The first time I heard about this disease, I wondered why I never experienced it.”
“Great,” Daniel scoffs. “I’m so glad we’re making this about you.”
“You see, I loved so often. I loved so frequently. And yet, never a petal. Never a blossom. Until you, I had never seen it.”
“Well, look at me now,” Daniel says, tugging his hand away from Armand to slot the toiletry kit in there. “Sorry you had to wait this long to see it.”
“I saw it forty years ago,” Armand says calmly.
Daniel’s head swims with memory, confusion, pain, aching, and he just wants this to be over. This whole thing has been a mistake, and now he’s paying the fucking price. He doesn’t need Armand’s dramatics added to the pile of bullshit.
“What are you saying, Armand?”
“You cut me out as if I were a tumor.” Armand’s orange gaze burns into Daniel’s soul. He’s tiger eye. He’s daylily. He’s a bird of paradise. “I couldn’t allow myself to love you back. You’re a mortal,” he says with mild disdain. “Unworthy. Cruel. Cold.”
“Sure, hey, let’s insult me to death. It’s quicker than the flowers,” Daniel mutters, staring back at Armand. He lets this tirade happen, because he’s too busy being lost at sea and debating if he wants to fight his way back to shore.
“...calculating. Intelligent. Fiercely witty. Fascinating. Beautiful,” Armand continues. “I couldn’t help myself. I told myself that you were just a passing fancy. I followed you. You kept running. I followed you still. There are corners of the earth that were ours. You were mine. I took everything I wanted and never thought about the consequences. I never have. You’re the first mortal who ever turned things around and made me pay for it.”
“Boss, I’m lost,” Daniel says, the pounding in his head matching the stutter-start pain in his chest.
The moment the words are out of his mouth, the coughing starts again. Here comes proof that Daniel Molloy has a heart – and that loving someone is going to make his stop.
Armand’s voice slides silkily into his mind Let me in, Daniel. You won’t need to fly home when I’m through with you.
“Fine. Just kill me. Let me die.”
“It would kill me to see harm come to you,” Armand says fiercely, his hand possessively holding Daniel close – he’s holding him right where the scar is, possessively tight. “I would never let you die, beloved. Why do you think I let you go?”
No.
It’s not possible.
“I cut you out,” Daniel says with disbelief. “You’re the one I loved so deeply that it nearly killed me?”
Armand says nothing.
That says everything.
“No,” is all Daniel has to say about the situation. “Nope!” He grabs another pair of socks. “Here I thought Louis was bad, but you? This is fucking taking the cake.”
“I’m not lying to you, Daniel. I’ve seen this before because I saw these flowers from your lips once, before I let you go to New York City and cut me away. I won’t let that happen this time. I can’t lose you again, especially when you are in the brightest, most brilliant, most beautiful stage of your life.”
Daniel snorts. “Bullshit,” he says wryly.
“Age is a gift that graces so few of my compatriots. Why do you doubt me?”
“Then why now? Huh? You let me cut you away before, forget you. Then you put on this song and dance pretending to be someone else, Rashid, as if I could even remember. Only, there’s some fucked up bullshit happening because I find out who you are and they come back, like I’m somehow in love again just because I find you so goddamn fascinating and attractive! So, why now? Why are you telling me now? Why aren’t you letting me cut them out again?”
It’s too much. He’s hacking up bloodied petals because he clearly still doesn’t believe. There’s no love for him. There’s just lies upon lies.
“I thought when you came back, we could start again,” Armand says, something new in his eyes. The calm facade he’s always so careful to maintain is gone, replaced by something far more familiar to Daniel.
He’d recognize that look anywhere – grief and heartbreak, mixed with panic and fear.
“Then, I started to lose you even before I got you back.” Armand is closer now, one hand slipping under Daniel’s shirt to palm his side, thumb brushing over the scar that travels perpendicular to his ribs. “I can’t do that again. You’re not the man you were. You may not be my boy any longer. Yet, none of that matters. I still love you, Daniel.”
“Bullshit,” Daniel accuses, but he stops coughing. The flowers recede. The fucking evidence is right in front of him, and isn’t that what he’s been waiting for? Isn’t it time to believe?
He waits. Armand’s hand pulls him a little closer. It’s not a dance, not really, but then, has anything they’ve done been a dance? It’s been more of a tennis match – back and forth, trading advantages, caught in deuce-duels, love-love.
Motherfucker.
“You’re the reason I nearly fucking died all those years ago?” He manages, swiping aggressively at a stray flower on his collarbone.
He can breathe for the first time in decades. His lungs are free and clear. He aches from the Parkinson’s, but not the Hanahaki and hey, right now, he’ll take it – even if he’s furious at being manipulated back into the situation where they could grow again.
“I let you go before. I had to. I couldn’t love you then,” Armand admits.
“But you love me now?” Daniel says. He’s not aiming to mock, but it’s too easy to fall into old habits and he hears it in his tone.
Armand says nothing. He merely reaches out to take the petal from Daniel’s hand, turning it back and forth as he holds it up to the light as if it’s an artifact worth studying. “Yes,” he says, sure as anything.
“And what about the love of your life in the other room?” Daniel’s never been smart. Put a hot stove in front of him and he’ll put his hand on the element, just to see how hot it is.
Armand flicks the flower away, his attention fully on Daniel. “Just how many lives do you think I have? One?” he scoffs derisively, amused by Daniel. “I’ve lived many long lives. I am the love of his life, so he says. Your body says the same. Right now, in this life, I love you. I love him, as long as I have him.”
There’s an unspoken promise in there.
Louis will leave.
Daniel won’t.
He’s not sure if it’s true or not, but there’s a certainty in the way Armand speaks. How the fuck is he supposed to feel about that?
Then, Daniel thinks, that’s a problem for tomorrow. For the first time in weeks, he feels fucking fantastic, and Armand keeps staring at him like he’s been on a chastity kick and Daniel’s the first person he’s seen now that he’s decided to break the fast.
“Fuck it,” he decides.
Armand’s lips curve up with amusement. “Close,” he taunts.
Yeah. Now they’re getting somewhere. “Fuck you,” Daniel lobs with a warm ease that has him grinning.
Armand hooks his fingers under Daniel’s collar and tugs with all his strength. His orange eyes flash as brightly as the petals on the ground and there’s no hesitation, no doubt, no worry. “Yes,” he agrees. “Fuck me.”
It’s a good thing Daniel’s got his breath back, because he has the feeling Armand is going to do plenty to steal it away. Dizzy with possibilities, Daniel lets the current sweep him out to sea, because Armand loves him and his body delivered proof positive of those feelings.
For the first time in a long time, Daniel’s got a future again.
He’d better not waste a single second.
Armand’s fingers are cool and steady against Daniel’s chest as they glide over his scar – again.
“You’re gonna rub the fucking thing raw,” he complains.
Armand smirks at him from where he’s leisurely perching his chin against Daniel’s collarbone. Even stripped naked of his clothes, his pretense, and his defenses, he’s infuriatingly smug and content. “And here I thought I accomplished that earlier,” he notes, squeezing Daniel’s upper thigh gently with his other hand.
“Yeah, yeah,” Daniel huffs out, wishing he could hide the rush of blood to his face, but that’s impossible with a vampire. “It’s just a scar.”
“It’s evidence of your affections – albeit, impulsive ones, given your choice to cut me away.”
Daniel scoffs, tangling his fingers through Armand’s mussed curls to give him a tactile thing to do as he talks about the uncomfortable truths of his history. “There was no other choice. I was an addict. You were a drug. Even if you did love me back, and you told me that you wouldn’t have copped to that back then, I don’t see how either of us walks away alive. Instead, I forgot. I fucked up a couple of other relationships. Even my career for a little while.”
“Then you came back to us. My boy,” Armand says, equal parts fond and possessive. “My beloved bouquet.”
It’s simultaneously a romantic and gruesome image.
Which means it’s perfectly Armand.
God help him, he loves it. He tips Armand’s chin up with two fingers so he can steal a soft kiss from him – softer than he would’ve thought possible from this ancient being – and feels himself melting into him like the drug he is.
“You’re not an addict anymore,” Armand chastises, barely heard in between increasingly frantic kisses.
It’s nice of him to say, but it’s untrue. “You’re still a drug.”
Armand doesn’t argue. He’s too busy, straddling Daniel and doing things to his body that will have his muscles aching and screaming later, but having vaulted back from the grave, Daniel is so past caring that he’s willing to let Armand tease and taunt, flirt and fuck, and wring him out until he feels like he’s coming down from a high.
They can’t stay in the bedroom forever.
(It’s been twelve hours and Daniel thinks that’s pushing it)
Armand reaches for Daniel’s robe to tug it on, the whole thing slouching on his body and leaving a shoulder bare. Before he can stand, Daniel grabs at the belt of the robe to yank Armand back in, burying his face in Armand’s collarbone to lay a trail of kisses on that perfect skin.
“You’ll stay, won’t you?” Armand asks as Daniel’s lips work their way back from the shoulder.
If Daniel hadn’t spent so much of his life interviewing people, he might not have picked up on some of the finer details of Armand’s tone. He has, though, which is why he catches the soft hitch in his words. He’s nervous that Daniel’s still planning to bolt.
Lucky for him, he’s got no reason to go. “Nah, I’m just getting used to my bedroom here,” he says, patting the space beside him. “But uh, there is one thing that I could use.”
“Anything,” Armand vows.
“You’ve got that mind gift, yeah? You can go in and fiddle?” His fingers wiggle as he speaks, finally letting Armand out of his hold.
“I can,” Armand agrees, warily, as he adjusts the robe. “Why?”
“The doctor can’t put the flowers back in me so I can remember,” Daniel says, raising his brows pointedly as he stares at Armand. “You could help with that. If you want me to remember. If there’s anything in there worth bringing back.”
Armand seems stunned at the request.
“You want them back?”
“I want everything,” Daniel says. “I’m a curious son of a bitch, remember? I don’t know what’s good for me.”
Armand raises a brow as he lingers at the door, absently letting his long nails skirt along the red marks Daniel has left along his collarbone. “I’ll think it over.”
While Armand thinks, Daniel is going to sleep – not like the dead, but like someone who just got fucked by the dead to the point that his body needs the time to recuperate. He could not have seen this coming if it had neon lights on it, but Daniel’s not upset with being surprised.
That’s what makes the story interesting.
The petals stop, proving that Armand really does love him.
The memories come back, but their return isn’t heralded by any admission of love. They come back as a gift, given to him as if they were small trinkets to please him. Armand gives him memories of Miami nights where the heat makes Daniel sweat even in the dark. He shares with him memories of Paris (still a shithole). He offers Rome, New York, Copenhagen, New Orleans.
He shows Daniel moving as fast as he can across the world, and Armand always catching up.
He gives all the sweet, but never refrains from the sour. He shows Daniel the fights, the back and forth as Daniel pleaded for the gift, for the blood, for more – always more – and Armand refused to give it. In these gift-memories, he sees the orange petals.
And he sees the moment that Daniel, in the past, decides to cut it all out.
He’s furious for the memories. He’s grateful for them. He’s ashamed to have been the reason they’re gone. He’s thrilled he did it, so he could learn and grow and become who he is now, so he could work his way back.
Through it all, he sees himself through Armand’s eyes – a kinder Daniel, a sharper one, a funny one, a cruel one. He sees the fascination and the adoration and he knows one thing above all else.
He’s never gonna need that surgery because there’s more love in Armand than he knows what to do with – but damn if he isn’t going to try and soak it all up to make up for lost time.
“What do you think?” Armand asks, sprucing up the tidy little bouquet that he’s been arranging in the foyer of the Dubai penthouse.
Daniel eyes them, unimpressed, and wonders again about that surgery. “I think you’re an asshole,” he says, eyeing all the flowers that once tormented him with pain and suffering and heartbreak, sitting there in a vase.
“They’re beautiful,” he says defensively.
“They almost killed me,” Daniel retorts.
Armand glides his way to Daniel’s side, two fingers sliding down the scar – the one that belongs to Armand, in one way or another. “Instead, they gave us a new life. Why shouldn’t I put them here, for all to see?”
Why shouldn’t he? Because it’s a reminder of all the suffering that mostly Daniel did. Because every time he looks at those goddamn flowers, his chest seizes up. Because it reminds him of his weakest days.
Yet, here’s Armand, twisting and sniffing the flowers like they’re nothing more than a romantic gesture.
“Start buying me something else,” Daniel says sharply. “I don’t know. Blue orchids. Purple iris. Goddamn daisies. Something better than the flowers that nearly adorned my dead body.”
“Noted.”
The next day, Daniel comes downstairs to find hydrangeas, irises, and Himalayan poppy – all of them blue to indigo, and none of them a reminder of the worst days of his life.
“Better?” Armand asks, clearly desperate to soak up the approval.
Lucky for him, Daniel’s in the mood to give it. “Much,” he says, with a kiss to reward him – which, as it usually does, leads to something a little more and delays the interview a few hours.
There’s flowers in the penthouse every day, but they’re celebratory. They’re an act of love. They’re no longer the sharp weapon that’s ready to take Daniel apart. His heart will stay as strong as it can. His love will pour out until it can’t. The memories will keep coming back until he’s whole.
And until then, he’s got a story to tell.
“Come on,” he says, humanity’s strongest warrior as he pries Armand away from the slow parade of kisses on his neck, “there’s an interview to do.”
“...after, though…?” Armand suggests.
Daniel grins, because he doesn’t need a voice in his mind to know where he’s going with that. “Yeah,” he agrees, buoyed with glee and excitement and anticipation.
Lucky for him, yeah is a promise and not an irritant to Armand. “Yeah,” he echoes, biting his lower lip. “Go on, then. Go and tell Louis’ story. Then come back and let’s continue ours.”
They get another chapter. Maybe they’ll even get a few more after that.
It’s more than Daniel ever expected, but he’s goddamn excited to live through it all and see how it ends.