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Daniel tastes him across every corner of his awareness, like the tip of a cigarette, the moment he turns the corner into his temporary abode. There’s a little ash, a little smoke, the warming embers of a fire. Contained, perhaps, for a minute, but devouring quickly. It quirks the edges of his lips, just a touch, but he doesn’t otherwise acknowledge it. Only huffs out the barest scrape of a laugh and shoulders his way in, studiously ignoring the corner of shadows in the dimness that amass into the shape of a man.
The roar of the crowd is still loud in his ears as he sheds the clinging layer of his jacket. The heightened sense of sweat and sex, without him, inside him, all around, remains. That ardent desire. Visions of Lestat on the stage leave spots in his sight, a deliverance of some good old-fashioned godliness to the masses. Hard to resist that when it’s serving itself on a platter.
Research, he’d purred in Louis’ ear from afar. Don’t you want to help an old man out with his work?
You’re not old. Louis had hummed back, calm, all soft edges over steel these days. Practically a baby in its diapers. And then, amused. Lestat doesn’t need me to hold his hand at every show.
No, but then I have to while he pouts. Talk about a bab-
Goodnight, Daniel.
That had been hours ago.
Maybe it was the conversation that spurred this little visit after weeks of silence.
Maybe it was just the sand in the hourglass run out again. Too long since the last time they clashed into one another before dissolving into a petty match of irritations and then nothing until one or the other of them breaks down in their endless dance of obsession and frustration.
Either way, Daniel is pleased it wasn’t him. This time.
“Like the shirt?” He tosses over his shoulder, when the quiet stretches too long around them. He always did hate an awkward silence, and being a vampire hasn’t done much for his patience. The silvery script that forms Satan's Night Out gleams in the pale moonlight as he turns toward the other, finally. It splashes gilded along his chest, clinging to him in the humidity of this fine summer night in Illinois, or Indiana, or whatever I-state they’re in tonight. “Think the name is an ode to your fine teachings, but you have to admit, it’s stylish.”
“It is hideous. Like most of your things. And his. ” Armand’s eyes are golden in the shadows as he shifts just a little bit closer, comes more clearly into focus. “Take it off.”
A different Daniel inhales, and the ash drifts down onto his fingers, the burn of the nicotine igniting, crawling down his throat, catching, searing, satisfying, and full of friction.
He chuckles, throaty, and without mirth, “Come take it off yoursel—.” The sound slashes to a halt as expected by Armand’s immediate presence inches from his face, the sentence beheaded before he can finish the last syllable.
Once, they’d have shared the same air, this close. Now, they share something else.
Despite himself, his heart skips one of its long, slow beats.
He’s not scared of Armand, he tells himself. Never has been.
Armand’s eyes are molten this close. Burning.
Beautiful. Daniel thinks.
But they don’t say that kind of thing to one another.
And inside his mind, the thought is safe from them both. He pushes it away. Leans all the way out of it and into something else.
Graceful fingers run up his stomach, determined, to twist into the fabric, tear, rip Satan right through the T. And Daniel tilts his head back against the wall with a grin and pretends it doesn’t do ungodly things to him. A messenger of Satan, if there ever was one, Armand. Daniel’s own personal devil.
“Alright.” Armand gives back calmly, as though they’d been in the middle of a conversation, and he’s merely finishing Daniel’s thought. “If you insist.”
“Not very polite of you, the Vampire Armand.” He lets Armand press him back, crowd against him, watches him tilt his head up, breathing hard, that snarl there, once pressed back and back, bared now, semi-permanent. Daniel doesn’t miss the masks. But he wonders what this face, all fury and rawness and some kind of hurt Daniel can see and pretends he can’t, wonders what this version of it would look like with a smile.
Only sometimes.
Not always.
Not now.
“Not polite at all. Barging into my room when I’m due for a nap. Making a mess. Ruining my souvenir concert tee after you already demolished half my wardrobe back in New York.”
“You’ll get another I’m sure. The Vampire Daniel.” Armand sniffs, mocks in all his delicious derision, drenched in self-pity, clad in an arrogance Daniel craves, and Armand's fingers are on his skin now, pressing, brushing, shifting—claiming. They trace over the contours of his bones, sweep up, flit along the veins on his arms, curve over his wrists, squeeze.
“Tonight was a good night.” The insistence comes out for no real reason, just to stoke the flame, just to make the grip tighten even more, his hands forced up by his ears now and higher, his body this side of crushed. “Worth remembering.”
“It will be.” Armand murmurs. And Daniel doesn't think he knows that he sounds like the villain from a superhero movie, or, like a giant nerd, or, is it, like an ancient vampire pinning Daniel in place in some hotel whose name he won't remember. But Daniel lets him because he will remember this. Because when the fire burns down all the way, and Armand’s lips are on his, and he can taste him in every corner of his awareness, can yank a hand free and tangle it into the soft curls of his hair, wrench him closer, crush them up together, because then, somehow, for the duration of a minute, or an hour, or however it is time can be measured for a vampire who has lost all sense of it, for the span of that hair’s breadth, everything in the goddamn universe seems to make sense.
Beautiful.
They don’t say that kind of thing to one another.
And they certainly don’t say.
I missed you .
Or---
Don’t leave.
Not as their fingers chase the trail of old invisible scars on wounds that have barely stopped bleeding. Not when their mouths entangle, and for the faintest trill of a second, there’s a softness that Daniel leans into as Armand moves closer, their eyes meeting, and the ensuing pull of lips on his is achingly, unbearably, tender, until they both remember at once that there should be teeth somewhere in the equation. Sharp, simple teeth, for their sharp, simple, silly, snarled relationship.
Soft things.
That’s not the deal as the old bitterness and the new pleasure and the complicated confusions of history seep into one another, meld together like their bodies do. They need this, revile this, an addiction, an obsession. The way Armand straddles his hips. The way the shadows play on the arch of his body back and the bare expanses of his throat. The noises Daniel makes.
Not here.
In the hours before dawn, Armand, bare and quiet, crawls up along his body, and lays his head on his chest. Daniel wraps his arms around the slender form of him, feels the stupid way they fit together, just right in the stillness.
And together, they stay, for a time. However it is time can be measured for a vampire who has lost all sense of it. They remain.
Maybe Armand will be gone soon.
Maybe not.
Either way, this moment will have faded from memory before the sun sets again, stubbed out of existence onto the ashtray, both their fingerprints left at the scene. Devoured quickly into ash.