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“Did you love Louis?”
The words murmur out into the sticky air of some mundane summer night—the two of them sprawled on sheets with a thread count that has mysteriously climbed since Daniel lay in them alone last night. Armand is curved away from him, almost out of reach, but not quite. His skin gleams even in the dim light filtering in through the window. And Daniel can’t help but touch him, the pads of his fingers tracing, absentminded, along the edges of muscles and slopes of bone. And so, beneath them, the shifting of Armand’s vertebra blares into him, the way they tighten and tense beneath his touch at the words, one by one by one. Their formation mutates, he imagines, underneath the thin layer of cells that covers it. A new form locking into place. Armand is pretty damn good at reshaping himself.
For some unbounded stretch of time, only silence fills the room. And Daniel muses, in a beat of that quiet, on whether this line of questioning is worth pursuing if Armand is going to pretend a stubborn case of situational deafness until it passes. But he lets it hang all the same, a moment longer, too stubborn to take it back on displeasure alone. That’s not what Armand needs from him anyway. Not what he’s willing to give. And so he waits until, at last, the other speaks, breaks through the humming electronic static that meanders through the dust motes of the room and the lullaby of buzzing crickets in the grass with a carefully empty tone, polite and far away. Armand profers a time machine back to a place where they were strangers, brandishes it like a sword.
“We are no longer in an interview, Mr. Molloy.”
He doesn’t turn to look at Daniel, but the sound of the sentence, flat, lands between them with a thud.
It’s deferral, not invitation, but it’s an inch. So Daniel presses for the mile. Armand did love Louis; that’s his best understanding of the situation. But it all falls apart for him after that. He’s pried the door open enough, and so he kicks it down.
“Yeah, well, if you loved him, why’d you create a play where you kill him in the end, then?” He doesn’t know why he’s pushing this here tonight; doesn’t even know if it matters at all.
If it matters to him.
But curiosity has always been his vice of choice; nothing worse than a loose end dangling in the story… And maybe, if he’s honest, which he’s trying to be, at least to himself, now that he’s seen all these cautionary tales and whatnot. If he’s honest, there’s something more to it than that—some unyielding urge to understand the creature lying beside him, a little too close, a little too far. Not even Armand, he considers, understands Armand. And so, it seems to follow no one else has ever understood him either. It could also be said that Daniel can’t ever say no to a challenge.
Armand is silent for another long moment and then hisses, a barely perceptible whisper into the dark. “You seemed quite content that you had all the answers in Dubai.” It’s less impersonal this time. More intimate. More angry. An accusation in it that threatens an impending explosion. The vestiges of control manifest around the sentiment like a worn habit but barely hold on at the corners.
Somewhere, deep below the surface, the faintest twist of guilt pangs through Daniel’s stomach. But he refuses to apologize for the way of things. For the way things went. Armand’s doings. Armand’s bed. It’s not Daniel’s fault he has to lie in it now. “The truth.” He offers back, levely, a little stern, but concedes. “In broad strokes.”
He doesn’t have to see Armand’s face to see the downturn of displeasure this sentence creates. Maybe it would be easier for Armand, for whatever story he’s telling himself, if Daniel pretended some kind of sympathy, assumed any of the fault. But he won’t be doing that.
His fingers linger still on the other’s skin, and beneath them, it’s soft, real, made of biological building blocks that come together in the way they’re meant to. Armand, distilled down to his component parts, is made of cells just like anyone else. But any step beyond that and everything inverts into a hundred kinds of confusions, into skins, and masks, and armors, into tales woven so tightly the truths and lies all blur.
They’re wearing them down, maybe, here, in these quiet nights, somewhere in the limbo between the snarling and the fucking, in the dimness before dawn, an occasional honesty. But it’s hard to ever really be sure.
“I intended to save Louis.” Armand murmurs, his head shifting back against the pillow so his hair falls to the side and frames his profile, his face upturned toward the window. But he does not turn. “I did not intend for him to die on the stage.” The unspoken sounds of as the pair of you decided echo loudly in the space between them. Armand inhales a breath he doesn’t need and lets it loose, slow, a dramaticism, maybe. A theatrical note. “The rest, I suppose, is correct.”
Daniel studies the outline of him in the dark. It doesn’t matter, maybe, if it’s truth or not. Armand believes it. Has convinced himself of the veracity of it. It’s true for him. And sometimes, on those counts, there’s no fact-checking available. It’s Armand’s word on Armand’s intentions. And that’s all there is to go on for that. Daniel finds, with just the barest of surprises, that he can accept it. That he can accept it as true. It doesn’t change anything, doesn’t really alter Armand’s hand in the revelations of Dubai. But maybe it’s important to know. He’ll question himself on it, on his belief of it, later, for now, he allows it to stand. Prods--- “Think that would matter to him?”
At that, Armand finally stirs. In one fluid motion, he’s shifted himself onto his side so they’re facing one another on the bed, and Daniel snatches his hand back into his body at the change of position.
Golden eyes sear into him, watching for a few beats, measuring.
“I am tired of going in circles with Louis.” A sentiment that’s harder for Daniel to determine the truth of, Armand lies like breathing sometimes. But the tone of the word changes as they turn from vibrations of air to sound, something contemplative twining into the ripple of them on his tongue, some stark amusement unearthed from blood and bone, from the matter of him. “He was my companion, and now I am alone. I accept it.”
The words bristle something in Daniel’s chest more than he likes, more than he cares to admit. But he tries to keep the acrid taste on his tongue out of his voice as he raises his eyebrow. “A funny thing to say to a man when you’re in his bed.”
A slow blink comes in his direction, and when Armand’s lids rise to reveal his eyes anew, the fragile thing in them has vanished. They’re sharp again, and his voice goes silky, purrs, soft and dangerous. “Oh?” The hum comes languid, a molten metal that tempts touch but relishes to burn. “Do you love me then?”
Daniel has no answer for that.
Armand’s fangs reflect the light in the room when they bare, and then they suck it up. Armand extinguishes the glow of lantern, and moon, and even the little green blink on the outlet. It all absorbs into him until there’s only the darkness and a gleaming white. He seems to expand, looms over Daniel as he loses all sense of shape and melts into a mass of shadows with teeth, predatory and cruel.
Fucking drama queen.
“Louis didn’t even know you.” Daniel huffs quietly into the performance, and, just like that, it deflates like a pricked balloon, the air rushing in around them, the stars blinking back to life, the alarm clock on the bedside table flashing its numbers again.
Armand is lying on his back as though he hadn’t stirred at all, dark hair a halo against the pale satin of the pillowcase (also a new addition). His gaze stares into nothing. Neither closed nor open.
“And you do.” There’s the faintest quirk of lip accompanying it. “You do not love me, but you think you understand something. Is that what this is?”
“I could.” He borrows some of Armand’s arrogance for the assertion because he thinks, yeah, it’s true.
A noise that’s mostly air and a touch of disbelief scrapes out of Armand’s throat, but he tilts his eyes enough to find Daniel’s. The same eyes now, golden. Maker and made. “I suppose I can allow you to try.”
“Well, thanks for that, Your Royal Pain in My Ass.”
Before Armand can respond to the scoff, Daniel leans over and presses their lips together, starts a kiss that deepens and turns hungry. Armand is a force of nature beneath his touch, an inferno that’s been on a low burn, and now its getting hotter every day. But Daniel has never been afraid of stepping into the frying pan.
There’s no one left for Armand to act for, he considers, as he pulls the other closer, tugs fingers through his hair that aren’t anywhere close to nice, no coven, no Louis, just Daniel, who sees right through him.
“This.” He murmurs, more breath than air, into the twine of their lips, into that precipice they straddle where Daniel doesn’t handle Armand like he’s fragile, but he isn’t careless either. Gentleness isn’t his key strength, and he doesn’t think Armand would know what to do with it, even if it was. But Daniel has his eye on the place where callous becomes cruel, and he doesn’t think anyone’s ever done that for Armand either. “What this is.” Armand’s cheek fits into the palm of his hand where he cradles it. “It’s real.”
And Daniel might not be in love with him right now, but he’s here . And in his bed, in the twine of their limbs and the clash of their teeth, maybe Armand, too, exists as nothing more and nothing less than himself.