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"Did you love Louis?” Daniel asks on a different night, in a different tone. The last time, he’d been after another piece of the truth, one more out-of-place puzzle piece in the pattern that needed straightening. This time, he’s curious about something else. About some other element of it. Beyond the objective facts and deeper, into the heart of the question. Into Armand’s heart.
The sigh Armand offers him is put upon loud and intentionally audible. “It is exhausting, truly, spending time with a journalist. And worse. A writer. Assist me in recalling why I come here again?”
“Well, I didn’t invite you.” Daniel huffs back in his direction, even though he’s changed all the curtains to a less offensive color and keeps silky robes on hangers in his closet these days. Silky robes on fucking hangers because you can’t allow silk to crease, Daniel. “You’re free to go.”
Armand rolls his eyes. It’s a stupidly endearing gesture because Daniel is pretty sure Armand picked it up from him. Louis’ Armand, Dubai’s Armand, would never have stooped so low as to reveal his displeasure with such a common show of feeling. But he’s slumming it now, eating that metaphorical ice cream right out of the container. And so, lewd eye gestures of the smallfolk it is.
The eye roll looks out of place draped across the vampire’s features, though, makes him seem small somehow, turns him into a child playing dress up, trying on an adult expression it doesn’t quite understand. It’s endearing, it endears Daniel. He can admit it. But, Armand, he reminds himself, is most certainly not that.
The other curls himself deeper onto the couch, presses his socked feet into the cushions. He seems to have forgotten for the moment that he professes to hate it whenever he makes one of his grand reappearances here. It is just so terribly ugly. But Daniel notices he spends a fair amount of time on it anyway for all that protesting. He doesn’t point that out, though; just watches, amused. And tosses out something else instead.
“Did Louis love you?”
Irritation and fury flicker sparks through Armand’s eyes. And it crosses Daniel’s mind, not for the first time, that he really ought to fireproof the place. It’s never been wise to bait Armand, and these days, it's more foolish than ever, given the other vampire’s fast and loose hold on his own self-control. But Daniel has always done it. Did it when he was in much more danger than he’s in now. And he probably always will.
Armand’s nostrils flare, and his teeth grind together, jaw clenching tight, opening just enough to eke out, “You will have to ask him.” Thin ice, the cadence of them seems to say. Shaky ground. Insert whatever other metaphor for you’re pushing it, bud, here. But Daniel isn’t afraid or impressed.
“I’m asking you.” His legs fall onto the coffee table, a move that Armand watches with bald distaste, and he stretches his arms back over his head before crossing them along his chest, tilting his head to peer at the other.
“Louis loves Lestat.” Armand parrots out dry as though he’s reciting a play. “Lestat was the villain in his tale when we met, not of my making, but Louis still loved him. And now I am the villain. But I suppose he does not love me.”
“I asked if he did.”
Armand lobs a pillow at his head with suspiciously good accuracy and just enough force that the impact actually thuds against him, glances a little bruising pressure across his cheek. “I regret turning you.”
“No, you don’t.” He grins. And man, some days he misses having a beer in his hand at times like these, so he could slurp it extra obnoxiously mid-conversation just to see Armand bristle and glare in that devastating way of his. He guesses he could get a stein of blood, but it’s in the carbonation, you know? “So you don’t think he did. That doesn’t hurt your feelings?”
He’s not wrong, but Armand doesn’t even bother to pretend he is, which means they’re getting somewhere. Instead, the other turns his head away and thins his lips into a tight little line of displeasure. “I don’t have feelings.”
“You’re so full of shit.” Daniel’s snorts, and considers whether keeping his apartment flame-free is worth mussing Armand’s perfect little angel curls up with a pillow of his own. He thinks it probably would be. Even though turnabout is fair play, he bets Armand’s face would get all huffy and shocked, as though he simply can’t believe such a thing could be done to him. He bets his lips would part in indignation, and then Daniel might have to kiss them.
“Very well.” Armand’s fingers twitch like he’s itching to throw another fastball himself, or maybe to wring Daniel’s neck for all the good it would do him now. There’s irritation writ in the syllables of his speech, but the faintest undercurrent of reluctant relief. As though the words have been sitting somewhere on his throat for days, just itching to claw their way up and over. “I have no wish to feel my feelings, then.”
Daniel isn’t sure why he does this, presses and pulls Armand into uncorking the well of repressions he has buried inside himself. It’s a fool’s game, for sure. A game that probably won’t have any winners, and if it does, they likely won’t include Daniel’s health and sanity. The answer to his question probably sits between curiosity, obsession, masochism, and some other word he’s not fully ready to spell out yet. But, hey, Daniel never said he wasn’t into a few repressions himself. And Armand keeps coming back here to let Daniel do it, so. So, he does.
“Yeah,” He levels back at the other, “And how’s that been working out for you.”
The smile that comes his way in response is saccharine sweet. A Dubai smile. A don’t you see, Daniel, Louis and I are perfectly in love, and all is the vampiric equivalent of sunshine and daisies smile. But with more teeth now. More bared than smirked. More ugly than serene. “Well, here I am, seated on a terribly ugly couch,” (there it is), “ in a place that does not exist on any civilized map, in a small, dusty house—” A pause for dramatic breath. “with you.”
Daniel’s arms stretch up above him again, his body resettling into a more comfortable position, the best one he can find to level a shit-eating grin of his own back at Armand and bat his eyelashes overzealously. “So pretty good then, all things considered.”
“Yes, Daniel, pretty good.” The parrot voice returns once more, but with a healthier dose of patronizing this time. Daniel gives himself a scrape of laugh, then lets it die away without a word.
Silence stretches between them for a long moment.
And then slowly, in well-projected motions, which Armand watches with a predator’s grace, the gears behind his eyes reflexively turning, weighing up whether he should reach out with claws to stop the motion or not, slowly, carefully, Daniel reaches out. His no-longer calloused fingers, that are still somehow rough, curve over Armand’s wrist. The fierce gaze drops to the touch, to the connection, and then cuts back up. Armand stills; beneath his touch, frozen.
“You can still feel sad, you know, even if you fucked it all up.” Daniel keeps his voice pitched neutral, but there are threads of, maybe not gentleness, but something like understanding in it. He doesn’t exactly understand, doesn’t exactly understand Armand, but he sure as hell is the closest the other has to someone who does.
Armand’s golden eyes bore into his. And the fury is back, tripled, but the something-like-relief is there too, not insignificant.
“You fucked it all up.” He hisses, but doesn’t snatch his hand back. Leans forward instead, leans into it. Insistent. Insisting. “Everything falling apart; you did that. I did what was necessary to survive. I did what I had to. You—“
“And what you wanted to do.” Daniel interrupts the flood, cuts right through the trills of Armand’s excuses without ceremony. Because isn’t that why Armand comes here, after all? Isn’t that what Daniel is after? He digs his knife right into the heart of these disguises and severs the arteries that keep them alive. Louis had needed him to find what was true. Armand. Armand needs him for a bloodier business than that. And Daniel. Daniel has a taste for blood these days. “And what you only had to do because you did what you wanted to.”
His grip tightens, not quite bruising, not quite breaking, but close, like water so hot it sits on the cusp of burning. No pain comes yet, just the heady promise that it could if circumstances changed just a touch. But Daniel has always had control. And he has it now. Knowing themselves is a problem only one vampire in this room faces. His grip is tighter, but careful, still. He holds Armand there. Makes him listen. Or maybe Armand has come to listen willingly, and it’s Daniel he’s making tell him. Maybe they’ve both lured each other into this moment
“But you can still feel sad about it, all of it, any of it.” The words come firm. Armand holds his gaze, unblinking. No betrayal of a feeling the way someone else, someone softer, less riddled with mazes and tunnels, with trapdoors and disguises, might have proffered in a sideways look or in extra moisture gathered in the corner of their eyes. “Even if all of that.”
They sit there, enveloped in one another. Daniel looks at Armand. And Armand looks at Daniel. Somehow they always get all twisted up in each other. Daniel’s fingers still curved over Armand’s wrist. Armand’s eyes devouring Daniel whole. Until finally, in a quiet flutter of words, more air than sound, in an exhale of a sort, a confession, Armand gives over to him. “I loved Louis.”
Honesty, at last.
A small admission of defeat.
Just a sprinkle of these things. But more than usual. And by the way Armand’s lips have pressed back together, set themselves back to stone, probably all he's going to get on this night.
Still, it suits him, Daniel thinks but doesn’t say, vulnerability, however minuscule.
He thinks it, but keeps his mouth shut, squeezes instead, the wrist in his grip, tugs Armand in and kisses him, kisses the taste of the truth on his lips, sweet, sad, and full or sharp edges that cut. Their lips fall together as Armand shifts on the terribly ugly couch, his feet digging in under Daniel’s thigh. They clash into one another.
The kiss is fierce, but for the briefest brush of a second they’ll both refuse to acknowledge later, soft.