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Armand arrives before him sometime after the sun sets, between when the last lines of light have faded from the horizon and when the stars have fully come out to parade their dominion over the night. Daniel is sprawled on his porch swing, watching the changing of the heavenly guard, maybe contemplating existence, maybe just coming down from the high of his nightly kill. Maybe a little bit of both. There’s a record spinning idly in the corner, strands of music twining through the buzz of insects and the singing of night birds.
Maybe he was just waiting for Armand.
He doesn’t feel surprised to see him, at any rate. But something about him catches at Daniel’s awareness, quirks his brow then furrows it.
Exhaustion, usually invisible, clings to the other’s form, graceful, still, somehow, but it slumps the lines of him, bends his shoulders with an unnatural weight.
Something has not gone right.
Maybe not cataclysmically. Daniel’s pretty sure if the world were ending or the other vamps were attacking because their panties were in a bunch over his latest TV appearance, he’d have gotten some kind of alarm by now. But just, he tilts his head, narrows his eyes, studies the other, just in the twists and turns of his maker’s mind. A bad brain day escalated to emergency because it belongs to an ancient vampire who’s fucked up six ways to Sunday and then some. And somehow, these days, it escapes beyond that, evolves into something else entirely, into Daniel’s problem. Whether that edifies him or infuriates him, not even he can fully say.
Armand is silent, watching him, waiting. There’s a certain sense in the air, thick, and cloying, like that moment just before lightning strikes. Some silent dare for Daniel to say something, to address the sudden shift from bucolic to vitriolic. Some irksome pause for a catalyst so Armand can rage or punish or send a flurry of cutting words out into the air.
The strains of music seem muted in this moment of atmosphere. The crickets have all fallen silent.
And Daniel admits that he’s a pretty good bet on the say something snappy and irritating front… especially where Armand is concerned. Can be counted on to get right under his skin without ceremony, but trusted enough not to hit too far below the belt, as it were.
But Daniel, Daniel was having a nice night. Peaceful, even. Just him, and the tunes, and the stars. The last bits of bloodlust still heating his veins. And it’s languid summer, now. Mid-August. Even a vampire knows it’s sleepy hot. The late blooms fill the air with heady florals, blend with the sharp peppery edges of freshly trimmed grass from faraway mortal yards. The air is sticky, so humid the cotton of his shirt clings even to his sleek new skin. Now and again, the staccato beat of a heart, pumping slow with the temperature and the hour, filters into his awareness.
He doesn’t want a summer storm; he just wants to revel in the warmth of the night.
But funnily enough, when he checks in with himself, he finds he wants to do it with Armand.
So he swallows down, Look what the cat dragged in, Or Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine tonight? Or any other version of a typical opening volley. He could lob that into the world so they could claw their frustrations out on each other, fight, and maybe fuck, and then fuck off, but he doesn’t.
Armand’s eyes stay on him. His hands, down by his sides, are clenched.
Instead, Daniel clears his throat, in what he determinedly pretends is not an awkward way, rises to his feet in one smooth motion, the lack of pain still a fucking marvel, and extends an arm out, offers his hand.
For a minute, the pall of storm fades, and the night is loud again, the music sweeping around them, melodic, bittersweet and nostalgic. Then everything fades in and out, like a radio trying to get signal. Armand watches his hand as though deciding if he should be offended or not. If Daniel is mocking him or not. The record scratches, for a heartbeat. And then the notes come again, touching the evening.
“I don’t—“ understand , Daniel hears the bit-back word anyway, and for some reason, maybe it’s the hour, or the song, or the way Armand’s face composes itself in a mixture of enchantment and terror, it fills him with a quiet kind of melancholy. Some small sadness for the other.
But words, he thinks, would ruin this, would send them right back on the path to rage. So he just raises his brows and proffers the hand again, waits for Armand to finally lower his own back into it, tentative and curious at once.
He’s a little rusty. He doesn’t think he’s danced with anyone since some wedding he’d gone to with his second wife. She pulling him begrudgingly out onto the floor while his mind was miles away, wrapped up in whatever piece he’d been working on at the time.
And then, of course, he’d thought he’d never dance again, not so long ago. Not that dancing had been top-of-mind on his list of nevers. But the point stands. It tightens a knot in his throat, if he thinks about it too hard. Gets worse if he considers that it’s Armand to whom he owes the undoing of these Nevers. So he lets it go instead to wonder about the last time Armand danced with anyone. Had he and Louis danced? Had Armand wanted to? It hadn’t come up.
But somehow, rusty or not, vampire instincts, or Daniel instincts, or just the ever-present magnetic current between them lets him pull Armand in, the other stiffening in slight increments, but not fighting the shifts, allowing Daniel’s arm to wrap around his waist and the readjusting of their hands together, the bending of his elbow.
They both breathe, in tandem, still for a moment, frozen in place. And then Daniel moves them, dares to press though it might break the spell, slow circles on the porch, the barest tilts of weight. Armand’s chest rises, falls, rises, and he closes his eyes, lets Daniel lead him through the motions as the currents of song seem to rise louder, the dream not shattered, but swelling, cresting, building, a crooning voice and the bluesy tilts of saxophone and piano surrounding them, their bodies close.
Daniel has danced before, slow and fancy, with women throughout the ages, at weddings, and dinners, and award show after parties. He can’t remember liking it, not even once. Not even when he was in love with his wife, and things were good. A chore. Some tedious ritual right of society meant to leave him failing.
But as Armand lowers his head, rests his cheek against Daniel’s collarbone, right where it meets his neck and shoulder, the silky brush of his hair tickling Daniel’s chin, and there, against him, Daniel can taste the exact moment the other lets go the tension swirling in his bones, releases himself into Daniel’s arms, and their bodies melt together. As that. As he tightens his arm around the other’s waist, holds him there, sure, maybe, solid, around him, if he lets himself say so himself. As he brings them together and they spin slow in the middle of his porch, Daniel considers for the first time in a lifetime there might be something to it.
Holding anyone else, it never felt like this.
And resting his cheek against the top of Armand’s head, the swaying as languid and sweet as the night air, something shivery unfolds in the middle of Daniel’s chest, threatens to take seed, to grow roots right there in that place around his cold vampiric heart.
It has a name. But it’s not the time to go there. Instead, he adds it to the sensations around him, savors the taste of it, that fragile thing and its fragile beginnings, the unknown stretching before them like the night. And hey, they’ve got nothing but time, after all.
He closes his eyes, too, squeezes Armand’s hand.
The last notes fade out, fizzle to nothing, give way to fuzzy static. They hold there, in limbo for a breath. And then Armand’s shoulders square against him and he pulls away. After images of his presence remain cold in his wake.
The coming of thunder has faded from the golden eyes, and instead, something lurks in them, questioning, a little tenuous, and other things, complex machinations deeper than Daniel can understand echo there too, but brittle, it seems to him, all of it, all the same.
“Do we sleep together now?” It feels of a test and an uncertainty at once, with Armand, it probably is both in simultane.
But Daniel isn’t afraid of either one. He never tries to guess what Armand wants from him, and he thinks that’s why this is working. Yeah, working, he said it.
With a half grin, wry, he slumps and sprawls back onto his seat, kicks his feet onto the table, hunkering back down with relish. “Nope.” He smacks the sound out of his lips, lets it linger long, just in case the clear word has somehow managed to get lost in whatever warped mechanisms Armand uses to translate speech to meaning in his mind.
Armand nods, as though the answer has satisfied him, but stays standing.
“Come on,” Daniel shakes his head when it’s clear the nerd is just going to wait there, or worse, flee. He pats the cushion next to him. “Listen to the night with me.”
“Sounds dull.” Armand hums, and whatever cloud had come seems to have passed them by. But he sits all the same, doesn’t protest when Daniel wraps an arm around him. Leans in and pretends he doesn’t.
They tip their heads back to watch the stars finish glimmering to life, and let the summer cascade around them. And in among the rest, the shivery thing in Daniel’s chest trembles, grows another sprout.