Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Something Louis de Pointe du Lac shaped tickles at the back of his mind, but Daniel ignores it.

Nothing against Louis. He loves Louis. He probably wouldn’t have gotten through the early days of vampirism unscathed without him, and he’s even learning how to have a good time again, though his definition of fun is still less bloody than it could be. But Daniel is just a little busy right now, and he’s more interested in sinking his fangs into this guy’s neck than he is taking psychic phone calls.

If Louis knew what was good for him he’d be here too, but things seem to still be hot-and-cold in the Pointe du Lac/de Lioncourt household and Daniel doesn’t know better than to pry, demonstrably he does not know better, but for once he’s kept out of it. Mostly because Lestat doesn't have the same tolerant fondness for him that Louis does, as a fledgling or a journalist, and he’s still trying to get his story out of him. That, and keep getting invitations to his afterparties, like the one he’s currently attending.

Fucking ragers. Reminds him of the time he followed a budding rockstar around on tour sometime in the late 80’s, chasing that story—until the rockstar got hit by his own tour bus and the story turned into an obituary. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

But partying as a vampire is better, and he has to admit that Lestat knows how to do it right. At the moment Daniel has a guy in a mesh shirt practically crawling all over him, dancing completely off-beat with the thudding song playing over the speakers, high as a kite on God knows what. Daniel is excited to find out the specifics.

If Louis would leave him alone.

“Can I help you?” Daniel mutters, finally opening his mind to the psychic prod needling at him, already with a mouthful of fang. Come on, man. He’s thirsty.

“Haha, yeah,” the guy says breathily, pressing his sweaty body closer.

Daniel’s jaw aches and he turns his head, tracking that bouncing pulse. Maybe he can drink and talk at the same time—

“You need to go handle Armand,” Louis says bluntly. “You may not be able to hear him, but the rest of us can. And it’s loud.”

Okay, record scratch. The music thuds on, his little friend blissfully unaware that Daniel lifts his head from where he’d been about to make a meal out of his neck. What?

It’s hard to tell which part is most arrested. The Armand, yeah. But the you, need, and handle are close runners up. Again: what?

“You know where he is?” It’s impossible not to sound eager, despite his every desperate attempt to play it cool. It’s been three years since Dubai, and Daniel hasn’t seen his deadbeat maker since he did the making. Asshole. Daniel’s scraped by on intuition and a healthy dose of pity from Louis in the meantime. He doesn’t even need Armand. Clearly. He’s been fine. Great, even.

But that hasn’t stopped him from looking.

“It’s become apparent,” Louis says dryly.

“Your maker has been mewling like a dying cat,” Lestat butts in to sneer, and Daniel can see him scowling from across the room. He breaks into a string of French that Daniel doesn’t understand entirely, but takes to mean something involving said cat, a bag, and a river.

Shit. Alright.

“Okay, okay. I hear you. Not sure what handle is supposed to mean, but—”

His snack laughs blearily against his shoulder. “Do you always talk to yourself?”

Daniel sighs. “Only on bad days.” No more snack, at least not this guy. If Armand is nearby—if Armand is needing to be handled, and for some reason that’s something Daniel is qualified to do—then he can’t be getting high on whatever cocktail this guy has running through his veins. At least one of them is having fun. “Go drink some water,” he says, trying not to sound sullen as he nudges the guy away like a wayward toddler. He’ll wake up tomorrow hungover and wishing he wasn’t alive, but he will be. He can write Armand a thank you note.

Daniel sighs again and rubs at his forehead. “Can you at least tell me where the hell he is?”

Armand is…in jail.

Why? He doesn’t know. Since when do vampires go to jail? No idea. On purpose, he has to assume. He’s brand new compared to a vampire like Armand, and he can outwit a cop. Hell, he was doing it when he was twenty, and there wasn’t a lot of wit to go around back then.

More importantly, he’s in jail like, two hours outside of the city, which is fucking annoying. Daniel borrows a car from one of Lestat’s roadies, but he still has to make it back before dawn unless he wants to sleep in the trunk and hope it’s well-sealed. Which he doesn’t. To be clear.

God. What a stupid night.

Stupid of him to feel nervous too, sitting in his borrowed car and squinting at the little podunk police station like answers will manifest in the buzzing yellow parking lot lights. None of this is how Daniel imagined seeing his maker again would go, and he’s had some time to think about it. Time he spent well. Sometimes he imagined himself angry. Sometimes aloof. Sometimes he threw out a cool, casual joke. Sometimes, if he was especially blood-drunk, he even imagined himself a bit sappy. It feels like a dangerous roulette of emotion that might pop out in the middle of an unexpected reunion at a police station.

Better get on with it. Before Lestat starts bitching again, at least.

Daniel tugs at his black leather jacket and pats his hair into place, hoping he doesn’t still smell like the booze stain he tried to buff out of his shirt on the drive over. The parking lot is entirely dead except for the cars belonging to the night shift and a couple of police cruisers dark and sleeping peacefully over to one side. The little building is outdated, all wood-paneling and fluorescent lighting that buzzes in his ears as Daniel pushes open the squeaking glass door. It smells like industrial carpet and disinfectant inside.

“Hey, weird question, I, uh—Uh.” Daniel stops. He stares.

The cop behind the front counter stares back at him, his eyes glassy and his face streaked with tears. Alive. Definitely alive, but he looks fucking possessed. He’s definitely not aware of Daniel standing awkwardly right in front of him.

“You there, buddy?” Daniel waves his hand in front of his face. Not even a blink. “Okay.” Well. Something tells him that Armand is probably here. At least there’s that.

“This is some real horror movie shit,” he mutters to himself, awkwardly sidling through the metal detector, which goes off at the keys in his pocket, but still no reaction. Cool. Well, that’s easy.

Jail was a bit of an overstatement, it turns out. The police station is hardly more than a handful of rooms crowded with desks and filing cabinets, most of the little offices dark at this time of night. It doesn’t really have the space or infrastructure to hold anyone particularly nefarious. Or anyone at all, except maybe for…the drunk tank.

Seriously?

Daniel doesn’t believe it even when he does see it, a wide holding cell at the back of the building, watched over by a woman at an old desk, wearing a uniform and her own tearful, vacant expression. There are only two figures inside of the cell. One is a man with graying, disheveled hair and a beer belly sitting on the bench against the back wall. He’s also clearly dead, even without vampire senses to confirm the diagnosis. His face is gray and bloodless, except for two little specks of it right on the side of his neck.

Armand lies stretched out across the rest of the bench, his legs bent to keep them from dangling off of the side, his head pillowed sweetly in the dead man’s lap. He lays with his chin tucked down against his chest, his eyes closed but his lips moving as he mutters to himself, too fast and low to be comprehensible. His hands dance in the air over his chest, twisting into intricate, erratic gestures that must mean something to him if no one else, as if he’s conducting a symphony, or just running through a play-by-play of a particularly intense conversation.

It’s not how Daniel expected to find him. Ever, really. Even at his lowest, shaken up by Daniel’s little coup d'etat in Dubai, he’d been panicked but somewhat put together, at least compared to this. This is gone off the rails right off the deep end. Did anyone actually arrest him, or did he break in for this little tableau? How dramatic do you have to be?

Armand doesn’t notice him. Daniel coughs. Nothing.

Yeah, not that easy. Naturally. He spends a minute considering the woman at the desk and wondering if there’s a key before he realizes that the cell door is unlocked, pulled almost closed but not actually secured, which fits in with the level of play-acting going on here. Daniel shoves it open and Armand’s head twitches, but he still refuses to open his eyes.

“Hey, c’mon.” Daniel says, snapping his fingers. “Let’s go, pal. I’m busting you out of here.”

Finally his eyes peel open, big and doe-like except for the fact that they’re bright orange, the pupils blown out so wide they almost eclipse the color entirely. “Daniel,” he says, sounding a little mystified, maybe a little confused. A series of emotions play out across his face, rotating too quickly to be named. His eyes roam over Daniel’s face, as if looking for some clue that it’s a trick. “You came for me.”

Daniel shifts his weight uncomfortably, the raw emotion chafing against him. So this is Armand drunk. Blackout drunk. Messy drunk. The kind that probably should have him puking up blood while Daniel holds his hair back if vampire anatomy allowed for that—which it doesn’t, at least so far as Daniel’s extensive experimentation has shown. And he absolutely, one hundred percent, is not having this conversation with a drunk Armand.

Three years is a long time to wait to talk to the guy who made you a vampire. He can wait a little longer.

“I was sent for you,” Daniel corrects him pedantically. “Up, up, up. I’ve got places to be before sunrise.”

Armand just stares up at him, somehow still artful, still angelic, even with his head pillowed in the lap of a dead guy. His hair is bunched up around his face, tangled and falling in his eyes, his face a mask of perfect, soul-deep pain. Behind them, the woman at the desk sobs. “I don’t think I should. I think I belong here,” he says mournfully.

Jesus Christ. He’s too old for this. He’s immortal and he’s too old for this. Amazing.

“You know what? Probably. But let’s debate that later.” Daniel grabs him by the armpit and pulls him up into the sitting position, until he has no choice but to swing his legs down. He knew that Armand was gangly, but he didn’t really understand the depth of the situation until he tried actually puppeteering him into standing. Suddenly there’s a whole lot of leg going in every direction.

“Oh—” Armand leans bonelessly against him once he’s finally standing, twisting at the waist to point ineffectively back at his victim. Daniel forcibly turns him back around.

“Louis is sending a guy to clean up your mess,” Daniel says. “Everyone say thank you, Louis.”

“Thank you, Daniel,” Louis says in his mind, so entirely bland that Daniel knows he’s really laughing his ass off. Yeah, so funny.

Maybe there is something a little funny about a five hundred year old vampire tripping out of the police station like a kid who broke into his dad’s liquor cabinet, but that’s something Daniel is going to have to appreciate later. At the moment it takes all of his attention to help Armand navigate through the metal detector, which has enraptured him as he steps through it and then back again, setting it off repeatedly with his belt buckle.

“Is this your vehicle?” Armand asks in the parking lot, a laugh at the edge of his voice. They left the station’s staff still weeping behind them, but Armand himself seems to be in something of a better mood. Maybe the metal detector was all it took.

“Lestat’s,” Daniel says shortly. True enough.

“Eugh,” Armand pulls his lips back from his teeth like a cat smelling something unpleasant.

“Why don’t you sit in the back?” he offers, but Armand is already opening the passenger side door, and there goes any hope of a peaceful drive while Armand falls asleep in the back. Road trip it is, then.

Daniel takes a steadying breath, his hand on the door handle but not pulling it open. This is fine. He’s an adult, and this isn’t the first awkward situation he’s found himself in. Hell, once he and his second wife drove seven hours to attend a funeral, and that was in the middle of the divorce. Granted, she hadn’t been drunk off her ass and neither of them were blood-sucking immortals, but the point stands. All it takes is a little stoney silence and a series of NPR segments to fill it. He pulls open the door.

Armand is already fiddling with the radio dials.

“Will you stop—the car isn’t even on yet.”

A gentle snow has started to fall by the time Daniel pulls out of the sleepy little parking lot, leaving minor chaos behind. It turns the night orange and blue, the sky soft and the street lights blurred against the glossy dark of the highway. It would almost be peaceful if Armand didn’t keep squirming in his seat, pulling at the seat belt that Daniel had insisted he put on so they didn’t get pulled over. No more cops tonight.

Finally Armand huffs and seems to find something halfway comfortable, his head tipped back against the headrest to stare moodily out of the window, the flashing streetlights copper against his skin.

“I’m thirsty,” he complains after a moment of almost-quiet.

“Are you kidding me? How many grown men did you drink tonight?” At least two—one to get him into the drunk tank and the other poor sucker as a chaser. “You’re fucking thirst—I’m thirsty. You know, I was kinda having a good night until I had to come bail your ass out.” God, he sounds like his fucking dad.

He expects Armand to snap back, but instead the silence that settles over the car is heavy, undercut only by the soft purr of the engine, the car too expensive to really fill the silence. Daniel lets them sit in it for a long moment, until he forces his hands to relax a little on the steering wheel and exhales through his nose. Yeah, it’s annoying being pulled out of your night out and having to run upstate to go play adult with someone who’s messier than you are. Worse when they’re not even someone you could call a friend exactly, and doubly so when you’re you’re kind of the one used to being the mess, not the one cleaning it up. But he’s not entirely without self-awareness. Daniel knows that none of this really is about the situation, as fucking weird as it is.

It’s about Armand.

He sneaks a sideways glance. Armand has pulled his legs up, nearly folding himself in half in the passenger seat, half of his face buried against his knees so he stares out over them at fat snowflakes hitting the windshield. The general air of wet misery hangs over him, so heavy that if it weren’t for the car he’d sink right into the earth. How the hell did he get here? A lot can happen in three years, doesn’t he know it, but this is a steep fall from grace from the Armand he knew in Dubai. This is just…sad.

“I didn’t—” Daniel starts and immediately stops himself. He’s not apologizing for shit. Absolutely not. He puffs out a breath. “This isn’t how I expected it would go when I saw you again. Is all.” That almost sounds like an apology, doesn’t it? Fuck.

Armand barely twitches, but his eyes slide sideways. Even drunk he manages to be watchful, a bit like a staring cat. “What did you expect to happen?” he mumbles into his knees.

Daniel shrugs. “I don’t know. I’d yell at you,” he says grudgingly. “Hit you, maybe. Call you some nasty names. Probably thank you.” He told himself they weren’t having this conversation right now. But— “Where the hell did you go?”

Armand is quiet for a long moment, long enough that Daniel starts to wonder if he’ll say anything at all, except that he’s still staring at him from across the center console, the soft sadness on his face turning his expression almost tender. Finally, he looks away, shrugging one shoulder limply. “I needed time,” he says. “I acted rashly. I needed to think.”

Oh wow. Just as underwhelming as he expected it to be.

“Great,” Daniel says flatly, thumping his palms against the steering wheel. “Glad you got that. I was fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”

“I knew that you would be resourceful—

“Resourceful—”

“I had every faith in your capabilities—“

“Well, next time you hit and and quit it maybe drop an instruction manual on the way out—“

“—you had Louis—”

“I needed you.”

Shit. He didn’t mean to say that. Daniel sighs and rubs at his face with one hand, almost expecting to bump his glasses before he remembers he doesn’t need those anymore. Three years a vampire, and thirty minutes around Armand suddenly throws him right back into being human again. Is this what they mean by arrested development? Is he fucking vampirically emotionally stunted? This is embarrassing.

“Anyway,” Daniel says hastily.

“You do not understand,” Armand says, stomping all over his attempt to backpedal. He practically lurches against the center console, leaning as far as his seatbelt will let him, his eyes big and red rimmed. “Do you know what it’s like to give away half of your soul? Of whatever may be left of it? Five centuries in the solitude of my own self, the sole keeper of my one conviction, that I gave away for you, Daniel Molloy. And here you are ever since, my constant, distant companion, the blood of my blood. Do you not feel it? Does it never threaten to drive you mad?”

“Uh,” Daniel says.

Armand blinks. He pulls back like a confused bird. “Do you not feel it?” he repeats, incredulous this time. Suddenly Daniel is wondering if he’s a little closer to sober than he’s letting on. “The bond of our blood? The connection between us? Like the ceaseless tide, like the eternal beating of a drum?”

“Uhhh.” Does he? Not enough to cry in the middle of a police station but maybe…a little? He grimaces at the road and reaches out with his mind, probing the space between them. Armand’s mind is like the absence of light, palpable in its strange absence but not something he can connect with like Louis or Lestat and definitely not the furling open book of a mortal mind. He’s aware of him, like closing your eyes and being aware of where your hand is resting or how it moves through the air, that extra sense that feels like intuition. Probably more than is normal, but it’s hard to tell for sure. He hasn’t exactly had a lot of vampiric makers to compare it too.

Daniel settles for a confused: “maybe?”

Armand makes a noise like he’s been punched in the ribs. “Maybe,” he scoffs, like the word is offensive. He flops back in his seat, one hand pulling restlessly at his seatbelt, though he doesn’t seem to be paying attention to it. He stares out at the highway like he’s not really seeing it, squinting as his face jumps through another dizzying series of emotions. “Maybe.” It’s hard to tell if he’s heartbroken, insulted, or disgusted.

Well, what are you supposed to say to that? Sorry? Jesus. Like it’s his fault he doesn’t hear the ceaseless drum of their…whatever. Maybe if someone had taught him better he would.

Still. He does feel kinda bad.

“...you can turn on the radio,” Daniel offers reluctantly. “If you want.”

Armand huffs and stares moodily out the window. Ninety seconds later he reaches for the radio dial. Staticky Christian rock blares through the speakers.

At least it’s safer than talking.

It’s half an hour before dawn by the time they get to his apartment, and the sky is turning a worrying shade of purple even beneath the falling snow, which chased them all the way back. No time to get a bite to eat, especially not when it’s snowing and only the garbage men and more dedicated joggers are out. He’ll live, but that doesn’t mean he’ll enjoy it. It’s another irritation stacked on top of a particularly irritating night.

Daniel parks the car in a loading zone to make sure it’ll be towed in the morning, just so he doesn't have to deal with returning it. Armand had eventually given up the joys of switching rapidly between radio stations and had settled for staring out of the window and listening to late night radio commercials for the last half hour of the drive.

“I wasn’t exactly expecting guests,” Daniel says, maybe a touch defensively as he leads him up to his apartment, because what else is he going to do with him? Armand may be able to handle the sunlight, but the rest of the world can’t necessarily handle him, and Daniel doesn’t need him getting a second wind when no other vampire is awake to try to rein him in.

Which is the excuse. The reality is that Daniel is maybe a little bit worried about him, which is a stupid thing to be. Armand hadn’t worried about him when he threw him directly into being a fledgling vampire without so much as a see ya later on the way out. But he was right, just a little bit. Daniel is a tough cookie. He figured it out.

Armand is a survivor too, in the way a cockroach is a survivor. That’s obvious, he wouldn’t have made it this long if it wasn’t true, but none of this is what Daniel has come to expect from him. Where’s the arch superiority? The sideways remarks? The eternal, ever-pleased sense of I know something you don’t know? This Armand is as moody as a five hundred year old teenager, drunk and disinterested. It’s weird. It’s—it’s just fucking weird. That’s all there is to it.

“Hm,” is Armand’s short assessment of Daniel’s apartment, as he passes through it like a half-curious ghost, his fingertips brushing against a side table or briefly inspecting a book spine. “I’m going to sleep,” he annouces without waiting for an invitation, or taking his shoes off. He makes an unnerving beeline to Daniel’s bedroom, as if he already knew where to find it. Daniel watches as he crawls into his bed and curls up face-first in the duvet. Still wearing his shoes. Yeah.

Daniel watches him for a moment, waiting to see if he’ll remember the shoe thing, but he doesn’t move. Finally he sighs and turns away, rubbing at his eyes.

Well, that all happened. If it weren’t for the vampire collapsed on his bed he might be tempted to write it off as a weird dream, but no, definitely real. Exhaustion dogs at his heels as he moves into the kitchen, brought on by the slowly rising sun, even though the shutters he’d had installed over his windows are all still firmly closed against the light. He needs to sleep even more than he needs to drink, but one thing is more important than both of those.

DM: Okay, I got him back to my place.
DM: What now?

It takes a minute for the typing bubbles to appear. Normally he’d ring up Louis with his mind, but as much as Armand looks like he’s already passed out, he doesn’t trust that he’s not listening. He’s not sure if Armand would be able to hear Louis’ half of the conversation floating through the air, but he doesn't really want to find out when he’s in the middle of asking hey, what do I do with him?

LDPDL: what do you mean what now?
DM: What do you mean what do I mean?
DM: He’s in my apartment. Sleeping it off.
DM: What if he doesn’t leave?

Nothing. Typing bubbles. Nothing again.

LDPDL: lol

Jesus Christ. Daniel leans against the wall and tips his head back, seeking benediction from a god that definitely isn’t listening to the likes of him anymore.

DM: Asshole.
DM: I think something is wrong with him.
LDPDL: probably
DM: So what do I do?
DM: I’m not taking care of him.
LDPDL: no one ever said you had to
DM: It’s starting to feel pretty implied.
LDPDL: kick him out if you want to
LDPDL: i think someone should help him, didnt say it had to be you
DM: This is a lot of compassion for the guy you threw into a wall.

More typing bubbles, undulating unbroken this time.

LDPDL: has anyone ever cared for you when you didnt deserve it?

Bastard. Even without the benefit of a psychic connection, Louis knows they’re thinking of the same thing. A burnt hand on his face and a voice, strained by methodical, pushing past fear and pain and planting belief inside of him. A bright young reporter with a point of view. Grace was a big word for anything that happened inside of that shitty little apartment in San Francisco, but Daniel knows that he didn’t deserve anything close to it. He’d received it anyway. At the very least, he got to keep his life.

DM: Yeah, yeah.

He looks sideways, through the open doorway where Armand has shifted a little on the bed, just enough to flip over one side of the duvet and bury himself in it. He sighs for the tenth time in the last hour alone. There’s no use fighting a battle that he’s already lost. This is what he wanted, isn’t it? To see his maker again, say all the things he’s been wanting to say, ask all the questions he never got to ask?

Yeah, and that’s going great so far.

“Hey,” Daniel calls, turning toward the room. “At least take your shoes off…”

Chapter Text

He had this girlfriend once—between the wives, but went about the same sort of way, what else do you expect? Anyway, he had this girlfriend once and she had this nice apartment in Boston, which is more or less why he liked her, and she had a cat. A big fluffy white thing with one black ear that would just stare at him from across the room. He swore he could feel it, like big orange eyes boring right on his soul.

It’s been a while since he felt that feeling.

Daniel groans and rolls over, squinting in the light sending daggers straight through his eyeballs. Armand stares down at him from the foot of his bed, entirely unblinking.

“Is this how you sleep?” he asks incredulously, his forehead wrinkling with the power of his judgment.

And Daniel thinks succinctly: what the actual fuck is going on?

The night before hits him a moment later and he lets his head drop back down onto his pillow with a fresh groan. Right. Party. Jail. Armand. Shit, did it snow all day? That’s going to make hunting annoying. Wait, back to Armand. He’s in his apartment, watching him like a kid at an aquarium just about to tap on the glass to get Daniel to do something, anything.

He’s clearly been awake for a minute, though if he’s suffering from a hangover after last night’s misadventure, it’s not immediately apparent. He’s showered, his hair still wet, and smells like the lavender shampoo Daniel picked up because the label said it’s supposed to be relaxing. And he’s wearing—

“Are those my clothes?”

“Is it?” Armand asks again.

“My clothes? Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” They’re sure as hell not the clothes he was wearing last night, or clothes that fit right. And that’s definitely his gray hoodie, complete with the mustard stain that took it out of the outside-clothes rotation.

“How you sleep,” he presses. He frowns. “You’re in a closet, Daniel.”

Daniel looks around, as if he needs the reminder. Yeah, he sleeps on a twin bed shoved into the walk-in closet. Yeah, that’s weird. But—

“It’s better than a coffin,” Daniel says defensively, pushing himself up on his elbows. It could be worse. He’s got a makeshift bed frame and a duvet and everything. He’s not a total slob. Yeah, he’s been telling himself he’s going to figure out a better solution any day now, but in his defense, he travels. He’s busy. And he’s too thirsty and half-awake to be defending his lifestyle choices right now. He gestures impatiently, letting his arm flop down on the bed. “What if something happens with the shutters in the middle of the day? I’m not waking up to vampire flambé. No thanks.”

Daniel drops back onto the bed, one hand over his eyes to block out the light. It’s barely dusk, according to his internal clock. He usually doesn’t wake up until it’s full dark, but evidently Armand is one of those people that chases a bender with a protein shake and a jog. Great. Good for him. Must be nice.

Wait.

Daniel peels back his hand and squints up at him. “How did you get my clothes if I’m sleeping in the closet?”

Finally, Armand blinks. “You sleep quite heavily,” he says matter-of-factly.

No fucking shit. The closet isn’t wide—the mattress is more or less stuffed in here. Daniel tries not to imagine the contortionism it took to crawl over him to rifle through his shit.

Did he float? No. Stop. He doesn’t want to know.

“Go away,” he huffs, letting the hand fall back over his eyes. “And turn the light off! It’s not even dark yet.”

Armand mutters something that sounds suspiciously like lazy and notably does not turn the light off, but he does leave. Not that it matters. There’s no way Daniel’s getting back to sleep now. Because it’s almost full dark, yeah, but mostly because he’s been forcibly reminded that his deadbeat maker is currently haunting his apartment, wearing his clothes, and apparently just acting like all of this is normal. Honestly, he’s not sure what else he expected.

Better just get up and face the day. Night. Whatever.

He won’t lie, he prefers to spend a little time looking like a slob in the morning (well, vampiric morning) when he can get away with it, but it feels too vulnerable for this situation. Or maybe too intimate. No, not intimate. He doesn’t want to think about the word intimate after Armand was just watching him sleep in his closet like a fucking weirdo. (The watching is the weird part, to be clear, the closet is just practical.)

Familiar. That’s the word he’s looking for.

Daniel needs to go out and feed anyway. He’s starting to feel last night’s accidental fasting hardcore, and as much as he and Armand need to talk about a lot of things, he’s not going to be nice about it if he’s hangry. He might not be nice about it anyway.

So he gets up and takes a shower to wash the lingering funk of Lestat’s after party off of him. By the time Daniel’s dressed and emerges reluctantly out into the apartment, Armand has already made himself at home at the kitchen bar. He sits on one of the tall chairs there, his long legs hooked back through the chair legs, his socked feet wiggling thoughtlessly against one of the horizontal bars. His head is bent almost religiously over an open issue of National Geographic.

“You can keep that,” Daniel says, pointing at it as he wanders through the kitchen. “Wrote a story for them once, now they won’t stop sending me the newest issue.”

“Hm,” Armand hums without looking up. God, he looks like a twenty-five year old grandpa, hunched over a magazine with a mug at his elbow. He turns the page with his fingertips. “It is not very good.”

Daniel snorts. “Yeah, just wait until it’s all AI shit.” If it’s not already, but they don’t need to get into that first thing at night. He pauses. There’s another mug on his side of the counter, waiting conspicuously right in the middle of it, as if staged with the handle at a perfect, deliberate angle. “This for me?”

“Mhm.” Flips another page.

How…considerate? Creepy? Both? Daniel keeps some packaged blood in the fridge, thrown in the vegetable crisper in case he has nosey guests. It’s just a backup on the occasion he’s ever desperate and can’t go out to hunt, or he has hunted but still has a craving. It tastes like watery pudding compared to fresh, but it’s better than nothing. Makes him feel like a little vampire Boy Scout. Always be prepared.

So Armand went through his fridge, but he also went through his closet. While he was sleeping in it. So maybe he’ll go with considerate for this one in comparison, even if Armand clearly helped himself to a mug too.

“…thanks,” Daniel says, picking up the mug slowly. It’s even warm. He must’ve helped himself to the microwave too. Wow, talk about customer service. “Don’t think we’re not going to talk about this arrangement. Or whatever the fuck last night was,” he says as he putters around, looking for where he kicked off his shoes last night. Talking about talking about it, rather than actually talking about it. Classic. He sips casually from his mug, and just the promise of sanguine nutrients hitting his body has his fangs pressing against his gums.

“Mm,” he hums, his fangs scraping the lip of a mug on a second sip. “This is good.” And not just because he’s thirsty. Usually bagged blood tastes like the intersection of a reheated TV dinner and questionably-good meat. It’s not what he’d ever call good.

Daniel frowns down into the mug. It doesn’t taste microwaved either. You can always tell, like ordering from a shitty restaurant. “Did you fucking…” he mutters. “Did you bleed in my mug?”

Daniel turns around, incredulous, only to find the full blistering force of Armand’s attention. The magazine is forgotten, if he was ever really paying attention to it, and he’s twisted around to hold the back of the chair, leaning over it so far he’s on the verge of tipping over. He stares at him intensely, his eyes wide and his expression deadly serious for a man wearing sweatpants.

“Why can’t you feel our bond?” he demands.

“You can’t just feed people your blood—”

“I don’t recall you complaining the first time,” Armand says snidely. Again, particularly haughty for a man wearing sweatpants that aren’t even his. “Why can’t you feel it?” He jerks his chin at the mug. “Drink it. Perhaps it will help.”

“What, do you think I’m under-done?” Oh, fuck off. As if he hasn’t managed just fine without him and his bond for the last three years. Daniel’s as much a vampire as the rest of them. “It’s a little late for that, pal. Maybe if you hadn’t flown the coop it’d be there for me to feel. What the hell is your problem? Do we really need a bond?”

“We have a bond,” Armand insists, still hanging off of the back of the chair. “You just can’t feel it.” His eyebrows pull together and his eyes search Daniel’s face like he might find the answers written there. “I fear something may be wrong with you,” he muses.

“Something is wrong with—” Daniel cuts himself off, closing his eyes and tilting his head back toward the ceiling for the second time in twenty-four hours. What did a therapist say once? Be the bigger person? What an absolute hack. He exhales. “Okay,” he says, opening his eyes again. “Y’know what? I’m going out to eat someone before I pass out. We’ll talk about this when I get back.”

He plunks his mug down on the dinner table, which housed more junk mail than meals even before his all-blood diet began. Honestly, he wouldn’t mind finishing it before he leaves, and even more honestly, he’s pretty fucking glad Armand can’t pick that thought out of his mind anymore. Tell a guy his blood tastes good and he’ll never shut up about it. He learned that one from Lestat.

Daniel grabs his coat off the hook by the door and pauses in the middle of pulling it on, only one arm through a sleeve as he turns back to point at Armand. “Do me a favor,” he says, “and be a little less crazy by then, would you?”

It snowed all day, leaving the city blanketed with angelic snowdrifts surrounded by much more prolific piles of gray slush. A shit sort of night for hunting, but there’s always someone who doesn’t mind the cold. Daniel drains this cool goth kid wearing five metal spikes in each ear, and he hopes he appreciates at least a little bit how metal it is to die by vampire. Less metal that Daniel actually groans out loud when the blood hits his tongue, but give him a break. He’s still a growing fledgling, he can’t be missing meals like that.

He considers hunting down seconds to make up for the deficit, but he doesn’t want to be bloated if he’s going to have to deal with Armand, and he’s not really in the mood to try too hard either. He should walk home just to put it off, but he takes the subway instead. Like any good serial killer, he makes sure not to hunt too close to home.

Weirder things have happened on the NYC subway system, but Daniel still puts his phone to his ear as a prop as he reaches out toward Louis’ mind.

“Hey. I know you can hear me,” he says, shifting in his seat. Two women who look like they got off-shift at a diner sit at the other end of the car, talking to each other in low tones, while a younger guy sits a little closer, restlessly rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingertips and listening to his airpods. No one’s paying attention to him. “Come on. Five minutes.”

“Are you going to call me every time he gets a hangnail?” Louis sighs.

“Who said I was calling about Armand?” Daniel scoffs, picking at a stray thread his coat. “What, are you busy?”

“A little.

“Doing what?” He frowns and turns his head, as if it could possibly help him listen closer. Not that he can hear Louis’ surroundings, but he can at least feel the tenor of his mind. “Is Lestat throwing another party?”

“Same one.” Now he’s laughing. Daniel can hear it in his voice.

“Oh, you bitch.” Daniel laughs and shakes his head, kicking his feet out. “You never go to that shit. Now you’re going to marathon parties and I’m stuck babysitting? You’re killing me.”

“Is this how you want to spend your five minutes, Daniel?”

“Seriously? Okay, okay. Uh.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp. “Do you and Lestat have a bond? Like a….you know like you can kinda feel him sometimes? I guess?”

The guy a few seats down gives him a weird look before going back to toying with his cigarette, his mind muttering something about goddamn freaks. Yeah, yeah, buddy. Mind your own business.

“Yes?” Louis sounds somewhere between amused and perplexed. “What’s this about, Daniel?”

Why does this feel so weird? There’s no reason for this to be weird. “I guess Armand can feel our…bond-whatever.” Probably the fucking word bond. Is there a way to have this conversation that doesn’t sound like a trashy paranormal romance novel? “But I don’t. I didn’t even realize we were supposed to have one, to be honest.”

There’s a long pause. “That’s…interesting,” Louis says.

Daniel squints. Intuition tickles at the back of his mind. “Is Lestat with you? Do not tell him this.”

A longer pause. Fuck.

“I swear to God—if he says something to Armand about it I will make sure every person on this Earth believes he’s a bottle blonde, I’m not even joking.” Daniel scrubs at his face with his free hand. “Come on. He’s weirdly sensitive about it, okay? Give him a break. Give me a break.”

“He won’t,” Louis says after another pause, the giggle in his voice making it abundantly clear what they’re talking about. Is it really that funny? Is it that weird that he can’t feel the connection between him and Armand? “Sworn on a stack of bibles.”

Daniel rolls his eyes. Fuck his life. “Yeah, sure, I believe that,” he says testily. “Fine. How about I leave you alone and you don’t make my life even harder? Deal? Have fun with your boyfriend.”

Usually that’s his little dig just to be annoying, because Louis will tell him that Lestat’s not his boyfriend, they’re taking things slow, figuring out himself first, yadda yadda whatever. It’s petty, but he could really use the win.

Instead, Louis laughs and says, “you too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Daniel demands, but Louis has already hung up the metaphorical phone, leaving him to scowl uselessly at his real one. “Pretty sure that’s homophobic,” he tries. Nothing. “Asshole.”

He drops his phone into his lap and accidentally makes eye contact with cigarette guy, who looks away uneasily. The train sluggishly jerks to a stop and cigarette guy gets up quickly, nerves he doesn’t know how to explain radiating off of him like a prey animal. Daniel watches him.

You know, maybe he’s still thirsty after all.

He’s in a better mood when he gets home, snowflakes dusting his shoulders and a renewed pep in his step, even though there’s still a vampire with clinical depression waiting for him. Assuming that Armand is still there. Assuming that what’s wrong with him is diagnosable and not an ancient form of mental illness undiscovered by modern medicine. Like those stories about viruses frozen deep in the permafrost, just waiting to reemerge. Sure, just like that.

“Oh, honey, I’m home,” Daniel mutters as he hangs up his coat and kicks off his boots by the door. The apartment is still dark, though all the shutters have been thrown open to let in the wintery moonlight. Atmospheric, except for the flickering light from the TV and the accompanying sound, the volume cranked up uncomfortably loud to vampiric senses. He can’t imagine his neighbors like it much either.

Okay, Armand watches TV. Add that to the list of things he didn’t know. Probably should’ve guessed that one, considering how often he was carting around that iPad back in Dubai. But trashy TV?

Daniel comes up to stand behind the couch, entranced and a little disturbed by what’s going on on the screen, which mostly seems to involve women dressed in expensive coats yelling at each other about things he can’t follow. Do people really watch this stuff for fun? If he wanted to be yelled at by women, he has ex-wives for that. “What the hell are you watching?”

No response. He tears his eyes away and looks down. Armand has pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and ensconced himself in it. Or tried to. He was able to wrap about seventy-five percent of his body in the burrito, the blanket pulled almost up to his nose, but his shins still stick out the end, his bare feet shoved under a throw pillow presumably to make up the difference. He’s scrunched into the corner of the couch, his head propped up against the arm so that his hair forms a dark, messy halo around his face.

“Daniel.” Armand turns his head slowly, his eyes dragging upward, umber in the half-light and red-rimmed. Thunderous, like a fallen angel. “We have to kill Lestat de Lioncourt.”

God-fucking-dammit.

“I’m going to kill him,” Daniel mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“As I said.” He wiggles, trying to sit up without extracting his arms from the blanket. “How did he know about your deficiency? Is he your confidante?” He says it a little incredulously, like he doesn't want to believe something so absurd could be possible, but there’s a trace of vulnerability in his expression that makes Daniel actually feel bad. He has no doubt in his mind that Armand deserves to get bullied. Hell, Lestat does too. Doesn’t mean he meant for it to happen though.

“No. I—no. Not the word I would use,” Daniel scoffs. Or the word deficiency. What? He leans forward with his palms planted on the back of the couch. He wobbles his head back and forth, trying to find the right words. “I talked to Louis, he was with Lestat. I thought he might have—you know. Advice. About the bond thing.”

He’s definitely opening a door that can’t be closed again mentioning the fact that he entertained the bond thing as a problem, even for a moment. It feels like giving something up, a little piece of that I don’t need you, I’ve been fine without you aloofness that he’s not sure he actually has at all. Considering the man is making himself at home on his couch, watching bad TV. And did Daniel really put up a fight?

Armand gives him a long, guarded look, but there’s a crack of vulnerability again that looks a little bit like hope this time. He sniffs. “You shouldn’t be telling Louis our affairs,” he says archly, looking back toward the TV again.

Daniel is going to kill him too. Lestat, then Armand. Maybe Louis, depending on the day. “Oh yeah?” he says, eyebrows going up. “Oh, he can show me the ropes while you fuck off to Timbuktu, but now we’re like this?” He holds up one hand, his fingers crossed. “Shut up, man.”

Daniel pushes off of the couch. He considers, for a moment, going off to hole himself up in his office. Instead he comes around the side, shooing at Armand with one hand. “Move over. It’s my couch.”

Armand pulls his legs back and wiggles further, so he’s actually sitting up, still squashed in one corner of the couch and watching Daniel like a rescue cat on its first day at a new home. They sit there for a long moment, Armand staring and Daniel sitting there with his hands on his legs, pretending to be comfortable while the women on the TV pretend to like each other now.

“Am I allowed to speak now?” Armand drawls.

“No,” he says bluntly, and he makes them sit in silence for a little bit more just because he asked. Luckily for both of them the show isn’t very good, and his attention span isn’t that long, even for the purpose of spite. Daniel leans forward to grab the remote off of the coffee table and mutes the TV.

“Pause it, please,” Armand mutters.

Daniel rolls his eyes. But he did say please.

“Okay,” he says, pausing the TV and then tosses the remote back onto the table. “Listen. This is weird. Obviously. But you’re here now, so why don’t you just…hang out for a couple of days. Maybe the bond thing will figure itself out. Maybe it won’t. I don’t know.” He shrugs uncomfortably. “It’s worth a shot, right?” Is the bond even a good thing? Armand seemed to be blaming it for all of his problems right up until the moment he found out that Daniel didn’t feel it too. Then again, Armand’s had the emotional stability of a ping pong ball lately, so who the hell knows.

Armand watches at him from the other couch cushion, an almost invisible line between his eyebrows betraying his emotions. One corner of his mouth twists downwards. “I have been remiss in my responsibilities as your maker,” he admits, dropping his eyes. The angel repentant. The plaid blanket wrapped around him somehow adds to the tableau rather than takes away from it.

Yeah, no shit. Feels a bit unproductive to beat him up for it now though. Or maybe just awkward.

“Yeah, well.” Daniel shrugs. “The first vampire deadbeat dad. I’m just glad it wasn’t me.”

There’s a soft snort, and they look both equally surprised that it came from Armand. Daniel gives him a lopsided smile.

Talk about the point of no return. This is stupid. This is so fucking stupid. Here comes his absentee father waltzing back into his life with all sorts of promises and he didn’t even buy him a fucking Xbox first. What nice story ever started that way?

But if they’re talking about letting people down, then Daniel is living in a glass fucking house. Louis is right, even if he can’t control his stupid rockstar boyfriend. He owes the universe some grace, whether Armand deserves it or not.

“If you’re really good,” Daniel adds, “we’ll even kill Lestat.”

Armand giggles. It’s the only way to describe the sound that comes out of his mouth and Daniel laughs a beat later, caught in the absurdity of it all. Never in a thousand years would he have guessed that he’d be cracking jokes with the vampire Armand on his couch, but maybe it’s a good start. It’s definitely not a bad one.

“I’m afraid it won’t be easy,” Armand says, flashing a tentative smile. He bobs his head, considering. “But perhaps worthwhile.”

“Yeah, perhaps a public service.” Daniel leans forward to grab the remote again. “We’re not watching this, by the way. Whatever it is.”

Armand huffs like he just misattributed a Picasso. “They’re the Real Housewives, Daniel.”

“Yeah? Are there fake ones?”

“I can only assume.”

“Let’s not find out.”

Chapter Text

Daniel wakes up to a subtle vibration itching against his ears. His first, sleep-bleary thought is an earthquake. His second is an inner ear issue. His third is…a drill? The sound stops and then starts again, as if to confirm that he’s on the right path.

Who the hell is doing construction right now? It has to be after dark.

There’s a thunk and the clatter of wood against the floor.

Correction: who the hell is doing construction in his apartment?

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Daniel says through his teeth, kicking at his blanket as he gracelessly tries to get up. It’s easier said than done. As resourceful as he thinks his closet-coffin is, the twin bed barely fits, and he’s left with about a foot of clearance between the end of the bed and the door that he has to scooch down the bed to get to. The good news is that at least vampire eyes were made to see in the dark. The bad news is everything else.

He tries to push open the closet door. The doorknob clicks uselessly and refuses to budge.

Daniel stares down at it. “What the fuck?” he mutters. Since when do closet doors lock from the outside? Is this even the same doorknob that was there last night? He wiggles it again uselessly. Pretty fucking locked.

“Armand,” he hisses, his face pressed to the crack where the door meets the frame. “Armand. Open the door, you little shit.” He yanks on the doorknob back and forth violently, giving into petty frustration more than actually trying to open it. He’d expected another rude awakening, maybe some more heavy staring, but what the fuck? This is unexpected in strange and creative ways. “I don’t care if you can spit fire out of your asshole, I’m going to—”

Crack. The door frame gives up the moment he seriously puts his shoulder into it, and Daniel stumbles forward with a spray of splinters, staggering into his bedroom.

Which is…a construction zone. A plastic tarp has been thrown over his furniture, which is good, because every other surface is covered with dust as a team of men rips out his windows and—presumably, he certainly hopes—replaces them with new ones. They immediately stop everything they’re doing and turn to stare at him.

Daniel stares back. In sweatpants and a souvenir t-shirt from Montreal that barely has a hem anymore. Having just burst out of a closet.

You can’t make this shit up.

“Uh,” he says succinctly. “Hey, fellas.”

They keep staring.

Right. That’s fair. “Just, uh.” He holds up a finger. “Yeah.” He doesn’t even know what he’s saying now right. Where the fuck is Armand?

Daniel steps over an unidentifiable piece of construction equipment and pushes through the bedroom door into the rest of the apartment, which is undergoing a similar treatment, though it appears to almost be done. While a handful of workers in hardhats negotiate with one of the new windows, a brisk winter breeze cutting through the empty hole in the wall, Armand sits sideways at the kitchen bar, his legs crossed primly, reading another issue of National Geographic.

Armand glances up. “Oh, you’re awake,” he notes. He hums. “Early for you. I thought we’d have a bit longer to finish up.” He turns the page.

It takes every bit of restraint he has not to grab the magazine and throw it across the room. “Finish up what exactly?” he says through his teeth instead, gripping the back of Armand’s chair like maybe he kind of wants to rip that away too. Daniel has never thought of himself as a particularly materialistic man, but something about having half a dozen strangers and one vampire who doesn’t understand boundaries in his apartment has suddenly made him very possessive of what is his shit, thank you very much.

“The windows, Daniel,” Armand says as if he’s being purposefully obtuse, entirely unaffected by Daniel’s attempt to loom. “I’m having them replaced with those that will filter UV rays, as you should have a long time ago. So you won’t have to continue sleeping in a closet like a…” He visibly stops himself and considers a polite response. “...very strange individual.”

Ah. Got it. This is Armand trying to be nice. Which is to say, it still involves violating Daniel’s personal agency and being halfway done before Daniel even knows it’s happening. Nothing new there. But the last time that happened, Daniel ended up a vampire, and much like how he’s been unable to complain about those results, this is…

Well, yeah, he should have had the windows done a long time ago. He has the money. And yet.

Ugh.

“This building is historic, you know,” Daniel says, just on the wrong side of bitchy, because he has to complain about fucking something.

Armand holds his gaze, blissfully unfazed. “Is it?” he says archly. “I couldn’t tell.”

Daniel snorts. Fuck. He doesn't want that to have been funny. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell them my five hundred year old roommate thought their building was unimpressive when they fine me.” He drops his hand from the chair and wanders into the kitchen, which remains a habit after waking up despite having little to do there in his immortal life. No mug of blood waiting for him today. “And why was I locked in the closet?” he asks over his shoulder.

Armand tosses his magazine onto the bar, casual yet deliberately careful not to lose his page. He turns to face him, his elbows propped next to it. “I told the workers not to go in there, of course,” he says, gesturing loosely with his palms up, “but I thought you might appreciate a little extra security during the daylight.”

What’s with all the right answers this morning? What happened to the guy trying to turn into a slug on his couch last night? He’d been easier to manage.

The corners of Daniel’s mouth pinch and he holds Armand’s bright stare as long as he can before he has to admit that maybe that was a halfway considerate idea. In an Armand way, at least. “You know, if you had told me first,” he says, “I could have locked it from the inside.”

“Ah.” Armand tips his head, considering. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“Perhaps I am,” Daniel says blandly. “I’m going to go take a shower.” He turns away and pauses. “See if they’ll fix the closet door while they’re at it, would you?”

Armand assures him that he’s paying a premium to make sure the installation is done before dawn, but evidently replacing every window in a century-old building takes a little bit of time. Daniel is hoping that they can at least finish before midnight, or he’s due to get some disgruntled knocks at the door. He can already sense the miasma of pissed-off neighbors brewing in the atmosphere. Yeah, he’s not exactly enjoying the ambiance either.

“Is this really not bothering you?” Daniel asks abruptly, looking up from where he’s been staring uselessly at his laptop for the better part of twenty minutes. His inbox takes up half the screen and a Word document the other in the hopes he might get something done, but all he’s done is toggle between the two of them fruitlessly.

“Hmm? What? The noise?” Armand looks up from where he’s been lazily flipping through another issue of National Geographic, which he appears to be working through with no consideration given to the publication date. Daniel didn’t know he even had that many lying around. “Not particularly.”

“It’s like they’re rubbing sandpaper against my eardrums.” Vampire senses had been cool at first. No more glasses, no more contacts. Sure, the smell of hot city garbage was more pungent, but it was pretty pungent to begin with. It took a little practice to learn to sort out useful sounds from the cacophony his ears could pick up now, but he’s had three years to get the hang of that. Not that hard, all things considered. But usually people aren’t deconstructing his house fifteen feet away.

The whine of an electric screwdriver splits through the air before hitting something that makes it go clunk, clunk, clunk.

“Okay, I’ve gotta get out of here,” Daniel announces abruptly, pushing himself to his feet and all but slamming his laptop closed. It’s not until he catches Armand watching him out of the corner of his eye, pretending to still be reading his magazine, that he remembers that he has a (temporary) roommate now. Not that you have to invite your roommate everywhere you go. He’s had roommates before. He knows what’s normal.

Never really had a vampiric maker before though. That’s a little new.

He stands there awkwardly for a moment, his fingers tapping against his laptop. He should invite him. It would be nice to invite him. And they’re trying to be nice, aren’t they? “There’s this uh, twenty-four hour coffee shop I like to go to sometimes. You know, air myself out. Get some work done,” he says. “Real trendy. Coffee isn’t that great, not that that really matters anymore.”

“That’s interesting,” Armand says, looking away. Fwip. He flips the page even though Daniel is sure he didn’t actually read the last one.

“I’m asking if you want to go. With me. Do you want to go there with me?” Daniel says, the sentiment unraveling the more he tries to clarify it. Jesus, why does he sound like a college freshman trying to ask his lab partner on a coffee date? “I imagine you’re paying these guys too much for them to steal anything.”

“You would imagine correctly,” he says with a touch of smugness that’s not strictly necessary. Daniel resists the urge to roll his eyes, but he doesn't really get the chance to be annoyed, or pretend to be. “Of course, Daniel. I would love to see all of your favorite places,” Armand says breezily, and it’s like flipping a switch. Gone is the casual museum curator aura. Now he stands and flips the magazine closed, tossing it aside carelessly, practically buzzing with barely-restrained energy. “Is there a dress code that I should be aware of? Do they know you there? I would like to make a good impression.”

Did he say it was one of his favorite places? He doesn't remember saying that. Daniel holds up a hand, turning to track Armand as starts to wander through the apartment, looking for his shoes. Or maybe his actual clothes. Did he ever wash those or what? “Okay, slow down, they serve shitty coffee at midnight—”

“A wonderful service.”

“Yeah, wonderful. Just maybe lower your expectations a little. It’s really not that exciting.” And maybe he’s already regretting this, but it’s a little charming, seeing Armand very badly pretend not to be excited. Who would have thought maker-fledgling bonding would be that easy? Maybe they’ll ever get a bond out of it. Better to at least try over tasteless coffee than let Armand start experimenting again.

“Just meet me by the door in five minutes,” Daniel says. “Or I’m leaving without you.”

Armand is already standing by the door by the time Daniel shows up seven minutes later. He’s dressed more akin to how Daniel remembers him from the Dubai penthouse, in a dark shirt with the top buttons undone in a way that’s really unnecessarily bordering on scandalous. It’s not the outfit he was wearing when Daniel found him, but also they’re not Daniel’s clothes either. He decides not to question it, but honestly he’s distracted by the fact that Armand has also shrugged Daniel’s mustard-stained gray hoodie on over the ensemble. He can’t even decide what to call the combined look.

Armand looks up, and his bright eyes make it incredibly easy to tell when he looks Daniel up and down. It might have been flattering, if he didn’t immediately frown and go, “is that what you’re wearing?”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Okay, he didn’t mean to sound so defensive. But this from designer shirt plus mustard stain guy? Really? “It’s classic.” Leather jacket over a band t-shirt, comfortable jeans. It’s cool. What about that isn’t cool?

Armand raises his eyebrows in a subtle but definitive what’s right with it? look. “At least wear a proper coat,” he says. “What if it begins to snow?”

“And what if I was an immortal vampire who doesn’t get frostbite?”

“Oh, are we advertising that now?” he quips. Armand tips his head back, his eyes flashing and and abruptly hard. For a moment it’s easy to see the coven leader behind the mismatched outfit. Don’t be mistaken by the bad taste in TV. He can throw his weight around when he feels so inclined. “Wear the coat, Daniel.”

Too bad Daniel isn’t convinced. Wasn’t impressed when he was human, isn’t impressed now. “I’m not wearing the coat,” he says with deliberate weight, putting pettiness behind every syllable. He smiles tightly. “Armand.”

He wears the stupid coat.

“You ought to pull up your hood.”

“I’m not wearing the hood.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Armand scoffs, the sprinkling snow already dusting his curls, making them go flat and unruly at the same time.

“I’m being normal. Will you—leave it alone.” He slaps Armand’s hand away as he tries to forcibly zip up Daniel’s coat for the third time since he put it on. It’s a plain black parka, which doesn’t actually do anything except cut the wind considering Daniel doesn’t put off body heat unless he’s recently fed. Not that it matters. Because he’s not cold.

But if he had to stand in that apartment listening to the whine of the drill for ten more seconds he was going to start biting people, so here he is, wearing the coat. Contrary to popular belief, he does occasionally know how to pick his battles.

At least the coffeeshop is only a few blocks down from his building. It’s barely snowing, just enough to collect on their shoulders and melt as soon as it hits the ground, blurring the asphalt with colorful streaks from the streetlights and passing cars. It’s late enough that most people are getting in their beds, but not the early hours of the morning yet. Not that weird to see people taking a stroll, except for that Daniel looks like he’s getting ready for an Alaskan cruise and Armand like a rogue business major during finals week. What a fucking pair.

“I’m aware I have not been the most attentive maker, but you could listen to me from time to time,” Armand points out. He gives Daniel a sideways look, his gaze cool and assessing. “You look pale,” he announces. “How frequently are you feeding?”

“Oh, we’re really going to do this?” Are they going for coffee or having vampire baby’s first check-up? Armand is probably still theorizing about his stunted growth. Daniel shrugs, suddenly self-conscious. “Every other night.”

What’s the normal amount? More? Less?

“Sometimes every night,” he amends. “It depends.” Which means sometimes twice a night. If he’s feeling peckish. It happens, okay?

Armand makes an amused sound, ducking his head to flash the sidewalk a little smile.

Oh, that makes him feel much better. “What?” Daniel asks defensively. “What’s so funny? That’s normal.” Probably.

“Nothing,” Armand says, still sounding amused, his hands in his pockets.

“Yeah, sure. Fuck you very much too.”

Armand actually laughs this time, tilting his head back in the soft fall of snow. “Daniel, don’t be sensitive,” he says, bumping their shoulders together, and Daniel’s heart nearly jumps out of his chest at the unexpected casualness of the touch. He tries to wipe the surprise back off of his face. “You’re young. It’s charming. You’ll be very powerful someday, you know.”

He feels pretty damn powerful now compared to where he was before, but he’d be lying if he hadn’t thought extensively about what else he’s seen vampires do. That’s something Louis hadn’t really been able to advise him on and Lestat really hadn’t been interested. It’s the kind of questioning you should really ask your maker.

“If I eat all my vegetables so I can grow big and strong?” Daniel drawls instead. He squirms in his coat, fussing with the zipper himself this time. “Don’t sound so…proud of me. It’s weird.”

“Hm.” Armand tips his head and goes quiet, and Daniel tries to shake the feeling that he might have hurt his feelings just a bit.

Their arrival and the coffeeshop spares him from having to decide what he should do about that, if he should do anything. It’s as hyper-trendy and without personality as he promised, called Midnight Roast Club as if it’s something exclusive and not just a hangout for college kids, people with redeye flights, and Instagram kids looking for a good backdrop. It’s the kind of place a younger Daniel Molloy wouldn’t be caught dead at, but it is open all night and has a rotating cast of characters that keeps things interesting. Occasionally one of the travelers won’t make that redeye flight and Daniel will have a satisfying drink after all.

But tonight he’s just here for some peace and quiet, or at least something close to it. A pop song plays quietly over the store speakers as he orders a small black coffee from the sleepy-looking kid behind the register and pays with a twenty dollar bill, keep the change. The way he always does, but the barista always goes through the motions of starting to count his change back. He assumed Armand would wander off to go find a table during the whole exchange, but instead Daniel catches him out of the corner of his eye. Armand stands in front of the bakery case, his hands clasped behind his back and his head bent to consider it with great interest, as if he were in a museum of fine art and not a shitty over-modern coffee shop.

“Do you want that?” Daniel asks after a moment.

Armand blinks and looks up from the cookie shaped like a fat bumblebee he was considering intently. “May I?” he asks tentatively. A little too tentatively for a guy that Daniel knows has money, assuming he didn’t spend it all on renovating Daniel’s windows. Then again, he probably left his wallet back in lockup.

“We’ll take the bee too,” Daniel tells the kid, nodding at the bakery case. “Thanks, man.”

Armand’s eyes light up with what can only be described as joy as the barista slips the cookie into a wax paper sleeve. He hands it to him over the case and Armand takes it, cradling it with his fingertips like it’s something precious.

Daniel puffs a soft laugh as the barista goes to pour his coffee. “Why are you so excited? You can’t taste it, unless that’s a perk I haven’t unlocked yet.” His coffee will taste like wet ash, but at least it’s warm, like blood, which is almost satisfying.

“I like it. Isn’t it charming?” Armand says simply. The corners of his mouth curl in a cat’s smile, looking down at the little packet in his hands like it’s his own little secret. “I don’t often receive gifts.”

Well shit. Armand has a habit of saying things lately that make Daniel’s resolve feel like a bruised apple. He takes his coffee with a nod and directs them toward his favorite corner, happy for an excuse to pretend to be distracted. “Yeah? Not really Louis’s love language, I guess.”

“Seventy years together, you know—it can be difficult,” Armand says dismissively, maybe a little defensively, as if Daniel doesn’t know the ugly little details of that marriage. As if he wasn’t the one who ended it. “What do you get someone who has everything?”

A cookie, evidently. Daniel shoots him a knowing smile. “I said the same thing before my divorce too,” he deadpans. “Turns out there were a couple of things.” Maybe he should have tried the cookie thing too.

His usual haunt is a high table toward the back corner, where he can set up his laptop and observe the rest of the coffeeshop passively, digging into the minds of the other patrons if his work gets too boring or the patrons themselves too interesting. Daniel pulls his laptop out of its bag and sets it up even though he suspects he’s not going to get much work done. Or he had suspected that. He had assumed that Armand would take every opportunity to grill him about the whole bond thing, or at least continue over-analyzing his nutrition.

Instead Daniel pauses, his coffee cup halfway to his lips, and watches as Armand sets his cookie on top of its sleeve and proceeds to perform surgery on it, methodically cutting it along the lines of its black and yellow stripes with the sharp tip of his thumbnail.

Armand catches him staring. “Yes, Daniel?”

“Nothing,” he answers too quickly. “Uh. Yeah. Don’t worry about it.” He shakes his head to himself and taps at his laptop. What a weird fucking life. “Actually, I was kind of thinking about the whole bond thing,” he throws out there casually, rubbing at his chin. “We’re supposed to have one, sure, okay. But how do you know we do? Maybe it’s not me that’s the problem. It could be we just don’t have one at all and you’re imagining what you expect to feel.”

“You think I’ve gone mad,” says the man currently beheading an innocent cartoon bee. He rolls his eyes. “I know what the bond feels like, Daniel. I haven’t imagined anything.”

Daniel shrugs one shoulder. “Just saying. Could be. It’s not like you’ve had any other fledglings to compare and contrast with.”

“Yes, but you forget I was one once,” Armand says with exaggerated patience. “As difficult as it might be to believe.”

Daniel hums against the lid of his coffee cup. “A fledgling Armand,” he muses. “What was that like?”

Armand opens his mouth—and pauses. He narrows his eyes, his gaze searching Daniel’s face for a long moment before he reaches across the table. He tugs on Daniel’s laptop and spins the screen around to face him. “The Vampire Armand,” he reads the title of the audio recording waiting on the screen. He barks a laugh. “A sequel?”

Haha. Busted.

“Probably the third book,” Daniel confesses, refusing to be sheepish. “Lestat called dibs on book two. Sorry.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Armand pushes the laptop back dismissively and leans back in his chair. It’s hard to tell what he feels about it, his head turned dismissively as if it all means nothing while one hand still rests casually against the table, stabbing a piece of bee to crumbs between two fingers. He scoffs. “Was one book not enough? Are you so determined to incite the entire vampiric world to be against you, rather than just the majority of it?”

“I’m an attention whore, what can I say?” And not as subtle as he thought. He’ll re-evaluate that plan later. Daniel waves a hand flippantly. “You’re right. Unethical journalism. I’ll ask next time. Or wait until after you’ve locked me in another closet.”

“You chose to sleep in a—Oh.” Another narrow-eyed look. “You’re mocking me.”

“Teasing,” Daniel corrects. He points at him with his coffee cup. “You could even say bonding.”

“Then it seems we should have it sorted out in no time,” Armand says briskly, and Daniel is still so unprepared to hear him joke that he snorts coffee up his nose. He catches Armand’s thin, pleased smile as he scrambles to wipe his dripping nose with a wad of napkins.

Did Armand joke in Dubai? Maybe once or twice, but Daniel thinks they were probably more condescending than funny. Armand is a strange collection of people stitched together in his mind—the Armand of Paris through the lens of Louis, distorted twice over by time and Armand’s presence; the Armand of Dubai, who had been more adversarial than not; and maybe most confusingly, the Armand of the last three years, that existed only in Daniel’s imagination as he struggled to understand how to hate a guy (did he, even in Dubai? hate him?) and owe him for his immortal life at the same time.

He’s not gonna count the Armand of San Francisco. Better not to think about that one.

The fact is: Daniel has no idea who the hell this guy is supposed to be anymore, but he knows who he is, and all of this has been…surprisingly kinda easy. Or maybe that’s not the word. He’s supposed to be better at words than this.

Comfortable. Being around Armand, bond or not, is comfortable.

Weird.

More than weird. Why?

“There are two young women who have recognized you,” Armand says, his eyes flickering over Daniel’s shoulder. “They’re wondering if they should ask you for a photograph. They’re wondering who I am as well.” He preens a little at that last part.

Of course tonight he’d be recognized. Very nice, very flattering—but not really what he was looking for tonight. “Yeah, it’s not because of the book. I went viral on TikTok after I told a newscaster to blow me,” Daniel says. He sighs. “Can you steer them in a different direction? I don’t really want to chit chat tonight.”

“Why would I do that?” Armand asks, distracted.

“Because I asked you to? Nicely?”

Armand isn’t even paying attention to him, squirming in his chair like he’s only just realized he’s sitting in it. He shifts his leg so their feet knock together once and then does it again.

Daniel frowns abruptly. “Are you playing footsy with me?” There’s a spike of excitement from the girls behind him, and realization chases after it. “Are you trying to—stop trying to make me look like your sugar daddy,” he hisses.

Which he is. Armand’s demeanor has changed entirely, his shoulders loosening and a soft smile on his face as he leans forward to prop his elbows on the table, his foot knocking sweetly against Daniel’s even when Daniel subtly tries to kick him back. He’s aware of what this looks like, two men, clearly not related, a forty year age gap between them. One of them a successful journalist-author, the other a handsome, dewy-eyed unknown. There are internet ads for things like this.

For God’s sake. This guy is over five hundred years old. If anyone is the sugar baby, it should be him.

Armand smiles coyly as he breaks off a piece of cookie and crumbles it between his fingertips. “They’ve decided to come over,” he murmurs with delight. “Be polite, Mr. Molloy.”

“You bastard—you’re not funny. This is not funny,” Daniel mutters, making sure to work in a glare across the table before one of the girls clears her throat behind him.

“Excuse me—sorry to bother you, but did you write the Interview From the Vampires book?” the braver one asks. “Could we—is it okay if we got a picture?”

Two college girls, sweet but a little nervous. Check. Got the title wrong. Also check. He’s done this before. He’s more than comfortable being a dick to the press, he even enjoys it, and he’ll call out a fan that’s pushing their luck, but they did ask nicely. Too bad he’s not wearing the leather jacket though.

“Hey, girls,” Daniel says warmly, turning in his seat to face them. Like flipping a switch. Armand isn’t the only one who can cycle through personalities. “Of course, yeah, yeah. You got a phone?” He holds out his hand to accept the phone for a selfie with them.

“Oh, well—maybe your friend can take it for us?” The shyer girl’s eyes dart to Armand and she blushes in a way that makes her smell like a raw steak. Focus, Daniel. You don’t eat fans.

“You know, he’s actually not very good at—”

“I’d be happy to,” Armand interrupts and he smoothly plucks the girl’s phone out of her hand. “Stand a little closer now—there you are. Daniel, please smile correctly. Thank you. You do yourself a disservice when you grimace like that.” He proceeds to take what might actually be a hundred pictures, judging by the way he presses his thumb against the screen and holds it there for a good thirty seconds.

“One of those has got to be good,” Daniel mutters. He clears his throat. “I hate to run, but I actually just realized Ar—my friend has a flight to catch.”

He’s absolutely not calling him Armand in front of fans. Lestat’s whole rockstar schtick is funny, even funnier when his publisher nearly shit themselves about copyright before he reminded them that it was nonfiction, not that anyone believes that still. But being caught playing sugar daddy with a guy named Armand? No. Hell no. If there are going to be rumors that he’s got a weird thing for his own characters, could it at least be Louis? Please?

The girls thank him profusely before scuttling off back to their own corner, but he’s still more than aware of them watching and whispering between themselves as he shoves his laptop back into its bag. He tries to ignore Armand, but he can still see him sitting there out of the corner of his eye, looking a little put out.

“We don’t have to leave,” Armand says, clearly trying not to admit that he doesn’t want to. “I haven’t finished my biscuit.”

“I don’t really need the internet getting ahold of pictures of you undressing me with your eyes, so yeah, we’re going to head out,” Daniel says dryly, slinging his laptop bag over his shoulder. “Come on. Hop to it. I don’t trust you here alone.”

Armand looks at him like a kicked dog. “I was playing, Daniel. I was—teasing,” he says. He flicks a bit of cookie crumb off of his finger, just to make it clear that he’s sulking. Yeah, well, that makes two of them. “You are sensitive tonight.”

Usually telling someone they’re being sensitive is a good way to get your head bit off, but this time it actually stops him short.

God, why is he so sensitive? Since when has he given a shit what anyone thought of him, much less the internet? Honestly, worst case scenario, rumors that he’s dating a young body-double for his own character gives him a little sales boost. Or what, he gets canceled on Twitter? That happens to Lestat all the time. He seems to enjoy it. Daniel really can’t explain why he suddenly wants to crawl out of his skin and throw what’s left of him into the river. What the fuck?

He tries to sigh but it comes out more of a rough exhale, his nerves rattling around inside of him like loose change. “Can we just…go?” he asks, and he hates how vulnerable that makes him feel too. He doesn’t usually doesn’t ask for favors anymore—for the job, yeah, sure, but not for himself. Not from someone from Armand, who, yeah, once tried to eat him. The same Armand that he already owes enough to. “Before I start biting people?”

Armand’s features soften microscopically, and Daniel hates that too. The only thing worse then asking for what you need is the other person realizing why you’re asking for it. “Of course,” he says demurely, and he considers the battered remains of his cookie for a moment before picking up the severed head and putting it in his pocket. He brushes the crumbs off of his hands and stands.

“Thanks. Thank you,” Daniel mumbles. He zips up his coat and shoves his hands in his pockets, abandoning the remains of his coffee on the table as they go to leave.

They almost make it to the door.

“Have a good night, Mr. Molloy!” one of the girls calls from her table. Daniel throws a half-hearted wave back.

“You too, Armand!” the other adds, chased by a giggle.

There’s no time to stop him. Shocked delight lights up the girls’ minds as Armand looks back over his shoulder at them. And smiles.

Fuck his life.

Chapter Text

It’s a perfect cold winter night. The light snow has stopped falling but the chill still hangs in the air, somehow perfectly still despite the odd car zipping past the sidewalk. It should be nice, especially when the bite of the cold is more of a passive sensation than a discomfort, if it weren’t for just about everything else. Daniel takes a deep breath and holds the cold air in his lungs, hoping some of that clarity might enter his bloodstream and make it up to his head. So far, it’s not working.

They make it about a block before Armand speaks up. “You are upset with me,” he says entirely neutrally, as if commenting on the weather or a crack in the sidewalk.

Daniel exhales through his nose and it comes out like a sigh. “I’m not upset,” he says, over-pronouncing the word like it’s a bad one, stalwartly staring forward, his hands buried deep in his coat pockets. He’s still aware of Armand walking next to him, still aware that his shoulders are set stiffly and his expression is as carefully neutral as his voice, but that only annoys him too. Yeah, he hurt Armand’s fucking feelings. Message received. Why should he care? Why should he feel bad about it? He shouldn’t.

There’s a long pause filled with the tread of their footsteps. “It would help if you informed me what I did that’s upset you—”

“I said I’m not—” Daniel bites down on the denial with a frustrated growl, abruptly coming to a stop and spinning on his heel to face Armand. “You know what? Yeah, you got me. This is weird, okay? I’m trying my best here, man, but one minute you’re moping around and the next you’re acting like—”

He drops the sentence before he can finish it. Armand stands perfectly still, his chin tilted downwards just a little, watching Daniel guardedly, as if waiting for a strike to land but pretending not to. He doesn’t say anything, but the tension in the air seems to say go on, say it.

Daniel groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t want to say it. He never should have gotten that far in the sentence at all. “You’re acting like you never left,” he says grudgingly, and it’s like releasing a pressure valve. Like taking a breath after slowly starving for oxygen. And the problem when things feel good, you want to keep doing them. Even when it’s really not a good idea. “But you did! You sure as hell did. So where is this attentive maker schtick coming from all of a sudden, three years too late? You know, the first time I tried to feed, I popped the guy’s head off? Right off. Just—” He mimes separating a head from its body with an impressive degree of accuracy that still doesn’t get across just how much blood went spurting everywhere. “It was a fucking mess. Where were you then?”

Armand frowns, looking inappropriately curious. “How did you do that?” he asks, which is a good question, but entirely besides the point.

“I don’t know.” He throws his hands up in exasperation. “But if you’d been there, maybe we could have avoided it.” This is stupid. He doesn’t want to talk about it and he shouldn’t have brought it up, or even be this upset, because he’s a big boy and it’s been three goddamn years. Shouldn’t he be over it by now? “Y’know what? Nevermind. I’ll get over it. Let’s just go.”

Daniel starts off back down the sidewalk, but the singular set of footsteps already tells him that Armand isn’t following him. He imagines if he looked back Armand would be pulling the pathetic act again—was it an act the whole time? it’s hard to tell when he’s so fucking good at it—with the big eyes and the tender expression. It might even start snowing again, just to complete the orphaned kitten look to him.

“That’s not what this is really about, is it, Daniel?”

He stops in his tracks. Don’t turn around. Whatever you do, don’t turn around.

Daniel turns around.

Leave it to Armand to prove him wrong just for the thrill of it. Rather than a pathetic puddle, Armand is standing taller than he was before. Even the quiet dejection from their misadventure in the coffee shop has sloughed off in favor of new, sharp interest. He tips his head slightly, his eyes narrowed as he stares at Daniel with amber-colored intensity.

Daniel tries not to squirm under it. “What are you talking about?” he says gruffly. “Come on, it’s cold.”

Armand ignores him. He closes the distance between them slowly, taking it with long, languid strides like a big cat, still staring at Daniel like he’s disassembling him with the same casual brutality he inflicted upon his cookie. “You resent me for leaving you, of course you do—but the example you’ve chosen…” His eyes search Daniel’s face, his lips parted around the unspoken words. He shakes his head. “The Daniel Molloy I’ve known isn’t disgusted by hunger. Ashamed by what he’s done in service to it, perhaps. Regretful, occasionally. But making a mess out of some poor man isn’t what’s haunted you.”

That you’ve known? Daniel wants to point out that a handful of days in a penthouse and maybe the cliffnotes version of his memoir doesn’t mean Armand knows him, but the words scratch deeper than he expected them to, shivering all the way down. He stands completely still, the corners of his mouth twisted in a sour frown, but he can’t actually spit any of the words out. Even when Armand reaches out and tugs thoughtfully on the front of his coat, rubbing the material between his thumb and forefinger.

“You feared I regretted your making,” Armand murmurs. His brow crumples briefly, something like grief cutting across his expression. “You thought I did not want you. Is that it?”

Daniel clears his throat and looks away, embarrassed by the swell of emotion that comes over him. Three years. Three fucking years. He’s really, really supposed to be over this. “Yeah, well,” he says, his voice rusty. “You kinda said as much in the car. Giving away half of your soul, unceasing waves of the bond or some shit.”

Armand sighs softly and smooths down where he’s rumpled Daniel’s coat with his knuckles, a possessive little touch that should make Daniel want to step away from it but doesn’t. “I was inebriated. I spoke carelessly.” He hesitates. “Change is difficult after so long spent the same,” he says, his eyes still downcast, focused on the zipper. “I have struggled. Please do not mistake that for regret.”

Daniel’s heart shivers and it’s a stupid thing threatening to make him do more stupid things. It’s a shit apology, and he knows a thing or two about those. He hasn’t been divorced twice for no reason. But it is what he’s been waiting to hear, and the fact that it was so obvious that Armand could pull it right out of him makes him feel drunk with the attention. It shouldn’t matter what Armand thinks of him or why he turned him or what he did afterwards—didn’t Daniel get what he wanted anyway?—but it does. Louis has always been frustratingly vague with his thoughts on why Armand turned him or if he left because he regretted it, and that was when he wasn’t being specifically ungenerous. It’s an answer he only could have gotten from Armand, and one he’d started giving up hope of ever getting.

“Yeah?” is all he can say.

“I hope you can forgive me,” Armand says, his eyes finally coming up, and he summons a little smile. “I would not have left had I known it would so negatively impact your development.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

It’s like flying high only to get spiked directly into the concrete. No, sure, it’s the deficiency they’re all worried about. Not the feeling the shit for three years because not even the guy who gave you immortal life wants to hang out every now and then. What’s the big deal? Nothing a little therapy can’t buff out.

“And now you’re pissing me off again,” Daniel says cheerfully. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and shoves them against Armand’s chest. “Go home and make sure your lackeys aren’t knocking new holes in my walls. I’m going to get something to eat.”

Armand catches the keys without looking down. He looks baffled. “I could—”

“Nope.” Daniel steps backwards and then another. He spreads his arms with a cheeky smile. “Would you look at that? You’re not the only one who can just fuck off!”

Asshole.

Daniel takes his time making his way back home, as much to avoid Armand as the ongoing construction zone that his apartment has become. It’s hard to tell what’s more embarrassing—either of his outbursts, take your pick, or how quickly he’d folded like a house of cards when Armand briefly, almost apologized for his absence.

Okay, yeah, maybe he’s been wanting a little validation from his maker. And maybe that’s not even that weird. Still. Not exactly his proudest moment. Snapping and running away to go eat his feelings also not one of his proudest moments.

Actually, he hasn’t had an abundance of proud moments lately. At least now he’s well fed.

It’s the early hours of the morning by the time he makes it back to his front door, and it’s with blissful relief that he notes that there’s no longer any sounds of construction coming from inside. When he opens the door, he finds his apartment…exactly the same as it was the night before, except for the window panes are tinted now, and don’t have faulty locks on them anymore. Everything else has been put back exactly where it was before, the dust cleared away, even the walls repainted as if they’d never undergone surgery. He’s pretty sure he can only still smell the drywall dust in the air because of his vampiric senses, which he can hardly hold against them.

It’s…yeah, it’s nice. It doesn’t really help how awkward he feels creeping home post-fight. Another familiar scene from his divorces. Familiar enough that it makes it hard to remember that it’s his apartment.

His dark, quiet apartment. Daniel kicks off his shoes and hangs up his coat and Armand still hasn’t appeared. Not that he expected him to jump up and greet him but—yeah. He doesn’t know what he expected. He lingers by the door, playing with his phone as if he’s doing something important and not waiting to see if Armand makes the first move. Unfortunately his phone is also where his Twitter notifications live.

The girls from the coffee shop posted a few of the photos, including a candid of Daniel and Armand sitting across from one another, the picture angled so that you can see Armand’s face—turned toward Daniel, but looking directly at the camera with the tilt of a coy smile. For some reason they thought it was a good idea to tag Daniel’s account, which means he’s now getting notifications for the replies to it.

lestat’s wig - 5m ago
So what’s it called when you ship an author and one of his characters? Like is that still RPF or…

mickayla ⋆｡°✩ - 4m ago
i think it might be in the dsm5

ARMAND NATION - 1m ago
you gotta admit it’s kinda hot thooooo

Daniel likes the last one, waits twenty seconds, and then un-likes it. Sometimes it’s good to give the fans something to fight about. Keeps them from coming up with anything weirder.

You would think there wouldn’t be anything weirder than the truth, but he’s learned very quickly not to underestimate the internet.

Okay, no more avoiding it. Where is that little shit hiding?

Daniel creeps through his own apartment, his footsteps dampened by his socked feet, until he finds Armand where he really should’ve expected him to be in the first place. He’s laying on the couch again, this time with his feet stretched out on the coffee table, watching what appears to be a documentary on city sewers with the volume muted and the subtitles in French.

Daniel stands beside the couch for a long moment, watching a fat rat scuttle across the screen. “Hey,” he says, when it becomes clear that Armand isn’t going to break the ice.

“Hello,” Armand says, his arms folded loosely across his chest and his chin resting against his clavicle from the way he’s slumped into the couch. His neck looks bent at a fully ninety degree angle to pull it off. He doesn't look up from the TV.

“The windows look nice.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “I had them keep the shutters in place, should the extra precaution reassure you.”

“Thanks. It does.” Daniel puts his hands in his pockets to keep them from fidgeting. Watches the documentary a little bit more. Clears his throat. “I realized that you’ve probably been sleeping in the bedroom.” He definitely did that first night, which hadn’t been a concern that crossed Daniel’s mind when he’s been sleeping in his makeshift closet-coffin anyway. But now that his bedroom is sunlight-proof…

Armand’s eyes steal sideways and then snap back to the TV, almost too quick to be noticed. “I sleep less than a younger vampire. The sofa will suffice.”

“I was actually going to say—” Daniel scratches the back of his head awkwardly. “You know, it’s a pretty big bed. We’re both grown-ups. There’s no reason not to share it.”

There’s a pregnant pause that makes Daniel mildly want to die. Is this really his version of an olive branch? There had to be a better option to patch things up than offering to have a sleepover. Are they going to braid each others’ hair while they’re at it?

Armand turns his head just a little, almost looking at him but not quite. “I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he says, pronouncing each word as if it’s a shard of broken glass in his mouth.

“Oh, fuck off,” Daniel scoffs. “You’re not the weirdest person I’ve slept with.”

Okay, well—

He shouldn’t have said it like that. Weirder to try to walk it back now. There’s no good option here. Forge onward, brave soldier.

“Call it penance for not having a real guest room,” he adds with a powerful dedication to acting like nothing weird just happened. “I’m not making you sleep on a couch, Armand.”

They took a couple steps back tonight—on both their parts’—but right now, Armand’s mouth curves microscopically. “If that’s what you’d like,” he says delicately, and he turns back to his documentary with the smile still playing on his lips. Daniel chooses to ignore how his heart feels a little lighter too. Must be a weird, entirely irrelevant coincidence.

Dawn is fast approaching so Daniel changes his clothes and brushes his teeth. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t exactly have to follow his dental routine anymore, but it’s always seemed like a good idea to keep up the habit, if only to keep his breath from smelling like a slaughterhouse. By the time he emerges into his bedroom, newly outfitted with windows that won’t kill him, Armand has already made himself at home. A fresh stack of National Geographics sits on the nightstand. Next to it is the head of the bee cookie. Daniel makes a note to keep an eye out for ants.

“Some light reading?” Daniel comments dryly as he double checks the latches on the shutters, just to be safe. It should be awkward, getting into opposite sides of bed with the vampire Armand as if they’re a sweet old couple that’s been married fifty years and counting. And it is, but not nearly as awkward as he’d expect.

Armand hums, dressed in a pair of Daniel’s sweatpants again and the same gray hoodie. He’s already sitting on top of the duvet, flipping through the magazine from the top of the pile. “I’m enjoying them,” he says. “Though I have yet to find your article.”

“I think it was sometime in ‘96. You’ll get there eventually.” Daniel crawls into bed and pulls the duvet up to his shoulders even though he doesn’t really need it, the stolen warmth from his recent feeding radiating off of his skin and catching underneath it. It’s nice. Cozy even. He lays on his side away from Armand and closes his eyes, the world outside of his shuttered windows slowly pinkening with the dawn.

“Daniel,” Armand says in a soft voice, just as Daniel is about to drop off into sleep.

“Hmm?” he grunts.

“Do you hate me?” There’s a pause. “Being unable to read your mind…I cannot tell.”

Daniel is quiet for a moment, his eyes open but staring at the wall across from him. “Well, asking is a good place to start.” He rolls over onto his back, so he can look over at Armand, who is still sitting where he left him. The magazine is still open in his lap but he’s looking at Daniel, a thoughtful crease between his eyebrows. He’s looking at him like he’s only just grappling with the fact that Daniel’s is the first mind in centuries he hasn’t been able to simply take the answers from. And maybe like his is the only mind that matters. It’s hard not to just look back, savoring not that fact that Armand has to wonder what he thinks, but that he cares enough that he does.

But he’s tired. He can examine that particular impulse some other time.

“I don’t hate you,” Daniel sighs, rubbing at his eye with the heel of his hand. “Just…give me a minute, okay? This is new for me too. Sometimes it takes time to figure it all out.”

And they are stuck together, one way or another. Armand decided that when he stuck his fangs in Daniel’s neck, and Daniel is stubborn, but not stubborn enough that he can pretend to regret that.

“Hmm.” Armand fiddles with the glossy corner of a magazine page, twisting it between his finger and thumb. “I suppose time is something we have.”

“Nothing but.” Daniel reaches out and knocks his knuckles against Armand’s. “Go to sleep.” The sheets rustle as he rolls back over, sleep tugging at him more obstinately as the sun rises outside.

“In a little while,” Armand murmurs. He says something else, but Daniel’s already fallen asleep.

Daniel wakes up to something tickling his nose.

He wakes up to the darkness tickling his nose, which doesn’t really make sense. He groans softly and lifts his head, briefly afraid that somehow he’s been locked in another, smaller closet, when he bumps against the darkness there too. It knocks against his cheek with a rustle, and the glossy surface sticks little to his skin before tugging away. What the hell?

The strange darkness shifts and slides away, revealing a sliver of the ceiling above him, shadowed but recognizable. Oh, he realizes entirely reasonably, it’s a magazine. He can see a rumpled zebra peeking out from the page that had been laying over his face.

Cool. Why was there a magazine laying on top of his face?

Actually, now that he’s starting to crawl back into consciousness, he’s starting to wonder about a few different things. Like what the weight across his shoulders is or when his pillow got so firm. And—this one is still developing—he’s really wondering when he ended up with his face pressed against Armand’s chest, an arm thrown around his waist like it’s a security blanket. Armand must have still been awake when he came crawling over, because his right arm is curled around Daniel’s back, where he’d apparently used Daniel’s head to prop up the magazine he was reading before falling asleep himself and letting it flop over Daniel’s face. Which is fair enough. Daniel’s face probably shouldn’t be there to begin with. Yet Armand certainly hadn’t stopped him.

He has to be honest: he’s not really sure how he’s going to get out of this one without admitting a few things.

Like that maybe he doesn’t really want to get out of it just yet. He’s never really thought of himself as a cuddler, like it’s something that happens to him rather than something he seeks out, but that seems to have changed. Vampirism has been great for a lot of things, many of them aerobic in nature, but human connection (oh, haha, fucking obviously) isn’t one of them. And with Lestat doing his rockstar shit and Louis in his Eat, Pray, Love era, sometimes it gets a little bit lonely.

Maybe it’s kind of nice, Armand’s chest surprisingly muscular underneath his cheek, his own sweatshirt bunched up around him, though smelling entirely like Armand by now, so really it might as well be his. Daniel can feel Armand’s chin resting against the top of his head, the listless tilt of it, threatening to fall off, suggesting without argument that Armand is still out cold.

Maybe there’s even something to be said for having some sort of bond, though Daniel is still fuzzy on what exactly that’s supposed to mean. He can feel Armand’s presence in the vampiric psychophere, but not his mind. Even now he could reach out and prod Louis, though the distance makes the bright star of his mind smaller. Daniel could still pass through it if he wanted to. Armand, meanwhile, is like a steel door. Right in front of him, solid enough to touch, but he can’t pull it open.

Not that he’s really tried. Admittedly, he’s thought that this bond stuff was mostly stupid bullshit, or at the very least useless bullshit, but as a natural-born contrarian, he was never going to think anything else with Armand breathing down his neck about it. Now, Armand sleeping, his face smooth and disarmingly innocent, all he can think about is that door. He’ll never be able to read Armand’s mind, vampire lore says that’s off the table and he believes that one, but maybe if he just reached out and put his mental hand against it he might feel—

Holy fuck.

It’s like getting hit over the head with a sheet pan, the impact reverberating through his skull and making the entire world wobble. Daniel doesn’t even know how to classify the emotions assaulting him. Warmth and satisfaction and a little bit of trepidation briefly float to the surface but it’s hard to focus on them past the electric current of fear that courses underneath it like a lightning bolt. Daniel jerks upwards as if actually shocked and clocks Armand in the chin with his head, which wakes him up with a startled snort.

“What? Daniel? What is it? Are you—” Armand tries to sit up at the same moment Daniel does the same thing, which causes their skulls to collide with a satisfying crack. Alarm stabs him directly in the brain, as solid as a railroad spike. Daniel tries to escape in the wrong direction and ends up tipping over the side of the bed only to tangle in the duvet and slide gracelessly to the floor, too wrapped up in the blanket to even fall.

“Fuck,” Daniel spits, his hand going to his forehead. He slumps against the ground, his legs still hanging off the side of the bed, twisted up in the duvet. Now his head is really reverberating and—

The steel door slams closed again.

It’s like music suddenly being cut off, if the amp were connected directly to his nervous system. Suddenly it’s only his own mind rattling around in there again, though every thought he’s ever had has been briefly scattered to the wind.

Armand peers down at him, looking alarmed. “Are you well?” he demands. “What’s happened?” His hair is tangled on one side, the curls sticking out in new and interesting directions.

Daniel just stares up at him, still struggling to regain his grasp on the English language. “What the fuck was that?” he asks. “Did you feel that?”

He frowns. “Feel what?”

“The—” How would he even explain it? Like getting punched in the nose by the personification of an anxiety disorder. If he thinks about it for too long he wants to start pulling off his own skin. “Was that the—the fucking bond?”

For a moment Armand just stares down at him. Then his frown deepens into a scowl. “You’re being ridiculous, Daniel,” he huffs. “Or mocking me. I don’t appreciate either at this hour.” He flops backwards onto the bed and turns away, muttering under his breath.

Great, now Armand’s pissed at him, but also—what the hell was that? Daniel gingerly feels out the steel door of Armand’s mind again, but it’s as firmly closed as ever, as if it even cracked open at all. But that had to be it. It had to be. And Armand didn’t even notice?

Maybe Daniel shouldn’t have given him such a hard time for complaining about having the bond. Holy shit.

Finally Daniel kicks himself free of the duvet and climbs to his feet. Armand is still pretending to be asleep, even though the low buzz of annoyance in the room makes it clear that he’s not really. Whatever, he’s not helpful. Daniel yanks his phone off the charger and retreats into the rest of the apartment, still embarrassingly rattled by the whole thing.

It’s a little early to be awake, but the new windows make his living room comfortably shadowed. He sinks onto the couch, throwing a paranoid glance over his shoulder, before pulling out his phone again.

DM: Is it supposed to hurt?
DM: Louis.
DM: Wake up!

Daniel sinks further into the couch, his knuckles pressed against his mouth. This is crazy, right? Like, finding Armand in a jail cell had been weird, and regular crazy, but this is crazy-crazy. Or at least the kind that Daniel can’t conveniently ignore.

LDPDL: what?
LDPDL: i’m not your doctor daniel

Oh, he thinks he’s funny. Haha.

DM: The maker-fledgling bond.
DM: Is it supposed to feel like my brain is getting charbroiled?
DM: Don’t give me ‘lol’ again.
DM: This isn’t funny!

His phone buzzes, but it’s not in his text thread with Louis. Instead he has a new text from Lestat with a Twitter link. The preview shows him the now very familiar image of him and Armand at the coffee shop.

LDL: My dear Daniel, if you wanted to cause an internet scandal you didn’t have to ask the gremlin…

Of course Lestat noticed that. Daniel rolls his eyes and sends him the middle finger emoji before flipping back to his conversation with Louis.

LDPDL: i don’t know what makes you think i’m the expert on this
LDPDL: you’d be better off asking lestat
DM: Not happening.
LDPDL: or armand
DM: Did happen. He accused me of making fun of him.
DM: It’s like he didn’t even feel it.
LDPDL: well he’s feeling you, you’re feeling him. that’s how the bond works
LDPDL: different feelings

He manages to get across a no shit sort of subtext even in text. Daniel frowns down at his phone, his face bathed in blue light. Yeah, yeah, sure, that makes sense and all. But how had Armand not even noticed their bond connecting, after harping about it so much? Yeah, he’d been asleep but—

He’d been asleep.

The gears in Daniel’s mind turn sharply and click into place. The steel door of Armand’s mind had only even allowed a draft through it when he was asleep. As soon as he woke up, it had snapped closed again.

“That motherfucker,” Daniel mutters against his knuckes. All these accusations about vampiric arrested development and deficiencies like Daniel is the reason he can’t feel their bond. Like Daniel is the problem and not fucking Armand. He won’t let Daniel feel it, and somehow he doesn't even realize it.

And maybe that’s a good thing if that taste of it was anything to go by. Jesus Christ. But Daniel still has to figure out what to do about it. Even if he didn’t want to, he’s not sure he could help himself now. He always has been a glutton for punishment.

DM: Nevermind, I might be onto something.
DM: I’ll let you know.
LDPDL: you don’t have to
DM: Don’t worry, I will.
LDPDL: thanks.

Chapter Text

Daniel likes to think of himself as a problem-solver. He likes a challenge, a tough nut to crack, an obstacle or two. It’s an instinct that pushed him through his career, chasing success until success wasn’t interested in him anymore. A lot of things have changed, but his mind hasn’t. If there’s one thing he can do, it’s figure shit out.

The problem: Armand is so uptight, so divorced from his own five centuries of shit, that he’s blocking their bond without even being aware he’s doing it.

The solution:

…

The solution:

Is—

Yeah, he doesn't know that one yet. He is a problem solver, but this is new territory, okay? He’s a journalist, not a therapist. Historically speaking, he’s better at breaking things apart than putting them back together.

Not that Armand needs to be put back together. Does he? He sure as hell did in that jail cell, but the next day he’d been back to normal, or at least some approximation of it, almost as if it never happened at all. But Daniel isn’t really sure what normal is for Armand, if he should be judging his behavior against Dubai’s standards or if that’s what he’s experiencing now. Despite having had the guy’s fangs in his neck (twice) it’s not like he knows him that well.

But he looks normal?

“You’re staring at me, Daniel,” Armand points out from where he sits across from him at the dining room table. It comes out offhandedly.

He is staring. Fuck. For how long? Hard to say. At least a few minutes. All Daniel can think to say is: “so?”

Weird answer.

Armand stares at him, a little crease appearing between his eyebrows, and Daniel stares back, refusing to acknowledge, even to himself, that this is strange. A lot of that going around lately. Armand has yet to mention Daniel sleeping more or less on top of him, and Daniel isn’t about to open that can of worms right now if he can help it. This is about what’s going on with Armand. Not him.

The corners of Armand’s mouth pinch as a scowl flickers across his features and, bond or no bond, Daniel gets the distinct feeling that he wishes he could stick his hand into Daniel’s brain and yank the answers out of it. His expression smooths over a heartbeat later. “By all means, continue,” he says blandly, and he makes sure that Daniel can see him roll his eyes.

Right. He needs to focus, because staring at Armand like he’s a puzzle that’s going to solve itself isn’t getting him anywhere. It doesn’t matter if he looks normal (Armand-normal, at least, which is a thing too complicated to define), because he’s very clearly not. You don’t end up having to be rescued from the drunk tank because you’re having a normal one, and you don’t just drop into your only fledgling’s life after three years either. Daniel’s mind still itches like a bad sunburn if he thinks about their brief connection for too long. All that tension stored in one body and locked behind a steel door. It’s a wonder Armand hasn’t snapped his own rib cage from the force of holding it all together. The guy really just needs to relax.

…Okay. Alright. It’s something to work with.

The solution (trial period): convince Armand to relax.

What he absolutely can’t do is tell him about any of this. What a wonderful world that would be, if it were only that simple. Unfortunately Daniel knows for a fact that if he told Armand that he was responsible for their uneven bond, there’s no way in hell he’d believe it. If anything he’d probably double-down on the deficiency theory, and he certainly would not relax. Stupid though it may be, absurd though it may be—this is his best shot at actually seeing progress.

Daniel putters around the apartment for a bit, pretending to do tasks without really accomplishing anything. He’s not really someone who dusts as someone who pays a nice lady to dust for him, but he swipes at a few surfaces until he coincidentally finds himself in front of his record player.

“You like music?” Daniel asks over his shoulder.

There’s a pause. “Conceptually?” Armand asks archly. “Are there many people who do not?”

Pedantic asshole. Daniel rolls his eyes at the wall. “I mean, do you mind if I put a record on?” He’d been hoping for some hint as to what kind of music Armand likes, but okay, that’s on him for not asking like a normal person. Probably something classical, right? The more pretentious the better? That’s relaxing.

“It’s your home, Daniel.” Another pause. “But no, I do not mind.”

Daniel was an old school guy before vinyl wrapped back around into being retro-cool again—his biggest obstacle is that his collection is spread across at least five different locations in his apartment, minimum. He shuffles through the albums within arms reach, trying to look casual.

“You’re acting strangely tonight,” Armand muses. It makes his shoulders tense. That obvious?

“Thanks,” Daniel deadpans, finally settling on something instrumental. Rain sounds and yoga music off of Spotify would probably be more appropriate, but that would be a little harder to pass off as part of his normal routine. And he is trying to appear normal, despite the fact that he’s apparently already failing. “Remind me which one of us was found in a jail cell again?”

Armand hums noncommittally, and Daniel really can’t tell if he won or lost that one. Lost, probably. That’s just how life is going lately.

The music is nice at least. Soft violin set over piano music, the sort of thing Daniel would put on when he was writing late at night, when he needed something to fill the silence without bothering the neighbors. Now they’re bothered enough by his footsteps at all hours of the night, but the music is still sweet and peaceful. He’s relaxed. If he closed his eyes he could probably tip his head back and forget the situation he’s in right now.

Until it’s cut through by a tinny pop song. It scratches all the way up Daniel’s nerves.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asks, turning to find Armand still sitting at the dinner table, a stack of junk mail piled haphazardly next to him where Daniel has been tossing it for the last week. He sits leaning forward on one elbow, his chin resting in his hand, looking down at a phone and idly swiping upward. The pop song changes jarringly.

“Watching videos,” Armand says, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Someone sent one to your social media account. Have you seen them? They’re quite impressive.”

“Is that my phone?” Armand doesn’t bother to grace that with a response. His is still in police custody, or maybe he lost it on the street during his night of binge drinking. He could get another one, Daniel is pretty confident in that, but he hasn’t. Instead he seems to have focused on buying himself a new wardrobe, obviously. He’s started dressing in clothes that he must have gotten somewhere and the answer isn’t Daniel’s closet anymore. Which only means he’s doing it on purpose when he chooses to steal Daniel’s sweatpants.

But also—videos?

Daniel comes to stand behind him and peer over his shoulder, drawn forward by morbid curiosity. People tag him in shit all the time. He thought he had notifications turned off, but there’s no accounting for spying. Despite the fact that his phone requires a passcode.

Armand flips to the next video, and his own face fills the screen. It’s the photo from the coffee shop, blown up so it’s grainy as hell, surrounded by a pulsating pink glow as the image pulls in and out and does somersaults into the second grainy stalker picture of Armand from that night. They flip to the beat of the song put over it.

“Jesus Christ,” Daniel mutters under his breath, transfixed. “There’s two pictures of you.” He points. “They even tagged it Armand. Seriously?”

“Your fans are very astute,” Armand says, practically glowing with smug satisfaction. God, this could be a problem. Attention only seems to make him worse. “Don’t take it personally. They make them for you as well.”

He flips backwards three videos, until it’s footage of Daniel from his viral interview, mouthing blow me at the camera while the song overtop of it declares the need for a femininomenon, whatever that is. He snorts despite himself.

Alright, that one’s pretty good.

The little red heart also declares that it’s already been liked. “You’re logged into your own account, right?” Daniel asks, already knowing the answer. “You know, what? I don’t even want to know.” His fault for becoming a meme instead of one of those authors that retreats into the woods and sends in a manuscript every couple of years written on tree bark and delivered by woodland creatures. Maybe, just maybe it’s because he kind of likes the attention too.

But that’s besides the point.

“Stiff neck?” Daniel asks, his eyes slanting sideways as Armand stretches his neck to one side and rubs at it thoughtlessly. As a human he wouldn’t have guessed that vampires still have to deal with things so mundane as a crick in their neck. As a vampire himself—well, he slept in a walk-in closet. He knows it can happen.

Armand hums and goes back to swiping through videos, too quick to properly absorb them. “Somewhat.”

“You did fall asleep at a weird angle.”

“Well,” Armand says, “I didn’t intend to.” He looks up and meets Daniel’s eyes, and once again they’re caught in an awkward stalemate. No, he didn’t intend to. It was Daniel practically crawling on top of his lap that made that happen. Are they really not going to talk about that? Not that he has to say it for them both to know what he’s thinking about. Not that Daniel wants to go down that road.

He opens his mouth and says something much worse instead.

“I could give you a neck massage.”

More staring. More staring back. No one says shit.

“If you want,” Daniel adds.

Armand looks like he’s waiting for the punchline, his eyes squinted microscopically and the corners of his mouth tight. The phone has been forgotten, playing the same grating song clip on a loop until the screen finally goes dark.

“I was not aware that was part of your skill set,” Armand says finally, mercy-killing the painful silence with breezy arrogance. Daniel is so grateful he could almost kiss his forehead.

“It’s not hard,” Daniel scoffs. “Come on, sit back against the chair before you fuck up your back too.” Why is it so much easier to bully him than it is to be nice? Definitely something to be analyzed there, one life-long personality defect that he can’t blame Armand or Louis for. He shifts sideways, standing behind the dining room chair as Armand obediently sits back against it, his shoulders pulled back into decent posture.

And he’s quite the opposite of relaxed. Daniel barely has to put his hands on him to feel the thrumming tension pulled at the muscles of Armand’s back. It’s actually a little impressive—to the outside eye he looks like he’s waiting patiently, his head tipped a little with an edge of paternalistic condescension, like he’s indulging a child’s game. But underneath Daniel’s hands, it feels like he’s ready to leap up and make a break for it.

Jesus, is he always like this? Or is he really that sure Daniel is going to do it wrong?

“Hey, can you do me a favor?” Daniel asks.

“Yes?”

“Chill out.” Armand starts to make a disgruntled sound but Daniel takes the opportunity to press his thumbs into the muscle on either side of his spine, and the sound cuts off.

He hesitates for a second, just long enough to see if something’s going to happen, but Armand doesn’t bite him or try to run or say a single word, so he assumes it’s okay to keep going. A vampiric bond would probably be useful for this sort of thing, but as Daniel works his thumbs in slow circles, smoothing out the tension with gentle force, the door to Armand’s mind still remains soldered closed.

“Eileen—my second wife—she showed me how to do this,” Daniel says as he methodically works his hands along Armand’s neck. He’s surprised how conversational it comes out, rather than just something to fill the silence. “I used to fuck up my neck, hunched over my desk all the time. You don’t know it, but getting older’s a bitch.”

“Hmm,” Armand hums, distracted, his head drifting downward a little. Daniel can’t see his face from his vantage point, but that’s a good sign. “That’s why she taught you?”

“No, she was sick of fixing my neck and thought I should be able to return the favor.” He can’t remember actually doing it all that much, which helps explain the ex- in ex-wife, but hey, maybe everything does happen for a reason. He had to be a shitty husband in order to be a good fledgling someday.

Probably not. But it does seem to be helping. Not enough to budge that door, not yet, but the tension in his shoulders has relaxed, and Armand leans back against his hands, boneless like a cat in a sunbeam. It’s nice. He’s about to tell Armand about the book he’d been working on at the time and the deadline mishap that almost ruined his posture forever when his phone starts to ring. It jumps a little on the table as it vibrates.

Shit. “They’ll leave a message.”

Armand’s head shifts microscopically. “It’s your daughter,” he says, reading the caller ID. A pause. “You should answer it.”

Katie in California, where it’s still daylight but she knows that he’s always up late these days. His rekindled relationship with his daughters still feels as though it’s a house of cards waiting to tumble down, and he’s trying really, really hard not to fuck that up all over again. Nothing like dying to make you realize how important the living are. That, or he just has more free time to fill.

He should answer it.

“Yeah,” Daniel says, clearing his throat. “Good idea.” He leans over Armand’s shoulder and swipes his phone off the table, already afraid that it’ll send her to voicemail after all.

“That did help. Thank you, Daniel,” Armand says in a quiet voice as Daniel retreats back to his bedroom to take the phone call.

“Yeah, no…” He turns to shut the door behind him—only the illusion of privacy in a house of vampires, but still—and he catches a glimpse of Armand with his head tilted, his long fingers resting thoughtfully against the side of his neck. He looks thoughtful. Daniel wavers. “No problem.”

His phone buzzes again, reminding him that it’s still waiting. He answers the call. “Hey, honey…”

That was—

Yeah, no, that was a good idea. Smart. Especially for something he came up with on the fly. He’s pretty sure they got somewhere with that one. Daniel is a nice guy. He must be, helping out a friend like that.

Are he and Armand friends? That feels a little too much and not nearly enough at the same time. Just blood-wise. Fangs-in-neck-wise. Jesus, why is he thinking about this so much? Be normal, Danny.

Anyway.

Katie was just calling to catch up, nothing important, don’t worry. Daniel hadn’t been present enough to worry before he picked up, but he pretended to be reassured. She could tell he was distracted and was disappointed in him for it, so he ended up on the phone twice as long, trying to make up for it. His fault. If he wanted more passes now, he probably should’ve tried harder when it really mattered.

Back to business now. Back to…whatever this is.

When Daniel emerges from the bedroom again he finds Armand measuring one of the walls, which can’t be a good sign, but he decides to let it go for now for the sake of the night’s experiment. If Armand tries to hang a stolen Rembrandt in his apartment, they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it.

“Hey, I’m going out to eat,” Daniel says. Then, as casually as he can, “you wanna go?”

Armand’s head whips around so fast he probably undoes any good Daniel’s massage did him. “To hunt?” he says, tentative despite the gleam in his eye like his birthday and Christmas and probably Halloween have all come on the same day. “With you?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Why not?”

“You were quite adamant that I didn’t last night,” Armand says without malice. He fidgets with the cuff of his sleeve. “I thought you must be shy.”

Well, no, he’d been pissed, actually, but he’s trying not to remember that. Instead Daniel snorts. If there’s one thing he’s never been, in his short vampiric life, it’s been shy about eating. Hence the head popping off that one time. It’s occasionally a problem.

“Yeah, not quite. You in or out?”

“Of course. Yes. Why would I not be?” Armand straight up drops the tape measurer he’s holding, just lets it fall straight to the ground where it lands with a thunk that his downstairs neighbors are sure to enjoy. “I have wondered how you must hunt. I’ve been so curious. Louis refused to tell me—”

“You’ve been talking to Louis?” Funny he didn’t mention that.

“—but I know that you must be magnificent,” Armand goes on, ignoring him as he disappears into the bedroom, and there’s a pathetic squeak as he steps on the mattress still stuck in there. When he emerges again he’s buttoning up a new shirt, a forest green satin that’s a little overkill for killing. “Absolutely magnificent. Are you ready? Please do tell me you’ll wear the—”

“I’ll wear the coat,” Daniel says with a bone-deep world-weariness that he feels like he’s earned. Nice. He’s being nice. This is Armand’s day. “But you’re wearing one too. We can at least look like we’re going to the same place.”

Armand is in too good of a mood to argue, even when it turns out that the extra coat Daniel has is dark red, making him look like a Christmas tree when he shrugs it on over his green shirt. It’s somehow both too big and too short on him, but he doesn’t seem to even notice. He’s almost incandescent with joy, and it’s hard to tell if he’s happy to be included or if this is just how he always feels about a meal.

“I’ve come to prefer a more delicate approach, as you well know,” Armand exposits as they head out onto the street, blissfully disregarding the fact that he’s referencing the time he tried to kill Daniel. Or not disregarding it, really. He’s actually regarding the memory quite fondly. “But please don’t let that sway your preferences. I hardly would have been this way as a fledgling, I can promise you that.”

It’s charming, which isn’t a word that’s been coming up with alarming frequency. Maybe it’s just a vampire thing, a contact high from seeing him with a bounce in his step, a little fang peeking out in anticipation. He keeps touching Daniel’s elbow with his fingertips as they walk, as if to draw him into the story as he re-tells one of his particularly macabre early kills. Daniel’s smile is lopsided, one corner of his mouth pulling up despite himself.

Charming, but not relaxed. If anything Armand is more wound up than ever. But that’s fine, he even expected it a little, after being treated to a taste of Armand’s hunting routine back in Dubai, though he’s considerably less restrained about it now. Daniel has a plan for that.

It’s late and a wet kind of cold that’s threatening snow but won’t actually follow through on it. Not the best time for hunting, but if there’s one thing Daniel knows, it’s how to find a stoner. Which is a weird thing to brag about, but that’s exactly what they both need right now. It’s genius, and a hobby that Daniel isn’t unfamiliar with. Draining coked up 20somethings at Lestat’s concerts is great, he’d never knock it, but sometimes you just want to take the edge off and have a night in.

So he takes them to the skatepark closest to his apartment, which is technically closed after dark but skaters and potheads aren’t known for respecting authority, God bless them. There’s usually a handful of them around, their wheels scraping against the concrete as they half-heartedly spin around the bowled surface. Even on cold nights like this, probably because Mom and Dad won’t let them smoke in the garage anymore. Tonight three of them huddle around a phone, loudly watching tiktoks while a fourth one actually skateboards, though poorly. Daniel can smell the blood on his skinned hands from here. His gums ache in anticipation.

Daniel stops outside of the tall chain link fence that boxes the skatepark in. “Well,” he says with a shrug, already glowing with satisfaction at a job well done. “What do you think?”

Armand hesitates before he drifts closer to the fence, his enthusiasm wilting like a flower as a gentle frown tugs on the corners of his mouth. “Oh,” he says, trying valiantly not to let it show. He sounds like a toddler has proudly presented him with a live worm. “Is this…what you typically do?”

Okay, not off to a good start, actually. Daniel shifts his weight and shoves his hands into his coat pockets with another shrug, less certain this time. “Well, no,” he says, suddenly self-conscious. He thought he was too old to be self-conscious, but Armand is somehow painfully good at making it happen. “I just thought it could be, y’know. Kind of fun.”

“Ah,” he says without enthusiasm.

Goddammit. Come on. “Listen, things have been stressful lately, right? With all this?” Daniel says, shrugging more aggressively this time. He needs to stop doing that, but he can’t. This isn’t working. Why isn’t this working? “Let’s just get high and sit on the couch. We can even watch your stupid housewives show. It’ll be good.”

Which is a pretty damn generous offer, he thinks. But Armand only tucks his chin down thoughtfully, watching the skatepark stoners like zoo animals on the other side of the fence with the air of soft, barely-restrained disappointment. “That’s very kind of you,” he says gently. “But no, thank you.” He turns and walks away, drifting a little aimlessly toward the park that borders the skatepark.

Daniel watches him go, the wind thoroughly taken out of his sails, his shoulders slumped helplessly. What the hell is going on? Okay, maybe this isn’t wanted he wanted to do tonight, but he’s not acting like himself either. Daniel would have expected Armand to scoff and inform him that he’s been remiss in his duties and he would be showing Daniel how to really hunt, but tonight it’s wet noodle Armand, wandering under the lamp-lit trees like he’s staring in his own indie movie about love, loss, and moving on. You can practically hear the twang of an acoustic guitar over it all.

Daniel jogs to catch up with him. “I found you in a drunk tank,” he points out, one last attempt. “You’re really turning a new leaf now? Going straightedge on me?”

“I’m over five hundred years old, Daniel,” Armand scoffs. “I’ve consumed more illicit substances than you can name.” He gives him a sideways look that rakes him up and down. “Though perhaps not many more.” It’s still barely even a barb. He’s not even trying.

Daniel steps out in front of him, forcing him to stop. The footpath has taken them onto a bridge that’s hardly worthy of the name—it arches over what might be considered a stream on a good day. Tonight it’s choked with half-frozen leaf litter and beer cans lit up amber and gold by the play of shadow and light from the lamps bookending the bridge. Armand sighs through his nose and stands with his hands in his pockets, his mouth pinched impatiently but the tilt of his chin tolerant.

“What would you rather do then? Chase someone around? You know, one of the late night guys at CNN is a real bastard. I wouldn’t mind taking him out,” Daniel says. “It’s your night. Just point me in the right direction.”

It’s too late. The mood has already gone out the window and is halfway down the street, probably never to be seen again. Armand just looks at him for a long moment, the look on his face strangely vulnerable despite the steel door still held up between the two of them. His eyes are the same color as the lamplight, golden-orange, slightly luminous but not enough to entirely push back the dark. He starts to say something but can’t seem to figure out the words, almost smiling before he swallows that too, and shakes his head. He shakes his hair out of his face. “I think…I really would just like to take a walk.”

He understands now, Armand’s look from earlier. He does need that bond actually, because he if he has to keep trying to guess what the fuck Armand is thinking, it’s going to drive him insane. It might have already. Daniel sighs and squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what else to fucking do,” he mutters to himself. Find an investment banker that just popped a xanax? He’s running out of options here.

“Daniel,” Armand says softly.

Yeah, he shouldn’t have said that out loud. Another stupid, only half-thought out move. He’s not really sure how he’s going to explain his sudden passion for making Armand happy, but when he opens his eyes again, that doesn’t seem to be the question Armand is asking. He looks at him with liquid eyes, darker now, his satin shirt open at the collar in an Armand-fashion, ruffled by the breeze, and his expression tender like a bruise. He looks a little caught off guard, though Daniel can’t guess why.

“Daniel,” he says again. Another half-smile, more tentative this time. “You don’t have to do anything, beloved.”

Armand steps forward and kisses him. It’s somehow both tentative and way more familiar than he’d expect for a first kiss, his body pressed against Daniel’s, his hand possessively cupping his neck. But that’s nothing compared to the door of emotion cracked open and spilling light everywhere, an almost-familiar cocktail of emotion that waterboards his senses. Excitement, nervousness, a melodramatic sweep of tenderness and that same high whine of tension, somewhat less shocking than the first time but only a little bit. And: what the fuck is Armand kissing him what the fucking shit is going on what—

Oh. That one is from him.

“Daniel?!” Armand pulls back, wide-eyed, looking him over frantically like he’s going to start spontaneously bleeding, and not in a fun way. He puffs out an impatient breath when he realizes it’s nothing again, just his fledgling popping off again or whatever he must think. His hand drops to curl around the front of his jacket like it’s a convenient handle. He gives him a little shake. “Must you keep doing that?”

Daniel just stares, his eyebrows slowly coming together. This time it’s Armand doing the staring back. He blinks.

“What?” he says, confused.

“Did you just kiss me?” Daniel asks, stupid. It’s really all he can come up with at the moment.

Armand freezes. His eyes are so wide that there’s white all around the iris. Another long, painful pause. “Was I not supposed to?”

“Uh.”

Armand inhales sharply, his mouth hanging open. His hand is still holding Daniel’s jacket, where he seems to have forgotten it. “But I thought you had—” He cuts himself off, his mouth still hanging open, and for a moment he looks like he might leap off the bridge, only it’s eight feet high and he knows the sweet embrace of death doesn’t wait on the bottom. His eyelids flutter like his brain is malfunctioning and can’t upload the right response to this. “It probably sounds foolish now. You see, the way you’ve been behaving—Well, it’s hardly important. We don’t need to discuss it, really,” he rambles haltingly, his hand fluttering away to gesture nervously, as erratic as a trapped songbird. “It’s only, it seemed as though this was—”

“A date?” Daniel fills in, his voice faint.

Armand’s mouth snaps shut.

The music. The neck massage. A fucking—dinner date. Where he more or less suggested they get high and Netflix and chill like a shitty, broke teenager. No wonder Armand was disappointed. He even took him to a coffee shop, like he’s trying to check off classic date ideas from a list. Should he try a movie next? Of course it looked like a date, Daniel Molloy, you stupid asshole. If he were anyone else he’d go yeah, man, no fucking shit.

Was it a date? When does something stop looking like a date and start being one?

More staring. More fucking staring. God, he’s never been so awkward in his whole life, and he’s had a marriage proposal turned down. But he wasn’t the one doing that, and suddenly Daniel thinks he may owe Alice an apology. A couple of apologies. Jesus, what does he say? He can’t be figuring out if he was just on a date with the vampire Armand, absentee maker extraordinaire and certified hot mess, not to mention all the other shit he’s done, right here now in real time. He definitely can’t be deciding if he liked it.

“We don’t have to feel weird about this,” Daniel offers. It comes out defensive.

There’s no surer way to make sure they’re weird about this. Dumbass.

“Of course not,” Armand says, equally defensive. He takes a step back, impatiently flicking his hair away from his face. He clears his throat unnecessarily. “It is quite common for there to be intimacy between maker and fledgling. The very act of making a vampire itself is perhaps the most intimate thing to be done—”

“Okay, now you’re making it fucking weird.”

“Not that I expect you to understand. Your deficiency—”

“Are you really going there? Right now?”

“It continues to be relevant—”

“You don’t have to come after me just because you feel weird—”

“I assure you I feel quite normal—”

“Seriously. Okay.” Daniel rolls his eyes with enough force to nearly pop them out of their sockets, practically sagging back against the bridge railing with exasperation. He almost laughs, but the sound comes out strangled. “You know what? I was trying to help you open up! Because you are the problem!”

“With what?” Armand says incredulously, pulling his lips back in a sneer.

“With this!” He flaps his hand between them. “The bond! I’d be able to feel it if you could unclench for maybe, I don’t know, ten seconds. But you won’t! I’m not sure you can at this point. That’s why we’re here. I was trying to help you just…relax.”

Armand’s sneer slips, his eyebrows pulling together in faint confusion. “You’re being ridiculous,” he scoffs, but he doesn’t sound as sure as he did a moment before.

“Am I?” Daniel raises his eyebrows pointedly. “Don’t you think it’s kinda weird that you can feel me, but I can’t feel you? Why would it go one way and not the other?”

“That’s…” he wavers. “Your deficiency…”

His eyebrows crawl up further. “Maybe it’s not my deficiency.”

Armand looks away sharply and clears his throat, smoothing down the front of his borrowed coat. “I don’t think that’s true,” he says archly, but it’s all borrowed arrogance. He still won’t meet Daniel’s eye. “But I do think I would like to take that walk now. Alone.” He steps past Daniel primly, and Daniel’s satisfaction at the victory starts collapsing in on itself before it can hardly form at all.

“Armand,” he says, turning to watch him go. “Hey, I shouldn’t have said it like that. Armand?” He might as well not have said anything at all. Armand continues down the paved path, his hands in his pockets and his dark hair gilded by the evenly spaced lamps overhead.

Daniel sighs and rubs at his face, the ghost of the kiss, of Armand’s chest against his, like a shadow there. Well, that could have gone better.

“Just come home before dawn, okay?” he calls after him one last time. Still no response. He sighs again. “Yeah. Okay.”

Chapter Text

He’s said it once, he’s said it a thousand times: fuck his life.

When you’re young, you think you’ll have figured it all out by the time you’re old. When you’re mortal—well, he’s never met a functional, emotionally stable vampire, so that one’s on him for thinking that anything would improve with immortality. Lesson fucking learned.

The worst part is that he can’t even blame this one on Armand, which is something he’s gotten quite gleefully comfortable doing. Daniel can blame Armand for a lot of things, up to and including torturing him for six days in a shitty apartment in San Francisco, though it’s probably time to let that one go. But this one…

It did kinda look like a date, didn’t it?

Daniel lingers at the entrance to the park, slouched on a bench under a flickering light, pretending to play with his phone but really waiting to see if Armand comes back. He doesn’t. Of course he doesn't. Would Daniel? Probably, yeah, but not as one of his prouder moments, and it’s well established that Armand is more of a cut and run sort of operator. Jesus, if he disappears again—

It’ll be fine. He made it the last three years just fine and so did Armand. Vampires are immortal, that's the whole schtick. They've got time.

But he doesn't really want to spend more of it waiting around, kicking the dirt and mooning after the same guy he's pretty sure he just chased away. Because, once more with feeling, fuck his life.

He hasn’t fed tonight, so Daniel is aware of the pattering heartbeat before it gets close enough to smell, but he’s stewing and not really interested in getting his fangs out at the moment. He expects them to move on and leave him to it. He’s definitely not expecting the little bag of blood to drop down onto the bench next to him.

Daniel’s eyes slide sideways, squinting skeptically at the kid sitting at the end of the bench. It’s one of the stoners, young enough to still have a baby face but old enough to be growing a truly pathetic mustache, a beanie pulled low over his ears and his coat bunched up around his curved shoulders. He stares at Daniel owlishly, the corners of his mouth pulled into a sort of not-quite-smile like they just made awkward eye contact at the DMV.

Daniel gives him a second to say something. It comes and goes. What now? “Hello?” he says bluntly, raising an eyebrow. “Can I, uh, help you?”

The kid fidgets. “You’ve been hanging around for a while.”

“Yeah?”

He shrugs with one shoulder, somehow both awkward and unerring staring. He’s noticed that Daniel’s eyes are the wrong color, but he’s decided that he’s just weird and probably into cosplay. What the fuck is cosplay? “Usually when old guys hang around…they want…you know…” the kid drifts off, letting the implication speak for itself. “For cash. Or beer.” He seems more interested in the second one.

They stare at each other for one heavy, blisteringly awkward beat. That’s the theme for the night, it seems.

“Only hand stuff,” the kid adds hurriedly.

“Jesus Christ,” Daniel groans, slouching back against the bench. Is that really what he looks like these days? A geriatric sex pest? Does the dweeby coat make it better or worse? “Fuck off, kid.”

The kid huffs and slouches too, sticking his over-long legs out in front of him. “You don’t have to be an asshole.”

“You just propositioned me in a park, so yeah, I think I do.”

“I was just offering,” he whines and he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, his shoulders pushed up to his ears. God, how old is he, nineteen at the most? Daniel can’t even eat him now, it would be too weird. They can ignore the fact that if the night had gone as planned, he probably would’ve eaten him anyway. “Sorry. God.”

Daniel shakes his head and glowers at the darkened trees, still trying to see the shape of Armand between them. Vampire eyes are a little too sharp for him to pretend he might mistake one of the shadows. “Yeah, whatever,” he mutters. He sighs and tucks his chin into the collar of his coat.

The kid shifts in his seat like he’s going to get up and leave, but he doesn’t. The heels of his sneakers tap restlessly against the path. “Are you, like, okay?” he asks. “You’re not gonna go kill yourself or something are you?”

“What? No!” He gives the kid a scandalized look. “Man, who the hell are you?”

He’s stoned as hell is what he is. Do they not teach stranger danger anymore? Offering handjobs for a six pack is one thing, but this is getting into unbilled therapy hours territory. “Hudsyn. With a Y,” he answers. “My friends call me Synner.”

“Yeah, I’m not calling you that.” Daniel sighs and scratches at his cheek. This is so fucking stupid. He’s not hanging out with a teenage stoner named Hudsyn with a Y and complaining about his—whatever the hell he has with Armand. He’s not doing it.

But—

“I fucked up,” Daniel says, pulling the words out between his teeth. He rolls his eyes and looks out at the path, refusing to make eye contact with the present situation. “That guy I was with—he’s been having a hard time lately. So I’m trying to help him out, but it just sort of…there was a misunderstanding.”

Hudsyn blinks at him, his mouth hanging open a fraction of an inch, almost enthralled by the idea that old guys have problems too. “Like what?”

It sounds even more stupid when he has to face saying the words out loud. “He thought it was a date,” Daniel admits grudgingly.

Hudsyn’s eyes get wider. “And it wasn’t?”

“It wasn’t.”

“Bruhhhhh.”

“Hey, you’ve got no fucking idea—he’s done way worse shit.” Daniel bristles like a cat, turning in his seat to gesticulate at this poor kid just to prove his point. “This is like a pizza party compared to what he’s done. Do not feel bad for him.”

“Alright.” He’s got that hapless, pinched-lips look again though. He tugs at the bottom of his beanie, pulling it down too low over his forehead. “It just kinda seems like you feel bad about it.”

“Well, I don’t feel good about it,” he says defensively. He’d be an asshole if he felt good about it, even if it is Armand. But he still can’t explain why he feels so bad, not just awkward or guilty for the misunderstanding, but there’s a heaviness in his chest, like he’d held something fragile carelessly and now he’s broken it. He doesn’t need Armand, that’s been established. If anything, Armand needs him lately. But—

Maybe it’s been nice, having him there. Maybe it’s been good.

Maybe he wants him. Wants him there, he means. In his apartment. Or just, maybe, like. Around.

Yeah. Maybe.

“He just—he pisses me off sometimes,” Daniel goes on. He gestures helplessly into the night and lets his hand fall back into his lap. “It shouldn’t have been a big deal. He made it a big deal. And now he’s—who the fuck knows where he is. And I’m talking to you. So you can see it’s been a real banner night.” And now he’s mad again. At the moment, it’s preferable to feeling tender-hearted. Or lonely.

Hudsyn nods seriously. “Once my sister was being a total bitch,” he says, leaning forward a little, “but my dad said that she was just on my period.” He says it with the wisdom of a modern sage.

Daniel squints. “You think he’s on his period?”

Hudsyn’s face drops, his eyebrows pulling together like he never considered that possibility. “I guess he could be,” he says gravely. “But I guess it’s, like, sometimes you don’t know what else someone has going on. Sometimes they’re a crazy bitch for no reason. But sometimes there is a reason.”

…huh.

Talk about out of the mouths of babes. And the thing is, Daniel knows what’s wrong with him. Well, obviously the vampire Armand is a 500-year-layer-dip of unaddressed bullshit—but he can suspect what happened here. After all, Daniel is the one who blew up his last relationship. It makes sense that the subject would be a little tender. And why rejection (was it a rejection? the jury is still out) would feel like a nuclear detonation event.

Well. Shit.

“You know what, Synner? You’re not as dumb as you look.” Daniel claps him on the shoulder and the kid grins like a golden retriever. It occurs to him that this could be an important life moment for this kid. That maybe he’s supposed to be the Daniel to his Louis right now. It’s too bad he didn’t prepare for that. What’s good advice? “Stay in school.”

Hudsyn frowns gently. “I dropped out.”

“Well, drop back in.” Daniel gets to his feet. The park is still dark, still dappled with buzzing orange light and thick shadow. For a moment he wonders if Armand is somewhere in the trees listening to all that, but something, some unshakable root of their bond, blood to blood, tells him that he’s not. But wherever he is, he’ll come back. And if he doesn’t—Daniel will find him.

“Oh, and stop hanging around here at night,” he adds. “You’re going to get fucking murdered.”

Daniel goes to bed alone and the fact that that bothers him for the first time in—well, it’s been a minute—is food for thought that he hadn’t asked for. They have a lot to figure out. He has a lot to figure out. He’s got the picture, okay? Daniel punches his pillow into a better shape, but he can’t seem to find an angle that satisfies him.

He just…needs to find Armand first.

He almost hopes that when he wakes up the next night Armand will be there as if nothing happened, picking through Daniel’s record collection with a distant aura of judgment, or tearing down his wall decor to install a painfully modern and truly ugly painting. But when the sun sets his apartment is quiet and cold and not all that different than it has been for the last three years, barring this past week. There’s no reason for Armand’s absence to feel so much like a missing tooth.

He jabs Louis directly in the brain. “You know where he is,” Daniel says without preamble. Without a question mark either.

Sometimes it occurs to him that he’s very lucky that Louis apparently has a soft spot for him. It’s probably something he should appreciate more, because he gets the feeling that a lesser vampire might have removed his head from his shoulders by this point. Not tonight though. He’ll send him a gift basket or something later.

“Daniel, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m trying really hard not to be involved in this,” Louis says in his mind, and it’s a testament to the nuances of vampiric psychic radio that Daniel can tell that he’s both enduringly fond of him and sick of his shit.

Because here he goes, poking the bruise of the other party that might be sensitive about the whole situation. He’s really batting a thousand here, isn’t here?

“I know, I know. It’s weird for you,” Daniel concedes hastily. He could point out that Louis is the one who pushed him into keeping Armand in the first place, but he knows when an argument will work and when it’ll just piss someone off. Both can serve their purpose, but the message is coming in loud and clear—don’t push your luck. “Just tell me—is he spiraling again?”

A beat. “Yeah.” Another beat of silence. “You handling it?”

Daniel sighs and rubs his eyes. “Yeah, I’m handling it.” Theoretically. Aspirationally. He thought he was handling it last night, and, well—

Whatever. Not the point right now.

“Thanks,” Daniel says, and Louis hangs around on the line for a second, clearly not believing that it could really be that simple, before the pressure of his presence fades from Daniel’s mind.

It would be a lot easier to get Louis to drop a pin for Armand’s location again, but yeah, yeah, he’s got it. Louis wants to stay out of it. Fair is fair, he probably wouldn’t want to co-babysit his ex either. More importantly, Daniel thinks that maybe he can find Armand on his own. The bond is there, he’s felt it, despite all the obstacles in the way. Maybe it’s like a muscle that needs to be stretched. It’s not like he’s been trying to exercise it the last three years any more than Armand has.

Breakfast first though.

The night is still young by the time Daniel is on the street, flush with a recent kill and that enduring feeling of a hunt. The blood has warmed him enough that his breath steams in the cold night air, sunglasses firmly in place like an asshole, his favorite leather jacket completing the look. He scans the street, but he’s not really looking. Armand isn’t going to go walking past on his way to the subway.

Instead, he listens. There are two layers to it, the mind gift like a sixth sense, layered on top of everything else. Overwhelming if you lean into it too hard, but so were his other senses at first. The city trembles with millions of heartbeats, all out of sync at first, until a prevailing rhythm takes over and the whole city seems to beat like one massive heart. Millions of thoughts, millions of worries. It’s a tangle of strings. Every pair of headphones and chargers and a ball of yarn for good measure, all tangled up in one another in an indistinguishable mess. Except for one. A single golden thread, that when traced back, has one end rooted right in his chest. If life were even marginally easier, he’d be able to yank on it and reel Armand back in like a fish.

But he can still follow it.

It’s Friday night—when did it get to be Friday? Armand has completely destroyed his sense of time—and the nightlife is appropriately alive. Even having just eaten, it’s enough to make his fangs ache in his gums. God, they really could be draining drunk 20somethings together right now if Daniel weren’t so fucking stupid. Or if Armand weren’t so fucking flighty. They really got the worst combination to ruin what could have been a good night.

Though Armand might have gone and had the same idea on his own. Daniel feels like a bloodhound, his head slightly tilted and his senses focused as he follows the soft impulse of their connection, hoping that it’s real and not just a delusion. Right to the front of a nightclub.

A high-end nightclub, who would expect anything less from the vampire Armand? It does have a bit of fake-sleeze to it though. To someone like Daniel, who is more than well-versed in real-sleeze, it comes across as embarrassing, but judging by the line outside, the intended audience is pretty into it. Well. It’s better than a jail cell.

“I’m with the band,” he tells the bouncer matter-of-factly, who blinks like he just took a ball-peen hammer between the eyes. Yeah, his finesse still isn’t fantastic, but it gets him through the door, even if the line grumbles and speculates about the old guy in shades getting the VIP treatment.

The inside of the club has Armand’s fingerprints all over it. More accurately it’s like he took both hands and dragged them through the innocent field of malleable brains. It reminds Daniel of the police station, where they’d all been caught in their own crippling malaise, only dialed hard in the opposite direction. The energy in the room is frenetic. The dance floor is crowded with bodies, all of them moving out of time with each other and faster than the music. It feels like two steps away from a mass heart attack.

That one is going to be hard for the news to explain. Daniel skirts around the edge of the dance floor, trying to avoid flailing limbs. There are curved booths to the far side of the room, swathed in shadow and flashing lights. Most of them are empty, their tables covered in bottles and broken glass, which makes the one still inhabited stand out. That, and the small crowd of supplicants surrounding it.

It looks like a renaissance painting by way of a pretentiously cynical art student. Those who can’t fit in the booth drape themselves around it, sitting on the floor or leaning against the back, drinks sloshing in their hands like a flock of drunken cherubs. The disciplines get real seats. They lean back against the leather booth or against each other, their eyes feverishly bright, yelling over the music so loud that their words become indecipherable again. At the center sits a guy with the biggest biceps Daniel has ever seen, his shirt as sleeveless as you’d expect and also entirely neon green mesh. And draped across his lap, like a modern Pietà, is Armand, his head tilted just right for the harsh light overhead to cast dramatic shadows over his cheekbones. Chiaroscuro made flesh and bone.

Daniel stares, his mouth hanging open a good half an inch, his brain valiantly trying to process the sheer absurdity of what he’s seeing. Armand’s head shifts, and his eyes slide over to meet his.

“Do you want me to take a picture?” Daniel says flatly. He smiles incredulously. “It’s kind of impressive.”

Armand’s expression doesn’t move an inch. Oh, he’s drunk again, that’s for sure. He watches Daniel with a carefully blank expression, but his eyes won’t quite focus and he practically glows with warmth, his face flushed with too much blood. Actually, now that he’s really looking, the boytoy-throne might still be alive but the guy next to him is definitely on his way out. No one seems to have noticed.

“I do not recall inviting you,” Armand says.

“Yet here I am. Let’s go.”

Another long, stony look. “I’m busy.”

Daniel rolls his eyes so hard it hurts. “You’re not busy,” he says. “You’re petty. Get up. We’re going home.”

Armand actually inspects his nails. Actually. In real life. He picks a bit of dried blood from under his thumbnail. “I don’t think I’d like to.”

“Armand—”

“Hey.” Jesus. He didn’t think the man-throne could speak. Now not only is he speaking, but he’s standing up, gently sliding Armand off of his lap as if he were a porcelain kitten. Man-throne unfolds himself into six foot three of muscle piloted by a marginal amount of brain. “He said he’s busy.”

Daniel looks between the two of them as his eyebrows rise. “You’re really going to make him do this,” he says, pointing at Armand’s valiant protector. “This is embarrassing, even for you.”

“I’m not making him do anything,” Armand says mincingly, his lips pulled back to flash a little bit of fang. “These people like me. They want to enjoy my company longer. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yeah, hanging out with mortals and listening to shitty club music,” Daniel says. “That’s really a hot Friday night for you?”

“You would be surprised,” he sneers.

“Hey!” Man-throne has made it around the table, parting supplicants like the Red Sea as he goes. “Are you even fuckin’ listening to me?”

“Not really, man.” Daniel doesn’t look away from Armand. “I shouldn’t have called you the problem, okay? I’m sorry.”

Armand’s expression slips, his mouth softening, the sneer dropping away. For a moment he looks cracked down the middle. “Even if I am?” he says. “Even if I have ruined our bond, perhaps twice over, before it could even begin?”

Daniel’s shoulders sag and he exhales. He’s seen Armand put on a show before, and maybe that’s what he’s doing now, but something tells him that there’s more to it than that. It’s easy to forget sometimes that they’re not in Dubai anymore, where Armand had the upper hand to such a degree that Daniel was the charming, maybe semi-lovable underdog. It’s still strange to see him to vulnerable.

“Even if you’re the biggest fucking problem in my miserable life,” Daniel says, and he’s surprised by how much he means it. “I want you to come home.”

Armand exhales softly, his shoulders drooping.

“Hey!”

It’s amazing what vampire reflexes can do. He’s aware of Man-throne’s intention to throw the punch before he’s even moved his fist, and that’s only with maybe a quarter of his attention on the wall of muscle in front of him. And when he finally does pull back his fist and throw it, it’s like it’s cutting through molasses instead of air.

He can’t believe Louis ever complained about being a vampire. This is so fucking cool. It’s like he’s in The Matrix.

Daniel catches the first in one hand, stopping it inches from his face. “Can you not see I’m trying to have a conversation?” he drawls, because every action hero needs a one-liner. He treats Man-throne to a smug tilt of a smile. And then crushes his fist in his hand.

Every bone in that man’s hand splinters. It sounds like stepping on a bundle of wet twigs. The skin across his knuckles bursts, spraying Daniel with a fine, refreshing mist of blood.

“Oh, fuck,” Daniel chokes. It’s half a laugh and half a gasp. That was, uh—

A little too hard. Good to know for next time.

Man-throne’s eyes bug and there’s a crystalline moment after his mouth contorts but before he starts screaming.

Chaos comes crashing down. The guy is screaming, some of the hangers-on are screaming—the ones who are still with it enough to focus their eyes—even random people on the dance floor are yelling now, swept up in the confusion. Y’know what? Not really his scene anymore.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Daniel calls, throwing out his hand, and he’s actually a little surprised when Armand takes it. He yanks him to his feet and Armand steps on the table between them before hopping off of it. They take off running, hand in hand, shouldering through the stampede of panicked people. “Think you could stop time?” he asks over his shoulder.

The scene stutters like a broken record and then resumes. “No!” Armand tips his head back and laughs. Oh, he’s wasted alright. His eyes gleam like a cat’s in the dark. “We could kill them!”

Daniel reels him back by their joined hands as Armand tries to veer deeper into the club. “Not right now!” He puts his shoulder into one of the emergency exits and they spill out into the alley behind the club, trailing staggering club-goers who liked the idea.

He wouldn’t have made it very far if he were still mortal, but instead they do pretty damn well for a couple of old guys. They make it three blocks before Armand starts dragging him back by their still-joined hands, bent over and staggering in an almost-run, and Daniel realizes that he’s giggling. Laughter bubbles up in Daniel’s throat, light-headed and intoxicating, and they finally crash to a stop against the side of a building, grabbing at one another’s shoulders as they both trip over their own feet, each others’ feet, the thrill of the night.

“That was—the screaming—” Armand wheezes.

“I told you. I told you!” God he’s crying. Daniel tries unsuccessfully to wipe at the bloody tears in the corners of his eyes but Armand keeps grabbing at his jacket and trying to take them both to the ground. “I popped a guys fucking head off! I keep forgetting—they’re so fragile.”

Armand doubles over in a fresh round of hysterical laughter and Daniel has to hold him by the forearms to keep him from falling over. And he looks—

Of course he looks beautiful, Armand is always beautiful. In Dubai it had annoyed him, because it was clearly some sort of play, the way everything Armand did was a play back then, even if Daniel still can’t all the way guess what the game was. But tonight he looks beautiful in a way that’s startlingly real, in the same clothes as the night before, though he lost Daniel’s extra coat, thanks for that one. His hair is in disarray, tangled and frizzing badly, and his face is contorted with reckless joy. This should be the moment Daniel reaches out to try to test that door, to see if he can touch the bond on the other side of it, but he finds himself caught in the moment, in that look on Armand’s face, like it’s a snowflake and one touch might melt it entirely.

It’s…nice. It’s really—

“This place smells like piss,” Armand declares succinctly, his nose still scrunched and still glowing, warm with blood and loose-limbed with the booze. He tugs on the lapels of Daniel’s jacket. “Let’s go elsewhere.” He doesn’t wait for an answer but instead spins off, stalking down the alley with the grace of a baby deer, as if he has any idea where he’s going. Daniel watches him go.

“Yeah,” he says, biting back a grin, “alright.”

Chapter Text

It doesn’t seem prudent to stick around too close to the scene of the crime, but they still swing around to get a peek at the nightclub from afar. Just enough to see that there’s four police cruisers parked outside of it with their lights flashing and no less than two ambulances tending to the herd of people milling outside in the cold.

“I’d kill to know what story they’re telling the cops,” Daniel mutters out of the side of his mouth.

“No, I don’t think you killed him,” Armand says and then bursts out laughing at his own joke, which isn’t really a joke by anyone sober’s definition of the word. Daniel has to usher him away before they start getting weird looks, but he can’t help the stubborn twist of his own smile.

“You are such a lightweight,” he scoffs, his hand wrapped around Armand’s upper arm to keep him from wandering off. He doesn’t seem to mind a little manhandling. This is actually the best mood Daniel’s seen him in perhaps ever, maybe barring the stretch of time when he still thought he and Daniel were going to hunt Wall Street suits together.

“You have no idea how much I’ve had to drink,” Armand counters, turning to pick a piece of lint off of the front of Daniel’s shirt. It makes him list sideways as they walk, so he’s leaning against Daniel’s shoulder like a cat stretched out across a sofa. The center of attention, but in a way that almost seems incidental. “Or my ability to cope with it.”

“You’re right. I have no idea the extent of your wicked and potent vampiric powers.”

He snorts. “Now you’re humoring me,” he says tartly, perching his chin on Daniel’s shoulder. “You can continue.”

It’s nice. It’s even pleasantly warm, from the combined stolen body heat of their meals, not to mention the lingering heat from the club.

It’s also a crash-out waiting to happen. Armand may be basking in the glow of attention now, but there’s no way he’s a happy drunk. Daniel’s the one who pulled him out of the drunk tank in the first place. There aren’t thick enough rose-tinted glasses in the world to forget how that one went.

But is it bad he wants to live in the moment just a little longer?

“Hey. C’mon,” Daniel says. His grip slips down Armand’s arm to grab him by the hand and tug him in the right direction. It worked in the nightclub, and it’s starting to feel kind of right. “I’ve got an idea.”

The thing is, buying forgiveness isn’t always a bad thing. He’ll stand by that. Sure, sometimes the flowers came too late or the girls’ Christmas presents were a couple of years out of date from what their interests were, but sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes the date night to that nice Italian place helped and sometimes he got a hug and a halfway-sincere thanks, Dad from a birthday gift, especially once he both started making real money and discovered the joys of gift cards. People like gifts.

And he hasn’t forgotten Armand and his bee cookie. He stared at the head on the nightstand when he went to bed the day before. He didn’t have the heart to throw it out, which is stupid, because it’s definitely attracting ants, but so it goes. He’s doing a lot of stupid things lately.

The point is: the Apple store on 5th Avenue is open 24 hours.

It stands like a glass obelisk to modernity, opulence, and late-stage capitalism. The Daniel Molloy of the past would have had a lot to say about lithium mines and over-consumption, but that kid had a lot to say about everything. He still grew up into a guy who likes his iPhone-Whatever-Pro because it has a big screen and connects with his AirPods so he can listen to NPR on the train. And also he kills people. Not much moral high ground left to stand on these days.

Armand loves it, of course.

He descends the spiral staircase into the subterranean store like a supervillain, slowly taking one glass step at a time as his hand glides along the railing, his eyes sparkling as he takes in the expanse of overpriced electronics. “This is amazing,” he murmurs. “What do people say? ‘Like Disney World’?”

Daniel follows much less gracefully as he tries not to slip, his shoes still wet from the snowy sidewalk. Vampiric reaction times as they are, maybe he’d be able to catch himself before anyone noticed. But also maybe not. He’s still getting the hang of this stuff. “You have not been to Disney World,” he scoffs.

“I have so.” Armand throws him a dirty look over his shoulder. “Louis and I had multiple investment properties in Florida.”

“And you went to Disney World?” He tries to imagine it and fails. Or succeeds, but it’s insane. All he can think about is Louis surreptitiously eating pigeons at the Food & Wine Festival while Armand stalks around in Mickey ears. What the hell did they do there? Ride Space Mountain?

“I wanted to see what was so enchanting about the mouse,” Armand says darkly, which does nothing to clear up the situation. His tone implies that he still doesn’t understand the enduring charms of Mickey Mouse.

Luckily they make it to the store floor before they can dig into that subject any further. A conversation for another time, maybe once Louis is feeling more magnanimous, which Daniel assumes has to happen sooner or later. He so, so hopes there’s pictures.

“You’re getting a phone, for starters,” Daniel says, taking charge of the situation before Armand can wander off into the endless expanse of white walls and pale wood. “So I can, you know, call you next time instead of running all over the damn city looking for you.” Or track his location. He’s honestly not sure how to turn that feature on, but they do it on TV all the time. It must be a thing. “And whatever else you want. My treat.”

Armand’s eyes flash to him, both wary and bright with cat-like glee. “Anything?”

He shrugs. “Why not? Get an iPad for each hand. Go nuts.”

It’s a dangerous order to give, but not in the way Daniel was expecting. He thought they’d wreck the store and his bank account in one fell swoop, but he’s learning a lot tonight, and the foremost lesson is that a drunk Armand wouldn’t know the word focus if it showed up and hit him upside the head.

Daniel had intended to let him loose and wait on a bench at the front of the store. A familiar place for the uninterested husband to post-up and wait it out, a move that he knows well. It’s a good vantage point to watch as employee after employee approaches and strikes out as Armand wanders aimlessly up and down the rows of electronics, somehow both engrossed in what he’s seeing and entirely incapable of choosing one of them. By the fourth employee to slink off and regroup with the rest of the herd at the Genius Bar, probably to hash out their next plan of attack, Daniel is starting to feel like he unleashed something on these people.

“Find anything?” he prods, finally taking it upon himself to intercept Armand at the Apple Watch display. Armand is pointing at different watch bands, his finger floating thoughtfully between different colors. He hums without looking up.

“Didn’t really take you for a watch guy,” Daniel pushes a little more.

“Oh, yes. I used to have one in Dubai,” Armand says, his hand drifting back toward the electric blue band. His eyes flicker up and catch Daniel’s frown. “I took it off before your arrival, of course. It would hardly have fit the role I was playing.”

Daniel snorts. “Right. Rashid’s not a watch guy. Must’ve mixed you two up.”

“Nor did I want you looking at my affairs,” he adds pointedly. “The notifications can be fairly obtrusive.”

“Yeah, you’ve got me there,” Daniel admits. Fair is fair. He would’ve snooped like hell if Armand (or Fake Rashid, for that matter) had been walking around with a screen strapped to his wrist. The iPad had been tempting enough. He prods experimentally at one of the display watches. “I can only imagine it. Seven o’clock, hunt a guy for sport. Seven-thirty, redecorate the living room. Eight, rearranged my boyfriend’s memories. Busy schedule.”

It just slips out, because he can’t help but be an ass. It’s a bit Armand’s fault too for mentioning Dubai, considering that little vacation ended up with Daniel bleeding out on the floor and a whole new life of vampirism ahead of him with no roadmap on how to get there. So: complicated feelings. But maybe not the best thing to bring up on an already complicated day.

What’s that saying about teaching an old dog new tricks? He never did figure out how to keep himself out of trouble.

Armand’s eyes come up, meeting his over the display of Apple Watches. They hold each other’s gaze for a long moment, locked in a brutal stalemate.

There’s that saying about a dog with a bone too. Oops.

“We ever gonna talk about that?” Daniel prods. “By the way?”

Armand’s eyelids droop. “My relationship with Louis?” he says delicately. “Or your gleeful destruction of it?”

“Either-or.”

The corner’s of his mouth pinch. “I find myself becoming rather unpleasantly sober,” Armand drawls. “So perhaps not.”

He drifts away toward the display of iPads, leaving Daniel to trail after him, as ineffective as any of the Apple salespeople. Armand lets him, which feels like a good sign that they’re not abruptly on the outs again, but that’s all he can reliably tell. They’re in rocky territory again, but when are they not? Everything about their relationship is a goddamn mountain range of ups and downs, from Armand faking his identity as the penthouse staff to Daniel imploding his marriage to the fact that they just shut down an entire club for the night. None of this is easy.

It’s honestly the part in his marriages where Daniel passively clung on until each of his wives respectively pulled the plug, and he had to deal with the fact that he was as relieved as he was regretful. He’s never been in a position before where he was the one trying to make this work. He doesn’t really know how.

Not that this is a marriage. Is it? Fuck. It’s hard to ignore the fact that he’s thought back to himself as a husband twice in the last twenty minutes.

“Did you mean it?” Armand asks, turning abruptly so Daniel nearly bumps into him, lost in his own thoughts. Armand’s eyes are wide but scrutinizing, the row of glowing iPad screens like a dozen extra eyes watching him just as judgmentally. “What you said?”

“Uh.” What did he say again?

“Perhaps you’re right. About our bond. I am…frequently ‘the problem’.” The corners of his mouth twitch again and he swallows. It’s a big confession coming from Mr. I Could Not Prevent It, of all vampires. Maybe he’s not as sober as he thinks. “Did you mean it?” he presses.

“That I want you to come home? Yeah, I meant it.” Daniel shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and shrugs. He wants to say something shitty like I might change my mind if you kill one of my daughters or we’re kind of stuck with each other either way, don’t you think? Classic move. Run away from sincerity. Make it seem like it’s Armand’s fault when he gets mad about it. He’s thinking about those marriages again.

But he’s also thinking about Hudsyn the fucking stoner, of all people. They’ve all got their fucking baggage. Maybe it’s just about learning how to carry it.

“Listen, we are what we are,” Daniel says, an awkward start to an awkward declaration. “I mean, we were never going to be normal, right? We barely know each other—”

“Of course,” Armand agrees unnecessarily.

“—and we’re tethered to one another by the brain stem,” he goes on. “Or vampire magic, or whatever-the-fuck. I’m a nosey asshole. You’re a…well, there’s a lot of words for what you are…”

“Keep going,” Armand says flatly.

“But you’re the only maker I’ve got,” Daniel says. He shrugs. “And at the moment, I’m the only fledgling you’ve got. So yeah. I want you to come home. Even on the many, varied occasions on which you’re the problem.”

The words come out like half a joke, but that defensive distance escapes him the more he talks, softening into something dangerously close to pure unadulterated sincerity. It should make him want to run away, his heart uncomfortably close to the surface, vulnerable after three years of pushing it obstinately to the side. He doesn't need Armand. He’s made sure that he doesn't need him. He’s gotten by just fucking fine on his own.

But he wants him there. It’s not a crime to say that, is it?

“I’ve been known to be a bit of a problem myself,” Daniel offers, restless in the silence. “If you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed,” Armand says a little too quickly, but it comes out fond. He’s staring at him, his eyes soft and hooded, his orange irises almost yellow in the washed-out, futuristic lighting of the Apple store, which they’re definitely still standing in the middle of as they have this conversation. Armand doesn’t seem to care. He reaches out and rests his palm against Daniel’s cheek, his thumb brushing fondly over it.

Daniel’s heart thumps painfully. A pretty human moment for an undead guy.

“I’ve never been someone’s maker before,” Armand murmurs, his hand still cupping Daniel’s cheek, his sharp thumbnail pressing gently against the skin. “A human. A fledgling. A coven leader. A lover. So many things, yet never that. It’s so very different from what I thought it would be.” He tilts his head, eyes flickering downward. “I fear I don’t know how.”

Maybe this is the bond, the magnetic pull lodged deep in Daniel’s chest, the need to be closer, to lean into his touch, still with the ghost of warmth from the fresh blood in his veins. It makes him feel a bit like a dog on a leash, tethered but happy to be there, all the bite domesticated out of him. It’s not the Daniel from Dubai, who still had teeth and was scared enough to use them. Maybe that’s okay. Fuck that guy. He’s been worse things than a dog, and Armand’s regard is like a warm hearth. He didn’t realize how long he’d been scratching at the door, waiting to be let in.

Daniel grabs his wrist, but doesn’t pull it away. His thumb presses against the inside of Armand’s wrist, against the pulse. “Could figure it out,” he offers. “Can’t be that hard.”

Armand tips his chin upwards, his lips parted, somewhere between surprise and enchantment. “Perhaps so,” he murmurs.

“Hey guys!”

Record scratch. They’re still—yeah, they’re still in the middle of an Apple Store.

“Anything I can help you find?” An employee with a name tag that reads Sarah and a desperate air of customer service about her stands a safe distance away. The surface of her mind confirms that she was elected democratically to go break up whatever the fuck is going on over in the iPad aisle and she’s not thrilled about it.

Armand drops his hand and turns to Sarah with a tight smile. “Now that you mention it,” he says blithely. “There are a few things.”

*

A quiet relief pervades the Apple store when they finally leave, but they have to admit, they sure as hell were paying customers. Once he was refocused, Armand took his free reign seriously. Evidently they needed two iPads for some reason, one in the 13 inch and then one of the minis, which to Daniel’s eye isn’t all that different from an iPhone at this point.

But no one asked him and he was happy to be cut out from the conversation if it meant a minute to get his head back on straight. It’s embarrassing how much of a presence Armand has and how much of an influence it has over him. One soft touch and all that pride he’s been hanging onto by his fingernails goes right out the window. Then again, if Daniel wants to play hard to get, maybe he should stop running after him. That might be the first step.

Sources say that’s not gonna happen any time soon though.

He ends up carrying the bags while Armand fiddles with his new Apple Watch, his head bent, paying no attention to the other late night wanderers they share the sidewalk with. They part around them both anyway, as if two vampires taking their half out of the middle weren’t even there. Daniel bites his tongue and resists the urge to ask how he does it, his mind gift so strong yet so seemingly passive. The answer is probably to live five hundred years and not have a lot of hobbies, but maybe not. Something to work up to, if a more entirely sober Armand is still dedicated to this how-to-be-a-maker schtick.

“You said we barely know one another,” Armand all but announces, his new watch finally to his standards. He lets his arm drop and turns his full attention to Daniel. “Perhaps that’s the first step to this relationship of ours. Ask a question then. Let’s get to know one another properly.”

This is maybe a weird place to start after he’s lived in Daniel’s apartment for several days. And worn his clothes. And launched several new rumors across the internet. But Daniel’s interest sharpens like a knife.

“You’ll do an interview?” he asks a little too eagerly.

Armand meets his enthusiasm with a scowl. “No,” he says. “A question, Daniel. Like a normal person.”

Like a normal person. He doesn't seem to pick up on the irony there.

The skepticism must show on Daniel’s face, because Armand gives an exasperated scoff and waves his hand. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says to the unasked question. “What is your favorite color?”

“My favorite color?” Daniel repeats dryly, packing the weight of judgment in every word. He laughs shortly. “Gee. You sure you weren’t a journalist in a past life?”

“I’m trying,” Armand huffs. “Which is more than you can say.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Daniel waves it off, but he has to admit, he is trying. That’s kind of the best either of them can do these days. “Uh. I dunno. Blue?”

“What kind of blue?” he presses.

“Like the sky,” Daniel says without thinking, and he’s surprised to find that it’s true. He hasn’t thought that much about the daylight, except to try to avoid it and the subsequent being burnt to a crisp. Easier that way, and on a list of things he gave up for vampirism, a perfect blue sky day doesn’t really make the top of the list.

“Like the ceiling in my apartment,” he goes on. “With all the clouds. They came with the place. You could probably guess that.” He’s quiet for a moment. “You can change whatever, but uh—keep that. Yeah.”

Maybe he’s lying to himself—he does think about blue skies sometimes, laying on his couch staring up at those angelic blue sky ceilings, illuminated unnaturally by energy saving LED bulbs and keen vampiric vision. He’ll probably never see them in daylight again. Even with Armand’s fancy windows, there would still be a tint. That’s okay. That’s alright. At least he’s seeing them, which is more than he might be able to say if he were still human. He still doesn’t want to see them go.

“Of course,” Armand says softly. Surprisingly muted, as if Daniel just confessed some truth. It’s just a ceiling. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. He clears his throat. “And your question?”

A question. God, for someone like him, it’s like his birthday. Except that it’s also like tying his hands together. A question, but not an interview. The thing is, you have to know your subject, and how much bullshit you can get away with. Daniel has often stepped directly over that line while making eye contact with it the whole time, but it’s always been a deliberate risk. If he tries anything too clever, Armand will just clam up.

Keep it simple, then. Corny.

But it’s still gotta be at least a little interesting.

“Alright,” Daniel says and he scratches at his chin, pretending to think. “What do you miss most about being human? If anything.”

“Being human?” Armand throws him a disgruntled look as they stop and wait for a crosswalk, a stray damp wind ruffling his curls. “Daniel, I’m over five hundred years old. I have not been human in a very long time.” He says it with five hundred years worth of impatient condescension.

“So you don’t remember it?” he says. “Any of it?” And for once he’s not actually trying to be a dick. It’s real curiosity, and more than just professional. That’s his future, if all goes well. And maybe it won’t, what with the books and everything, but ideally. Will he forget, or will all those things eventually just seem like something that happened to somebody else? If you asked him three years ago he’d have said that aging already does that to you, but aging, or not-aging, as a vampire is different. Like a camera with a different lens, one incompatible with the last. He can already tell.

He has a memoir. He already told his story. At least he’ll never have to tell it to some shithead reporter, young or otherwise.

“Pieces,” Armand admits, pulling Daniel out of his own musings. “Nothing that I would say that I…miss, exactly.” He says it uncertainly, like he’s not sure if that’s true. Like maybe there’s something he misses, or he grieves for, that haunts him like a ghost. And like a ghost, he can’t quite wrap his fingers around the shape of it.

Or maybe Daniel is just projecting. Dangerous habit, that.

“I miss burgers,” Daniel says, lightening the mood like dropping a brick on a frozen pond. “A nice burger. I’d give anything for just one more. Crisp lettuce, juicy tomato. Maybe a little bacon. Real heart attack waiting to happen. Love blood, but you just don’t get that variety in texture as a vampire.” He jostles Armand with his elbow. “Maybe it’s an American thing.”

Armand hums a perfunctory laugh, but his eyes are still far away, the tilt of his head thoughtful. He lifts his fingers as they cross the street and catches a stray snowflake on his fingertip. It doesn’t melt.

“I envy things,” he says after a long pause. He’s still considering the snowflake. “Oh, many things. I envy your relationship with the passage of time. Such a complicated relationship! You love it as much as you loathe it. So terrified to leave this world without making your mark on it, yet it’s exactly that desperation that drives you to do such remarkable things. The last century alone! The innovation! A vampire would never have made this.” He brandishes his new Apple Watch and the screen wakes up attentively. “We would say—oh, later. Later, later, later. Why rush? We have the time. What’s the purpose anyway? There is no purpose!” He flicks his hand. “Humanity is always running forward, even when they haven’t a clue what they’re running toward. They don’t know where else to go.”

That was more than he expected. Daniel scuffs his shoe against the sidewalk. “You said you,” he points out. “Not me. Not anymore.”

Armand blinks at him. “Did I?” he says. “I forget sometimes. To me, you seem so human still. You’re still very close to it.”

Why is that so embarrassing? Armand says it so casually, so out of hand, but to Daniel it still feels like failing some sort of test. If Armand had been him that first year, popping heads off and letting them spray like a chocolate fountain, he wouldn’t think he’s not vampire enough.

“Ah, Daniel.” Bond or no bond, Armand must pick up on his dinged ego. His hand brushes Daniel’s elbow. “It’s not a judgment. Did I not just espouse all the things I’m envious of? You should be lucky to keep them for as long as you can.” His smile tilts and he scoffs. “Even if it means writing those ridiculous books.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” He sinks his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he gnaws on a thought like a dog with a bone. “You know, you could be that way too. If you wanted.”

“Five hundred years—”

“Is a fucking long time to spend waiting for your undead life to become interesting,” Daniel drawls. “Get a hobby. Louis does his weird art thing. Lestat makes bad music. Pick something! Run a theater group that doesn’t have to call you master. Join a book club. I don’t know how to tell you this, but humans get bored with their lives too. That’s why they invented community theater.”

“Hm.” Armand hums shortly. He stops in his tracks and eyes Daniel warily. “And what is your hobby?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He turns around with a grin, his fangs grown out just enough to flash under the street lights. “I’m waiting to interview you.”

They bat around a few more questions on the way home, and Daniel is surprised to actually learn a bit about Armand after all. Favorite movie is a big hit. He’s never seen someone so enthusiastic about Blade Runner. Armand is still unsuccessfully trying to get his Apple Watch to order it for him on VHS via voice command as Daniel unlocks his front door. Must be a nostalgia thing. He wants to tell him that he should order a VHS player while he’s at it, but honestly he might have one around here somewhere. He’s a few decades overdue for a spring cleaning.

Inside the apartment, Armand hesitates, rubbing his fingertips contemplatively against the dining room table. “You called this place home,” he says without looking up. “Is it? My home?”

Daniel sets the shopping bags down on the kitchen counter. A lot of little reassurances tonight. Who would’ve thought the vampire Armand was so self-conscious? Abruptly, Daniel feels the same way. He did say home, didn’t he? “If you want it to be,” he says, trying to sound casual. So much for we’ll try this out for a couple of days. Yet why is he so nervous Armand might say no? “I won’t make you start paying rent, if that’s what you mean.”

Armand doesn’t say anything, but he flashes a pleased little smile that Daniel isn’t sure he was meant to see.

Daniel putters around for a little while longer—he died, not his old habits, and it’s hard to deny the old-man-isms sometimes—while Armand takes to the couch and fills the room with the sound of his trash TV. It’s nice, having someone else in the apartment. It’s only one other body, but just that seems to fill out the space better, like the balance was off before, not enough to make him trip but enough to notice.

When he finally wanders into the living room, Armand is stretched across the couch, his eyes half-lidded but still invested in whatever he’s watching, a throw-pillow mashed up under his head at an awkward angle.

“Alright, move over,” Daniel says. “You can have the whole couch when you actually do start paying rent.”

Armand snorts softly, but he’s clearly crashing, all that drama and shitty clubber blood catching up with him. He scrunches up like an inchworm, just enough to liberate a single seat cushion for Daniel. Good enough. Daniel drops down into it and is wondering how much longer before Armand falls asleep and he can put on something at least halfway decent. He’s still wondering when Armand stretches back out again, as languid as a cat, and parks his pillow in Daniel’s lap.

Oh. Okay.

Daniel sits entirely still for a moment, his hand hovering in the air, unsure what to do with it. Armand only squishes the pillow into a slightly less comfortable looking shape under his neck and settles down again.

Armand doesn’t need it, but Daniel tugs the blanket off of the back of the couch and puts it over him anyway, tugging it up over his shoulders. Hey, it’s cold outside.

“Daniel,” Armand murmurs, barely audible over the blonde women arguing on the TV.

“Mhm?”

“Will you drink my blood tomorrow?” He shifts his head, just enough to look up at him, his curls falling messily over his face. His eyes could almost pass for a dark amber in the sickly television screen light. “I would not ask if I didn’t believe it would help us.”

He’s not sure he believes that one. But—

“Yeah. Yeah, alright.” He rests a hand against Armand’s head, brushing his hair back away from his eyes. Nobody warned him that this bond thing came with so much goddamn sentimentality. “Worth a shot, right?”