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Daniel Molloy woke up on the evening of his re-birth with a noticeable lack of a pounding headache.
It was a conspicuous lack of any pain at all, really. A person doesn’t get to nearly seventy without becoming used to the aches and pains of daily living, to say nothing of the goddamn Parkinson’s tremors. If he didn’t take his Sinemet four times a day as prescribed he would start shaking, a fact that aggrieved him to no end.
It had to have been at least twenty-four hours since his last dose. He rested his hands on his thighs, watched as they laid perfectly still, not a single resting tremor in sight. He flexed his forearms, watched as they moved unimpeded by any rigidity.
What a marvel.
One would think that having all the blood drained from his body would leave a hell of a hangover, but instead he felt better than he had since his late-30s. He looked around at the destruction surrounding him, tried to recall the last day or so of his life. Un-life? Re-birth? Whatever, he would get around to the semantics of it all later.
He was seated on a couch, a blanket thrown over him, the burnt remnants of his laptop laid out on the low table in front of him. The shades were drawn but from the sliver of uncovered window he could see that night had fallen. It was lucky, he supposed, that a shaft of light hadn’t escaped into the room and incinerated him as he slept.
Slowly, shards of the last day started to string together into comprehensible scenes. His own words came back, the piecemeal beginning to make sense.
“Armand, Amadeo, Arun.”
“You were supposed to die with Claudia.”
“He didn’t save you, Lestat did!”
How strange, to tell someone of their own lifetime, one that preceded his own.
Louis had stormed off and Armand had pursued him. There had been shouting, then the warning from Raglan James, then a tremendous crash mere moments later. The acrid taste of fear had risen in his throat. The concrete wall behind him cracked, glass and paper scattering everywhere, and for a moment Daniel had thought the building itself would collapse upon him.
Daniel found Louis in the next room standing over Armand, the dust from his impact still settling. Absurdly, Daniel’s brain noticed how it grayed his hair, how he looked ever so slightly closer to his real age.
“You are not to touch him, you understand? You harm him in any way, I will kill you. Do you understand?”
Armand had looked at Louis with those huge loris-like eyes and not said a word.
Louis had spoken to Daniel then, told him of his ten million dollars earned, thanked him, and promptly set his laptop ablaze. He should have left when Louis did, but he hadn’t. Why hadn’t he left? Had he trusted in Armand to keep his unspoken promise to Louis? Did he have a death wish?
As he sat on the couch, a voice in the back of his head echoed back, “He told you before, you were bartering with desire.”
Whatever the case was, Daniel had decided to stay in the emptiness of Dubai with a centuries-old supernatural murderer whose life he had so recently imploded. Perhaps he did have a death wish. He had gone back to the table and the remnants of his computer and had attempted to salvage what he could - if nothing else, he was going to get this damn book written, for how much trouble it had given him.
How many hours had passed? He couldn’t recall, but he remembered the exact moment the air shifted around him. Armand stood at the precipice of the room staring at him, his amber eyes aglow. The hairs on the back of Daniel’s neck rose, the prey instinct in his hindbrain shouting at him to run, to hide, to get away from the apex predator that was surely about to tear him to pieces.
But you didn’t become a two-time Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist by fleeing every time your brain told you to be scared.
He had watched Armand approach him before he stopped a few paces away, the dust shaking out of his curls as he walked. Had he stayed on the floor the entire time? Almost certainly he had.
“You are still here,” he said, confusion lacing his voice.
“Well, yeah.” He gestured to the wreckage surrounding them. “I gotta see what I can save from this mess.” He glanced around at the disarray before crossing his arms and taking stock of Armand again. “Look, if you’re going to kill me, you should probably reconsider. I’ve heard the carbidopa-levodopa really kills the flavor.”
Armand had frowned at that. “I am not going to kill you.”
“Really? I’m sure you’ve killed more people for less egregious sins than blowing up your entire life. Or facilitating it at least, since it was probably the decades of lying that really did it.”
Daniel was going to have his throat ripped out, he was sure of it. It was odd - he wasn’t one for casual cruelty, his general asshole-ish attitude aside, but he couldn’t help the jabs at Armand. It was probably the residual irritation of realizing where a decade of memories had disappeared to. Still, that didn’t stop the fact that his digs were probably about to cost him his life. He waited with bated breath for the inevitable.
And then Armand had surprised him.
Rather than tearing out Daniel’s throat, or setting him on fire, or compelling him to take a quick walk out of the nearest window, or any of the other dozen ways he could have killed him, Armand simply crumpled to the floor as though he were a marionette whose strings had been cut. On instinct, Daniel rushed forth to grab him, sinking with him as his knees protested the movement.
They lay together on the floor, a monstrous Pietà. Even now, Daniel’s body could still feel the tremors that had wracked Armand, the wetness of his tears as they stained his shirt crimson. His hand had risen to Armand's hair, running through it in the same way he had when Alice came crying to him. The cement dust had roughened the strands.
From there the memory became fuzzier, which considering this debacle was with Armand wasn’t even all that unfamiliar. Whether he was twenty or seventy it seemed he would never be able to hold a complete memory around the guy. Armand had looked up at him, his eyes twin suns rimmed with red, and then he had been upon him, on top of him, draining the lifeblood from him and giving it back in turn. Had they fucked? Daniel certainly hoped not, if for no other reason than if he fucked Armand he wanted to remember it this time.
And now here he was, on the couch and freshly turned.
He looked around again, wincing as his senses were assaulted by more information than they were used to. He swore he could see every individual fiber in the knit of his shirt. How had Louis’ head not exploded when he was first turned? It seemed impossible to consider moving an inch, the sheer influx of information forcing him to sit still.
So what now? Here he sat on the couch of his former interview subjects, surrounded by dust and debris and a collection of artwork that was probably worth more than the sum total of every article he had written in his career.
But most importantly, Armand was nowhere to be found.
He remembered the first time he had seen Armand after he turned him into a baby vampire and absconded like some deadbeat dad.
(As his daughters would attest, Daniel Molloy knew more than a little bit about being an absent father. Still, he had never abandoned them completely, so he wasn’t being a complete hypocrite when ire flashed through him every time he remembered that he shouldn’t have to figure out all this shit all on his own.)
It had happened just after he had landed back in New York City. A few panicked phone calls to Louis (actual, physical phone calls, not the vampire-telepathy-network since he hadn’t quite gotten to figuring that out yet) had provided him with enough blood bags to satiate him for the trip back, but now that he was stateside his supply was quickly running out.
He had delayed his first hunt for as long as he could, but the physical pangs of hunger soon drove him out of his apartment. Daniel knew what he had to do, but hearing about Louis and Armand wreaking havoc across the population of post-war Paris and actually going out to murder someone himself were two different issues.
As he stepped outside, the faint rays of the setting sun caused his skin to tingle. He wanted to start as early as possible in case things went awry. The plan was simple - he would start out in Prospect Heights and take the C into Bushwick which should be far enough not to lead suspicion back to him but close enough in case it got too close to daybreak and he had to bail. There, he would find some unsuspecting sap, hopefully one who was roughing up a stranger or catcalling a passerby, and chow down.
He would deal with the whole “disposing of the body” issue when he got to it.
Daniel had walked about half a block from his doorstep when a sound caught his newly-enhanced hearing. He looked down the nearest alleyway and saw the edges of a man’s shoes, the rest of him obscured by a dumpster. Daniel jogged down the alley (he could jog now without his knees screaming at him, what a joy) and came upon a man collapsed by the side of the alley, nearly but not completely hidden from view.
There was a note pinned to his front reading “To Daniel” in elegant script. That note surely couldn’t be for him. Could it? He leaned down, ignoring the man’s wet gasps, and opened the paper.
“Daniel - I know you surely have your trepidations, but you must drink while the man is still alive. Please try not to be messy. Do not worry about him afterwards.”
The note wasn’t signed, but Daniel knew who had penned it. He looked around until his eyes zeroed in on the one person he had been searching for.
Armand stood at the end of the alleyway, long dark coat gently swaying in the late summer breeze. With his new vampire senses, even at this distance Daniel could make out the gleam in his eye, his expression one of slight anticipation. He desperately wanted to run to him, to meet his maker, but the agonal gasps of the man below him drew back his attention.
He would not have long. Daniel glanced back at Armand who simply gestured him along with a wave of his hand.
He was so hungry.
Daniel crouched down to the man and sank his teeth into his neck, blood dribbling down his chin and onto the ground beside him. Each drink begat another, the long pulls streaming into his mouth until rivulets of blood ran not only onto the ground but also the front of his shirt.
Whoops. So much for not being messy.
Finally, his hunger was sated. He breathed in deeply, a metallic scent lingering in the air. The man lay dead before him, but in light of the meal he had provided and the cessation of the terrible drumbeat of hunger in his skull, Daniel couldn’t find it in himself to care.
When he looked up, Armand had vanished.
Then it kept happening. Again and again and again. Occasional sightings of Armand, even rarer interactions with him, never long enough for Daniel to hold him down and find why he kept leaving.
As time wore on and he settled into his new vampiric lifestyle, Daniel discovered that he preferred to do his hunting in Manhattan, a good bit removed from his home base in Brooklyn. Aside from the physical distance it allowed, hunting in Manhattan significantly increased his chances of running into his prey of choice, finance bros and venture capitalists.
Man, fuck those guys. And people thought he was the bloodsucker around these parts.
Daniel had taken to hunting more easily than he would have thought. Maybe it was the justification that he was doing the world a favor, really, ridding it of these jackasses, but a part of him wondered if he was just a misanthrope who had been given a license to kill. Whatever the reason, after the initial sloppy encounters and a few tips from Louis he developed a style and had stuck with it since.
That wasn’t to say that it all went smoothly. There had been a night a couple months after his return where he had been in a local park, so intoxicated by the smell of a fresh kill that he had completely neglected to sense the cop coming upon him. It really ruined the ambiance when he had a gun pointed to his chest and a policeman telling him in a shaky voice to put his hands where he could see them.
It was a real dilemma. Daniel had been practicing his persuasive abilities but hadn’t really gotten the hang of it - the best he could do so far was making people a little less disagreeable. He was internally debating if it would be more prudent to kill the guy too or to try and make a run for it when the wind shifted and there Armand was, whispering into the policeman’s ear. Even with his improved hearing Daniel couldn’t quite make out what Armand was saying, but the soothing cadence of his voice and the vacant look on the cop’s face made it clear what had occurred.
The cop lowered his gun and spoke in a blank tone of voice. “Ok sir, well, keep safe out there. It can be dangerous out here at night, never know what sorta delinquents you could run into.” With that, the cop tipped his hat and went on his merry way, completely oblivious to the carnage before him.
Armand and Daniel watched the man as he ambled off. Once he had gotten some distance away, Daniel turned towards Armand, who was sporting a slight smile on his face at the scene in front of him. Daniel’s hands were still on his prey’s shoulders, the stream of blood coursing from her neck thinning out at the blood coagulated.
“Daniel. You are doing so well. But of course you would, my fledgling.”
He swallowed a mouthful of blood, tried to speak, but for perhaps the first time in his life his words failed him. Armand is here, my maker is here, he’s here, he’s here, he’s here.
Armand’s smile widened, a flash of white in the darkness, before he suddenly vanished into the shadows.
“No, no, no, no! Don’t go!”
Desperation crashed into him and he cast his eyes about wildly but in vain. Daniel was shouting into the wind, his only witness the dying woman in front of him.
It happened again in Toronto while he was on the international leg of his book tour.
Interview with the Vampire had been published to great fanfare, not least because at least half of his previous audience thought he had gone off the deep end and a good portion of the rest, including his daughters, thought he had really committed to the method acting with his shades and nighttime-only appearances.
Well, whatever. A sale is a sale, and at least his publishers had acquiesced to his demand that it be sold as nonfiction.
Toronto was a city like any other with its fair share of killers and con men and tax evaders. The mind gift came in handy when he was traveling and allowed him to more easily suss out suitable victims. Louis had told him that to the best of his knowledge his mind gift had developed at a truly astonishing pace, that he shouldn’t have this level of skill until he was at least a decade into the blood. Daniel had preened at that, not least because he knew he had developed the skill through plenty of trial and error and by himself to boot.
It was underneath a bridge close to his hotel that Daniel had taken his latest prey. It was a risky decision, doing this so close to where he was staying, but he was set to leave the country in the next couple of days and figured it was worth the risk.
He drained the man dry and dropped him carelessly to the ground. Normally, he took a bit more effort to arrange the body, but the man so recently exsanguinated had been pissed about the Maple Leafs losing and had been planning to take it out on his girlfriend. Daniel was tired from the long book tour and didn’t feel like being charitable, so the man’s body would remain where it lay in an unceremonious heap.
Body thus disposed, he stepped out into the moonlight and fiddled with his teeth. They itched sometimes after he used them, which Louis assured him was a normal part of the fledgling process. Convenient, how he’d left that particular snag out of the interview. He’d been informed that his vampiric teething pains would eventually subside, but that in the meantime it was best to just grin and bear through it.
He was running his tongue over his gums when he sensed a presence next to him. His body reacted before his mind comprehended what was going on, energy sparking down his spine, his proverbial tail starting to wag.
Armand stood there beside him, wearing the same coat as he had in New York. He brushed a hand over Daniel’s lips, parting them and feeling the sharp angle of his canines. He pressed in, allowed the tooth to draw blood. Was Armand forcing his body to stay still? Surely he must, what other excuse did he have that he felt rooted to his spot, unable to move?
He watched with wide eyes as Armand brought his bleeding thumb to his lips, licking off the thin trail with a swipe of his tongue. His eyes fluttered shut and he nodded slowly to himself as if satisfied by what he tasted.
Then, his eyes snapped open and he took in Daniel from head to toe. His pupils dilated, the golden rims of his irises thinning as he leaned forward and breathed in deeply. His eyes closed again momentarily before they opened and he turned sharply, walking off into the cool air of the night.
Daniel could only watch as he walked away, still frozen to his spot. To his consternation he found that he was more turned on than he had been in his entire mortal and immortal life.
In Rome, he met up with Louis.
After the conclusion of the book tour, Daniel’s agent had strong-armed him into taking an extended vacation. Most likely she thought the whole book was a result of a mental break and that he needed some time for rest and recuperation, but his daughters had also been nagging him for years to work less and travel more. And hell, he didn’t have much of a reason to say no nowadays.
So he found himself in the land of the Romans.
As it so happened, Louis had also planned to be globe-hopping around that time, and when Daniel told him of his plans he rearranged his schedule so that they would be in the city at the same time. He also ordered a portable coffin to be made available for Daniel, who, being so new to the blood, had completely forgotten to arrange for such a necessity.
It amused Daniel that they had both relocated to America and yet the first time they met after his turning was on Italian soil. He and Louis met in the shadow of the Colosseum and slowly wended their way through to the Vatican. Louis had handed Daniel a silver hip flask filled with blood at the outset of their walk and he delighted in taking sips as they admired the moonlight-dappled streets.
As they broke into the Sistine Chapel, Louis recounted his reunion with Lestat in New Orleans under the auspices of a hurricane, how after the realizations of their last interview he had rushed to the city to meet with his eternal love. While Armand was draining Daniel of his blood, Louis and Lestat were embracing each other as the wind tore the house around them to pieces. It was quite sweet, in a way.
And then, just as they were admiring the Creation of Adam, Louis told Daniel that Lestat was planning to take up a career in glam rock.
Daniel had never met the man, but from quite literally every single piece of information he had gathered about him from Louis and Armand and the Talamasca, he was surprised but not shocked at his choice in career. He told Louis as much and Louis laughed, the long column of his neck extending skyward, and for a moment Daniel was struck by his beauty. It made sense how this man had captured the heart of nearly every vampire whom he had met.
He would have Daniel’s heart too, except, well. He wasn’t sure if there was a vacancy open there quite yet.
Louis flew to Dubai one day earlier than Daniel was scheduled to leave for New York City, and so he found himself alone on his last night in the country. He had figured out how to get some of the blood of his most recent victim into the hip flask, and he swirled it around his tongue as one would a rich liquor. The wine and pasta did add a certain verve to the blood in these parts, it had to be said.
He didn’t have an itinerary for the evening, simply planned to watch the bevy of passers-by from the patio outside his hotel and perhaps snack on an unsuspecting swindler or two. His daughters hadn’t been entirely incorrect - it felt nice to relax and visit a place without the need to chase down a story or hunt down a source. Of course, he wasn’t built for such a sedate lifestyle and too many of these days strung together were apt to drive him insane, but a few of them couldn’t hurt. He stretched out and allowed the warmth of the Italian night to settle into his bones.
He was trying to remember the first time he had been in the city - he recalled being there in the early 90s, though he suspected he had visited with Armand sometime before that - when he spotted the man in question across the piazza.
For once, he wasn’t sure if Armand was aware of him. He looked younger and lost, the curls of his hair particularly windswept, his clothes more disheveled than the model-perfect they typically were. His visage was blank, and of all the oddities this troubled Daniel the most. Armand was many things, but unemotional was not one of them - even as Rashid he hadn’t been able to fully hide the true scope of his emotions.
Across the piazza, they locked eyes.
Armand’s mouth opened into a perfect “o”, his eyes widening in panic, his gaze frantically sweeping over him. Daniel stood suddenly, knocking his chair to the ground. He would not repeat Toronto - but just as he started forward, a passerby walked in front of Armand, and by the time she had moved he was gone. Daniel had been abandoned. Again.
He spent the remainder of the evening lost in his thoughts and retired to his coffin earlier than he had expected, though he did not rest. He couldn’t rid his mind of the haunted look on Armand’s face, and for once he almost wished his heightened memory could be dialed back.
Day broke and he was forced under by the narcotic pull of the sun. Louis said it was normal for young fledglings to be helpless to the dawn and that it would take some time before he wouldn’t pass out when the first rays of light crossed the horizon, but goddamn it was irritating in the meantime.
Daniel had enjoyed talking to Louis, had liked talking to him even when he was a human, and his pieces of advice were helpful as he got his sea legs under him about the whole crash-course-to-being-a-vampire thing.
But Louis was busy with his own problems and couldn’t be there for him all the time. After all, while he was globe-trotting he was also being hunted by half the known vampiric underworld. Daniel didn’t feel guilty about that one. Louis was grown and had fully known what he was getting himself into when he asked Daniel to come by and interview him again, but it certainly proved a bit of a drag. That was to say nothing of his re-burgeoning romance with Lestat, which seemed to occupy Louis more than the multiple attempts on his life.
Besides, as much as Daniel liked Louis, he wasn’t his maker. He needed Armand.
It had been a little over three years since his turning. The next time he saw Armand something in Daniel snapped .
It was the week of Lestat’s performance at Madison Square Garden. Though he was an investigative journalist by trade and not a documentarian, Daniel had been recruited to capture the rise of The Vampire Lestat in all of his glitter-covered, grimy glory. Daniel strongly suspected Louis had played a role in this turn of events, but whenever he cornered Louis to badger him about it he shrugged and changed the subject. Lestat, of course, had no idea how the whole thing had occurred, although he had thanked Daniel for “telling Saint Louis about the duplicitous actions of that snake Armand and bringing mon ami back from the desert” .
So now Daniel and his crew traveled across the world with Lestat, committing every fangirl scream and over-the-top stage costume to tape. Although it aggrieved him to say it, the music was actually pretty good.
The MSG performance was to be Lestat’s pièce de résistance, the crowning achievement of his entire North American tour, which of course meant that preparation was long, arduous, and combined with Lestat being a diva took until the small hours of the morning.
Daniel had returned to his apartment in the early hours after the final runthrough, wearily turning the key in its lock and looking forward to passing out in his casket.
The door swung open, and as he stepped inside he heard one of the cabinet doors in his kitchen creak closed. Daniel whirled towards the noise, fangs bared - for a close associate of the two most recognizable vampires on the planet, he had avoided a lot of scrutiny, but it wasn’t beyond the realm of comprehension that someone could have snuck in, someone who wished him harm.
Instead of finding some nefarious agent, he saw his maker standing by his kitchen island, the remnants of a now-broken blender scattered in front of him.
Daniel seethed.
“You bastard!”
Why the fuck had he shown up now? Daniel thought back to the last time he’d seen him - four months back? Five? Was he in town to visit Lestat?
Armand looked well, but then again, aside from after his brief encounter with a concrete wall in Dubai and whatever had taken hold of him in Rome, he always looked good. He had forgone the coat this time, sported a collared shirt and flared pants reminiscent of the 1970s. Perhaps they were vintage; Daniel couldn’t recall him wearing the exact outfit but then again, he couldn’t recall most of that decade. He could have passed for any regular denizen of Brooklyn were it not for the flash of his fangs.
“Hello, Daniel.”
“Hello, Armand,” he replied, attempting to inject as much venom as he could into his voice.
“I apologize for the intrusion. I was not expecting you back for another hour yet.”
“I get it, you’re ready to drop and run as soon as I’m here.” A glimpse of hurt flashed across Armand’s face, and Daniel seized the provocation like a rabid dog. “Lestat’s just wrapping up some final sound checks, but it’ll take at least an hour to get over to MSG from here.”
“I wasn’t here to visit Lestat,” Armand said simply.
“Who is it then? Louis? Real Rashid? Some other poor sap that you’ve drained and refilled? It certainly wasn’t me, even though you’ve decided to play home invader in my kitchen.” Armand stayed silent, watching him quizzically as three years’ worth of resentment came pouring forth. “Look, man, I realize that I’m not a perfect fledgling. It took awhile to get the hang of how to drink without causing a huge mess and I’m still trying to get a handle on the whole “vampiric persuasion” thing, although I do think you have to give me credit for picking up the, what’s it called, the mind gift pretty quick. And besides, I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t choose a near septuagenarian to turn. Like, I get it, right?” he said, vaguely gesturing at his face. “It’s not as though these wrinkles were going to get any better unless I invested in some heavy-duty Botox, but now they’re preserved for all of eternity.”
Armand was upon him in less than a blink of an eye, his hands cupping his face gently. Daniel’s hair blew gently back from the speed of the movement. His hands were cool and dry, as though they had been dipped in a pool of water and toweled off.
“Daniel, no. Do not ever think that. You are my first and only fledgling, my most perfect creation.” A fierceness bled into Armand’s voice. “You are of my blood.”
Daniel nearly stepped back from the suddenness of their proximity, but he held his ground. He hadn’t spent decades as an investigative journalist to not pursue an open line of inquiry. “Then what’s your fucking problem? Why do you keep leaving?”. To his horror, his voice trembled at the end. Goddamn vampires and their goddamn vampire emotions, was this why Louis and Lestat and the rest of them were always so terminally dramatic?
Armand’s brows ticked down, his head tilting to the side as he stared into Daniel’s eyes. His hands remained on Daniel’s face, his thumb rhythmically brushing over his cheek. “You wished for me to stay?”
“Of course I wanted you to stay! How else was I supposed to navigate being a baby vampire? Do you know how hard it was to figure out all this? I’m surprised Louis hasn’t stopped talking to me with how much I was badgering him about this stuff because it wasn’t supposed to be his job! It was supposed to be you!” He had been determined to keep his voice level but with each sentence his volume increased until he was nearly shouting right into Armand’s face.
Armand’s confusion remained evident. “I had assumed that after everything you had heard during the interview that you would not wish to spend time with me. I do not know if anyone has truly wanted my presence for the last century.”
God, Daniel was so angry, though at Armand’s words a swell of pity coursed underneath. His mind whirred and caught a loose thread in the response, his journalistic instinct still intact. “Then why did you show up at all? It would have been easy enough to avoid me.”
If Daniel didn’t know any better, he would say that Armand appeared sheepish. Could vampires still feel shame?
“I could not stay away from you entirely. As I said then, you are a fascinating boy.”
I think you might be misremembering that, Armand, seeing as you couldn’t see why I was so fascinating then, but that’s besides the point.
Daniel sighed heavily, attempting to modulate his bottled-up resentment. “Look, man, I know you have a kink for controlling people but do not get to control me. My thoughts are my own and my decisions are my own, even if you disagree with them.” Armand opened his mouth to interject and Daniel cut him off. “Ah ah, nope. No interruptions from you. Even if you are five hundred years old and have been a vampire for several centuries longer than America has been a country. I wanted you there, and you abandoned me.”
“Five hundred and fourteen.”
“What?”
“I am five hundred and fourteen, give or take a few years.”
Daniel was going to scream. “That’s what you got out of that? Did you not hear me? I said that you don’t get to make my decisions for me. You should have been here!” Tears started to prick at the edges of his eyes. Goddamn vampire emotions! He had never been a crier - that had always been Alice’s burden to bear, and he’d been accused by her more than once of being an emotionless robot because he couldn’t muster up any tears at any tragedy. And yet here he was, about to start weeping because his maker didn’t want to be around him. It was pathetic.
He swiped at his eyes, and when he looked back at Armand, he was met with a face full of amazement, his eyes a warm liquid gold. He had not let go, his hands still cupping his face.
“Did you truly wish me to be with you?”
“I already told you, yes . If nothing else, it would have made those first few hunts a lot less chaotic. Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a body in New York City nowadays? There’s CCTVs everywhere, it took me forever to figure out a system.”
Armand laughed in delight, the sound ringing high and clear. Even through his anger, Daniel wished he could bottle it up.
“Oh, my Daniel, my Daniel.”
The few words shouldn’t have been enough to melt Daniel’s will. They really, really shouldn’t have. He was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch and he had valid reasons for being incredibly angry and Armand. To wit - he’d been turned, left behind in a completely foreign country, given next-to-no guidance about the vagaries of vampiric life, and teased with the most fleeting of appearances for three years, to say nothing of the whole “rearranging a decade’s worth of memories like shuffling a deck of cards” issue.
And yet Daniel softened. Whatever. Blame the bond between maker and fledgling. Lestat may have had a point in all his ramblings about his dear Saint Louis.
He leaned his forward until his forehead touched Armand’s. He couldn’t say how long they remained in that position, their breaths commingling in the air. Finally, Armand lifted his head. “I promise, I will not leave you.” Before Daniel could retort, Armand gazed past him at the window. “Come, let us go to sleep. Young fledglings need their rest, after all.” He glanced at his watch and saw that it was a mere five minutes until dawn. Armand might have a point.
Daniel grabbed Armand’s hand and walked with him to his casket which was situated in his living room, the only space in his apartment big enough to accommodate it without moving most of his furniture. It was a thing of beauty, all polished red wood with a black satin interior. It had been a pain and a half getting it installed, and he was grateful for the typical New York demeanor of his delivery men who didn’t question why he was setting up a casket in the middle of his apartment.
He clambered in, twisting around indelicately so that he never let go of Armand’s hand, and he tugged on his arm once he was well ensconced. Armand suppressed a smile and slipped in with all the elegant grace of a half-millenia-old supernatural creature. The casket was slightly narrow and Armand rested half-atop Daniel, his head pillowed into his chest.
“Rest, Daniel.”
For a moment Daniel panicked, the words all-too-familiar. Armand was going to put him under and then he would wake up alone again in the evening and, and -
And then he realized he was just as awake as before. Or, well, just as sleepy, but the point was that he didn’t feel compelled into a false stupor.
He shifted in the casket until he was facing Armand.
“Will you be here in the morning?” He couldn’t stop the tinge of desperation lacing his voice. The thought of waking alone made him want to claw into Armand, to sink his teeth into him, to do anything to prevent him vanishing again.
“Yes, my fascinating boy. I will be here in the morning.”
Daniel didn’t rightfully know if he could trust Armand - what was it they said about fooling someone twice? What about the fifteenth time? - but for now he was nestled in his maker’s arms and the encroaching morning was pulling him to sleep.
He closed his eyes, and the last thing he felt before he lapsed into unconsciousness was the press of Armand’s lips against his own.