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Daniel shoved the steno pad into his back pocket after comparing the address he had scribbled down to the mailbox and the street sign. He was at the right place. He had no idea if anyone was actually home, if anyone would actually answer the door, but this was the place. His eyes followed the long driveway up to the house, a dark olive 60s thing with expansive windows and sleek lines.
He was here now, but his feet didn’t want to move.
He pulled the pad out again, flipped to its cardboard back, and slapped it down on the car hood. He felt a pull to get back in his car and drive right back home, but that was why he hadn’t come empty handed. Daniel pulled a baggie out of the same pocket and used his library card to form a line, which he promptly snorted. Just one for courage, then he shoved the baggie back in his pocket along with the pad.
He could do this. Fuck, yeah, he could do this.
Freshly emboldened, Daniel started up the slightly curved drive. The landscaping was beautifully maintained, though likely rarely enjoyed by anyone. He could smell lavender carried on the breeze as he walked past beds of poppies and coral bells still beautiful under the moonlight. It was a perfectly lovely home occupied by two bloodthirsty monsters, one of which Daniel was head over heels in love with.
Fucking fairy tale shit that made him want to fall to his knees and kiss Armand’s feet. He wanted to pick every flower in the garden and climb the trellis to deliver them, because his heart couldn’t hold all the wonder and the sadness.
Armand made him deliriously happy. Armand made him furious.
He steeled himself and knocked on the door.
It had been six years since the interview on Divisadero. The vampire who opened the door looked pretty much the same as he had then, as was to be expected, the only difference being the perplexed look that came across his face at finding Daniel on his doorstep.
“Daniel Molloy,” Louis de Pointe du Lac said. Daniel had often wondered how much Louis knew about what he got up to with Armand, and the expression he wore now told Daniel the answer to that was absolutely nothing.
“I’m not here for you, Louis,” Daniel said, pushing past. He ran a hand nervously through his sweat-soaked curls as he scanned the area leading off the foyer. “And honestly, I’d like to avoid a fight about this, because I think you’re an okay guy, despite the whole-” He waved a hand in the general location of his neck. “Thing.”
“Where is he?” The floor plan was open, and Daniel was quickly able to surmise that he wasn’t downstairs. “Armand, you asshole, come out here!”
Daniel heard a quick shuffle of feet on the floor above, and then there was his baby, coming down the stairs.
“Daniel,” Armand hissed, and, ooh, he was angry. Daniel knew his baby’s body language like the back of his hand, and Armand was two seconds from snapping. Daniel saw him glance over at Louis and force composure upon himself.
“The boy who interviewed you,” he said, in a much more level tone. “What is he doing here?”
“Well, you tell me, Armand,” Louis said, voice laden with suspicion and curiosity. “It seems like he’s here to see you.”
At the foot of the stairs and not an inch closer to Daniel, Armand crossed his arms. “Well?” His eyes were fire. They were a warning. Armand looked as if he wanted to melt Daniel with his mind. He could, he could.
Fuck, Daniel had composed a whole speech of beautiful shit in his head on the drive here, and now it was all falling out of his brain.
“There’s only so much a guy can take,” he started, not really knowing where he’s going with it but feeling good about it. He felt a thrum under his skin, a feeling in his chest that was some unhealthy combination of excitement and fear and love. It was the sort of rush that only came from Armand.
“Babe, you toss me around and I know I’m not your only guy, I’ve known about Louis from the start, of course —- sorry, Louis —- and that was okay for me then, but I’m not okay with it anymore. It’s driving me crazy to think about you with him. It’s driving me crazy to wake up and find you gone and know that you’re just keeping me away on some shelf to use and put away when not needed. I want to be with you all the time.” Daniel felt like there was so much he wasn’t able to put into words, so he just felt it as hard as he could, knowing Armand was most certainly dipping into his mind right now.
Armand was stone faced, as Daniel could have expected. He tended to shut down in the face of direct adversity. Daniel could almost feel him rooting around inside frantically, but his face betrayed nothing.
Louis, on the other hand, looked amused. Not a funny kind of amused, but he didn’t look ready to physically harm Daniel. “Have you been keeping secrets from me?”
“I apologize, Maitre.”
“Oh, come on, enough of that subservient bullshit.”
“Quiet, Daniel.”
“So I take it you’ve been bedding this boy.”
“Damn right he has.”
Armand shot him a look that said shut up, but Daniel took it in like he’d been blown a kiss. Louis should know what the hell he’d been missing out on when he put Armand in a box. He hoped Louis was reading his mind. Daniel purposefully conjured up a few particularly explicit memories for his viewing pleasure.
Louis peered out through the window shades, looking down to the street where Daniel’s car was parked under a streetlight. “Hmm, nice wheels,” he said. “Between the clothes and the car, I can tell you been doing a lot better for yourself than the last time we met.” He pointedly looked at Armand as he said all of this.
Yeah, Armand had bought him the clothes. Armand had bought him the car, a Starlight Black Firebird they went whipping through the night in, Armand watching him in fascination from the passenger seat until they finally had to park somewhere and fuck in the back. Daniel was doing better, he was getting published. Armand just wanted him to be able to write and not have to worry about taking another job delivering pizzas or something just to pay rent. Which Armand also paid.
“From my own accounts only,” Armand said, as if it mattered. As if that was a courtesy instead of a method of limiting traceable evidence. “I admit to sleeping with the boy and buying him a few gifts.”
The logical portions of Daniel’s brain knew that Armand would downplay the relationship to Louis, but it felt like shit all the same, to see him lie so freely about something that meant so much.
Daniel had a big mouth, he knew. It got him into trouble more often than not. ““Yeah, sure, let’s talk about it like that. Christ, you love to bullshit. ‘A few gifts’, he says. Asshole. Dick. You love me.” His hand crumpled to fists that he rubbed roughly over his eyes before throwing his arms out from his body, palms open. “You love me,” he said with a ridiculous laugh. “When we’re together you say there is nowhere else you would rather be, and either that is a pack of lies, or—”
Armand interrupted him. “Louis, surely there is no reason to keep entertaining this.”
“Let the boy speak, Armand.”
Armand bit his tongue, and Louis looked at Daniel expectantly. Ever so calm and cool until he wasn’t, Louis stared with an eyebrow quirked and hand casually tucked into one pocket of his high-waisted white jeans.
“He loves me, and I love him, and I want him to leave with me. Today. So there’s that.”
“Alright,” Louis said with a snort, apparently barely able to suppress a laugh. He rolled his head to the side to look at Armand and gave him a sardonic smile. “What do you say? Ready to go pack your bags to run off with your true love?”
“I’d prefer if you did not mock the boy,” Armand said, voice tight. “There is much he does not understand.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m a moron when I'm standing right in front of you.”
“I will talk about you however I like,” Armand said sharply. “As you have shown up on my doorstep, uninvited and ill-behaved. You have clearly, against my request, engaged in some level of investigation into my personal matters, as you have never been provided this address and for good reason…” The level tone of his voice was starting to waver. Daniel could tell he was beginning to panic, and he was torn between wanting to rip into him and wanting to hold him close.
“That shit is public record,” Daniel said. Armand could shove his reprimands up his ass. “You can barely call that an investigation. My mom could figure out how to pull your property records if she wanted to! Now who doesn’t understand shit?”
His gaze turned to Louis, whose expression still read vaguely amused, but dangerous. “Oh, and I’m sorry for fucking your boyfriend, but if you could wipe that condescending smirk off your face, I would really appreciate it.”
This drew an actual laugh from Louis. “Armand, I didn’t know you wanted a pet! We could have gotten a terrier; it might yap less.”
“Oh, fuck y—”
“I’d like to speak to him alone for a moment,” Armand said. He had a soft hand on Louis’s upper arm. The intimate gesture along with the way his eyes pleaded for approval pissed Daniel off. Louis nodded, and Armand grabbed the cuff of Daniel’s bomber jacket roughly to drag him into a small office off the main living area. The door slammed telepathically.
“Are you insane?” Armand was practically shaking him. “Coming here. Coming here, to my home! I specifically told you to never seek it out. That request was for your own safety.”
“Was it really? Or was it for the safety of your marriage with maitre over there?”
“Oh, you really think something of yourself, don’t you?” Armand was pacing and pressing a hand to his forehead as if that would contain the overflow of thoughts and emotions. “What did you think would happen? You would sweep me off my feet and I would just…what? Walk out the door with you?”
“That was kind of it, yeah,” Daniel said. “And you want to.” Sure, it was cocky, but Armand liked him cocky. Said he had a smart mouth and was fortunate that it was too talented to tamper with.
A moment passed where Armand just gazed at him with those wide, panicky, beautiful eyes, then he was grabbing Daniel’s collar to pull him in for one hard kiss. “Idiot,” he said. “You are a romantic idiot.”
“That’s me.”
Armand gave him another long stare, motionless, his hand still holding on to Daniel’s shirt. He no longer looked homicidal, just frustrated, like Daniel was a problem to solve.
“You promised you’d be there when I woke up,” Daniel said after a long gap of silence. His confidence felt withered under the weight of Armand’s direct gaze. He heard his voice and hated how pathetic he sounded. “You promised. I don’t mean to sound like some dumb kid, I don't wanna whine. I know I signed up to be your mistress, but it is starting to hurt. It’s starting to really fucking hurt.”
“I’ve explained many times, Daniel, you are not my mistress. I love you. You are my heart. My relationship with Louis is just…there is a complex nature to it that you could not understand…”
“Seems pretty easy for me to understand,” Daniel said. “You’re choosing him over me. You’re choosing him over me when he doesn’t even care. You saw him out there smirking. I don’t mean to be some overly macho guy, but I’m going to be honest, I’m ready to fight just thinking about him touching you.”
“He doesn’t see you as a threat, that’s all.”
“Am I?”
At this, Armand’s expression finally softened. “Surprisingly so,” he said after a moment. “But Louis can’t know that.” His hand had fallen now, and Daniel moved forward towards his touch again once more. This time, Armand didn’t reach to hold him like he wanted. He backed away, turning to lean two clenched fists on the green baize top of the desk.
“You don’t know what kind of work you’ve caused me,” Armand said, shaking his head. “You don’t understand.”
“You don’t want me to understand.”
“You have shown time and time again that you are incapable of it.”
Daniel sighed. He didn’t want to argue. They could argue whenever they wanted. They did. He wanted to touch. He wanted Armand to come to him. He wanted it all so badly it made his head spin.
“If you won’t turn me,” Daniel said, coming up behind him and laying a head on Armand’s shoulder. “And this is the only lifetime I have… I want you with me all the time. I have a limited number of days on this planet. I don’t want to spend any of them without you.” This was as close as he had come to the speech he had so carefully prepared on the drive over. The one he knew Armand could already see in his heart.
Armand turned around and looked at him with those terrifying eyes Daniel found so beautiful. He brushed a gentle thumb over his cheekbone. “You’re high, beloved.”
“Yeah? So? That’s got nothing to do with any of this.” Daniel didn’t have to be high to declare his love for Armand. “You’re not taking me seriously, Boss.”
The thumb turned to a whole hand cupping Daniel’s cheek, and he couldn’t help but nuzzle into it.
“Daniel, Daniel,” Armand murmured. Daniel thought he might cry. “You are a uniquely egotistical thing, aren’t you? Go back to your apartment and wait for me. I now need to settle things here, but I will come to you by morning.”
“You really think I came all the way here just to be sent away again?”
“You’re very brave,” Armand said. “You must care for me very much.”
He did. Armand was everything. Daniel wanted to lick the wrist that rested against his chin.
“But you should sleep.”
“It’s like 8:00PM.”
“And when was the last time you had 8 hours of rest, beloved? Eat a good dinner, then rest and wait for me. Don’t do anything else.” Daniel felt a wad of bills being slipped into his back pocket. He felt kisses placed on his temple before Armand backed away. He felt his resolve softening, giving in.
“Didn’t know you had it in you, Armand.”
“You’re displeased with me.”
“Of course I’m fucking displeased. You’ve been lying to me. And with the boy? Why this boy, Armand? Is it some kind of passive aggressive slight to me? Are you that unhappy?”
“My relationship with him has nothing to do with you.”
“Oh, your relationship. It’s a relationship.”
“My association with him. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It ends now.”
“Come here.”
“I am here.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
When Daniel woke, it was to the familiar creak of his bedroom window and a malevolent presence enveloping the room.
“Jesus, Armand, you have a key,” Daniel said, still half asleep, voice groggy. “You don’t have to enter like Batman.”
A weight on the other side of the mattress, then a cool body pressed up against Daniel’s bare back. A nose in his hair and soft lips pressed against his jugular.
“If you ever try anything like that again, I will kill you,” Armand murmured into his neck. His voice against the skin sent pleasant tingles down Daniel’s body. He grabbed Armand’s arms and wrapped them around his waist to snuggle even closer.
“Mmhm,” Daniel hummed happily. “Okay, sweetheart. You promise?”
“Louis does have a limit to his patience,” Armand said. “If you catch him at the wrong moment, he could be quite dangerous.”
“Oh, yeah, I have no idea about that. Let me put my imagination to work real hard to picture what that might be like.”
“Daniel, I’m serious.” They lay entangled in the quiet dark. Daniel loved the feel of Armand’s limbs wrapped around his. “I don’t want to have to give you up.”
“Damn, and you call me greedy. Rude.” It’s all within your control, Daniel’s heart sung. You don’t have to give me up. I won’t go anywhere, so it is all your choice. I’ll be yours as long as you’ll have me. Forever.
Armand didn’t respond with words. He chose to show his greed through his lips, his hands, and the overwhelming, possessive darkness of his mind within Daniel’s. Daniel let himself be wrapped up in it, suffocated by it. When Armand let his apology drip bloody from his wrist to Daniel’s waiting tongue, what could he do but drink it down?