Work Text:
Armand hasn’t has an .. outburst in almost thirty years.
The light softly melts through the smoke, the laughter, the love and the lust; the haze stitched in the breath of men and cigarettes, of all the cruel and softly shadowed desires. Armand can hear them in this room, person to person, the whispers here are just as those in holy places. Only less apologizing.
His jaw tenses painfully. The insolence of mortal gatherings, the music, the ugly words, amplified into crashing sensory waves -- primitive, dull, loud, and ordinary.
What Louis would choose over him, again and again.
Between the heavy, moody lights, a void of dark brown curls. Their gentle luster.
What quite possessed Armand to find him, he cannot articulately rationalize.
Those days in the apartment, it was not only Louis that slipped out of Armand’s design. Armand has been transformed as well; he released something that he cannot recall. It will not be lured back into discontent, it will not find a home in this shell again; it dragged him here, after Daniel Molloy. The awful, trivial boy that seismically wronged everything.
Louis and Armand are now left mending as the burned flesh has -- no more are the nights of Louis spending fleeting, mortal creatures. Their relationship is settling back into the mold Armand carefully chiseled.
But now, it’s him bleeding through the lines. And Louis’s placated gaze and mouth are not enough to dissolve the fury wound tight beneath his skin. To banish the insane possession, or perhaps a shadow risen to the surface.
Daniel Molloy’s head curving, the face of a bruise.
Armand knows this boy.
He spent days inside him, spitefully pouring through his head. He stood with him on the orange carpet, swigging the bottle his father fell asleep with dangling from his hand; he was at one of the desks in the room when his tenth grade history teacher smacked him in front of the class, and they laughed. He was with Daniel, reading the musings he would scrawl and crumple in quick succession, beside him vividly with all of the characters he interviewed. Which testaments he discarded or savored, the things he deemed profound -- meaningless, and what made him laugh. He saw Louis, there. Coffee and cigarettes for breakfast, his favorite diner when he has the money to treat himself -- the first man who ever kissed him without asking. How he is like syrup crusting on a tree in the afternoons he wakes (sometimes not in his own apartment), watching the bleary sun whiten his windows, feeling truly like he’s no longer alive. Knowing he’ll use the junk again anyway, knowing it might kill him. A boy teetering on the blazing horizon of creation and destruction. A contradiction in sly flesh, how someone can possibly desire so much while simultaneously flirting with extinguishment. That leather jacket he wears everyday is the most expensive thing he owns. He would leave nothing behind, he would take it all with him.
Armand sipped this life through feverish eyes, which had darkened in their submission as Armand held him. He scrubbed the dewy skin with his fingers, felt the trembles and surrenders in Daniel’s body as he was opened to him; Armand felt what happened each time he struck a memory. A feeling. The curls slipping through Armand’s fingers, moist and feathery, flattening beneath his touch, obedient where Armand would wipe them from Daniel’s forehead. The blood from his pliant neck when he snapped the flesh like an overripe fruit, nectar rushing over his tongue; a connection.
Suddenly, like lightning -- he came to know someone else who is not Louis. For the first time in twenty years, after the slaughter of his coven and the devotion born in their blood. And just as Louis had, he revealed himself to this boy. And yes, he commanded Daniel to forget him -- but Armand, somehow unmasked by this boy, remains so.
Is that why Armand is following him?
He watches Daniel, not quite sure why he is still unsettled -- almost waiting for an explanation to blossom from somewhere amongst the uninspiring sequence of his existence. Armand sees the bartender, a resigned expression, the mischief on Daniel’s face and a hurried, pacifying promise he will never uphold. “I’ll pay you later.” The bow of his head when a drink is passed to him and how he is so clumsy and eager taking his first gulp. Armand is so lost in the numbingly asinine nature of it all that he stares for too long,
Are you a charming boy or a pitiable one, which makes you fascinating?
Daniel perks up from his drink and looks about the room. Armand watches the jolt, the desperation. His eyes don’t quite look green from here, not as they did in that room that slanted to the north. So near to Armand’s, lashes clumped from weeping -- but their pale irises are still apparent from a distance.
Those eyes snag Armand’s for only a beat.
A dent in his brow, so soft -- so unknowing, lights swimming over his face. The musings gushing beneath.
Unfortunately, he and Louis’s peace is as fragile as Daniel Molloy’s mortal heart.
Daniel Molloy is the only promise Louis has dedicated to him, the only testament he has made to their companionship. Yet somehow, more than anything, Armand wants to kill Daniel for it. He wants to kill him even more than he had in that room. He looks more insignificant to him now than he did then, so disposable. This is what Louis has given him, a vow bound in the flesh of this young, and perishable creature.
Armand’s indulgence is on a leash.
He rises from the wall to forget the boy tonight, intending to leave the bar. He seems to visit Daniel when he is feeling especially frustrated with Louis; Armand comes to look at the promise he made to him.
He deftly weaves through the bodies, ignoring the gazes like sludge in their falling over him. The thoughts that reach him unwillingly -- once again, he feels the taste of scorn flourish in his throat. How could Louis ever find this appetizing? An abattoir of fevered, swollen meat.
The door is in sight, only for another vision to sever him from it.
“Excuse me,”
The lamb.
Daniel throws himself in front of Armand, nearly colliding. “Sorry, uh,” His eyes are a little bit wild, the rest of his face in suit. Leather, coffee, bitters, a spicy cologne that is not quite the savior it was meant to be -- and iron flood Armand’s senses. Like a drink.
It plasters the vampire to where he stands.
“Just -- you said something to me, didn’t you?” If his voice were falling on mortal ears, it would certainly be drowned by the music and the drunken bustle of the crowd. But Armand hears him like he’s the only one in the room.
Armand’s response is delayed, crude . “..No.” He says, the lie managing to slip past the edge lodged in his mouth. The orange carpet, the highschool girl, the white windows; every movement tearing through aching tendons. Daily failure and rebirths and desperation.
He can feel Daniel’s deciphering gaze trying to pluck his threads, pull them loose -- determined even while the walls of men awkwardly compact them here. The foolishly, brazen Daniel, “Okay, man, look -- I know I was asking. But, I know you were talking to me. You’ve been looking at me for a while. Did you sneak up behind me or something?” He glances around once, as if to demonstrate, a bewildered smile on his face.
“I have to be going,” Armand responds instead, intending to instill finality -- furthered by his action of side stepping the boy.
Except Daniel Molloy chases him again.
“Look, man, wait -- I’m sorry,” He starts, “I’m not making fun of you, if that’s why -- if you wanted to talk, you should’ve stuck around. That’s all. I’m not not interested.”
Armand’s gaze slices to him, and he sees the affect it has. The frenzy in Daniel’s face, quieting; the full toothed smile softening into fixation.
“.. You look really familiar.” He says.
The invisible chain around Armand’s neck tugs -- his restraint clasped into place by Louis. The boy is even more foolish than he previously conceived; the awesome mercy Armand gifted him was nothing short of a miracle. Any wisp of Armand left in his mind should be a dark shard, reflecting the face of death -- yet, this boy chases it out of a bar.
This boy is not not interested in his death.
Armand feels the veil he crafted tremble.
“Are you implying the existence of an interest to be reciprocated?” He finds himself asking, letting the fire lick his words; his mouth is like a hot coal.
Daniel’s smile breaks wide again. “I’m occasionally hopeful.”
Armand glares at him.
Music thumps like a soft heartbeat, bodies drift close to them in passing; the laughter roars.
“I can barely hear you, man, do you want --” Daniel begins, and Armand knows he’s about to offer him a drink only to remember in the same instant he has no money; the prospect dissolves awkwardly on his tongue. Armand lifts his chin slightly.
“A smoke? We can go outside,” Daniel improvises.
Armand should leave. His pursuing this boy for as long as he has without killing him is already nonsensical, given how much he hungers to kill him -- given there is no mortal he’s revealed himself to still breathing. Nonsensical, because he can’t kill Daniel Molloy, and this is a punishable torment Armand is indulging.
Yet, it was nonsensical for Louis to agree to an interview in the first place. Armand does not know exactly what possesses his answer, where this abandon breaks.
“Lead the way.”
There is a seclusion offered outside, the lip between the bar and the next building -- an alley silvery in the night, flush with warm air. It brushes through their hair, dark feathers against Armand’s jaw.
Daniel is leaning on the wall across from him, unsuccessfully trying to flick his lighter on. He mutters to himself through a cigarette, “Stupid fuckin’--”
Armand glares at the dull reach of the lighter, and an ember breathes to life. Daniel hums in satisfaction.
“Here, man,” He shuffles through his pockets and extends a cigarette to Armand. Their hands brush when Armand takes it.
Wordlessly he brings it to his mouth, and instead of handing him the lighter Daniel closes a few steps between them and starts trying to light Armand’s cigarette with it. His hand hovers just shy of the vampire’s chin, green eyes illuminated this close -- sharp in their focus. Before Armand can repeat his previous trick, Daniel curses and pockets the small device.
Daniel doesn’t say anything but leans in, holding the end of his own cigarette to Armand’s. Waits for it to light.
Of course, Armand’s senses are more vivid than a mortal’s -- stronger, that he could smell Daniel’s blood when he stood across from him. But at this proximity, it’s a bath. He can smell the acrid burn of the tobacco from Daniel’s cigarette, like a forest fire -- and yes, his blood; he can hear the boy breathing softly, and it is loud as a hurricane. The pulse that quickens like frenzied drums, the delicious liquid bursting from the heart in floods. And Daniel isn’t thinking about anything, not in words -- but Armand can feel the sweet telltale arrest of his nerves. The stuttering song that hitches from his lungs.
Armand stares at him, he could count the fibers of hair tickling his browbone.
His cigarette blooms alight, a fire just too large to have been from Daniel’s.
“Shit!” Daniel stumbles back, shaking his hand.
Armand merely takes a drag.
“That wasn’t normal!” Daniel leans back on his side of the wall, still slightly wild.
Armand blows a lacey plume of smoke.
“When do you intend to interest me?” He taps his cigarette, stroking the paper with a sharp fingernail. Armand still is not certain why he agreed to this, by his own logic it would be a mistake. Regardless, his eyes flicker to Daniel’s.
Daniel swallows.
“..For some reason I feel like you don’t like me.” A crooked grin slants his lips. “We must have met somewhere.”
The fury coils tighter in Armand, like a viper posing to strike.
Instead he only says, “Perhaps you dreamt of me.”
“Perhaps,” Daniel repeats like the word amuses him, taking a drag of his own cigarette. “But if I ever pissed you off, well -- I can’t promise I won’t do it again,” The smoke obscures his lips.
“I’m Daniel.” He reaches out his hand. Armand looks at it.
Of course Daniel Molloy would shake hands with a stranger at a gay bar. Sure, it is a natural gesture of greeting -- but a bold thing in its intimacy, an easy connection. Too professional for a place like this, but not disguised as such. A hand from out of the void. Armand takes it delicately.
“I don’t bite, y’know,” His voice is simultaneously boyish yet slightly rougher beyond his years.
Armand meets his gaze. Daniel squints.
“You’re killing me.” The boy admits, chuckling. Finally, Armand’s hand moves but only to slither under Daniel’s leather sleeve, voyaging upwards his wrist -- slowly, just as the snake’s body would wrap its prey. Armand’s head tilts, almost appraising. He feels the veins in thin swells, how soft they are beneath his sharp thumbnail -- how with the slightest force, Armand could slash them here.
“Your skin is so cold,” Daniel hisses.
Armand pulls away.
“You talk a lot, Daniel.”
He watches Daniel search him, “Yeah, well, it’s kind of my work -- I’m a journalist. I mostly do interviews.”
Armand coldly recalls the sentence, nearly identical to his conversation with Louis’s in Polynesian Mary’s. Armand had been listening, of course. As he listened to all of them, each boy Louis charmed and led home, as the kills crested into triple digits. Armand was always there, tucked in the farthest corner of the room, or even across the street. He could still hear them.
Louis only ever really invited him out of courtesy. Or perhaps that was false. Regardless, Armand never accepted. He never stayed to witness Louis demonstrate how inadequate Armand was.
He brings the cigarette back to his lips. “Is that right?” He lets himself joke, although Daniel would not know it is any such thing.
“Yeah, I’m into different perspectives. Everyone has a story worth telling kind of thing -- I’m good at getting angles.” The sounds of the bar float distantly from the other side of the wall. Armand can hear their steps shuffling onto the concrete, the wanderers passing. The disappearances into parked cars, bathrooms, and staircases -- vessels for clandestine passions but seldom confessions.
“I would direct you elsewhere,” Armand bites out, a humor like venom seeping into his voice, “I was recently told that I am boring.”
Even though the span of this interaction has been short, Armand can calculate that the beat of silence that passes from Daniel is rare.
The boy tilts his head, not unlike a dog would. His eyes are sparkling thoughtfully.
“I don’t believe that.” A chuckle laces his voice, but not one to subtract the seriousness from it.
Armand’s resolve fades deeper into obscurity. “You have no reason to doubt it. I haven’t even told you what I’m called.”
Daniel peeks at Armand from under those shaggy dark curls. “My instincts are usually right about people.”
Armand feels his own face change, strangely. Like a century of Winter melting into a tentative warmth.
Daniel’s instincts of course, gleefully led him to a vampire’s home where he was painfully brought onto the cusp of his demise -- and should once more taunt the shadow that spared him there only after torturing him.
It’s a smile on Armand’s face, he realizes. Slightly mean.
Slightly fascinated.
“And how do your instincts consider me?”
Daniel sucks his cheek and furrows his eyebrows in what Armand can deduce is mock contemplation, accentuated by a growl sort of hum -- which has no reason to reverberate through Armand’s chest the way it does, stirring frozen soil. Daniel takes another sip of his cigarette.
“Well, you’re obviously mysterious -- but,” His gaze like razors, peeling the layers of Armand, so precisely that he is almost curious as to what assessment they’ll make. If they will see the glimmering flesh of an orange or an old, ancient tablet weathered of its meaning by time. Armand relinquished the effort that is to truly know himself. Over five centuries, which could be countless mortal lives -- over the monumental shifts in civilization, Armand has corroded and regenerated into different creatures. He is generations in one body. Half a millennium. Unfathomable, fantastical to nonexistence.
Apocalyptic.
“You want to be captured. Just like the rest of us, you want to be seen -- you want someone to be worthy of that,”
Armand tilts his head. “You make me sound.. pompous.”
Daniel wags his cigarette, “And you are. Partly because you just used the word pompous.”
Armand finds himself grinning again. “Would you consider yourself worthy, in this narrative you are deciding, Daniel?”
Daniel shrugs, tapping ash off his cigarette. “Not really, I’m just a shitty kid from Modesto.” He confesses, “But for some reason, you’re still talkin’ to me.”
Armand’s demeanor darkens, reminded of his own mindlessness, the insanity that carried him to this bar -- standing here, across from Daniel Molloy. A mortal boy who could not produce a quarter if you asked him for one. Armand has taken rests longer than Daniel’s entire life. It would be so easy to kill him, like picking an orange apart, like slicing through warm bread. It would take Armand less than a minute. Forty-five seconds, and Daniel Molloy’s existence would be no more. This would be over; better yet, Armand could rearrange afterward, like it had never happened in the first place. It would be as if Daniel never even existed.
He can taste Daniel’s death on his tongue already, thick and splendid.
And yet, another craving pushes through, presses with the undead organs inside of him. It is adjacent to a feline’s, the one that prefers to bat the mouse between its paws.
Perhaps it is the music, the atmosphere; the fact that intimately he and Louis have drifted, in part due to Louis nearly disintegrating and other parts him taking over a hundred lovers in past months. Or perhaps it is the smoke. Armand opens his mouth after a pause, “We don’t have to talk.”
Daniel’s eyes narrow at him, narrow into shadows. Into a boyish anticipation that might bewitch a mortal recipient, but to Armand it is predictable. Yet, not repulsive. Not at all. “..Yeah?” Daniel asks. Armand can read the blood that circulates through him, the wishes falling between his heartbeats, singing for Armand.
They stare at one another; Armand, still and slightly challenging. He does not have to manipulate mortal curtains to beckon Daniel, the boy rises on his own, experimentally at first -- then, slow steps close toward Armand. And it is just as the time before, when Daniel approached to light his cigarette, except there are no small fires here anymore, no obscurity. The heat that slithers is invisible, organic.
Daniel hovers over Armand, abandoning his cigarette on the ground. Armand’s eyes flicker over him, the eyes that would appear dark and cavernous to Daniel’s; Armand was once prized for his mortal eyes, easy to adore and impossible to find offensive. They were innocent. Daniel cannot see the hell fire that has bleached them. Even as he is so close, even if his observation is flush to Armand, he is blind.
“Yeah.” Armand answers finally, one of his hands sliding over Daniel’s cheek. They meet eachother in the kiss, Armand accepts Daniel’s mouth.
Armand had forgotten the pleasing qualities of mortals. Daniel kisses him with all abandon of a dying creature, hands sliding roughly upwards Armand’s hips and spine, clawing for the ledges of him. Hard breaths and heartbeats and sweet little noises spill from Daniel; the mortal’s wanting, the candle. A vampire has eternity to enjoy every desire, time is not a luxury -- but to a mortal the moment is everything. To be a mortal’s lover, is to embody this everything.
Armand’s mouth falls open when Daniel’s hand skims under his shirt, and he finds himself confessing, “Armand.”
Daniel laughs against his lips, the vibration traveling in a shiver. “Armand, Armand,” Daniel echoes, emphasizing the name with kisses along his neck. “Armand. Where have I heard that? Armand,”
Armand wraps his arms around Daniel’s shoulders, claws pulling the leather. He could injure him this way, if he liked, he could rip dark ribbons through Daniel’s flesh, slice him open. The papers would write about a tiger in California.
This is the best moment to kill Daniel, while desire swells in his veins, it would be like the syrup from a summer fruit. It is the only scent in the air.
Yet, there is something more priceless Armand finds, curling his fist in Daniel’s hair. It was there, too, in the apartment, for everyday Armand kept Daniel there.
He has fought to love and subdue Louis for over two decades, these efforts have crumbled in the late moons, locking Armand in a sequence of spiraling and rebuilding -- in decay, disaster.
Control has never felt brighter, than it does in his hands right now. Hatred is less complicated than love.
He suddenly realizes that he does not want to let go of it yet.
He leans his head back, unfurling his throat for Daniel’s kisses to expand upon. “You were right, Daniel,”
“I don’t like you.”
He feels a laugh rumble against his skin.
“Then why did you talk to me, in there,” Armand hears Daniel’s voice, mostly breath.
Another kiss, two, three. “Why did you come out?”
Armand is more honest with him than he’s been all evening. “So I could kill you.”
Another laugh vibrates near his paulse.
He hears the dumb quips tripping over one another in Daniel’s head, each too intoxicated to form.
Armand leverages his hand in Daniel’s hair to rip the boy out from his neck; he seizes his face in both hands, and his kiss lands similar to when fangs sunk in Daniel’s neck. His mouth is just as punishing, and as hungry, descending onto Daniel’s lips like a predator. The violence surprises a noise from Daniel, who fists Armand’s hair as well -- possibly to balance himself, as the force of Armand’s kiss pushes him back a step. Armand continues to lash him, merciless as Daniel’s breaths struggle to pass, hoarsley collapsing in each instant Armand permits him the room to. Armand kisses him, like he means to fuse with him, to vanish in Daniel somehow -- to wear him, to become something Louis chose.
“Jesus--” Daniel hisses somewhere. “You really don’t like me,”
Armand smiles against his lips, his shorter fangs gleaming in the night. Daniel’s mouth is a bruise, irritated by Armand’s force. Such a sensitive mouth. But his eyes, those eyes are anything but; lanterns that capture the whispers of light around them. Pale and commanding.
Armand’s thumbs wipe his cheeks with deep pressure. If he wanted, his thumbs could cave through the flesh, through muscles and bone, Daniel would break like a swollen peach, like a porcelain doll. With the slightest more force, he could disfigure him. Perhaps Louis would not have wanted him then.
His hands drag downward Daniel’s face, his chin, and fall heavy on his shoulders. Armand finds he is bowing his head, it drops with a hoarse sigh from him.
He is slipping, he realizes.
“.. Armand, are you--?”
He hasn’t proved anything; this has not bettered the circumstances, or smothered the fire that’s licked underneath his flesh -- why would he believe it would? These fires are infernal, a discontent, an inadequacy that should sing with him forever. It forgets everything eventually, except for him, he always remains. Even the sun does not want him, but it will not set him free.
Armand does not know what he wants, not really.
“If we meet again, you should run from me, Daniel Molloy,” He says finally. “I will be there to kill you,”
Armand raises his head, stabbing Daniel’s gaze again.
“I will catch you, but you should still run from me.”
Daniel still appears delighted, but a touch of confusion slips in with his face; a fear so small. Like he has spotted a misshapen shadow, and he is attempting to reason it away.
With that, Armand staggers away from the boy; a restraint haunting his motions.
He hears Daniel’s thoughts frenzy, and decide ultimately that he is not going to ask Armand how he knows his full name.