Work Text:
During the interview in Dubai, Daniel had been convinced that the so-called ‘vampire bond’ was absolute horseshit. Something Louis told him – and himself – to justify taking Lestat back, choosing him over their kid time and time again, and still being this hung up on him eight decades after their rather dramatic divorce.
Daniel just didn’t buy it.
Claudia didn’t let her ‘bond’ with Lestat keep her from attempted patricide. The nightmares Lestat had about his maker weren’t because he missed him so much. That kid Bruce had just shrugged when asked about who’d given him the gift.
Nah. Vampire bond, schmampire bond. Try that line with someone else.
So he’d been extra pissed off when it had hit him that first time. Time stopping, everything around him fading to gray, the only sound left in the world the rushing of his own blood. A gentle squeezing around his heart.
At first he’d thought he was having some kind of cardiac event or a stroke, but then he’d remembered he was immortal now and functionally invincible. And then he’d felt it. Him. Armand.
Everywhere.
He wasn’t actually there – at least, Daniel didn’t think he was – but at the same time he was. He was in Daniel’s heart and soul and capillaries. On his taste buds. Making the hairs in his arms stand on end and his head spin. Pulling at him.
All there was was Armand.
Nothing else mattered anymore.
Daniel couldn’t even come up with a good metaphor for the experience in the moment, it was so overwhelming.
He’d come up with one later, though. These little moments, raptures, whatevers... They felt like Daniel was goddamn Lizzie Bennet and Armand Darcy was the only other person on the immortal dance floor.
No, it was worse than Pride and Prejudice, actually. It was some saccharine Bridgerton shit, complete with period-inaccurate clothes and an invisible string quartet performing a classical rendition of (They Long to Be) Close to You.
And the dumbest part was that Armand wasn’t even there. Daniel knew that for sure now. He hadn’t been there for any of the times it had happened.
It was just Daniel, by himself, in the middle of the street, on the subway, in the crowd at one of Lestat’s concerts.
Yearning.
Daniel was fucking yearning. And for what?
Some asshole who’d given him immortality against his will and then pissed off before the bite marks had even closed up, leaving him to figure it all out by himself? His deadbeat vampire dad?
(If he was completely honest with himself, which, despite his illustrious career in truth-seeking and knack for self-deprecation, Daniel had never been much of a fan of, he’d have to admit that the dumbest part was actually the fact that he liked it. He liked feeling Armand all around him and inside him. He became a little bit less pissed off with it every time it happened and instead found himself feeling sad every time it ended. Felt himself yearning even when it wasn’t happening. Found himself dreaming of Armand – daydreaming of Armand – taking him in his arms and holding him close and telling him that everything was going to be alright, beloved.
It was absolutely ridiculous.)
And then Daniel had finally talked to Louis again, after over a year of being iced out over the book (which, okay, publishing it without asking or even telling Louis had been a dick move, but wasn’t Louis’s entire story about how leopards didn’t change their spots?). Anyway, he’d opened up to Louis, told him, “Hey, that vampire bond? I get it now. I really get it. I understand what it’s like.”
And Louis had looked at him like he’d grown another head and might want to talk to Dr. Fareed about that. Sounds weird, followed by one of those patented De Pointe Du Lac looks of judgmental-yet-distinguished distaste.
Maybe Louis just wasn’t in a place where he was ready to admit it happened to him, too, Daniel told himself. He was still pissed off at Daniel about the book, after all, and not exactly on speaking terms with Lestat again just yet. Or maybe it was just that the fact that Armand was Daniel’s maker gave Louis the ick.
Or maybe what Daniel was experiencing hadn’t ever happened to anyone before in the history of vampirism.
He’d joked to Louis that the only thing he’d inherited from his ancient first-time-parent maker was the Low-Hanging Balls Gift, but leave it to Danny-Boy Molloy to be the first immortal ever to develop the Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear When You Aren’t Even Near Gift.
Either way, Daniel didn’t feel great about his talk with Louis and his response to Daniel and Armand’s supercharged vampire bond. So it was probably some kind of karmic justice that, barely ten minutes after Daniel had left Louis with agents Rashid and Raglan James, it happened again.
From one second to the next, the park he’d been crossing faded to nothing, the people and dogs and fucking squirrels that had been in it dissolved into the atoms they were made up of, and Daniel was hit by a wave of longing so all-encompassing it almost knocked him flat on his ass.
But it was different this time.
That fuckass vampire bond had only just closed its hand around his heart and wormed its tendrils into his lungs when the nothingness around him parted like the sea and there he was.
The Devil Daniel and Louis had just been speaking of.
Not the feeling of him, not the idea of him – no. He was actually, physically there, in the park. In the flesh. In all his technicolor splendor.
Great hair, blazing eyes, a slightly lost look on his face, an actual halo around his head (if you squinted). Birds appearing, stars falling from the sky, goddamn choir music blasting from invisible speakers. It was a miracle Daniel didn’t fall to his knees then and there.
Suddenly, the world came rushing back, like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water onto Daniel’s head.
“Hello, Daniel,” Armand said.
And it took Daniel every ounce of restraint he had left not to immediately close the remaining distance between them and throw himself into his maker’s arms.