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Armand lay in the middle of the bed fully-dressed and stared at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, the crushing weight of 517 years in the savage garden pressing him down.
Living alone did not suit Armand, and it was hard to feel anything when nothing meant anything anymore.
The splendour of the hotel room around him (not owned by one Thomas Pitt, esq.) meant nothing. The life of the AI ‘artist’ he had drained earlier that night meant nothing.
Armand meant nothing.
The only thing that still meant anything would be crossing into Lucas County within the next thirteen minutes. On a gaudy tour bus with Lestat and his current flock of pet mortals.
Armand had arrived several hours ahead of them.
Of him. His Daniel.
His first-born child and only fledgling. His only reason to keep enduring, now that he had lost Louis.
Armand had ostensibly been keeping his distance while Daniel sowed his vampiric oats, but he had never stopped tracking him, was still protecting him like he had always done.
Living alone also didn’t suit Daniel now he was no longer human, and he had jumped at the chance to climb aboard Lestat’s tour bus and zoom across North America while he and the brat prince himself play-acted at having a good time living the rockstar lifestyle.
Lestat’s need for constant attention being what it was, they were continuously surrounded by a small cast of regular supporting actors and a never-ending, ever-changing slew of guest stars and extras, which now also included Lestat’s first fledgling, mother and oldest surviving lover, who were all one and the same person.
Of course she would turn up when Lestat was at his lowest. Demoralised and literally beaten bloody. Easy pickings. Worming her way back into his life and into his bed like the conniving harridan she’d always –
Armand closed his eyes for a moment, drew in a deep breath through his nose and slowly let it back out through his mouth.
Gabriella, too, ultimately meant nothing.
But she did complicate matters.
The last eighteen hours had been greatly complicating.
Daniel and Lestat had exposed themselves. Made an unholy, juvenile mess in front of Lestat’s band and 59 other mortals during their drug-fuelled brawl with those misguided children who imagined themselves Armand’s disciples in the hotel they did not yet realise belonged to Louis.
Blatant disregard to the Fourth and Fifth Great Law from all parties involved. Armand had seldom before witnessed vampiric carelessness at such a baffling scale. Lestat should be more appreciative of his human lawyer’s unrivalled skills, though even she would be hard pressed to clean up this latest mess entirely.
And things would become more messy and more complicated still.
Louis was already in town, planning a meeting that was half meant as intervention, half to goad Lestat into even more reckless behaviour.
Talamasca agents Raglan James and ‘Rashid’ (real name not, in fact, Rashid) were currently airborne and would be arriving in Toledo in approximately two hours and forty-seven minutes, bringing with them little complications of their own.
Daniel and Lestat’s public decimation of the Detroit coven would not remain unanswered. There would be more would-be assassins, the flames of their fury stoked higher and higher with each new concert, each hour Lestat spent flouting the rules that had kept them all in safe obscurity for centuries.
Armand had already dispatched more than thrice as many of them as Louis had, unbeknownst to any of his former companions and even to the Talamasca, though the latter no doubt had their suspicions. He had been there, in Detroit, ready to step in should it prove necessary. He would never allow any real harm to come to his fledgling (or to Lestat for that matter, or Louis, all the rest could burn).
But he couldn’t hold them all off, not indefinitely, not with the exponential way in which they were multiplying.
Lestat’s hubris would get them all killed in the end, Armand included. And Armand would have welcomed it, if it hadn’t been for Daniel.
Armand must live so that Daniel could live. And Daniel must live so that Armand would continue to have a reason to.
Daniel.
Daniel.
What was he to do about his Daniel? His beautiful, reckless boy. Especially now, when Armand himself was so afraid?
Armand closed his eyes again, spread his arms out wide and reached out for his beloved. He felt them rushing towards each other, both of them unstoppable forces and immovable objects, and he welcomed the collision.
The first time they had connected like this, it had unmoored Armand, completely. He had never experienced anything like it, had never observed or heard of any two immortals experiencing anything like it. It was overwhelming and entirely beyond Armand’s control, so he had shut it down as quickly as he could, that first time.
He had regretted it almost instantly. But he hadn’t been able to claw his way back to it, not that time.
He could, now. It hadn’t taken that much practice, and it helped that, after the first few times, Daniel had started welcoming it, too.
Sometimes Armand initiated their connection, sometimes Daniel did – unwittingly – by thinking about Armand slightly harder than he usually did. Sometimes it just happened, and they both let it.
Even after all this time, they were still addicted to each other.
It took less than two seconds after Armand had closed his eyes for their minds to find each other and crash together, Daniel’s presence washing over Armand’s like a tumultuous wave, comingling with his own.
He couldn’t see his boy or hear his thoughts, but he could feel him. All of him.
And he could feel Daniel feeling him, welcoming him, pressing his consciousness up against Armand's. It warmed Armand’s long-dead soul like the sun or a fresh kill after a long fast.
It was magnificent and had stirred Armand to tears more than once.
He allowed himself to bask in their connection for several minutes, revelling in the fact that all the world had faded away until it was just them that remained. The fact that he could no longer tell where he ended and Daniel began. Clinging to each other so desperately they almost ceased to be two separate entities.
It was longing and belonging and, above all else, love.
Armand’s own love for Daniel, of course, which he always felt, which had been his constant companion for over half a century. But he also felt the longing and the love Daniel felt for him, which Daniel himself didn’t understand and Armand had not yet found the courage to explain to him.
Daniel hadn’t forgiven Armand for taking those six horrible nights in San Francisco from him. How would he ever forgive him for stealing years worth of memories? Years in which, yes, they had known pain, but also love and joy and wonder and the closest thing to happiness Armand had ever experienced since he had been a young human boy who still believed his parents loved him.
Armand felt his own melancholy seeping into Daniel. He didn’t want to taint the experience like that, so he pulled back, though he would have liked to remain intertwined for much longer and he could tell Daniel wanted him to stay.
The room materialised back around Armand, leaving him feeling colder and emptier than he had before giving into the pull between himself and his fledgling.
But he would endure.
Daniel was safe for now. And Armand would make sure he stayed that way.
48 more hours in Toledo were enough for Armand to decide that enough was enough.
The complications he had predicted were quickly compounding into something he could no longer comfortably manage from a distance.
It was too much of a mess, too many moving parts.
Lestat, Louis and Gabriella all in the same room. Louis at a table with Raglan James and Rashid, who had come to bait him into a murderous rampage against the remaining members of the Detroit coven. The mounting rage of the vampires of the world regarding the murderous rampage that had already taken place at Louis’s Detroit hotel.
The ever-more-tangible threat of the Great Conversion.
And Daniel right in the thick of it. In harm’s way. Perfectly positioned to take maximum damage from whichever of these bombs went off first.
Even Armand could only physically be in one place at a time. Couldn’t diffuse all of these situations at once.
The time had come to extricate his fledgling from the eye of the storm.
For Daniel’s own sake, of course, but also for Armand’s. It had been too long since he had allowed himself to want something, and even longer since he had allowed himself to take it.
(Though, a snide voice in the back of his mind asked, had he not selfishly taken Daniel from the mortal world and into Hell with him only three short years ago? And then been too cowardly to do his duty as a maker and truly claim him?)
Armand would claim him now, finally.
He had followed Daniel to his meeting with Louis, at less of a distance than he normally would. It wouldn’t do for Louis to notice him, and Armand had no desire whatsoever to deal with agents Rashid and James tonight. But Armand couldn’t help himself. The pull between Daniel and himself was too strong and too urgent.
It was fortunate that Daniel exited the building on his own. Armand braced himself and approached, letting their bond draw their bodies closer but trying his damnest not to let it take over his mind just yet.
It was a futile struggle. Armand wanted it too much. Wanted nothing more than to feel Daniel all around and inside him, and for all the world to melt away, which it did. Until all that remained was the force of their connection.
He pushed through the fog until they were only ten feet apart, the closest they had physically been to one another since Daniel’s rebirth.
Daniel’s eyes – the perfect mirror image of Armand’s own – widened when he realised Armand was truly there.
“Hello, Daniel,” Armand said.
And it took him every ounce of restraint he had left not to immediately close the remaining distance between them and throw himself into his fledgling’s arms.