Chapter Text
Armand only goes to 'check on' the fascinating boy reporter so he can finish what Louis started. He promised Louis he wouldn't kill him, but Louis keeps things alive kicking and screaming in pain just so he doesn't have to experience their loss. Armand has never had that impediment.
He knows what to tell Louis—checking on the boy was Louis's idea in the first place, no doubt feeling guilty for attacking young Daniel, but he'd dropped it shortly after mentioning it. Armand picked it up and held it tightly to his chest, and now he's here. For Louis. So he can assure Louis that the boy isn't suffering and have it not be a lie.
He finds Daniel in the alley outside of a bar, passed out against the wall, side of his face pressed into the brick like a tired child nuzzling a pillow. Armand feels his face twist in pity, and he slides, gently, into Daniel's mind. It's buried in a confused, subconscious-heavy fog, but what comes through very clearly is that there is a relatively new and mortal wound in Daniel's psyche, and that his mind is desperately scrabbling to figure out what caused it and never quite making it.
Armand crouches next to Daniel, and hovers a hand just above his shoulder. He feels his lips instinctively sliding up to reveal his fangs. Mercy has always been his instinct, planned or not.
As he watches Daniel, though, as he feels his scattered, desperate dreams messily exploding through his own mind…something shifts inside him. Death would be a kindness, but there are many kindnesses Armand was never afforded by the people with power over him.
He's never had anything to himself. Everything has always been an act of devotion to someone else. Every kill a splint, holding something broken together. Killing this boy wouldn't fix the mounting pile of brokenness in his relationship with Louis. It could be the shattering point for all of it.
He finds himself able to set Louis aside, though, in a way that feels new to him. Daniel twitches against a dream of a cold, whispering fog enveloping him and telling him to rest, and Armand runs the back of his finger down Daniel's cheek, which only makes the boy more tense. He wants something to himself. He wants this boy. And so does Louis.
He runs his tongue over his fangs, base instincts pulling at him like he's still a feral, hungry child, then remembers the part of himself that was Maitre, and forces his mouth closed, like he would have done to any of his coven. He can't end Daniel's pain. He can remove all of the specifics, but something will always remain, twisting a knife Daniel can't even remember being stabbed by.
Arun and Amadeo remain in their shallow graves, ghosts that have followed Armand for centuries, whom he doesn't remember being well enough to appease into silence. He doesn't want to do that to someone else. A bright young reporter with a point of view. Armand wouldn't have been anything, even if he hadn't been turned. A wealthy murderer's boy whore who died young, physically dependent on the man who owned him.
Armand watches Daniel's fitful, uncomfortable sleep. He won't die tonight, but it's only a matter of time, living like this. Armand resolves to keep checking on him. To make sure he doesn't die in pain that Louis caused.
Armand's had scores of deaths blamed on him, some more rightfully than others, and it's an accusation he can handle, even coming from himself. He knows he's done the right thing. Louis doesn't have that ability. He'd fall apart if this boy died because of him.
So Armand will keep Daniel alive. For Louis.
*
From across the Golden Gate, Armand feels the shard of himself he pressed into Daniel to keep track of him. It never pulls more than a fraction of his focus, unless he lets it, but he always feels it. Every moment of consciousness, and even in his shallow dreams, now, too.
He sits on the deck of their Sausalito condo with Louis, and the two of them watch the man-made lights twinkle from all around the Bay, only the dark mass of Angel Island blotting them out, and the only thing in Armand's head is Daniel. Doing anything to feel alive and then anything to make the feeling of being alive stop when it proves to be too much.
"Arun," Louis says, and Armand blinks back into his own body.
"Y-yes, maitre?" he answers.
"Nah, just, you weren't answering me," Louis says. "You were gone. Had to…call you back, I guess."
"Oh," Armand says.
"Where were you?"
"Right here," Armand says, forcing a smile. "Must have just fallen into a trance with my eyes open. Old theatre habits die hard."
"You were looking for our boy," Louis says, smirking. "I didn't mean to make it a whole project for you. I like him, but you don't have to—"
"I know," Armand says.
"How's he doing?"
"Not well."
"Yeah," Louis says, then sighs. "Hey, if he needs help tonight, I'll drive you. Maybe seeing me—"
"I'm sure seeing the man who invited him home to eat him will be very helpful to his mental state," Armand says.
"I didn't invite him home to eat him, things just kinda slid that direction," Louis says.
"Whatever you have to tell yourself."
"I thought we were good?"
"We are," Armand says, with another tight smile. "And I can drive myself."
*
The first time Armand has to step back in to Daniel's life, however briefly, comes sooner than he'd expected.
It's past three in the morning, and Armand feels Daniel getting closer to him. The Golden Gate. There's never a good reason to walk the bridge at night.
He's there in minutes, watching from the shadows as Daniel grips the railing and shakes himself back and forth, likely trying to self-soothe. Most of his existence seems to be spent self-soothing.
Eventually, Daniel takes one long, deep breath, and starts to push himself up on the railing.
"Wait," Armand says, stepping out of the shadows and freezing Daniel in place, running soft fingers over his nervous system, relaxing him and pulling him back from the edge.
Daniel looks at him, squinting through the darkness, and something connects. "I know you."
Louis has never come close to remembering anything Armand's taken out of his mind like a broken toy from a child who will only focus on its uselessness. The fact that this mortal, this boy, is fighting back when even other vampires can't…Armand feels some stir of recognition from the ghosts he houses in himself. Amadeo. He feels kinship in Daniel.
"I think you're mistaking me for someone else," Armand says. "You don't seem well."
"Yeah, might shock you given the circumstances of this meeting, but things are not going great," Daniel says, with a ragged laugh. "I'm pretty sure I know you, though. Don't I?"
"What would keep you from jumping?" Armand asks. His eyes stay fixed on Daniel's, lightly holding the boy in place with his mind, not tightly enough for him to notice.
"No, where do I—Twin Peaks? Midnight Sun?" Daniel asks, not letting go of the thread, not letting Armand gently pull it from his grip. Fascinating. "No. No, it was—Polynesian Mary's, right?"
Armand exhales, startled that he got there. "We've never met," he says, firmly, with a hooked edge, trying to fish the memory of his face back out of Daniel's mind, but Daniel holds onto it tighter.
"Did you follow me? That's pretty fucked up, man."
"It's 'fucked up' to try and stop you from committing suicide?" Armand asks, frustrated.
"It is if you're stalking me, yeah," Daniel says. "Just—go away. Let me die in peace."
"It won't be peaceful," Armand says. "The sound of the wind, the biting, salty cold…halfway down you will feel nothing but fear, and it's the last thing you'll ever feel before all your bones shatter on impact with that filthy, freezing water."
Daniel pauses, breathing hard, looking at the ground between them. Distracted from remembering Armand. Armand takes the opportunity to pull the memory of Polynesian Mary's away while he can.
"I just…" Daniel says, and shrugs, hopelessly. "I'm never gonna be anything. Right? Just…just an underground failure of a fucking journalist who sucks dick for drug money. I keep—I keep hearing this voice in my head, and it's not even my voice, and it just tells me…tells me all of that. Tells me I should rest. That that's all that's left for me."
"Do you want to rest?" Armand asks, softly.
"I think something really fucked up happened to me and I don't…I don't remember it. Or I remember part of it, but there was more," Daniel says. "It's all I think about. I can't—I can't stop. I just wanna stop thinking." He looks up at Armand again with those desperate, hungry eyes. Eager black hole. "Do you know how to make me stop?"
"Go home, Daniel," Armand says, and Daniel's eyes flash alarm at his name. "That room on Haight you haven't touched in weeks. Sleep until you stop feeling like death. Forget that you were ever here, and that you met me. You can't rest yet."
"How do you know my—" Daniel starts, fighting it, and then Armand's words rewrite his brain, and he turns to walk back towards the city through the cold, damp darkness.
*
"So, the kid's okay, though," Louis says, looking at Armand, whose face is entirely blank. "Right?"
"He feels l'appel du vide, Louis," Armand says. "I'm sure you're familiar with it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Louis asks, and Armand raises his eyebrows in surprise.
"You have been at least passively willing to die, if not actively volunteering, for decades."
"Why are you trying to make me mad?" Louis asks, cocking his head. "What's going on with you? You've been off for weeks."
"If I keep having to intervene and then make him forget me, over and over again, I'm going to…" Armand closes his mouth, tilts his head. "I'm going to make it worse. There's only so much a mortal mind can take."
"Then stop making him forget you," Louis says, shrugging and squinting, as if it's that simple.
"You…you want this utter wreck of a man in our lives?" Armand asks.
"I think you do," Louis says. "And, yeah, I dunno. Why not?"
"You want this to make it okay that you've fucked and killed hundreds of men and left me the mutilated remnants to deal with?"
"I wasn't gonna say it like that," Louis says. "Or at all. But. That's part of it."
"It doesn't," Armand says. "It won't."
"I think…he'd be something new, and I think we need something new," Louis says.
"Is this how you pitched Claudia?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you tonight, Arun?" Louis asks, and Armand's spine instinctively straightens.
"I'm sorry, maitre. That was over the line," Armand says. "I'm not sure he's going to want to come here immediately after we…well, meet properly."
"Can't you make him?"
Armand blinks. "Entirely violate his autonomy?"
"How many times have you stopped him from killing himself?" Louis asks.
"…three," Armand says, and it's not the full truth, but it's enough of it. It's the number of times Daniel actively tried to end his own life, incidental and frequent brushes with death caused by his own decisions left uncounted.
"Fuck," Louis says, sounding genuinely winded. "Okay. Yeah. So, three times he tried to claim autonomy over his body in the most extreme way you can, and you stopped him."
"I see where you're going," Armand says.
"You're gonna say 'it's different', but it's not," Louis says. "You hate free will. You're a marionettist."
"I would still rather ease him into it. For our sakes, more than his," Armand says.
"Sure," Louis says. "But if he tries to kill himself again, maybe just bring him here."
"I will be handling this how—"
"Arun."
Whatever effect the name had on Armand decades ago has passed after so many years of use. He would rather Louis just command him like a dog than invoke Arun's name. But he pretends it still works on him, because he knows it still makes Louis feel powerful, and he will always indulge Louis.
"Yes, maitre, whatever you say," he says.