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“Did you say walk in the sun?”
The corner of Armand’s mouth twitched, almost a smile, and Daniel cursed himself inwardly for allowing himself to be reeled in so easily.
“It will take time, of course.” There was a hesitancy to Armand’s voice, to his whole demeanor, that was unusual. Armand had always been so precise, so calculated, but there was a look in his eyes now that Daniel knew intimately. He’d seen it in his own reflection for the last two years. Armand was in freefall.
“I don’t have a spare five centuries to piss away, so if that’s what you’re suggesting-”
“Not that long.”
Daniel let out a long, exasperated sigh, rocked back on his heels, looked around at the now almost deserted park. He didn’t know why he was making a show out of it. Armand knew the moment he’d put the offer forward that Daniel was going to say yes. Still, he did his best to make it seem like he was wrestling with the decision.
“Fine,” he said, once he was convinced Armand was starting to doubt himself. “When do we start?”
Now it was Armand’s turn to put on a show, looking dramatically up to the sky, his eyebrows pinching together mockingly. “We’ll need the sun, I suppose.”
“What, you’re just gonna shove me straight out into the daylight? Like you’re tossing a baby into the pool?”
Now the crease between his eyebrows was genuine. “Why would anybody throw a baby into a swimming pool?”
“It’s a thing. You… forget it.” Daniel shook his head. “So what, then? You’ll send a car for me at sunrise?”
A pained expression flashed across Armand’s face, gone in an instant and replaced with his usual flat look.
“If that is what you wish…” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Where are you staying?”
“You stalked me for fifty two years. You expect me to believe you don’t know where I’m currently showering?”
Armand opened his mouth to argue back, then seemed to think better of it, pressing his lips into a hard line before speaking again. “It’s a poor choice of accommodation. The curtains barely offer any protection from the sun, the whole building is infested with rats, and the owner installed cameras in the bathroom vents so as it happens, Daniel, half the world would know where you were showering if I hadn’t removed it for you.”
“Jesus Christ, you’ve been in my room?”
“Did you listen to anything I just said to you? Louis paid you handsomely for your work and yet you live in squalor. Why?”
“Try spending a few months living on a rock band’s tour bus, you’ll be amazed what constitutes as luxurious after that.”
“Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.” Armand stood up straighter as he spoke, and Daniel felt something like shame brewing in the pit of his stomach, a sensation he hadn’t felt since he was eleven and being scolded by his mom for not putting his laundry away properly.
“I searched the bus while I was waiting for Lestat to wake up.”
“Of course you did.”
“And there was only one coffin. His coffin. So unless the two of you were-”
“No. No, Jesus, that’s not-”
“Then where-”
“I had it figured out, okay? I had a towel closet with no windows, a sleeping bag, and the best noise cancelling headphones money can buy. So that paycheck was being put to good use somewhere.”
“No.” Armand shook his head. “There was not enough room in that closet to sit, let alone lie down.”
“Yeah, no, I… there was a hook on the wall so I just sorta… hung from that.”
Armand blinked at him, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, steepled his fingers together, and tapped them against his chin.
“You hung yourself on the wall? Like a coat?”
“It was surprisingly comfortable.”
“Daniel, I think you should come home with me.”
It felt like more of an instruction than a request, and Daniel found himself unable to come up with a counter argument beyond yelling fuck you and stomping his foot.
“Fine,” he said, getting some small satisfaction from the look of surprise on Armand’s face. “But I’m ordering takeout once we get there, and you’re paying.”
“Whatever you want.”
It wasn’t until they were halfway down the street, Armand leading the way and Daniel trailing a few steps behind him, that it occurred to him to even ask where they were going.
“Where are you staying, anyway?” He asked, breaking into an awkward half jog to catch up to him.
“I’m between places at the moment.”
“That a fancy way of saying you're homeless?” Daniel frowned at him. “Armand, I swear to god, if you’re leading me to a tent in an alleyway after all that bitching-”
“Of course I’m not homeless.” He snapped. “I have countless apartments across countless cities. I just haven’t settled anywhere yet. None of them feel…”
“Like home?”
Amber eyes met his for a moment. “Yes, exactly.”
Daniel tried to imagine this version of Armand, untethered, floating from city to city like a ghost. It wasn’t so dissimilar from his own life for the last two years, but at least he’d had a purpose, ridiculous as it was. Chasing Lestat from state to state, concert to concert. What was Armand chasing? Besides him?
“When you say countless apartments…”
“Yes. It’s becoming something of a problem, actually. I’m starting to lose track of where they all are.”
“You’re paying rent on multiple apartments and you don’t even know where they are?”
“Yes.”
“Twitter would have a field day with you, you realise that?”
“They’re calling it X now.”
“Yeah, and Musk can shove it up his ass. So-” Daniel stopped in his tracks. “Why do you know about Twitter? Do you have a fucking Twitter account?”
Armand continued walking, not acknowledging the question.
“Armand! Are you following me on fucking Twitter?”
He had imagined Armand’s apartment would be something like the brutalist hellscape of his Dubai penthouse, but when Armand led him through the door the reality was anything but. The word that immediately sprang to mind, despite his best intentions, was cozy.
“If this is what between places looks like, I’d hate to see you settled in,” he murmured, looking around the room.
It was small – smaller than his own apartment had been at least – with an open plan kitchen and living area, and every available surface was cluttered with books, decorations, even a couple of potted plants which, upon closer inspection, were definitely real. The couches were littered with blankets and cushions, and the whole room smelled vaguely of… cinnamon?
“It’s this.” Armand held up a candle as Daniel sniffed the air. “It claims to carry the scene of freshly baked cookies. Having never smelled such a thing, I don’t know how accurate that is. I just liked it.”
“This is…”
“Not what you were expecting. No, I imagine not.” He shrugged out of his coat, folding it carefully and setting it down on the arm of the couch. “I keep my instruments of torture in a separate storage facility a few blocks away.”
“I genuinely can’t tell if you’re joking.”
Armand smiled and said nothing, and for the sake of getting through the night unscathed, Daniel decided not to push the issue. He stood awkwardly by the door, feeling, for some reason, as if he needed permission to sit down.
That permission came in the form of Armand nestling himself into an armchair, then nodding towards the couch, and Daniel could feel his eyes tracking him as he made his way over and perched on the edge. He bounced his knee up and down, clenched his fists to keep the tremor at bay.
“You look tired, Daniel.”
The words weren’t said unkindly, but Daniel glared at him anyway.
“If you tell me to rest I’m gonna punch you in the throat.”
Armand frowned. “I was going to ask if you still wanted something to eat.” He nodded towards a stack of takeout leaflets on the coffee table.
“Hm,” Daniel grunted, shuffling the leaflets in his hands like a deck of cards and pulling one at random. “Looks like pizza. You want anything?”
He tossed the menu to Armand, who studied it carefully for a few minutes.
“Three lots of mozzarella sticks. Please.”
Daniel blinked at him. “Are you serious?”
“I like them.”
“Alright, whatever.”
It was hard to truly enjoy the blood filling his mouth with Armand sitting a few feet away, meticulously pulling each mozzarella stick apart, stretching it until it snapped, then setting the two halves down and moving on to the next one. The delivery guy underneath him made a sound that was somewhere between a gurgle and a scream and Daniel sunk his teeth back into him.
“Perhaps I should have put some newspapers down.”
Daniel looked down at the mess of blood and gore pooling underneath him.
“Sorry.” He made a feeble attempt to cover the blood stained carpet up with the driver’s corpse. “I’ll uh… I can clean it.”
“You can’t. It will need replacing.” There was an amused smile on Armand’s face as he pushed his box of bisected mozzarella sticks aside and walked over, crouching in front of him. “Are you always this messy?”
He wanted so badly to lie and act like he’d fucked up Armand’s carpet out of spite. To make some sarcastic comment that Armand would roll his eyes at. But there was a shift when Armand’s eyes met his, and somehow Daniel knew that if he were to look out of the window right now, he would find the streets ghostly silent.
Rapture.
“I don’t mean to do it.” He glanced down at the ruined throat of the delivery driver, a mess of shredded flesh. “I just… once I smell the blood it’s like a switch flips inside of me and I lose control.” And it scares the shit out of me.
“Once you have bitten them, the blood will come.” Armand swiped his thumb across Daniel’s cheek, popped it into his mouth to suck the blood off. “You don’t have to tear them apart.”
“I know that.”
“How often are you feeding?” He swiped some more blood from Daniel’s face, licked it from the pad of his thumb.
“Couple of times a week.”
“Daniel, it’s not enough.” Armand paused in his cleaning, sat back a little. “When I was a fledgling I would have fed four, five times a day had my maker not been there to drum some restraint into me. You are starving yourself.”
“I’m not… doing it on purpose.”
“Is it taking lives that you are struggling with? Because there are alternative-”
“No! It’s not that. I’ve just… I’m busy, okay?”
“Because you insist on maintaining your human persona.”
“Yes!”
Armand touched his cheek again, letting his hand linger there this time. “Starvation can turn us into the worst possible version of ourselves, Daniel. You have no idea what the consequences can be. No idea of what it will-”
“I’ll try every other day, okay?”
“You should be feeding daily.”
“I’ll try.”
That seemed to appease Armand enough for him to let the topic drop for the time being. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, which made Daniel laugh because who the hell carries handkerchiefs around with them anymore, and went back to work cleaning the blood from Daniel’s face.
“I’ve been thinking-”
“That’s worrying.”
“About our sleeping arrangements for the morning,” Armand continued, ignoring him.
“What about the day walking?”
“You need to rest first,” he said, smiling when Daniel narrowed his eyes at him. “Ah, you see? I have said it. And the world continues to turn.”
“Asshole.”
“You need a coffin.” He held up his hand when Daniel opened his mouth. “I won’t hear any arguments about it, Daniel. You’ve spent the last year hanging from a peg in a closet, you are going in the coffin. The issue is that the only coffin here is mine…” He paused, glancing away from him. “I am happy to take the couch.”
Daniel opened his mouth again, this time to tell Armand that he absolutely would be taking the couch because there was no way in fucking hell he was sharing a coffin with him, but for some reason the words wouldn’t come out. All he could think about was being alone in the dark, and waking up to find Armand gone again.
“No.”
A small crease formed between Armand’s brows as he tilted his head, questioning.
“I don’t… I want…” Christ, this would be a lot easier with telepathy. “You can stay in the coffin.”
“I already told you I want you to take the-”
“I know, I know. I’m saying… We can both take the coffin.”
Armand blinked at him. “You want to share? With me?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“Are you certain?”
Daniel considered it for a moment before nodding.
“Very well.” Armand got to his feet, offering out a hand to help Daniel up which he pointedly ignored. “You’ll need a shower. I don’t want blood in the coffin.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
When Daniel came out of the shower he found a pair of silk pyjamas waiting for him, neatly folded on the countertop. His size. Armand slipped past him and into the bathroom before he had the chance to ask about it.
The sound of the shower faucet acted as background noise as he snooped around the rest of the apartment. The kitchen was stocked with an inexplicable collection of ingredients which seemed to be following, if nothing else, a colour scheme. A half disassembled microwave sat on the counter along with an assortment of screwdrivers, and Daniel could only assume Armand had been taking it apart recreationally. He found a small closet with a vacuum and some extra coats hanging up, and the second door he tried led him to the bedroom.
There was no bed, obviously. Just a sleek, dark wood coffin in the center of the room. But that wasn’t what interested him. Instead, he found himself perusing the shelves surrounding the room, overflowing with books and trinkets. There was a record player in the corner, complete with two crates of vinyl, but before Daniel could reach them and cast judgement on Armand’s music taste, he heard the door clicking shut behind him.
Armand lingered awkwardly by the door, dressed in a matching set of pyjamas, red where Daniel’s were white.
“Do you…” Armand cleared his throat. “Do you want to be on top?”
Maybe it was the absurdity of the sentence, or the absurdity of the situation, but Daniel laughed at that, almost hysterically, until there were tears pricking the corners of his eyes. Armand said nothing and watched him with a pained expression on his face.
“Sorry,” he said, straightening up. “I’m sorry. That’s… I can be… it’s fine.”
“I want you to be comfortable.”
“It’s fine, Armand.”
He strode across the room and lifted the lid off the coffin, which was a lot lighter than he expected, gesturing for Armand to go ahead. He tried to play it off as some kind of chivalry, but in truth the idea of being stuck inside a coffin with a body on top of him did make him feel a little nauseous.
Armand held his gaze for a few more seconds before shrugging, sliding his feet out of his slippers and stepping into the coffin. As he settled himself inside, Daniel briefly considered whether it would be better to go top to toe, before deciding that having Armand’s feet in his face would be more awkward and climbing in on top of him.
It wasn’t as tight a squeeze as he’d expected, but it was certainly cozy. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in such close proximity to somebody he wasn’t actively… well he didn’t want to think about that right now. After some jostling, he found a spot just below Armand’s collarbone where his head seemed to fit nicely, and he didn’t kick up a fuss when Armand’s arm circled around him because really, where else was it supposed to go?
“Comfortable?” Armand asked.
“Uh huh.”
He felt Armand shift, heard the creak of the coffin lid closing, and suddenly everything was dark. Daniel was immediately aware that in his whole life he had never experienced real, true dark like this. It was all encompassing. A complete absence of anything. It was… nice. The dark was like a weight settled on top of him, wrapping around him, pulling him down, but with one sense cut off completely, he was all the more aware of Armand’s physical presence beneath him. He was aware of every tiny movement Armand made. His throat bobbing as he swallowed, a twitch in his foot, the swish of his eyelashes as he blinked in the darkness.
“So people actually bang inside these things? Sounds like bullshit.” The thought was vocalised before Daniel’s filter could kick in, and Armand made a noise that might have been a laugh, or might have just been a very heavy exhale.
“I imagine it’s a very… intimate experience.”
“So you’ve never-”
“No.” Armand’s tone was clipped.
“Alright.” He wriggled restlessly. “You ever do this with your maker?”
“No.” The edge was gone, replaced with a sadness. “No, my maker had a coffin prepared for me long before I was turned. There was never a need to share.”
“Hm.”
Armand’s fingers found their way into his hair, nails raking across his scalp, and the sensation sent tingles down his back.
It was stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. But in the dark, in the coffin, with Armand’s arms around him, the thought suddenly occurred to him that he was safe. For one night he didn’t have to think about Lestat, or Great Conversions, or armies of vampires showing up screaming about Great Laws.
“Killed a bunch of vamps in Michigan the other week.” He wasn’t sure why he said it, other than a small voice in the back of his mind that longed for some kind of approval.
“Yes, I heard about that.” Armand continued carding his fingers through his hair. “Did they hurt you?”
“Naw. Turns out I make a decent vampire slayer.” He frowned. “How’d you hear about it?”
“I was in the area.”
“You’ve been following me the whole time, haven’t you?”
“Lestat has painted a remarkably large target on his back, and on yours by extension.” Armand paused for a moment, his fingers stilling. “If I felt you were in any real danger, I would have intervened.”
“Might have been helpful to know that at the time.”
“No, it wouldn’t. If you had known, you might have let your guard down. It would have made you vulnerable.”
“Well, maybe I’d like a break from having my guard up every once in a while. You ever consider that?”
“I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“For what?” He felt Armand flinch at the spike in his voice, couldn’t find it in himself to care. “What are you actually sorry for, Armand?”
“If you had allowed me to read my letter-”
“Fuck your letter!”
Armand was quiet for a long time, and it was only the repeated tap tap tap of his foot against the side of the coffin that indicated he was still awake. The silence stretched on, thick and heavy, and Daniel began to wonder if there was still time to tap out and sleep on the couch when he felt Armand inhale deeply.
“I have been unfathomably cruel to you, Daniel, and unspeakably selfish. And more than anything I want to tell you that if I could, I would undo it all. That I would take it all back in a heartbeat. But it would just be another in the endless list of lies I have told you and… the truth is the only thing I have left to offer you.”
He paused, and Daniel looked up at him, interest piqued.
“The truth is that I have played it over in my head a thousand times, and there is no version where I am able to let you die. Even when I know I must. Even when it would be sparing you an eternity of suffering. I can’t do it. Couldn’t do it. And I know that cannot possibly make any sense to you, when you have only ever known me as a monster. I suppose it is monstrous, really, to condemn you to this life for such selfish reasons. But I would rather live with those consequences for the rest of my life than live in a world where you no longer exist.”
Daniel tried to swallow, his throat dry and tight all of a sudden. He was apologising for turning him. Of course he was. Of course that was the thing he regretted, tying himself to Daniel for the rest of eternity. His mind drifted back to Armand’s words during their interview in Dubai, the same words that had replayed over and over in his head for the last three years.
“The idea repulsed me. Repulses me.”
“Is this another one of your self-flaggelation things?” He asked, trying in vain to put some distance between the two of them. “Locking yourself in a box with me when I obviously disgust you so much?”
“Daniel, did you listen to a word I just said?”
“Yeah, I heard you. I heard that you think the only fucking thing you think you have to be sorry for is turning me into this shit excuse for a vampire.”
“You’re not… I like it well enough, how you’ve turned out.”
Daniel snorted. “Is that the best you can say?”
“What can I do?” Armand snapped. “ I try to tell you the truth, and you reject it. I try to make amends for burdening you with the gift and you continue to be angry with me for it.”
“I’m not angry with you for turning me, you god damn immortal idiot!” He tried to sit up and smacked his head on the lid of the coffin, which only infuriated him further. “I’m pissed because you fucking left!”
He couldn’t think about it – had been avoiding thinking about it for three years – but it was all there, in his head. A wound that had festered and grown inside him, rotting him from the inside out. He barely remembered it, really. The memories were just feelings. Fear, panic, confusion, pain. Somehow he’d ended up in a cramped airplane bathroom, hollowed out, sitting in a puddle of everything that once made him human. He’d refused to accept the reality, as he stumbled off the plane and into the waiting car. Armand had obviously gone off ahead, had to make arrangements for him, control freak that he was. But when he’d reached his apartment, hauling the limp body of the driver behind him, and found it cold and empty, he knew with horrible certainty that Armand was gone.
In the pitch black, Armand’s hand found the back of Daniel’s head, rubbing small circles with his thumb over the spot he’d smacked against the coffin lid. He wanted to tell him to knock it off, but the fight had drained out of him. Maybe that was a sign that dawn was starting to break outside. Maybe it was a sign that he was still broken.
“I thought,” Armand said slowly, softly. “That you would hate me for what I did to you. And that my presence would only cause you more pain.”
“Might’ve been right. But I still needed you.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
The only thing he could see was the faint orange glow of Armand’s eyes, but he could imagine his expression. The tilt of his brows, the downward pull of his mouth, the crease of his forehead. He guided Daniel’s head back down against his chest, going back to stroking his hair.
“July 19th, 2022. You stagger out of your apartment, consumed with hunger. The first person you see will become your meal for the night. It would have been a woman, on her way home from an awful date and doomed to cross paths with you at the wrong time. Her cropped hair and light brown skin would have reminded you so much of your youngest daughter that the guilt would have eaten you alive. I send her down a different street, away from you, nudging an older man with an unfulfilling life into your path instead.”
Daniel shook his head, and Armand circled his arm around him.
“I thought that I could support you from the shadows. I thought it would be enough.” He sighed. “It wasn't enough. I’m sorry.”
He'd lost count of how many times Armand had said that in the last twenty minutes. But there was a catch in his voice this time, a glimpse of genuine emotion that made something inside Daniel’s chest clench, and suddenly he wanted to be a million miles away from this conversation.
“It’s fine,” he said, his tone clipped.
“It isn’t,” Armand persisted. “It isn't fine, Daniel. I watched you. I felt your anger, and your grief, but more than anything else I felt your fear. You were alone. More alone than you have ever been, and so afraid.”
“Stop.”
“And I should have been there with you. I should have taught you how to find victims who will not burden your soul for weeks and months at a time. I should have shown you how to feed without wasting the blood. I should have given you a home, and a coffin, and made you feel safe. You needed me, and I abandoned you, and now you have forgotten what safety feels like. You have forgotten that it’s something you were ever deserving of. I took that away from you.”
Daniel hated crying. Hated it even more now that he was a vampire, with all the additional annoyances that fucking blood tears came with. He knew Armand must be able to tell, pressed this close to him – if nothing else, he’d be able to smell the blood – but he still tried to hold it in, pressing his lips together, fidgeting to try and disguise the way his shoulders were shaking.
Beneath him, Armand was still for a moment, and it brought him some small modicum of comfort to think that he was just as uncomfortable with this situation as Daniel was. Then he brought his hand up to the back of Daniel’s head and started stroking his hair again.
“I’m here,” he whispered, lips brushing his ear. “I’m here now. I’m here.”
Daniel clung to Armand’s shirt, so tightly his nails pierced the fabric, pressed his face into the crook of Armand’s neck and inhaled the inhuman scent of him.
“I’m here.” Armand held him tighter. Tight enough that if Daniel had been human, his bones would have been crushed.
His body continued to tremble as the sobs kept coming, but it wasn’t from the grief and the loneliness anymore. Now it was relief. An outpouring of everything he’d been holding in for the last three years. Hell, the last fifty years. And Armand continued to hold him, rubbing small circles between his shoulders, massaging the soft spot behind his ear with his thumb, whispering over and over again that I’m here now and it’s okay, you’re okay until finally Daniel was hollowed out.
“So that’s your carpet and your pyjamas ruined,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Coffin’s probably a write-off too. Who do you even call to clean blood out of a coffin?”
“It’s not important, Daniel. I can get another.”
He sniffled and rubbed his face with the heel of his hand, and a second later he felt Armand maneuvering his head, turning it to the side and offering up his wrist.
“Drink.”
He didn’t argue, between his mess of a meal and crying out half his body weight in blood, he felt so wrung out he could barely think.
Armand’s hand lingered on the back of his head, perhaps as a reassurance, or perhaps ready to yank him away if he started ripping at flesh again. He bit into him almost shyly, just hard enough to break the skin, sighing when Armand’s blood flooded his mouth. It was richer, thicker than human blood, and achingly familiar. Even though they were sealed off from everybody else, Daniel could feel that outside of the coffin, the rest of the world had fallen silent again, leaving just the two of them.
He managed a few mouthfuls before Armand’s skin healed over.
“Again,” he instructed, and he sunk his teeth in again, took a few more swallows. “Again.”
Daniel bit five times before Armand was satisfied he’d drunk enough, withdrawing his wrist and pressing a kiss to his temple. He managed to maneuver himself out of his bloodied shirt, lifting the lid of the coffin just enough to toss the balled up fabric away. There was still blood soaked into Daniel’s clothes, into the fabric of the coffin, but neither of them cared enough to do anything more. Daniel nestled against him, cheek against bare skin, and listened to the thrum of the blood still moving through Armand’s veins.
“Armand?”
“Mm?”
“You’re not gonna leave again, are you?”
“Never.” Armand’s fingers stilled in his hair. “Unless you send me away, of course. But I will make sure you can always reach me, next time.”
“Yeah? You gonna leave me an email address this time?”
“If you wish. Or you can tweet me.”
“That’s not… fuck you.”
Armand chuckled, a rumble in his chest that Daniel felt in his bones, and he laughed too, then shut his eyes. It wasn’t until he was on the very cusp of sleep that Armand nudged a curl of hair away from his ear and whispered to him.
“For what it’s worth, Daniel, I’m glad that it was you, in the end.”
Daniel didn’t respond, except to snuggle a little closer to him. He couldn’t vocalise the thought, could barely even grasp hold of it inside his head. But deep amongst all the fears and the resentments and the uncertainties, was the knowledge that of all the vampires in the world, he was glad it was Armand.