Chapter Text
In the end, Daniel goes back to New York.
He’s impulsive and vindictive and yes, maybe just mean, but he’s not an idiot. He takes ten seconds to freeze like an animal in the headlights as Armand stares up at him from his crumpled position on the floor, and then Armand shifts and Daniel flees. He slams his laptop shut, fire be damned, swipes everything into his satchel, and leaves. His phone buzzes all the way down the elevator and through the building; by the time he’s ordered a cab and slid himself, heart pounding, into the backseat, he’s blocked those Talamasca fucks and is ready for his book, his future, and his ten million dollars. What Louis doesn’t know about the cloud doesn’t hurt him, and no matter how much those suits had helped him in the end, he's never been a fan of secret agencies. No good journalist is.
It’s only been two weeks, so he’s not sure why he expects his apartment to be coated with dust when he returns, like it’s been a lifetime since someone stepped inside. The corners are a little dustier and there’s a carton of Chinese food in his fridge he missed behind a jug of juice, rotten and smelling like death, but besides that the place is the same mildly grungy way he left it.
He takes the trash out. He hoovers the corners. He calls his doctor and gets his levodopa delivered to the house, where he slots it in his usual place in the back of the fridge and glares at it balefully for a moment, remembering the hand-delivered expert doctor that had done this all for him in Dubai. Then he closes the fridge.
There’s a puzzle abandoned on his table, the empty cardboard box where the original cassettes had been delivered to him still laying next to it. He recycles that and finishes the puzzle.
Before bed, he checks his answering machine, an ancient lump of tech that crouches on his nightstand like an toad. There’s his agent, fussing about this new book he’s unsure will ever get published, a long-term researcher of his asking if he has any gigs because she’s between jobs, and a creepy as fuck message from those yokels back in Dubai warning him to keep the burnt remains of his encrypted computer close and to keep watch for—. That one he deletes before it finishes, sourly, and sits on the bed. Nothing from his daughters, although he should’ve expected that.
He had landed in New York that morning at eleven after a grueling eight hour flight back, not any easier with his first class flight tickets when he still had the screaming of those two arguing in his head the whole way back. There had been a lot of whiskey involved on that flight, and a lot of telling the flight attendant to charge everything to the card on file as he gorged himself on expensive food he’s sure his doctor will see on his next round of blood tests. It’s worth it just to imagine Armand getting the credit card statement.
But now, at almost ten at night, he’s barely tired. Although, Daniel can admit, that might be the shock.
He’s a damn good journalist. He knows that. The world knows that. But no one is built to sit in a room with two apex predators as they start to go for each other’s throats.
He’s gotta check the apartment for bugs. He’s gotta check his computer for bugs, and probably his mailbox, and probably the Citi Bikes outside if he ever wants to use those again. Fuck. Whatever that group is up to, he wants no part in it, not even inadvertently. He wants to publish his book, languish in the inevitable backlash of trying to publish a seemingly fictional horror novel as nonfiction, earn a fuckton of money in lieu of not getting closure for anything that happened fifty years ago, redo his will, wait until his body begins to rot enough that he can’t live alone any longer, and then fly to the Netherlands and fucking die. Is that so hard?
Daniel rolls over. Alice’s voice shrieks in his head about wearing outside clothes on the bed, and he gets up to shower. There’s a spot of blood on his collarbone he peels off his clothes, and he wipes it away with the pad of one finger.
Another warm trickle of blood as he flex his shoulders, a messy smear on his white undershirt. Several of the books on the shelves above him had fallen directly on top of him; his skin is very thin and weak these days. He’s got a smattering of bruises along his back from the books falling on him, several places where the skin had simply caved in and split, a mark of the elderly. He examines those in the mirror after he finishes stripping, one lip pulled up in disgust at the blue-black staining draped over his shoulders like a cloak. His doctor is definitely going to bitch about that.
You’ve got to be more careful, he’s always being scolded. You’re not forty anymore, you can’t be running across war zones and into the tents of guerrilla warfare leaders.
Daniel presses one trembling finger down into the bruise, imagines telling him the truth when he’ll ask. That sounds like a great way to get dementia tacked onto his list of diagnoses.
He gets in the shower. The thinnest tinge of pink colors the water as he watches it circle the drain.
+
The next morning: in the lampshade, really?
“This is kind of pathetic. I know you all had this gentleman spy look thing going on, but this isn’t actually a Bond movie, and blindness isn’t a Parkinson’s symptom,” Daniel tells the bug gleefully before putting it down the garbage disposal and hearing the metal shriek.
There’s four more that he can find: under his mattress, in the back of a kitchen cabinet, on the inside of his toilet tank, and on his fire escape. “This is New York,” he tells that last one dryly. “I’d be shocked if you can hear anything but honking on this one.” He throws it clean across the street into pile of trash cans, where hopefully the rats will get it.
It’s possible, probable even, that there’re more that he can’t find, but he’s got two years of CIA training, on-and-off on several different assignments, under his belt to feel confident enough he’s got at least most of them, and it’s not like he really talks to anyone in here anyway. The only humiliating thing they might pick up is him trying to call his daughters, once each, and leaving his own slightly pathetic voicemails when they don’t respond.
Daniel unpacks, draws his own IV of medication and winces as he slides the needle into the port on his arm. It shouldn’t hurt, but there’s always been something about seeing the sliver of metal vanish beneath his skin that he doesn’t like. He can probably figure out a way to blame the vampires for that, too, when he gets over the brief wash of nausea. The rest of his afternoon is dedicated to reorganizing his notes, transcribing the final few stretches of interviews, taking down his notes on the few interactions he had with Louis off-camera before his mind loses them again, and backing everything up onto several different hard drives like a paranoid shut-in, which, well.
He treats himself to berating the bug obviously tucked away in the back of his mailbox that night, after everyone has gone to bed and he has the entryway of his apartment building to himself. A couple walks past the door, seeing him muttering to seemingly himself at eleven at night, and keep walking—he’s probably not even in the top five strangest things they’ve seen on the streets of New York today.
There’s nothing on the Citi Bikes, but he’ll check tomorrow. There’s a bodega down the street that’s open until one am; he masks up and gets himself a hot chocolate that he’s sure will taste more like chocolate milk and a few bags of Doritos he’s again sure his doctor will be able to see next week during his next round of labs. The bodega guy is happy to see him, at least, his face crinkled up behind his mask.
“Where’ve you been?” he calls, far too loud for the short distance between them as Daniel checks out, thumbing a few bills out of his wallet and mutinously thinking of Armand’s credit card statement again.
“Dubai,” he answers, short but not unkindly, and the man gives a wordless crow of enjoyment.
“Anything I can read?”
“You’ll have to wait for the book,” Daniel responds, grinning up at him and trying not to show how tired the idea makes him, and he crows again.
“I’ll wait!” he says, and pushes the chips across the counter to him, safely tucked away in a plastic bag he shouldn’t be giving customers. Daniel thanks him and tucks the bag beneath his coat. It’s the end of July, far too hot to be wrapped up in the way he is, but it’s still hard to warm up in the muggy night as he makes his way back to the apartment.
He checks the Citi Bikes again. This time, a well-meaning but drunk, idiotic tourist tries to give him instructions on how to rent one out, speaking slowly to him like he’s a child all the way up the steps until he opens his apartment building’s door and closes it in her face. “She one of yours?” he asks the mailbox, and goes upstairs.
Daniel unloads the snacks on the counter, keys in one hand and drink in the other, ignoring the light switch to fumble around in the dark, sipping his powdery, hot milk and grimacing. He glances at the spoon in the sink before going for the drawer, pulling out a clean one and stirring the drink himself as he rummages in the cabinets for a bag of marshmallows. Coming up empty, he settles for ice cream, ancient and scalded over with freezer burn, mixing it into his drink to make a slightly more flavorful concoction, giving the empty ice tray a little shake to dislodge it from the wall. The breeze from the open window chills as he walks into the living room; he goes over and closes it.
He stands there for a moment, staring into his living room, back to the wall. The window casts a square panel of moonlight onto the ratty rug by the television; through the kitchen pass-through window the green numbers on the microwave give a small radius of light. The short hallway leading down into his bedroom looks very black indeed in comparison.
“I know you all don’t need permission to enter, but surely you know it’s a bit impolite,” Daniel drawls into the dark.
It could be either of them, loitering behind the shadows, or another one entirely—all he knows is that there’s one there, just beyond his sight. He’d place his bets on Louis, for most things and any day, so it’s a mild surprise when materializing between one blink and the next is the vampire Armand, peeling his way out of the pitch of the hallway.
He stays there, half-hidden in shadows, and Daniel can’t actually see him much at all, but the glittering gold of his eyes shine like a cat’s in the dark.
“Well,” Daniel says, knowing he sounds smug but also knowing he’s always enjoyed poking the bear, “someone’s still in the doghouse.”
“I did knock,” Armand replies in that airy, gentle voice of his, like smoke rising from a chimney, “but you were out.”
“I was out for five minutes,” Daniel snorts. “Don’t pretend like you weren’t flying above the streets like a giant cockroach and watching me.”
“They tell me those kinds of snacks are bad for your health,” Armand says in response and finally steps out into the light.
The Dubai penthouse had been cast in harsh shades of gray and concrete, the curtains always drawn and the lighting harsh and fluorescent. Armand had always been cut in angles of black or white, blocky and obvious against the modern decor, but here, in the moonlight and the lived-in mess of Daniel’s apartment, he looks smaller. The swathes of fabric he’s wrapped in are nondescript and layered, giving him a wraithlike look that almost flows in some nonexistent breeze as he steps forward.
Daniel slurps his drink. The sweetness is so strong it makes his molars ring. “Tell me, how long did you lay there on the ground like a squashed bug after I left? How long did it take you to realize Louis wasn’t coming back?” When Armand doesn’t answer, Daniel switches gears. “Couldn’t have been that long, if you’re here now. Did you take your own private jet over or did you simply float across the Atlantic?” Armand had stopped in the middle of the room, picture-poised in the middle of the square of moonlight. Daniel moves around him to take a seat on the sofa facing the television, deliberately turning his back to him as he flops down. “Thanks for the flight back, by the way. Hope you don’t mind the credit charges.”
He’s not going to look back. He’s not. He keeps his eyes forward into the black screen of the TV, though, seeing if the reflection of that vague black shape moves. There’s no point to moving, not really. If Armand is here to exact his revenge for Daniel breaking up his sham of a marriage, then there’s nothing he can do about it. There’s even less about it he can do now than he did fifty years ago. What’s he going to do: tremble Armand to death?
The couch makes a creaking noise, old and ragged, as Armand instead eases his way onto the other cushion. Daniel didn’t even see him move around the back of it—too fast, Daniel thinks. The curtains over his window are fluttering with the wind from his movement.
“I took the jet,” Armand says smoothly. “I got here a few hours before you; the convenience of escaping airport security and your American TSA cannot be overstated.”
“Uh-huh,” Daniel replies. “I bet you’ve got a carbon footprint the size of Godzilla’s. You’re the one that’s going to have to deal with a dying Earth, you know, once you take that jet enough to fuck up the atmosphere. And you didn’t answer my first questions.”
“I wasn’t aware I was still being interviewed.” There’s that lilting smile, small and charming, as he pillows his face on one hand to watch Daniel. It’d be far more convincing if Daniel couldn’t see the two little divots in his lip where his fangs dig in, unsheathed and ready for attack.
He takes another obnoxiously loud drink instead. “It’s polite to answer people when they ask you questions. Just like it’s polite not to break into their apartments and stare at them from the dark.”
“I thought standing in the dark as you opened the door might’ve been worse.”
“And waiting outside the apartment building like a normal person?”
Armand just smiles. “Louis did text me about our arrangements,” he responds instead. “The penthouse is in my name, but I’ve graciously decided to let him stay there. I’m working up the paperwork now to have it transferred to him, but we’ve agreed to chat about things further when he’s had the chance to calm down. For now, I’ve decided to give him an ocean of space, but I have no property on this side of the Atlantic. So here I am.”
Daniel rolls his eyes in response. Sure. How gracious of Armand. He’d bet that whatever calm text conversation Armand is implying here was probably far more vengeful and hideous on Louis’ end, which is much deserved. When Armand opens his mouth to lie about something else, Daniel holds up his spoon to silence him. Armand closes his mouth, vaguely outraged.
Fine, he’s pushing a little bit. So what? This is his apartment, and if Armand wants to kill him it won’t matter what he’ll do.
“Save it. I know what a breakup looks like. The better question is, why are you coming to me about it? I’m the one who broke up your little sham. Responsible for three divorces now,” he says, pointing the spoon at himself before tucking it back away into his drink. Better not to go overboard. Armand lets his gaze drift down to Daniel’s neck, lingering on the crescent chunks peeking out of the collar of his shirt, before drawing his gaze back up. “You’re doing a really great job of acting like someone who’s planning on eating me,” Daniel continues, chuckling only slightly, but Armand frowns.
“I’ve gone through quite some trouble over the course of your life to keep you alive; it’s safe to say killing you is not something I’m interested in at this point.”
“You sure do a lot of grandstanding about it. This time I won’t save your life, and all that,” Daniel says, letting his voice drift into the posh tones of one of Armand’s many accents, getting a narrow-eyed look in return. “And you’re not answering the question again.”
Armand lets one arm dangle over the back of the couch, sliding down slightly to let his cheek tuck against his own shoulder. It gives him a pouty, open look, peering up at Daniel like he’s the one with power in this situation. It would, again, be more effective if the big, lovely eyes looking up at him were human-colored and not radioactive yellow, glowing in the dark, and if Armand bothered to blink more than once a minute.
“This is what humans do, don’t they?” Armand asks, letting his voice drop into a register that’s not seductive, but not his normal one either. Playful, maybe, as if that’s a mood a predator can give off. As if that’s a mood Armand is capable of directing to Daniel, who’s very responsible for his situation. “Crashing on their friends’ couches when there’s a blip in their romances?”
It’s Daniel’s turn to narrow his eyes. Everything about that sets off his bullshit alarms, every single one of them blaring in his head that he’s being lied to. Alongside the general mental shrieking that comes with his hindbrain telling him he’s in the presence of an apex predator and needs to run run run, he takes a moment to push down the clamor of his mind. “Except we’re not friends. We’re actually very much not friends; you think I’m responsible for Louis breaking up with you—don’t, I can see it in your eyes—and frankly, you kind of both scare and disgust me.” Daniel shrugs, as if it’s all the same to him. “And I can’t imagine the great vampire Armand deigning himself to sleep on my fucked-up sofa. This thing’s been here since the nineties.”
“Well,” Armand only says. “I saw you have a guest bedroom.”
“That’s for my daughters when they visit.”
“And do they?” Armand asks, clarifying after a moment, “Visit?” He’s still looking up at him with those big eyes, now too cold and blank to be anything but cruel. Daniel bites back a wince by curling his hand in the blanket tossed over the couch—he’ll never get used to it, the way the vampires’ moods turn like that.
Then it occurs to him, belatedly, that Armand thinks he’s being kicked out.
“Take it down a notch. I wasn’t saying no. You wanna take over the spare bedroom, be my guest. Be aware I did not pre-arranged a coffin to be put in there just in case one of my vampiric friends decided to stop by,” Daniel says, letting his voice hiss out the word, because no, really, what the fuck?
Armand draws himself out of his feigned pout and to his feet in one fluid pose, landing on the balls of his feet like a dancer. “I prefer the softness of a bed now that I don’t have to worry about the sun,” he says, giving Daniel another little smile. And with a movement somewhat akin to bow, “Thank you, Daniel. You’ll forgive me, but I was waiting for you to get home to sleep. I’m quite tired.”
“Sure you are. There’re spare towels in the closet if you want to shower. If vampires do that sort of thing,” Daniel responds, unsmiling in the face of Armand’s charming little skit. “I’ll be putting together my notes from Louis’ interview—and yours, at this point. If you want to stay here, I’m gonna be asking some follow-up questions.”
Armand’s face doesn’t change. “Of course. You have work to do, I won’t be in your way and will assist in the ways I can.”
He stays like that another moment, hand tucked into his pseudo-bow, before Daniel speaks again. “And if you wanna cut the bullshit at any point and tell me what you’re really doing here at any time, I’d be interested in that, too.”
Armand’s face still remains unchanged as he pulls himself up to full height and turns towards the darkened hallway. “It’s interesting to see your paranoia remains unchanged, even when on your own territory. Goodnight, Daniel.” He turns into the bathroom, clicking the door closed, and is gone. The lights inside don’t turn on.
Daniel thinks what a fucking freak loudly at the bathroom and hopes Armand can hear it.
The sigh, he lets out. Jesus, he hasn’t smoked for seven years and his fingers are itching for it suddenly, his mouth dry and aching for nicotine in a way it hadn’t back in Dubai. That had been another world, safe and distant from his New York City hovel, and Armand here in his home somehow seems more real and yet also like a paper cut-out, held up against a false backdrop. Daniel reaches out a hand to the other cushion. Cold, like he’d rested a bag of ice there.
Definitely real.
He lets himself sit there for another ten minutes, his shitty cocoa going cold on the coffee table, before admitting to himself that Armand is probably hiding and he’s not going to get anything by watching the bathroom door and waiting for him to stop standing in the dark.
Spoons, into the dishwasher. Armand doesn’t even eat; he’s got no business using Daniel’s cutlery. By the time he puts everything away, dumps out the cocoa and puts his Doritos in the cabinet, the bathroom door is open again and Armand is gone. Going into the hallway feels like walking into the mouth of a shark, but his own bedroom is down there, the door still cracked open from where he left it.
Slowly, Daniel makes his way down the hallway. He brushes his teeth in the bathroom that looks to all the world to have been completely untouched: no residual water from the shower, metal fixtures warm to the touch, his towels dry. The idea of Armand simply standing in here, unmoving in the dark, makes his skin crawl. He only peeks into the guest bedroom, and it’s fair game since Armand hasn’t shut the door all the way.
There’s a distinct lump in bed. Tucked away to one side, the other still made sharp, army-style, from Daniel never shaking the habit from a three-month stint camping out on the Ukrainian border. It looks to all the world like he’s ready for Louis to crawl into the other side.
For the first time, Daniel recognizes that Armand might be trying to cause an emotion besides abject terror and disgruntled paranoia. The melancholia emanating from the scene feels like it could’ve been pulled from a painting.
It still doesn’t make Daniel feel bad for him. Not one bit. If anything, Armand’s open manipulation of the scene makes his lip curl.
He closes the door and lets Armand sleep.
+
Armand is gone when he wakes up, his side of the bed made neatly but not in his preferred military-style. It’s not like Daniel’s going to go in there and fix it; as far as he’s concerned, that room is basically radioactive until Armand leaves. He’s probably hunting, which bothers Daniel less than he think it should. There are plenty of people in this city who deserve to get eaten.
He gets rid of some of the more embarrassing things around the apartment, just to avoid the weight of Armand’s placid and knowing glances. The half-finished puzzle goes back in its box, he eats an entire bag of Doritos as both breakfast and lunch, and gives himself a transfusion. That last one is to save the awkwardness of fucking around with own veins in front of an animal who wants to put his tongue against his puncture wounds.
The only other thing on his schedule for the next is to cringe and open up his laptop to get scoffed at by his agent.
Technically, he’s got a longtime editor he’s worked with for the past fifteen years, as his career hit its peak and stayed there until the gradual decline along with his health, but it’s not like he’s got this book sold or under contract, and his agent is leaping down his throat about how he can’t sell this one as his typical nonfiction.
It doesn’t matter that it is nonfiction—his extensive research on New Orleans, Paris, and the forefront of WWII could basically be a history book in and of itself, but there’s, of course, the matter of the vampires. His longtime editor might have a small issue with that, but he’s determined to get this out under a nonfiction imprint, not a fiction one. He meant it, back in Dubai: legacy means jack shit at his age, and he’s willing to bury it alongside his pride to get this out there.
It is a triumph of a book, not only of research but of personal analysis—even if Louis had not been a vampire, there’s the de Pointe du Lac legacy, being a Black man as a business owner in the American South, any number of subjects Daniel’s ready to exhaust if it just means he’ll get the book out there.
“You’ll be lucky if this ends up going for 20k to Chronicle for their shitty coffee table books collection,” his agent, who does not feel the same, snarls on the other end of video call.
“It’s not a coffee table book, Abigail,” he repeats, for what feels like the millionth time. Abby is a good agent, really, he reminds himself, and her chihuahua-like fervor and snapping is what’s ritualistically earned him a smattering of great deals over the course of his career. She’s been with him since before the birth of his first daughter, before both divorces, and she’s put up with more from him than what she probably thinks is a sudden onset of dementia. “If you sell it as a nonfiction book, people will read it as a nonfiction book. It doesn’t matter if they actually believe it or not, do you think any of those crappy celebrity memoirs are actually real?”
“I’ve basically written several of them for the latest crop of idiotic influencers because I’m trying to get the last kid through college, so yes, Daniel, I am well aware of the lack of reality behind the nonfiction genre,” she responds, acerbic, and Daniel looks wistfully into the kitchen. He’d taken out the whiskey earlier in preparation for this exact chat, and it’s calling to him. “It doesn’t change the fact that Flatiron doesn’t have you under contract—no other end of a two-book, not even an option—right now, so if I can’t convince Zach to re-up you, which he won’t because you’ve given me a book about the goddamn undead, we’re going to have to go out on submission, and that means facing up to the reality that you could very well flop—who the fuck is that?”
Daniel doesn’t want to turn around. He keeps his headphones on, his beautiful, noise-cancelling headphones, and pretends not to have heard. “You were saying. About me flopping,” he tries, but Abigail leans to the side in her chair as if she could peer around him.
“Are you married again?” Abigail gasps, and Daniel manages to choke.
“Jesus, Abby, of course I’m not. You know I always invite you to the weddings,” he replies in what he hopes is his calmest voice, but something in it must catch Armand’s attention.
He feels more than sees or hears Armand’s approach to the back of his chair—he really should’ve moved his workspace out of the living room—and resigns himself to taking off his headphones and switching his sound to the laptop microphone. Locks of black hair enter his peripheral vision as Armand bends at the waist on his right to look into the laptop camera. “I’m sorry to have distracted you. You must be Abigail, right? Daniel’s told me so much about you,” Armand says, firing on all thrusters for that luxurious voice of his, putting on that undefinable accent that makes him sound like old money. Which Daniel supposes he is.
Daniel has also not told Armand about Abby, much less so much about her, which means either Armand has been rummaging in his head again or just doing some particularly dedicated research to the names mentioned in the acknowledgments of his past books. Either is possible. Daniel turns his head to face him and tries not to obviously glower. “Abigail, this is Rashid. An old friend. He’s been unlucky in love lately and is crashing on my couch. I thought he was out for the day, otherwise I would’ve moved into my room,” Daniel says dryly, ignoring Abby’s wide-eyed stare behind her glasses.
Armand turns that faux-affable look to him. He’s got the contact lenses in, at least. “Daniel has been so kind. I truly didn’t mean to disturb you, I was just on my way to take lunch in my room.” And he floats out of the room and down the hallway. He’s got a duffel bag slung over one narrow shoulder; the chances of there being a human head in there are nonzero.
Abby mimes putting his headphones back on and Daniel does, anxious to forget about the click of the guest bedroom door he heard closing and the potentiality of limbs to be chewed on in there. “Sorry about that, he showed up yesterday and I’m not used to having houseguests—” he starts, clicking the Bluetooth of the headphones on and letting the comfortable noise-cancellation sink in.
“Daniel, are you fucking him?”
Daniel gets up and leaves Abigail squawking in his ears as he grabs the whiskey from the kitchen counter, popping the cork and pouring some into the mug that held his coffee twenty minutes ago. “No, I am not,” he heaves out as he takes a long draught.
He’s still not an idiot. He knew the second Armand holed himself up in that bedroom what the outside world might think, because the outside world sees Armand as an outrageously beautiful young man with an affable personality and not as a looming monster that’s gobbled up a hundred thousand human lives. And Daniel’s an old man with a written, published history of fucking other men for drugs.
So he knows how it looks. He’d even called both of his daughters and left a voicemail saying that he’s helping out the son of an old friend, so if either of them use their keys to come by unannounced not to be surprised. He’d emphasized that Rashid would be out of the way and staying in the spare bedroom only and that Daniel is just doing a favor for an old friend. Not like either daughter had responded to him, not like he really expected them to.
“Oh, you just have the most handsome man I’ve seen in a decade puttering about your living room,” Abby continues as Daniel continues to sip, looking at her outraged face over the rim of the mug with a sense of grim resignation. “Platonically.”
“Look. He’s technically the son of an old friend, his boyfriend kicked him out, I’m not about to let the kid be homeless. And I had the room,” Daniel retorts, well aware that Armand is probably listening to this entire conversation if not his thoughts as well.
“His boyfriend. So he’s gay. And in need of cash.”
“Don’t give me that look. He’s richer than God; he’s just depressed and slumming it. He’s been together with his boyfriend for—well, a really fucking long time—they’ll work through their bullshit housing issues before we even get this book to Zach,” Daniel says. “Now, can we get back to how I’m going to flop on submission and irreparably char my legacy?”
They do, although Abigail looks at him suspiciously over her wire rims a few times, not even trying to hide that she glances behind him every few minutes.
Armand doesn’t return. Abigail shouts about his advance dropping by a hundred thousand and is only placated by Daniel promising to give Zach a personal call. Daniel has another drink.
His back pops in three different places as he gets up from the chair and throws his headphones down on the desk, groaning. “If you’re going to hover around me, can you make yourself useful and move this desk?” he calls out in no direction in particular.
He’s clearing off his laptop, mug, and spare papers when Armand drifts into the room. “Redoing your interior decor?” he says from the hallway entrance; Daniel glances up to see he looks remarkably pristine for someone who’d probably been drinking blood twenty minutes ago.
“My agent thinks you’re boning me for drugs, so you’re going move this desk into my room before my editor thinks the same,” Daniel grouches. Hopefully still his editor, Abby’s right on that front. He’s going to have to spin some wild take on this if he wants this out there with any kind of real backing from the publisher, and he definitely can’t do that with the most handsome man Abby’s seen in a decade staring into his editor’s eyes from behind him.
Armand steps more fully into the room and goes right back to hovering, inches away from Daniel’s back, trailing him as he cleans off the rest of the desk. “I wasn’t joking earlier; I really will stay out of your way. I wasn’t expecting you to be taking a call in the living room when I returned.”
“So you’ll listen to my thoughts but not through the front door as you walk inside. It’s for the best,” Daniel adds as Armand opens his mouth to retort something. “The lighting out here is shit anyway. Returned from what, by the way? Should I be watching the news for missing persons and buying bleach for the mess you’ve probably made in my room?”
Armand smiles beatifically. “I had a few errands to run.”
“Are there severed limbs in my guest bedroom, yes or no?”
“You know we can’t drink the blood of the deceased,” Armand says, which does not answer his fucking question. His smile changes slightly to something more sincere; or, at least, as sincere as Armand is capable of. “I would never bring anything linking my feedings back into your apartment. That would be quite a rude way to repay you for your hospitality.”
Daniel stares at him for a long few seconds, trying to discern the truth in those bottomless eyes of his, and promptly gives up. It’s like staring into the sun. “You know what would be a great way to thank me for my hospitality? Moving this desk.”
Armand picks up the desk by one leg and carries it effortlessly down the hallway. Superimposed for a moment on his back is a memory from ’73: Armand picking up the table he’d had the tape recorder on after Louis had thrown it across the room, placing it back on its legs as Daniel trembled on the floor. Daniel trembles now too, following Armand with his laptop under one shaking arm, although for a very different reason. Terrified and young and injured back then, bitter and old and ill now.
The desk now sits in the corner of the room, by the large window. Armand stands next to it, hands clasped behind his back. “For the light,” he says of the placement.
It is a good spot for the light. Maybe now he can stop adjusting the camera every ten seconds. Here, Armand looks more like a paper cut-out than ever before, striking and odd against the background of Daniel’s room, especially when he stands so still like that. It’s even stranger in the middle of the day: Armand’s gauzy outfit catches the sunlight only barely, letting shadows fall to the floor in hazy patches, like he’s see through. There hadn’t been one single moment in Dubai he’d saw Armand standing in the light, except for the brief moment he’d walked by the window as a tease, me, a vampire? Look at me in the light. He’s a statue cast in bronze in the hot summer rays of the sun.
“Don’t suppose I could get you to bring the chair in too?” Daniel asks, dumping his stuff on the bed.
“It’s a rolling chair. I think you can manage,” Armand says, still smiling, and takes his exit.
Daniel, grumbling, resets his work station and drags the chair in there from the living room. On his way back to grab some files, he sticks his head in the guest room. It’s, again, Armand’s fault for leaving the door open.
The bedroom has been sparsely decorated; the few times his daughters came to visit they usually brought an assortment of items with them that populated it, their makeup, video game consoles, books, portable vanities, a selfie tripod on one memorable occasion. Whatever Armand has brought with him in that duffel bag is absent. Armand himself sits in the chair by the window, reading a book. It’s laying in his lap so Daniel can’t see the title.
Armand does look up at his entrance. “Is this what you’re planning on doing until you can get a new place?” Daniel asks in mild disbelief. Armand still has his shoes on.
“Who’s to say that me and Louis won’t work through this little problem? We’ve worked through them before,” Armand replies instead. Worked through them. Quite the euphemism for extensive brainwashing. His head, tilted over the book, looks up only slightly. It has the same effect as on the couch last night: peering up at Daniel through his eyelashes. It’s a move Daniel had seen him do several times to Louis over the course of their interviews: a very clear simper, one that Daniel isn’t so nearly as weak to as Louis was. Daniel actually thinks it’s such an obvious ploy that it makes Armand look a bit silly, although he keeps that to himself. “You even mentioned us getting over our housing issues to your agent. Or was that a ruse?”
“I wasn’t lying to her. But when I said work through your bullshit housing issues, I meant more like finalizing the divorce, not… whatever the hell you seem to think is going to happen.”
“We’ve worked through things before,” Armand repeats stubbornly.
Daniel pushes up the rims of his glasses to rub at his nose. It is true that Louis seems to be attracted to the craziest dick in the room. “Fine. Maybe. You’ve been together longer than I’ve been alive, twice as long as he was with Lestat. What the hell do I know about your fucked-up eternal relationships?,” Daniel says. At the mention of the name, Armand’s mouth twitches. It’s a very obvious motion, coming from him. “Alright, alright. Keeping the Frenchman’s name out of the house. Just saying, if you can unwind a little. Take your shoes off.”
“What would unwinding look like for me, exactly?”
“I would suggest clubbing, but you don’t really seem like the type. And we both know what happened last time you tried to pick up a guy in a bar,” Daniel says, aiming for levity, but Armand remains unmoved. “Use my Netflix or something, Jesus. Or just sit here if that’s what you want to do. This is me trying to be nice to you so you won’t kill me in my sleep, by the way.”
Armand does smile at that. “I appreciate it.” He closes the book and rises, gliding past Daniel and out of the room. Daniel glances at the book he tossed aimlessly on the bed before turning around to leave himself. Dracula. Hilarious.
+
It ends up being deeply obvious when Armand does go out hunting.
There’s no elaborate schemes to bring down cryptobros and the casually suicidal in New York; he doesn’t waltz back into Daniel’s apartment with his elaborate coat pristine and untouched, his victim’s sunglasses on.
In bed, Daniel opens his eyes. He’s laying on his side, facing the alarm clock. Half past three in the morning. He’s usually a heavy sleeper at this point in his life, the treatments are exhausting and he seldom dreams. When he sits up, staring out into the hallway at the foot of his bed, it’s clear what woke him.
Armand is in the bathroom again, door closed and lights off. Daniel’s not sure how he knows, as the hallway is absolutely black—sound, maybe, as he slept. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and rises, ignoring the pain in his knees, and creeps down the hallway.
It’s his apartment, after all. Armand deserves privacy, theoretically, but maybe not when Daniel’s still half-certain this is all some elaborate ploy to rain hell down on Daniel’s head in revenge for breaking up his marriage.
Armand hasn’t locked the door. That’s as much of an invitation as anything. Daniel turns the doorknob, pushes, and hits the lights before he can think better of it.
“Daniel,” Armand says in surprise. “You should be sleeping.”
“Heard noise. Making sure it wasn’t any of Real Rashid’s Talamasca buddies wandering my halls,” he lies, hand still frozen on the light switch. “Maybe next time you go creeping around, you can turn on some lights so I know I’m not about to meet an unseemly and embarrassing end by some half-competent government agent.”
“Of course. I forget my manners.”
“Good night,” Daniel replies shortly, lamely, and closes the door behind him as he leaves.
He closes his bedroom door as well this time. Spasmodically, he rubs his hands over his sleep pants, as if the blood on Armand’s face had transferred to him and he’s stained now, forever. Vampires can feed cleanly, he’s seen Louis do it, but he supposes that was one big show anyway, all put on for his benefit and ease. He could do with a little playacting right now. For ease. There’s nothing like being confronted by a bloody predator in your bathroom, still damp and wet as the excess dripped down his face and stained his shirt. His hair had been soaked with it, even, curls shiny under the fluorescents and perfectly coiled, like his ex-wife’s after a shower. The splatters had gone up and past his eyeballs.
His eyes. Those, Daniel had never seen more alive.
He locks the bedroom door, as if that’ll do shit. He’d put the desk chair under the handle too, if the useless thing didn’t have wheels. Daniel, Armand had said, his mouth a little moue of shock. Fangs still out.
Daniel gets back into bed. He lays there, wide awake, until morning.