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Against all belief, Armand is just sitting there, legs crossed delicately in Daniel’s stupid fancy hotel chair, prim and proper as the goddamn queen of England. His dark hair curls gently to his collarbones, shirt buttoned low enough to reveal acres of smooth brown skin. For a moment Daniel’s mind whites out to an impossible fury; without conscious thought, he’s picking up a paperweight off the nearest side table and lobbing it at Armand’s head.
“Mother fucker,” he says, watching Armand dodge it easily, barely even shifting in his seat. The thing clatters impotently into the curtains, landing on the carpet with a dull thud as Armand inclines his head disapprovingly.
“You mistake me for Lestat, I think,” he says, in what is probably his attempt at a joke, and normally Daniel would give it to him for trying, but right now he is so not in the mood.
Daniel eyes the lamp on the end table, considering. But shit, it’s a nice fucking lamp, and after that pitiful first attempt it’s probably better not to embarrass himself by throwing anything else. Instead, he presses a thumb between his eyebrows, the same spot where he used to get tension headaches, and demands, “So, what? What is it? Why now? And don’t give me that shit about blood purity or whatever the fuck, because I gotta tell you, history has never been kind to dickheads spouting about—”
“I meant what I told Lestat. You should not have debased yourself with him,” Armand says. His face remains infuriatingly placid.
“Why not? You did.”
“And I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“Bullshit,” Daniel says easily. Armand tilts his head, and now Daniel can see him physically wrestle down his anger into the blank calm of his empty smile. It’s a little terrifying. Daniel’s more than a little turned on.
Armand’s left thumb is rubbing small circles into his fingers. When he speaks, his voice is brisk, businesslike. “Still, I perceived that your juvenile cries for attention would not end without some form of intervention. And given the disturbance those little performances were causing in the vampire world as a whole, I had no choice but to—”
“Bullshit,” Daniel says again, stepping closer. “Cut the crap, Armand. We both know you’re here because you want to fuck me.”
All the air seems to leave the room at once.
Armand takes the book from his lap and sets it neatly on the table beside him. He rolls his neck, a bored, languid movement that exposes every vein in his throat, then settles an elbow on the table. Haughty, disinterested, he rests his head on the heel of his palm, cold eyes wandering the room. “Go on. Tell me more about what I want, Daniel.”
Daniel’s mouth wets. “You want me on my knees, for starters,” he says. “Maybe you want to do it hard. Punish me, make me pay for blowing up your life. Those floggers I saw in Dubai? Maybe they’d make an appearance.”
Armand doesn’t react. Daniel’s heart ticks faster. “Or maybe,” he says, “you want it tender. You want me docile, licking you clean. Your helpless fucking boy. Taking it like a martyr. Just like how we used to do it, once upon a time.”
Armand’s eyes flash to his.
Daniel has the cold sensation of sinking through water. He nods once, slowly. “Thanks for confirming it,” he says. “You know, I actually hadn’t been sure.”
Armand looks away.
There’s nothing else for it, so Daniel parks himself on the sofa and waits. Silence stretches; Armand makes no attempt to fill it. Lamplight casts his profile in warm shadows, gilding the curve of his nose, accentuating the hollows of his cheeks. An artist’s rendition of abject melancholy, carefully inked in hues of gold. Daniel narrows his eyes.
“I dreamt about you, you know,” he says, finally. “For years, actually, on and off. This kind of, faceless fantasy. Just an impression of dark hair, lips on my throat, fucking me slow, that kind of thing. Real arthouse shit.” He shakes his head. “Then—craziest thing! After Dubai, the dreams started coming back, only now there was a face, and it was yours.” Daniel laughs a little, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I mean, how embarrassing, right? Murdered and ghosted by a guy, and now I’m fantasizing about him? Like, Jesus, does it get any more pathetic than that?”
Armand’s hand is smoothing the wrinkles from his slacks, a quick, repetitive movement that he may not even be fully aware of.
“But the dreams kept getting more detailed,” Daniel continues, eyes tracking the arc of Armand’s wrist. “Little things. Like, I could recognize the room I was in—this beat up motel in Calgary, the one I stayed in to cover the ‘88 Olympics. God, that place was a dump. I remember the heating crapped out by the second night. Would’ve frozen my balls right off if I didn’t have Alice with me under the covers, the two of us keeping warm like wild animals. Only—once I started thinking about it, I realized that didn’t make any sense. We finalized the divorce in ‘87. That was the winter of ‘88. She remarried a month later. So why did I remember her in my bed? Why was I dreaming about you holding me down like a weighted blanket? And then I thought, Christ, it’s just like fucking San Francisco.”
Armand’s baleful eyes continue to offer nothing. Daniel sits forward in his seat, voice hardening. “How much else have you fucked with, Armand?” he demands, knocking at the side of his temple. “What else should I start doubting, huh? Were you every girl I ever brought home? Every Santa Claus I sat on at the mall? Were you my mommy, Armand? Did you tuck me in at night, cut your breast for me to suckle?”
“That’s enough, Daniel,” Armand says. “There’s no need to be crass. I only changed what I did to protect you—”
“—oh ho, protect me, I’m sure—“
“You were a foolish, insouciant boy,” Armand’s voice rises for the first time, words singed with an escalating heat. “You were greedy, you were insatiable, you found a taste of the blood of life and wanted nothing but more. You were—”
“Beloved,” Daniel interrupts. “I think you used to call me that, didn’t you.”
Armand stands up abruptly. The chair is several feet behind him, toppled on its side; Daniel hadn’t even seen it move. He watches the rapid rise and fall of Armand’s chest, feels his own pulse rocketing under his skin.
“Don’t go to him again,” is all Armand says, before he pushes towards the door. Walking out. Again.
The fuck he is, thinks Daniel, and quick as a flash he’s behind Armand, wrenching his wrists back from the doorknob, one arm drawn tight across his chest, holding him in place. “No, no, no,” Daniel gets out, almost breathless. “You don’t get to leave again. I won’t let you. I’m not your helpless fucking boy anymore, see? You made sure of that. For whatever reason.”
Armand’s chest is firm beneath Daniel’s arm. Fangs glint under the curl of his lip. Daniel knows Armand could still crush him almost as easily as if he’d been human; mercilessly, brutally, effortlessly.
But this time, he wants Armand to know he’d put up a fight.
“You’re not going to walk out of this room,” Daniel says, rough and low, right in Armand’s ear. “You must’ve been lurking here since the first time he stuck it in me. Skulking around my hotel, waiting. Waiting for what? You came all this way for something, and I think you’re damn well going to get it.”
Armand wrenches from his grip and pushes him to his knees. Daniel goes down, hard. Armand looms like a falling star, vicious and wild, something true finally clawing free. Forget blank, it’s a full apocalypse in those amber eyes. Yes, Daniel thinks. For one exhilarating minute he’s almost sure that Armand is going to strike him. Then Armand bends to look Daniel in the eye, hooks a finger under Daniel’s chin, and crushes him with his mouth.
The kiss is an annihilation. Armand’s fangs are out, sharp and cold. They scrape against Daniel’s lips, drawing blood, the wetness sliding along both of their tongues. Daniel lets out a soft keening noise that makes him feel about fifty years younger; foolish, desperate, needy, everything Armand had called him ringing true. But he’s all that, and this, too: still pretty fucking mad. And just because something in Daniel has been aching for this for decades doesn’t mean he’s letting Armand off the hook that easily.
“Bed,” he pants. “I’m really over kneeling.” Armand sighs but acquiesces, scooping him up like a feathered thing and tossing him bodily onto the mattress. His robe flops open, and it’s only now that Daniel remembers he’s still wearing Lestat’s chartreuse abomination. Armand’s lips curl in a sneer, and he settles himself over Daniel’s hips, pushing down on Daniel’s chest with one hand and ripping off the offending robe with the other. That out of the way, the full brunt of Armand’s attention turns to his bare skin.
In Dubai, Daniel often had the sense that something in Armand was simmering dangerously close to the surface, a pot about to boil over, a power barely contained by the disguises he wore. Forget Rashid, even his skin was a deception—passing him off as a man, when really he was closer to a bomb. A nuclear reaction housed in a glass bottle; how Daniel had longed to push the seams, feel the heat of its release.
Now it’s breaking, and Armand is a supernova.
His lips are everywhere. Daniel’s head falls back, bowed by the force of it. “I know what you want,” Armand murmurs, nails dragging down Daniel’s chest, grasping the flesh of his hips as he begins to grind against Daniel’s cock. “What you have always wanted.”
Daniel’s hands come up, and Armand lets him pull open the buttons of his shirt. His is the kind of beauty that people write poems about, make paintings of, sing odes to, and Daniel knows that people have done all of the above for Armand, that history is littered with it, lousy with it, filthy with it, but damn if he isn’t still tempted to add his voice to the choir. “Yeah? And what’s that?”
“This,” Armand says. Calmly, he digs his finger into his own throat until blood begins to pool. Then he sticks his fingers into the slit, coats them thickly in blood, and slides them into Daniel’s parted mouth.
The blood. The blood. The blood. Everything in the world—his latent anger, the lights of the room, even the growing ache in his cock—all of it fades to nothing. There’s only this: Armand’s fingers in his mouth, stroking the soft ridges of his palate, the blood dripping onto his tongue.
The blood. And then he’s twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-six again, Armand dribbling blood from his wrist over Daniel’s waiting mouth. Just drops, just enough to taste, but Daniel laps it up like a dog. Begs for it like a dog. Whines for it. Humps for it. He would’ve done anything. Had done anything.
He remembers arguing with Armand about it, at the time. He’d always wanted more. Armand would always refuse. And didn’t that sum them up perfectly? Because there was always a piece of Armand that he kept out of reach, hidden in cold remove, safe atop a shelf that Daniel could never hope to reach, no matter how much he humiliated himself jumping for it. But the blood—that was real, that was true, and in its sweetness Daniel swore he could taste Armand’s love for him, whole and unhidden.
He’d wanted more.
And he’d wanted to turn.
This part angered Armand even more than the blood. Now he remembers the fights, the one-sided desolation, how Armand had grown more and more taut the more Daniel frayed at the rope. Daniel was getting older. Armand wasn’t, at least physically, and Daniel was desperate to turn before it was too late, before his hair turned gray and his skin sagged and Armand left him for some other fascinating thing, some new beautiful boy.
But more than that—the thought of a single mortal lifetime with Armand was a cruelty. He wanted centuries. He wanted eons. But Armand did not, apparently, and in a fit of hurt and outrageous recklessness Daniel told him fine, he didn’t need Armand anyway; he’d heard whispers on the street that Lestat de Lioncourt was keeping fledgling boys as rat catchers down in New Orleans. Maybe Daniel would join them.
That’s his last memory of Armand, before Dubai: a flash of pain, so brief he could’ve imagined it, and then perfect, resolute coldness.
Armand’s fingers slide out of his mouth. Daniel gasps, batting away his hand, but weakly. When it comes up to cradle his cheek, he doesn’t protest, but says, “Bastard. Why’d you ever feed me that stuff in the first place? You started it all, technically.”
“I had to make sure you needed me,” Armand murmurs, thumb brushing over the tremble in Daniel’s lower lip. His smile is rueful, self-mocking. “Look how well that turned out.”
“Of course I needed you,” Daniel mumbles. His mind feels like it's splitting open, the gears of it scraping painfully as decades of memories reconfigure. “I always—“
“Needed the fix, more like it.” Armand’s grip on his face tightens, punishing, a rigor mortis of agitation. Daniel struggles to breathe. “And if not me, you’d be just as happy running off to him—Lestat—anyone to give you what you need. Just as you’ve done now—”
“Would you shut up and listen! I needed you. You, Armand, goddamn it. It was never about Lestat. It was never even about the blood, not really. I wanted you, only you. To know I belonged to you. To know I was loved by you. Forever. Did you seriously not know? Fuck, man, it was practically the only clear thought rattling around my head in those days. Some vampire you are.”
Armand’s grip slackens. For a long moment, there’s silence. “I couldn’t be certain,” he says finally, and his voice is quieter than Daniel’s ever heard it.
Oh, fuck. That does it for him. He pulls Armand onto the bed beside him, gazes level, noses brushing. Daniel tucks the rest of his anger on a shelf somewhere, low enough to reach; he’ll come back for it, some day, when he’s ready. But he doesn’t need it right now. Right now, all he needs is this: Armand’s soft, quick breaths; Armand’s curls splayed on the pillow; Armand’s mouth so close to his, tentative, waiting. “It was always you,” Daniel says, and Armand shudders into him.
When he fucks into Daniel, it’s not punishing. It’s not docile, or simpering, or performative. It’s slow and steady and both their eyes are open, for the first time in years. “You’re mine,” Armand says, lips against his mouth. And this time, Daniel knows it’s true.