let gravity be my sculptor

by luminoussbeings

Summary:

“No more doctor’s appointments,” he says to Armand, who’s perched in one of Daniel’s squashy armchairs, scrolling listlessly on his iPad. “But maybe we should book you in with one. When’s the last time you had a prostate exam?”

“Ha,” says Armand, without looking up. “Why, are you offering?”

Or: when Daniel gets turned into a vampire, Armand gets turned back into a human. It’s not going well.

Notes:

title from incomprehensible by big thief!

Chapter 1

The last of Daniel’s blood is draining out of him, and it’s really not such a bad way to go, all things considered. 

He can feel the curl of Armand’s cold hand around the base of his neck. Yes, not so bad. No worse than letting Parkinson's waste his muscles, diaphragm collapsing, a slow, ignominious choke on his own fluids. A haze of dark curls swim into view, and he thinks: better this than the yellowing, distending death of cirrhosis. Soft lips drag against his throat; better than an anonymous overdose, a stopped heart in the street.

For a vengeful vampire, Armand’s teeth are surprisingly gentle. But then again, that had always been his modus operandi, hadn’t it. An easeful death. It’s a mercy, now, and he opens his mouth to thank him. 

But Armand’s shushing him, and then he’s being cradled up into his arms, held like a bird with a bent wing. A wet gash at his lips, warm, dripping. He’s drinking before he even realizes what it means. 

He’s being saved. 

No, his editor’s voice sounds in his head, ditch the passive voice, tell the real story.

Armand saves him.

The blood rushes through him, and god, fuck an easeful death, he’d been so stupid. Fuck going gently into that good night, no matter how good it feels when the night touches you. No pills, no cliff, no brains on the floor, not for him. He has a book to write. And music to hear—music. And dancing, and reality TV, and summer blockbusters, and whatever the fuck else humanity can come up with. 

How he loves it, humanity. How even an eternity spent learning its stories would still fall short.

Armand pushes his head down, away. And Daniel lays back on the floor, gasping. He can feel the crust of blood drying on his lips. His body starts to churn under his skin, and he knows from what Louis had described that it’s his organs dying. Fine. They’ve been dying for a while, that’s nothing new.

He can’t tell if he’s dipping in and out of consciousness, or just blinking. Time’s doing funny things, skipping like a tape and then unspooling all at once. He can hear his heartbeat, thundering like a drum, just as Louis had said. 

He can hear Armand’s, sprawled on the floor next to him.

But there’s something… not right. Daniel staggers onto an elbow and looks over. Armand’s curled around himself, hands over knees, shivering. There’s a wrongness to the fetal bent of his body. This isn’t right, he thinks again, dumbly. Louis had never mentioned something like this happening to Lestat. Or to him, after Madeleine. Was this normal?

Armand’s breathing accelerates. The uneven beat of his heart pounds in Daniel’s ears. He’s making these sharp, gasping sounds, half-choked, like he’s trying to hold them back. 

Wrong. It’s all wrong.

Daniel crawls over to lay next to Armand. The act depletes what’s left of his energy, and the room echoes with the twin sounds of their ragged breathing. Armand’s really not looking good. His forehead sheens with sweat, skin ashen, hair matted with blood and dust. His mouth is red.

And when he opens his eyes, they’re startlingly brown.

***

A few days earlier, Armand had sat with Daniel over breakfast. Louis hadn’t risen yet. Daniel was spearing eggs with a fork and squinting at Armand’s still figure.

“You know, it’s bullshit, what you said. The other day.”

Armand had tilted his head. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, Mr. Molloy.”

“And cue joke about 90% of the words out of your mouth being bullshit, and laugh track plays, and we’re moving on. I mean, when you said any vampire would give it up, for a chance to be human again.”

“Well,” said Armand, inspecting a fingernail. “It’s fortunate, then, that your opinions matter very little to me.”

Ignoring this, Daniel had pressed on, “Cause if that were true,” and here he paused to take an over-large bite of eggs, the rest of his words muffled around them, “then why wouldn’t you all have thrown yourselves into the fire already?”

“Many have,” Armand pointed out. 

“But not you.” Daniel swallowed, drained his orange juice, and looked at Armand squarely. “Five hundred odd years, and you’re still kicking. So keep telling yourself the ‘I’m just dying to give it up’ shtick, and maybe that’s true for the others. But not for you. You’re here to stay, and you know why?” He pointed his fork at Armand, who smiled thinly.

“And why would that be,” he said. 

“Because you like it,” he said. “You get off on it. The power, the blood, sure. But the self-loathing bit, I think that’s what takes the cake. You just love having an excuse to be damned, don’t you.”

For a moment, Armand’s firelit eyes had flared. Daniel could see the moment the embers almost caught. Then— the soft padding of footsteps from the hall. The imperceptible straightening of Armand’s spine. “You have a lot of peculiar thoughts, Mr. Molloy,” was all he finally said. Fire doused. Then, as Louis approached the table, “Let’s hope you can redirect those energies into completing this interview, yes?”

“Yeah,” Daniel had said, letting the vowels stretch into an insolent drawl. A muscle had tightened in Armand’s jaw, just barely, and Daniel had thought, gotcha. 

***

Afterwards, Daniel goes to the penthouse kitchens. And Armand follows, because Daniel had told him to.

The staff have all cleared out. Probably Rashid got to them, told them it was about to get nuclear, and that if you were smart, you should drop everything and get the hell out of there. Daniel hadn’t been smart. But he’s alive, isn’t he—and screw the semantics of that—so that’s got to count for something.

Now he’s flinging open the doors to fridges at random. There’s got to be at least twenty in this place, scattered over the industrial spread of the room. Vampires, world’s biggest drain on the power grid, he thinks, now there’s an angle for the book—if he can write the book—if he doesn’t die from thirst in the next five seconds— “Which one,” he rasps at Armand, words scraping over the ache in his throat.

Armand lifts a hand and points. Daniel watches the motion of his arm, and he swears he can feel every microliter of blood it takes to power that bare movement. His thirst is a living animal, wild, skittish, snapping its jaws. But he’s got a lifetime of fighting for self control and the chips to prove it, so he makes it to the fridge Armand had indicated. Inside are dozens of pouches, neatly packaged with precise labels and dates. Demographic information? Whatever, he can be interested later. Right now Daniel just picks two at random and shotguns them like it’s nothing, and then goes in immediately for another four. 

When he comes up for air, Armand is sitting at one of the stools. He doesn’t look as awful as he had in the immediate aftermath, but there’s a blankness to his gaze that spells trouble. Daniel regards him warily. “So, what?” he asks. “You’re human now? I didn’t know it could work like that.”

“Neither,” Armand says, crossing his arms delicately, “did I.” 

Daniel wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. It comes away red. Sloppy. Armand’s looking at him like he’s the lowest thing on Earth, which Daniel thinks is pretty unfair, and lets him know. “Hey, buddy, you did this to me,” he says, pointing. “So I don’t want to hear it. Speaking of—care to elaborate on why?” Armand just blinks slowly at him, and Daniel sighs. “Right.”

He looks around, then back to the contents of the fridge. “How much more of this stuff do you guys have?”

It takes a moment for Armand to respond, and when he does, it’s like he’s speaking from somewhere far away. “Quite a lot.”

“...Okay,” Daniel says. And look, he realizes that Armand is going through a big life change, as his court-ordered therapist had put it for him after divorce number two, but Daniel’s having a big fucking day himself, and he’s really in no kind of mood to play vampire trauma counselor to the guy responsible for most of it. “Listen. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to put me on a private jet with your entire blood bank packed up on ice packs, and you’re going to pay off whoever you need to pay off so customs doesn’t sneak a peek. And then I’m going home.”

Armand’s looking at some point on the counter. “And where will I go,” he asks, and it’s so transparently pitiable that Daniel wants to bark a laugh. But then Armand looks up and meets his eyes, and he’s startled again by the warmth of them, how human they look—because they are human. And fuck, chalk it up to the blood high, a momentary lapse in sanity, but something in Daniel relents.

***

The first time Armand asks it, they’re on the plane to New York.

Asks is generous. Commands would probably be more accurate. 

“You need to turn me back,” says Armand, and Daniel replies, “I don’t need to do shit, actually, and—wait. Turn you back?”

“That’s indeed what I said, yes.”

Daniel huffs a laugh. “And you really think it would be that easy? Blood for blood, swapped back and forth like a hot potato?” He folds his arms over his chest, eyes narrowing. “You don’t even have a clue about this stuff, do you?”

“I have my intuition,” Armand says testily. “And after 500 years of wisdom, I should think—”

“Whatever happened back there almost killed you. I saw you, and you were wrecked, man. You want to risk that again?”

“Yes,” says Armand, simply.

“Well, I don’t.” Daniel takes a long pull from the pouch stashed in his seat pocket. He’d found a straw in the coffee cart and stuck it through the plastic, giving the effect of a gory Capri-Sun. Armand’s eyes track the blood as it slides up the straw. “Can a person even be turned twice? I think it’s just as likely that I’d kill you, and I’m not going to do that until I’ve had my fill of watching you suffer. So welcome back to humanity, asshole. You better get comfortable.”

Armand’s regarding him bitterly. Without his amber eyes, his entire face looks different. Softer, somehow. It’s at odds with his murderous expression. “You can be a remarkably cruel man, Daniel Molloy,” he says. 

“Yeah. A splinter of coldness in me. You’ve said.” But the words shake something loose, and he’s hearing Alice storming out of the kitchen—because you’re cruel, Danny, and I’m done with it, I’m just done—and he wonders if Armand chose that word on purpose. He can’t dig through minds anymore, but who knows what arsenal he’d been accumulating all this time. 

Armand’s smile betrays nothing. 

Daniel looks at him. Looks away. He rifles in his carry-on for a moment and emerges with a half-squashed granola bar, which he tosses at Armand. It falls on his lap like a dead bird. “Here,” he says. “You’re human now, which means you need to start eating normal food, remember?” 

Armand’s lip curls. He takes the bar from his lap and sets it on the table beside him, where it remains untouched throughout the flight. 

***

Daniel settles back into his life. Or, as much as he can, now that the life part comes with footnotes. 

The first call he makes is to his publisher. The call is long, and not altogether pleasing. The second call is to his general practitioner; the third, his neurologist. These are much better. These are gleeful, something he’d never thought could ever describe a call to a medical office, but shit, this brave new world is full of wonders. 

“No more doctor’s appointments,” he says to Armand, who’s perched in one of Daniel’s squashy armchairs, scrolling listlessly on his iPad. “But maybe we should book you in with one. When’s the last time you had a prostate exam?”

“Ha,” says Armand, without looking up. “Why, are you offering?” 

For some reason—probably a side effect of his continual adjustment to vampirism—Daniel’s mind stalls out completely at that. After a few aborted attempts at a comeback he just leaves the room. Fuck his new roommate, fuck him. He should kick Armand out. Make him fend for himself, for once. Send his long-limbed insouciance packing to haunt someone else’s living room furniture.

He does none of that.

Instead, they fall into an uneasy sort of routine. Daniel works on the book, sometimes in his office, sometimes in the living room; sometimes with speed and ferocity, sometimes plunking out one leaden word at a time and getting up constantly to pace. 

And Armand…sits.

Sometimes he sits in the guest room Daniel had set up for him. Daniel walks by it, on occasion, just in the course of doing laundry, not seeking him out, of course. Through the crack in the door he catches Armand’s profile turned toward the window, half-hidden in shadow. Ships drag across the Hudson below, slow-moving, turgid hulls strangely graceful in the fading light. Sometimes Armand watches them intently. Sometimes he orders athleisure from his iPad. Sometimes he closes his eyes, tips his forehead to the glass, and moves his lips soundlessly. 

Daniel has the uncomfortable feeling that he may be praying. The sight of it unsettles him. Makes him feel like he doesn’t know anything about Armand at all. Makes him feel like he doesn’t know shit about anything at all, come to think of it. 

Armand’s face is hollowed, bones jutting sharply, like he hasn’t been sleeping, eating. His blood slides thinly along blue veins. Daniel’s more aware of its path than he wants to admit. Yet now when he looks at Armand, soft and rumpled in the wan light, something grips him more powerfully than the ache for blood—the nonsensical urge to take care of this languishing thing in his guest room. To feed him. To rock him to sleep. To wrap him in something warm and tuck him away in Daniel’s pocket. 

He annihilates the instincts like they’re vermin. Maker-fledgling residue, that’s all it is, of course. Some vestiges of it still fucking with his mind. Because Armand is 500 years old. He can damn well take care of himself.

It’s a relief, then, when the building manager calls to tell him that Lululemon packages for his address are clogging up the mail room, and Daniel can spend the whole lumbering nightmare of carting them up the stairs feeling freshly virtuous with his dislike. 

But more often than not, if Daniel is in the living room, then Armand is in the living room. He leaves a healthy distance between them. He doesn’t say much, but Daniel has always been a yapper, and he’ll often find himself chatting at Armand while he works, little things, just about the book or bitching about his publisher or whatever, and then he’ll remember who he’s talking to. At first it makes him shut his mouth, but he gets over that quick. It doesn’t have to mean anything. His mother used to say Hitler would’ve committed suicide a helluva lot faster if someone had left him in the room with Daniel, which for her standards was barely hurtful and anyway probably true. Daniel needs to talk, so he talks. And Armand listens, or makes incisive little interjections, or tunes him out and grunts at appropriate intervals.

It doesn’t have to mean anything, he reiterates, and then wonders why he feels the need to keep saying it.

***

“You don’t like me,” Armand says one day, apropos of nothing.

Daniel snorts. He’s been editing a chapter about the Paris early days, but now he lowers his laptop and looks over at Armand, who’s perched, birdlike, in what Daniel’s come to recognize as his favorite chair. “Do you honestly think you’re a likable person?”

“No,” Armand concedes. “But that trait doesn’t usually deter you. I was simply curious what it is, in this case.”

Daniels blows out a breath. “Okay,” he says. “Where to start? I mean, how many people have you killed, again? Or would it take the rest of your human life to list them all?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Armand says calmly. “Louis has killed thousands, and you still take his calls. Oh yes, I know you’re in contact,” he adds, when Daniel opens his mouth. “I may no longer possess the mind gift but I can certainly recognize the look in your eyes when you talk to him.”

Daniel grits his teeth. It’s true. Louis checks in from time to time, ostensibly to support Daniel in his transition, but they both know the bigger part of it is keeping tabs on Armand. When Daniel had told him what happened, Louis didn’t believe it, at first. But after the bewilderment and suspicion had passed, concern rose up to fill in the gaps. And despite everything, Daniel couldn’t begrudge him that. He’s been divorced enough to know that some feelings never really go away. 

For the other part, Louis tries to offer encouraging advice about vampirism, but Daniel mostly shuts him down and changes the subject. Look, it’s not that he doesn’t appreciate it, but Daniel’s trying not to make a whole thing of this, okay? Vampirism saved his life, which was awesome, but besides that Daniel’s been preferring to keep it sequestered to a part of his mind where he doesn’t have to think about it too much. It’s not like he’s experiencing any great moral crises over it or anything. He drinks blood from bags and doesn’t dwell on where they came from. Armand’s power had given him enough of a resistance to sunlight that he can live a relatively normal life, if he spends most of it indoors and takes a few afternoon naps. Which was pretty much how he was living before, only now his body actually listens to the signals from his brain. So he’s doing great. 

Apart from the roommate.

“Yeah, I like Louis,” Daniel says. “Maybe he’s just more charismatic than you, but I’d call him a friend. And you murdered his daughter, as we’ve established.” He gestures to his laptop.

“Who was also a serial killer,” Armand says. “As you yourself said. You can play back the recording, if you wish. So shall we debate the ethics of killing killers? Or will that, too, take until—what was it you said—the rest of my mortal life.”

Daniel works the rest of the day in his room. Door shut. 

***

The second time Armand asks, he’s polite about it.

“Daniel, I’ve been thinking,” he begins. He’s in his favorite chair by the window, wearing a pair of soft, loose joggers and an old faded t-shirt. Daniel’s t-shirt. There’s a logo on the front of the bar he used to pick up shifts at back in Modesto, whenever the writing was slow or his habits got pricey.

Daniel’s aware he’s staring. Armand follows his eyes down to his shirt, and shrugs. “It was in the guest closet,” he says. “I can change, if you’d prefer.” 

“‘S fine,” Daniel grunts. But the sight of Armand in Daniel’s shirt is doing funny things to his chest. He used to love that shirt. Alice used to love that shirt. How many times had he fucked her lazily in that thing, tops on, bottoms pushed to the foot of the bed, the slow ease of Sunday morning intimacy? Hell, it was more than likely his kids had been conceived in that shirt.

There’s a reason he’d stuck it in an empty closet.

With effort, he tears his eyes from the way it hangs loose over Armand’s chest, draping at the neck, thin enough to expose the peaks of his nipples through the fine fabric. Is he cold? Daniel’s rooting under the coffee table for a blanket before he realizes what he’s doing. “Uh, you were saying?” he asks, sitting back.

Armand steeples his fingers. “I was wondering if you’d given any more thought to my request.”

“Your request—?”

“To turn me back,” Armand supplies. When Daniel doesn’t speak, he clarifies, unnecessarily, “To a vampire.”

He’s looking at Daniel expectantly, but Daniel’s preoccupied with the roiling, irrational anger rising inside him like poison. The reasonable part of his mind is telling him this level of reaction doesn’t make sense. That the whiplash of moods is probably indicative of some things he should really sit down and examine, one of these days; chase down that story, Molloy, why don’t you.

But the larger part of his mind is drinking the poison, gargling with it, pooling it up to spit back.

“No,” he says, and his smile is a humorless slash. “Because I’m a remarkably cruel man, remember?”

For an infinitesimal second, Armand’s face falls. Then his blank mask slides back into place, and god, that just infuriates Daniel even further. This fucking creature. As if he has any right to ask for anything. As if he has any right to sit there in Daniel’s t-shirt in Daniel’s chair and look at Daniel like his feelings are hurt. As if he has feelings. As if he hadn’t lost those with the rest of his humanity sometime in the past five hundred fucking years.

“And I changed my mind,” Daniel says. “I want my fucking shirt back.” 

***

Daniel’s half-dozing on the couch, laptop perched on his belly, a Stanley cup full of blood on the table beside him. Sunlight slats through the cracks in the blinds, pressing warmly into the room. The afternoon drowses with comfort, and it wears down against his resolve to remain diurnal, making it seem silly, foolish, even, in the face of this simple luxuriance. If he closes his eyes for just a moment… 

There’s a loud creak of the front door opening.

That’s not right, he thinks sleepily. Armand wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. And then his eyes snap open, because now he recognizes the tap of those heels on the linoleum, and why the hell had that been his first thought? 

Before he can even move, his daughter stands at the edge of the room.

Shit. “Hi, Katie,” he says weakly, rubbing a hand over his bleary eyes and hoping that when he blinks, this’ll all be a dream. Because Katie’s eyes are tracking back and forth between Daniel on the couch and Armand. Armand, sitting with his legs tucked beneath him, looking impossibly young in his Lululemon joggers and plain blue tee. 

And Daniel, looking like an old, gay pervert. 

Something’s building in Katie’s face. Daniel can see the clouds of it brewing the way her tantrums used to come on as a kid, a slow stormfront before shattering open into great thundering rages.

Katie opens her mouth. Daniel’s mind empties of all possible excuses. And then, to his confusion, she bursts into tears. 

“I didn’t want to believe it,” she’s saying, and Armand is giving Daniel wide eyes, but Daniel has no directions to give him back. This level of reaction is not what he was expecting.

“Katie, it’s not what it looks…” he starts, then trails off lamely, because at this point, what’s the use.

But she continues as if he hadn’t even spoken. “I’m your healthcare proxy, remember? When Dr. Tabas told me you canceled all your appointments, I thought—no. No, there must be some mistake. But now I see—”

The words choke off. She turns to Armand, and barring all disbelief, clasps his hands in hers. “Thank you for caring for him,” she says sincerely, and then adds, low under her breath, “How long do you think he has?”

And then, all at once, it hits him. She thinks he’d canceled his appointments to die peacefully at home. Armand as his hospice caretaker. His monocolor navy Lulus even look passably like scrubs. 

Daniel feels an insane laugh bubbling up in him. 

“Oh,” Armand’s saying, seeming to arrive at the same conclusion as Daniel. For a moment their eyes meet, and he’s not sure if Armand will play along. Daniel's not even sure if he wants him to. A beat passes. Two. Then Armand says, softly, “We don’t like to think of it like that. We’re… taking it day by day.”

“Of course,” Katie whispers. She pulls him into a grateful hug, brief but warm, and Daniel knows she means it. That’s the thing about Katie—huge heart, bigger temper, every emotion massive, messy, loud. Not to manipulate anyone, not to intimidate them, but because that’s just how she feels, and it never occurred to her to learn to hide it. 

It’s why Daniel’s fuckups had hurt her the most, because living like that makes you vulnerable. Walk around with your soft bits exposed and it hardly takes a sniper to land a blow. But secretly, Daniel was glad she’d never changed. Because that kind of heart was also why, despite everything, Katie had been the one to start returning his calls.

Her sister had not made the same mistakes.

Katie pats Armand’s arm, who looks—strange. He lowers himself back to his chair, tablet in his lap, but doesn’t open it. His hand comes up to run along his arm, almost involuntarily, and Daniel wonders if Katie was the first person to touch him since becoming human. Had to be, right? Daniel certainly hadn’t. And as far as he can tell, Armand has never once left the apartment.

The thought makes him feel irrationally guilty. 

And then Katie sits beside him on the couch, and now he feels guilty for feeling guilty, because shouldn’t he reserve all of his shame for the people he actually loves, and has actually hurt? Continues to hurt, he corrects himself, because Katie’s going to bear the weight of his imminent death like arrows piercing her big open heart, and it’s all a goddamn lie. 

“Lenora didn’t believe it, you know,” Katie says. “When you first got diagnosed. She thought you were faking it for sympathy. One last-ditch cry for attention to get us to forgive you.”

“And that’s the kind of cynicism that's keeping her safe from Ponzi schemes and timeshares alike, so I must’ve done some of this parenting shit right, huh?” He flashes his old ‘cool dad’ grin at Katie, the kind he’d whip out on weekend trips to FAO Schwartz, the kind he’d wear when pretending that buying the girls lunch at the American Girl Doll Café was any kind of recompense for missing both of their birthdays. It’s a good grin. It performs admirably. It always has.

But Katie’s eyes are still welling with fresh tears.

“No, don’t cry,” Daniel says uncomfortably. “Not over me, okay, Katie?” He pulls her into his arms, and all he can think is that Lenora was right. He is faking, reaping sympathy he isn’t owed, and he’s as much of a piece of shit as she thinks he is. But even pieces of shit can’t help being greedy for love, and that’s maybe his worst fuckup of all. So he just presses a kiss to the top of Katie’s curls and knows he doesn’t deserve it, but lets her love him anyway.

Armand, who had been watching silently up to this point, retreats to his bedroom without a word. 

Notes:

"No pills, no cliff, no brains on the floor" is from hammond b3 organ cistern by Gabrielle Calvocoressi which is as much a classic to me at this point as the dylan thomas poem so i just had to put that in there

armand saying "any one of us would give it up" was actually from the DM chapter and not the show but my memory merged the two so we're just going to pretend <3

Chapter 2

Notes:

tw for emetophobia about halfway through! also tw for more explicit disordered eating patterns in this chapter

Armand’s passivity is starting to unsettle him. Daniel keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the grand plan to reveal itself. But it doesn’t come. Armand just sits in his chair, or watches the river, human eyes, human hands, human blood. 

As he edits the story, Daniel remembers how Armand had stagnated with his first coven for hundreds of years before Lestat. A hundred years after. Seventy-seven spent dragging the necrotic limb of his relationship with Louis. Maybe that kind of stagnation is Armand’s default setting. Was that what he’s planning to do here? Plant himself to rot in Daniel’s apartment, a coven of two?

Absolutely fucking not, Daniel thinks.

“You need to get a job,” he tells Armand one day. “All this sitting around, it’s not good for you. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, or however it goes.”

Armand gives him a withering look. The act makes his cheekbones stand out in stark relief, and Daniel is struck again by how much weight he’s lost since Dubai. Curls unkempt and tangling over his eyes, soft clothes hanging loosely over his spindly frame, he looks almost sickly. Diminished. He looks, Daniel thinks, almost nothing like that sleek, elegant monster who’d sat before him in the penthouse. It takes effort for Daniel to remind himself that the two are still one and the same. 

“Playthings,” Armand echoes. “I had one job when I was human, Daniel, and I rather think that word still applied.” He closes his tablet and looks at him squarely, eyes challenging. “Would you like me to return to it?”

Daniel crosses his arms. “Legal jobs, asshole,” he says, but finds he can’t quite look at Armand directly. 

“Oh, it was quite legal then, I’m afraid. And I don’t have a social security number,” Armand points out, “so what would you have me do? Sing for my supper? Wear something slinky and stand on the street corner?” The edge in his voice sharpens. “Drop to my knees or bare my hole for a few coins to put in your pockets, my landlord, my maitre, my dear Mister Molloy —”

“Stop it,” Daniel says, louder than he means to. This conversation is rapidly making him feel sick. Images rise, unbidden. Every horror story he’s ever reported on, now with Armand at the center. Dead-eyed and pliant. Not fighting back.

It’s not that Daniel hadn’t known Armand’s history was bad. He’d heard the backstory delivered from him and Louis, had jotted it down in flippant but factual detail. And yeah, Daniel had acknowledged it was objectively fucked, what had happened to him. But the distance between the boy he’d spoken of being and the thing doing the telling was wide enough that it rendered any emotional impact of the story lessened. It was hard to feel sympathy for the shark who claimed it once was a minnow.

But now it’s impossible not to. And not only that, but looking at Armand now, Daniel can see this hurt creature overlaid in the predator, see where this boy had lurked even in the butcher. Books and their covers and all that, but Armand’s binding is coming apart at the seams, and Daniel can’t help wanting to hold the body of him together.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Daniel says finally, too tired for games. “But if you’re really planning to sit here forever, then fine.” He pauses. Wars with himself, and loses. “But at least eat, alright? This whole New York Fashion Week look really isn’t doing you any favors.” 

Armand presses his fingers together, jaw working. “I eat,” he says unconvincingly.

Daniel levels him with a look.

At first, Daniel had thought this hunger strike of Armand’s was intentional. Some way to punish Daniel for not giving in to trying to turn him back. Some way to make his suffering loud enough that Daniel would start to feel bad about it, which, lo and behold, he does. 

But one day he’d stopped before entering the kitchen. Armand, mortal senses, hadn’t heard him yet. He’d stood before the pantry doors, a single graham cracker clutched in his long fingers. Daniel couldn’t remember the last time he’d even bought graham crackers, meaning the thing was probably stale as hell, but maybe that wouldn’t make a difference to a thing that had spent 500 years with food tasting like ash. 

Armand had tilted the cracker this way and that. Daniel had watched his jaw move, practicing the motions of it, the gnashing of teeth, the swallow, everything it took to take in something solid. He’d raised the thing to his lips, taken a single, agonizingly slow bite. His hand had trembled. His body had trembled. He’d braced his forehead against the door, breathing ragged, audible. The rest of the cracker went into the trash.

Daniel had retreated into the hall, and then, after a moment, walked in without predator’s grace, stepping on the floorboards he knew were prone to squeaking. By then Armand was sitting at the counter, neat, put-together, unbothered. Filling out Sudoku in the morning paper. 

But Daniel could see the lingering tremble in his frame, and he’d thought, shit.

***

After that, Daniel starts buying groceries and leaving them in the fridge, on the counter. It doesn’t mean that he cares about Armand. It’s purely for selfish reasons—what if Katie drops by again and sees his live-in nurse looking like a prisoner of war? It’s good for Daniel, anyway. He hasn’t gotten out enough, since it happened. He tells himself it’s because he’s busy with the book, but really he knows the truth boils down to this: he is afraid.

Daniel has yet to feed on a living human. The cold bags are all he’s known, but they’re starting to get less and less satisfying. He drinks them, and the thirst abates, and he functions. But nothing in his fridge can quell the urges that rise in him when his neighbors pass too closely by the door. How hotly their blood pumps. How vital. Even in Armand, who he should be inured to at this point, he hears that blood pumping like a song. And he’s never drinking from Armand, never, not when there’s a risk he might kill him before the bastard becomes a self-actualized human being or whatever. So Daniel’s gone out less and less, afraid to say hi to the mothers pushing strollers, the young men holding open the doors. He knows all it will take is one. One lapse in control, one cheat day, and the sterile pouches won’t do it for him the same ever again. 

But Jesus fucking Christ, Molloy, get a grip. This is no way to live. He reminds himself of the furious joy he’d felt while drinking down Armand. He was supposed to live forever, not pussy-foot around like some shut-in coward forever. That’s his roommate’s job.

So, yeah, he goes grocery shopping. In the evenings, at first, or very early mornings, when the sun is still weak and the aisles are mostly empty. A few clerks pushing mops around the floors. He’d always liked grocery shopping, the mundanity of it, the thrill of banal choices. What fruit was in season, what ice cream flavor was on sale this week. It hits him like a blow to the chest that this experience is closed to him, now. 

So it’s with spite that he buys cheeses and soft breads, the ripest fruits, frozen pizzas. Chickpeas and garlic. Chocolate cake and pop tarts. All of it sits untouched. The fruits rot in their casings, drawing flies. Daniel shovels it all into the trash at the end of the week, and then heads back out to the store. He smiles at the clerks. He makes conversation with the stroller-pushers and doesn’t eat the babies. He tells Armand that persimmons were half off this week, has he ever had a persimmon? Because Daniel hasn’t, and now he never will, thanks to him, asshole, but anyway, they’re on the counter if he wants to try.

Week after week. He’s going to do it over and over again, until this thing shaped like their lives starts to feel like it. 

***

Daniel’s hauling his ShopRite bags through the front door one night, wondering idly how he might pester Armand into giving hot pockets a go this time, when he notices something is—different.

The apartment smells good. Not that it’s usually rank—Daniel’s matured into a man of standards, thank you very much—but tonight something goes beyond the normal. And then saliva pools under his tongue, and understanding slides in like a knife between the ribs: it smells good because it smells like fresh blood.

He thinks: No.

Something wet splashes on his ankle. He looks down, and the groceries are smashed, pickle jar rolling under the sofa and eggs cracking on the floor. He leaves it all. He’s already running.

The scent’s coming from the guest bathroom. Daniel throws open the door and finds Armand sitting calmly on the closed lid of the toilet seat. For a moment there’s just the horrible relief of seeing him alive. Daniel lets that moment stretch infinitely, basks in the ghastly warmth of it. 

Then the rest of the scene sinks in.

There’s a purpling bruise on Armand’s cheek. Claw marks above his left eye. Blood dribbling from his mouth. He’s filthy with it, staining his hands, his white shirt. Two bodies lie at his feet. 

“Jesus.” Daniel grips the towel rack. The bodies remain, no matter how hard he swipes at his eyes. “Jesus fuck, Armand, what did you do.”

At first, Armand doesn’t respond. Then he turns his head so slowly that a shiver crawls up Daniel’s spine. There’s something vacant in his expression. Tipped out and slick like the bottom of a gas can. “I was so hungry,” he says, and his eyes are far away.

Daniel stares. “Okay,” he says, “okay. Okay, we’ll just—” But he can’t finish. He doesn’t know how. Use your words, Molloy . But what are the words for this? Armand in his bathroom. Washed out under harsh fluorescent lights. Red lips, red teeth, and he’s a monster. God, the smell. Rich and close. Decadent and seductive. Blood painting the tiles, slicking under the soles of his shoes, and Daniel’s mouth is watering, and he’s the monster, and they’re both monsters, and this is the nightmare.

There’s a knife on the floor. Daniel picks it up and moves it beyond Armand’s reach. Armand doesn’t react. The bodies have stab wounds. The men. The men have stab wounds. They’re average height, slim builds. One has a CUNY t-shirt on, too mangled to make out which campus. They’re not men at all, they’re boys. College kids. 

And they had struggled.

It was one thing to kill as an all powerful vampire. Daniel thinks of the tidily duct taped body on Divisadero street, the neat trash bags and bleached efficiency. But Armand is far from that creature. Weak, even for a human, and the mess he’d made shows it. He’d had to hack at them. Organs slosh. Bones protrude. Blood continues to flow sluggishly out of the smaller one, and Daniel realizes with a shock that he’s still breathing. 

He drops to his knees, pulls at a mutilated wrist to check the pulse. “Armand, he’s still alive,” Daniel says. “We should call 911, we should—”

His fangs are so large in his mouth he can barely speak. It smells so, so fucking good.

Armand’s watching him now, some of the focus returning to his eyes. “You know what to do, Daniel,” he says, soft as anything. 

Blood on Daniel’s hands. Blood soaking his jeans. Armand’s voice, cool as menthol, 2022, 1973, all times the same. But you already know who you’ll be. And this is the nightmare. 

Daniel lifts the mangled arm to his lips and latches on. 

Once, in the late 90s, his second wife had started them both on Atkins. Bonding activity, she’d said, but really Daniel knew it was because she didn’t like the little belly he’d put on now that his vices skewed less ‘heroin chic’ and more ‘genteel drinking problem.’ And Daniel, in turn, was realizing he didn’t particularly like her, but for some reason he’d gone along with it anyway. He’d made it three days into chalky meal replacement bars before giving up. The marriage itself hadn’t lasted much longer. But he can still remember the first diner souvlaki he’d had after jumping off the wagon. How the steam had wafted with fragrant herbs, the plate scalding, the chicken still sizzling. The fried potatoes and the cool bite of sauce. He’d decided in that moment that fuck it, he was never dieting again. When the world offers so few pleasures you’d have to be a goddamn idiot to turn away the ones you have. 

Now Daniel drinks down the hot, tangy blood of this mangled boy, and knows with a pit in his stomach that the refrigerated bags will never again be enough. Fuck. 

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Armand leaning forward. Knuckles curling white under the seat, as if to hold himself back. The boy’s flesh is so torn that Daniel barely has to suck, just tilts his head back and lets gravity do its job. It pours down his throat. Armand smiles.

The boy’s eyes try to flutter open, briefly. Daniel pushes them closed. The boy’s lips part, the beginnings of a groan. Daniel covers his mouth. He drinks until there’s nothing left, the body spent and wrung dry like a dish towel, and keeps going after that. The blood. The only thing that stops him is the noise.

He looks up. Armand is curled over the basin of the sink. His shoulder blades stand out like knobs of amputated wings. He’s making these horrible retching noises, underwritten with whimpers like a dying animal. Dark blood pours from his mouth. His body shakes.

The thing in Daniel’s lap slumps to the ground. “Hey,” he says, pushing it away, voice thick and glutted with blood. “Hey.” He clambers up to Armand, tries to put a hand on his shoulder, but Armand’s body is like a puppet on a string, the whole fragile skeleton of it convulsing with the violent need to expel. His eyes are wide. Afraid. More blood staggers out of him. It dribbles down his front. His body sways against the sink. 

Daniel doesn’t think, just catches him. Holds him there, chest bracing his back, hands rubbing small circles over his front. The way he’d hold Alice during morning sickness or the girls during stomach bugs. He may have been a shit spouse and a worse father but his arms were always strong and steady, and he uses them now. “It’s okay,” he says. “Just get it out.” There’s not going to be three bodies in this room. There’s not.

Armand retches past the point of belief, past what Daniel would have ever thought possible. How much blood had he drank? It seems unreal, even as he watches it come up. He is such a small thing in Daniel’s arms. When finally all that’s left is dry, heaving spasms, the body unable to break its sickening loop, Daniel pulls him from the sink to sit with him on the ground. 

Sweat slicks down Armand’s curls. The hair is matted. Stringy. Daniel brushes it out of his face, and Armand’s eyes flick to his. Hatred. Pain. Desperation and terrible wanting. He lets Daniel see it all. There’s not a trace of shame, but Daniel’s got enough of that for the both of them. Armand's cough is a sick, wet sound. Daniel feels the tight contraction of his muscles. 

The air is silent.

Finally Daniel says, “Hepatitis C.”

Armand blinks at him. 

“Hepatitis B,” Daniel continues. “And HIV, of course. You must’ve at least heard of that one.”

Armand doesn’t speak. But his eyes are sliding away again. 

“Point is, you can’t do this, Armand. You know that. I know you know that. So why do you—”

Armand’s not listening. He’s vacant, dreamy-eyed roadkill. 

Daniel doesn’t care. “We’re getting up,” he tells him. And when Armand doesn’t move, Daniel slides his arms under his legs and carries him.

***

The master bathroom is clean. White tile, white walls. There’s a few red footprints, now, but they’ll wipe up easily enough. 

Daniel lets the faucet run, pre-war plumbing taking its sweet time to warm up. While the water heats he digs through the cabinet for an old bottle of conditioner. No tears, no tangles, it says. A cartoon dinosaur smiles cheerily on the front. 

“Okay,” Daniel says, nudging Armand with his foot. “In you go.”

He guides him up from the floor. Lifts away his tattered clothing, so wrecked it all but falls apart in his hands. Eases Armand into the tub. Through all of it he’d been unresponsive, moving as if asleep. But when his body enters the water his shoulders curl up reflexively. He does not look at Daniel.

Daniel takes a soft cloth and lathers it with soap. He perches on the side of the tub and works it efficiently over Armand’s back, his shoulders, his front. He keeps the actions brisk, clinical. The suds rinse pink down the drain. He can feel every hollow and ridge of Armand’s vertebrae, but he doesn’t linger. 

When his body is clean, Daniel turns to his face. Dabs lightly at the bruise on his cheek. Swipes away the mess of his lips. “I’m going to do the hair now,” Daniel warns. Brusque. Unapologizing.  “It might pull.”

Armand doesn’t respond.

The shampoo is a bright green apple, artificial and sweet. Daniel works it into Armand’s scalp. Takes down the shower head and rinses it out. The first pass got most of the blood, but the hair is still a dry snarl of knots. He’ll have to go slowly. 

Shutting off the water, he takes it section by section, smooths each piece with conditioner and works it through until the strands slip like silk between his fingers. He works doggedly, determinedly. Takes a grim satisfaction in the tactile proof of his efforts. This is something he can do, something good. Don't think about the bodies in the other room. Don't think about the blood pooling in your gut. Focus on the tangles. The darkly shining locks. The small sounds he makes under your hands, pliable as clay. No, don’t think about that either, you sick fuck. Jesus.

Somewhere along the way, Armand’s head had fallen back to rest against Daniel’s leg. Now Daniel cradles his neck forward to rinse out the product. “You can’t do this again,” he says, quiet but firm. The faucet drips like the patter of rain. Daniel watches it instead of Armand as he says, “Promise me.”

Armand’s head falls back to Daniel’s knee. He closes his eyes.

***

The last time Armand asks him, it’s a plea.

Daniel can’t sleep. He’d put Armand to bed and then bagged the bodies as quickly as he could, dragging them into a hall closet so Armand wouldn’t stumble on them in the night. A problem for later. Now he lies under a thin blanket and bone-deep exhaustion and sleep is a ridiculous, far-off fantasy. His mind ravages over the images, the memory abrading with its every retrieval, but he can’t stop himself. Armand, brittle-boned and blood-soaked. Monstrous. Mortal. The whites of his brown eyes shot through with red. 

Finally he can’t take it. He gets up, opens the door to his room, and finds Armand already standing in the hall. Daniel had dressed him in his old Modesto barback t-shirt. It hangs on him like the sheet of a ghost. Daniel steps back to let him in.

Wordlessly, Armand follows him to the bed. Daniel gets back under the covers, but Armand just lies on top, still like a body. There’s barely a foot between them but the distance is oceanic. Armand lies unmoving long enough that Daniel thinks he’s fallen asleep, and Daniel’s starting to think he might be on the verge as well, when Armand says, smaller than Daniel’s ever heard him, “Please, Daniel. You have to turn me.”

“No,” Daniel says. Not angry. Not spiteful. Just factual. No. “I can’t.” The broken bent to Armand’s body as he’d thrown up the blood. The ruined sprawl of him on the penthouse floor. Fragile. Only halfway-dead, but passing for fully. The sick drop in Daniel’s heart when he’d thought it was the latter. “I can't,” he says again, inadequately. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m dying anyway,” Armand says. His voice is miserable. “Can’t you see it?”

“No,” Daniel says, and now he’s angry, angry and fucking tired. “You’re not. You’re twenty-seven, and able-bodied, and you’ve got a long fucking time ahead of you if you can get your head out of your ass and take care of yourself for once.”

A pause. Armand turns on his side. Daniel waits, but he says nothing more, and eventually his breathing evens out. Either sleeping or faking. Daniel leaves him to it. 

But in the back of his mind, he’s starting to get an idea.

***

“I don’t know,” Armand’s saying. 

They’re standing at the kitchen counter. A gleaming, state of the art blender stares back at them. Armand’s looking at Daniel dubiously.

“No, no, hear me out,” Daniel says. “Chewing repulses you, right? Eating?” He waits until Armand gives a reluctant nod, and continues, “Well, here’s a goddamn trick. You’ve been drinking for five hundred years, so let’s give that a try, huh?”

Armand doesn’t say anything, but he also doesn’t turn and sulk out of the room, which Daniel counts as a win.

He spoons the blender half full of strawberries. Dollops in rich, honeyed yogurt. Tops it off with mangoes, peeled and sliced, juices glistening. Armand watches it all with clinical disinterest, and then Daniel nudges him when it’s time. “You do the honors,” he says, pointing to the button.

Armand sighs but holds it down. The electric blades whir immediately into violent and cacophonous action. The strawberries pulverize. The mangoes obliterate. A glint enters Armand’s eyes, the barest spark of something. “Powerful,” he remarks, and Daniel hums.

He forces his eyes to wander the room while Armand pours himself a small cup. He’s trying not to look too invested, but god, he doesn’t know what he’ll do if this doesn’t work. Can he check Armand into an eating disorder ward? Daniel imagines how that would go. Yeah, it’s a little complicated, he drank nothing but blood for 500 years and now food won’t do it for him, but good luck with the sharing circle! Oh, and he might still try to drain you dry. It's all part of his healing journey. Daniel’s not a praying man but he sends a fruitless hope to the universe that it won’t come to that.

Armand sips the smoothie. Daniel watches out of the corner of his eye. Armand’s still for a moment. The line of his throat bobs as he swallows. Then he nods once at Daniel, unsmiling, but takes another sip.

And it’s not much, but it’s a goddamn start.

Chapter 3

“—and you’re not stupid enough to let your guard down near the tracks, right? You can’t trust anyone in this city, remember that. Crazy fuckers out there.”

Armand regards him irritably, arms crossed. “I’m aware, Daniel. Some would say I’m one of them.”

Daniel grunts, but he can’t really argue with that. Then another thing occurs to him. “And you’ve got enough cash for the fare—just in case the card reader’s down? ‘Cause those spindly legs of yours won’t walk you there fast enough and I don’t want you getting in a car with some stranger if—”

“For the last time, I’m fine,” Armand says, “except that I’m going to be late, if you don’t let me pass.”

“Okay, okay.” Daniel raises his hands and steps back from the doorway. But as Armand walks through, Daniel catches at his sleeve. “Wait,” he says, and straightens the nametag on his polo shirt. ARMIE, it reads. Cheerful block lettering. Daniel taps it once and pushes Armand out the door. 

He forces himself not to listen for Armand’s heartbeat winding down the stairs. There’s no reason for him to be this on edge. Stupid. Nonsensical. An opening shift at Smoothie King is probably far and away one of the least dangerous things Armand has ever done in his life, and if anything, Daniel should be worried for the customers. Armand doesn’t need someone to fret over him, so Daniel tells himself he’s not. It’s just—

Things have been better, lately. There haven’t been any more crime scenes for Daniel to clean up, at least, although the possibility of it never quite leaves Daniel’s imagination. So why rock the boat? Why add a new variable? The immediate horror of Armand’s convulsing body had passed, but the thought of it was supplanted by the persistent whisper that if Armand had picked someone just a little stronger, a little bigger, it would’ve been his broken body on the floor, instead. Should it matter? What was one more dead monster among monsters?

But of course it would matter. He can’t keep pretending anymore. Because the truth is that he likes Armand, plain and simple. He likes his wit. He likes his temper. He likes the way Daniel will make some offhand comment while working on his laptop, and Armand will bat back, and then they’ll waste away an hour in flying argumentative jabs about politics or philosophy or the cinematic merits of reality television, vicious snarling fights that invariably end with the two of them slamming off to their rooms in a huff. An hour later they’ll both emerge and sit in the living room like it never happened, until another hour passes and the cycle repeats anew. But it’s fun, to talk like that. He can’t bully Armand. Armand can’t steamroll him. Unstoppable forces and immovable objects make for pretty good bedfellows, as it turns out.

Because they are, still, somehow. Bedfellows.  

Ever since that horrible night, Armand has followed Daniel to his room. They don’t comment on it, although Daniel’s not sure why he’d be so embarrassed if they did. It’s not a sexual thing. They don’t even touch. Armand just lies there corpse-still, face turned to the wall, shoulders drawn and tense and barely relaxing even when his breathing passes into the rattle of sleep. 

But the shadows under his eyes start to lessen, so Daniel figures there must be some comfort in it for Armand, even if he barely shows it. The simple fact of another body in the dark. What do you want me to tell you? We used to sleep seven to a room, you could barely move for the stinking heat of it? Armand had snapped at him once, when Daniel was pestering him about what it was like in the 16th century. And then all those claustrophobic years with the coven, and later, Louis. He knows Armand just needs someone there. Anyone at all, a bulwark against the emptiness. So whatever, Daniel’s here anyway. Path of least resistance.

Some days he wakes before Armand, opens his eyes to the vulnerable curl of his neck. The glimpse of skin through the tangles of sleep-mussed dark hair. Something about it bugs him. His fingers still remember the feel of those curls and they itch to reach out, detangle, smooth it down. And there, beneath it all, the steady thrum of blood. It would be so easy to wrap his hands around that neck, that fragile throat, to feel the fluttering pulse of it hot against his grip.

He keeps his hands to himself.

Other days Daniel wakes to an empty bed, an apocalyptic whir echoing from the kitchen. The sound wars at him with dual relief and irritation. Relief, because the racket means there’s a 50% shot that Armand’s actually putting some nutrients in his body, and irritation because the other half of the time he’s merely exercising grotesqueries of free will. 

Once Daniel had walked in on him hovering over the blender with a near religious intensity, his wide-eyed face so beatific, so rapturous, so innocent as he’d loaded the pitcher full of the wet, gleaming bodies of roaches. Cue a yelling match violent enough that the apartment super had stopped by to knock, and Daniel, running hot and foul with temper, had drained him dry before even thinking about it.

Armand had just looked at him, eyebrows raised, like where’s your superiority now. His fingers had poised over the start button. Some of the roaches were still twitching. “Fucking Christ,” Daniel had said, throwing up his hands and then stooping to gather up the body. “Whatever. Whatever.”

Ever since then, he gives the kitchen a wide berth when the blender’s in operation. 

But the yogurts and fruits empty from the fridge without spoiling, and slowly, Armand’s frame begins to strengthen, so Daniel figures he can stop worrying about Armand’s organs shutting down, at least. 

But worry is an insidious thing, isn’t it. The way it hooks you like a drug. Makes a space in your mind that cries out to be filled; excites your neurons until they’re whining like a dog, desperate for anything to rut against. So with one immediate crisis appeased, his worry sets itself swiftly on other things. Like this goddamn job.

Daniel had actually laughed in his face when Armand announced he’d applied for it. The ancient vampire Armand, slogging it out in food service? Give him a fucking break.

And yeah, Daniel had heckled him a bit about getting a job, but that had been mostly for show. He’d never thought in a million years that Armand would actually do it. But look, here they were. Armand had used whatever shady contacts and cache of money he still had to procure a social security number, and he was swiftly hired as an opener at Smoothie King. Daniel supposed that made as much sense as anything else. He should just be glad it was blenders that really did it for Armand, and not, like, pipe bombs or AK-47s.

So now while Daniel sits on his ass in the living room, Armand is off, trudging through the city to sweat behind a counter. To talk to customers and tap at a screen and blend shit together, pour it into foam cups and serve with a smile. He hopes to God this location doesn’t have an insect problem.

And Daniel is blessedly free to work on his book, no distractions this time. 

He makes it ten minutes before he shuts his laptop.

It’s too quiet. When had it gotten so quiet? Somewhere along the way he’d gotten used to the small noises of cohabitation, and now their absence is fucking with him. There’s no one breathing lightly in the armchair, pattering away at a screen. Making little hums or grunts of displeasure. Sniping at Daniel over the mug of coffee he’d taken to drinking in the mornings. 

Get it together, Molloy. Acting like a mommy dropping her kid off at kindergarten, Jesus Christ.

He opens his laptop again. Shuts it. There’s a restlessness building in him that feels a lot like thirst. Well, if the shoe fits. He zips up his jacket and steps out the door.  

***

He’s freshly showered and in clean clothes by the time Armand returns. “Honey, you’re home,” Daniel drawls, then looks up. 

He nearly drops his laptop.

Armand’s once-neat polo shirt is bedraggled and dripping. Brilliantly colored stains make a canvas of his chest, his forearms, his neck. His name tag hangs askew, curls sweat-slick and plastered to his forehead. He smells like he lost a war between artificial strawberries and cleaning fluid.

A gloating smile creeps on Daniel’s face; he can’t help it. “Good first day?” 

Armand shuts himself in his bedroom without a word. Daniel figures that’ll be the end of it. Well, kudos to him for trying, at least.

But then Armand’s crawling out of bed the next morning and taking himself out the door. And the next day, and the next, and the next after that. Daniel might not even believe he was really going to work all that time, but the first few days he comes back in similar states of cleaning product and smoothie-sprayed disarray. After the first week, though, something seems to click, and Armand comes home more or less in the same condition he’d left in.

Still, the sheets always smell like strawberries, even when he’s gone.

“You actually like it, don’t you?” Daniel asks one night, glancing at Armand sidelong, as if something as banal as a different angle could catch him in a flash of truth. Yeah, right.

Armand just shrugs. He’s not in his chair for once, but sitting beside Daniel on the sofa, stooped over the puzzle on the coffee table with a look of intense concentration. “It passes the time.” He fits together two end-pieces and slots them into the corner.

But he does like it, Daniel can see that. Or at least, it’s agreeing with him. There’s a more focused light returning to Armand’s eyes. He looks more solid. Less like he’s going to fade into the upholstery, more like he might be a real person.

Huh. 

Daniel decides he needs to see for himself. One morning he follows Armand to work, stealthily, out of sight. It’s bizarre to see Armand’s form outside of his apartment. He’s grown so used to seeing him lounging on an armchair or stooping over the table that he’d almost forgotten how goddamn tall Armand is. He cuts through the crowds with grace, elegant even in his garish red polo. Daniel watches from the other end of the subway car as Armand leans against a pole and swipes at his phone, steps back with a nod to let others by. He could be any normal kid yawning his way to an early-morning shift. 

It’s disconcerting.

At Smoothie King, Daniel lingers outside the window. He watches customers file in, Armand greeting them politely, smiling with teeth. His work is quick, courteous, efficient. A serial killer made your smoothie, Daniel imagines saying to the girls giggling over their drinks as they push out the door. And he wasn’t flirting with you, okay, his eyes just look like that.

He walks into the shop instead. Armand’s wiping at the counter with a rag. “What does the chef recommend?” Daniel asks, and Armand looks up. 

His hand freezes on the rag. Daniel feels embarrassed, suddenly, even though he has no reason to be. It’s normal for him to be curious about Armand at work, alright? It would be weirder if he wasn’t, in fact, because who wouldn’t jump at the chance to see a former coven leader in all his minimum-wage stodgy-uniformed glory. Maybe Daniel should’ve invited Louis. 

Armand’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing here?”

“Just checking out the establishment,” Daniel says, spreading his arms expansively.  “Pretty nice place.”

Armand resumes scrubbing. “Yeah,” he says. There’s something a little off about his expression. Almost nervous—but why? Does he think Daniel’s going to embarrass him if more of those giggling girls come in? Because fuck that, Daniel’s very cool, thank you very much. Cooler than Armand, anyway.

Scowling, he squints at the menu over Armand’s shoulder. “Jesus Christ, this list is insane. A hundred fucking options? Are you kidding me? Why do you need Vanilla, and Slim-n-Trim Vanilla, and The Shredder Vanilla, and High Protein Vanilla, and—the Hulk Vanilla? These cannot be different things. What kind of sick schemes are you running here?” He shakes his head, lifting an eyebrow. “Fuck, man, maybe this job was a better fit for you than I thought.”

“Very funny,” Armand says. Then a man walks out from the back of the shop, and Armand’s body—transforms.

There’s no other word for it. Something about the shift of his shoulders. The deferent angle of his neck, the slight arch of his back. Still six-feet, but tall no longer. It happens so fast that Daniel can only blink.

“You working or chatting,” the man says. He’s maybe in his late forties, hairline receding, a bloodshot look to his pouched eyes. RICHIE, his nametag reads, with MANAGER below it. He’s chewing gum while he talks. Stale tobacco wafts in when he walks closer, a slow, swinging gait.

“Working, sir,” Armand says. Quiet. Servile. Hand twitching on the counter.

“Then why don’t we have an order yet for our friend here,” Richie says, nodding to Daniel as he passes behind Armand, and for a brief moment Daniel has the crazy thought that he’s going to smack his ass or do something equally stereotypical. But he doesn’t. Just opens the cash drawer and tracks his eyes over it. 

Armand’s eyes are simmering. But his voice has the same obsequious tinge as he says, “Apologies, sir. He was just leaving.”

“Yeah, not enough vanilla options for me,” Daniel says. He looks directly at the manager and curls his lip, baring just a hint of fang. “You should tell corporate to work on that.”

He tries to catch Armand’s eye, but he’s staring determinedly down at the counter, scrubbing the same spot in a tight circle. Richie’s glaring blearily at Daniel now, blinking. He can’t tell if he noticed the fangs or not, but Daniel has to get out of here before he does something stupid. There’s cameras winking at him from the wall and a murder investigation would be a big fucking nuisance right now.

He rides the subway home and grips the bar tight enough that it warps under his fingers. Fuck, does he need to sit down with Armand and make sure he knows that you don’t have to call your minimum-wage boss sir? That your day-manager is not your maître? But Daniel had felt Armand’s revulsion for the man, as tangible and heavy as a brick in hand, even as that rolled-over servility seemed to envelop him without conscious thought.

Yet when Armand comes home later he’s happy, or as happy as he ever gets. Tired stretches. Small, pleased smile. Folding back into his chair and chatting gamely with Daniel well into the evening. Daniel keeps waiting for a chance to bring it up, but a natural point never seems to come. And if Armand’s happy like this, then does he really need Daniel to swoop in and save him? He’s a grown man. He can enact an on-the-job submissive dynamic for himself, if he wants. Whatever gets him out of bed, and all that. Shit. 

Weeks pass. Armand looks stronger every day. Not quite up to his Dubai stature, but getting there. All those crazy protein mixes at Smoothie King must be good for something, at least. 

But lately, Armand’s been coming home with that strawberry-sweet scent darkened by the bite of cigarette smoke. Daniel’s seized by the thought of that greasy manager leering close enough over Armand to impart his stench. God, are they fucking? It’s not his business, it’s not, he reminds himself, but he can’t let go of the idea once it grips him. He’s not sure if it’s better or worse that he finds Armand’s own crumpled pack in the back pocket of his pants before tossing them in the wash one day. But an irrational anger erupts at the sight of them, regardless.

“Oh, no way, buddy,” Daniel says, barging into Armand’s room and brandishing the pack of smokes at him. “Your human lungs can’t take this shit like your dead ones, okay? Find a new hobby.”

Armand glares at him from the window. “You smoked far worse when you were a human.”

“And I ended up with a neurodegenerative disease by 65, so I don’t know what point you’re trying to make there.”

Armand crosses his arms mulishly. After that, he starts locking his door more often. Daniel knows, because he tries to barge in a few more times, and finds himself stymied by the realization that maybe he’s getting a little controlling. Controlling? No. He’s just trying to keep the ancient idiot from accidentally killing himself, alright? Does that make him crazy? And the building codes are strict as hell about indoor smoke. He can’t keep killing all the supers, that’s all. 

One day he spies Armand stowing a vape in his pocket on the way to work, which Daniel has to take as an improvement. 

New normals. That’s all life ever is, really. Daniel’s lived long enough to know this. Things happen, and the earth shifts, and you look around at the ragged contours and wonder how you could possibly go on. But life has a way of settling, doesn’t it, smoothing over it all like falling snow, new landscapes emerging to soften out the wreckage. New normals, yes. And this is theirs: Armand at the shop, Daniel at home. Armand serving customers, hitting a vape, maybe fucking his boss. Daniel committing murders in back alleys and typing up a book.

It’s not such a bad life. He should take what he can get. He shouldn’t fixate on the way Armand’s gaze is turning inward again. The way he’ll sometimes sink into the armchair and it’ll take Daniel three tries to get his attention, and after that Armand will still only reply with some halfhearted quip. Good days and bad days, right? Healing isn’t linear, or whatever shit they used to spout at him in rehab. Peaks and valleys. If it seems like they’re spending more time in valleys, now, that’s probably all in Daniel’s head. Objectivity has never been easy when the interviewer's his own subject.

***

Daniel’s been stuck on the same chapter for an hour when he decides to give up. It’s getting late, anyway, and he’s trying not to be peeved about the fact that Armand’s cloistered away in his room again instead of sitting with Daniel on the sofa. The puzzle is languishing without him. Armand’s slender fingers have a knack for fitting together pieces that Daniel’s can never seem to achieve, so he mostly just prefers to sit back and watch Armand work. It’s more fascinating than it sounds. When Armand gets on a roll it’s like he’s alone in the universe, and all the masks he still wears, even around Daniel, start to slip. His eyes light up, fingers tapping excitedly, the smile on his face building into breathtaking proportions. Boyish. Giddy. Sometimes it’s almost a little painful to see him like that, but Daniel can’t ever seem to look away. 

Not tonight, apparently, but whatever. Armand’s allowed to have space. It’s fine.

But as Daniel passes by the guest room, he pauses. The door’s not fully shut. Quirk of the pre-war build, wood that expands in the summer heat and won’t close tight unless you heave your weight into it. Usually Armand’s careful about that, but for whatever reason, not tonight. Daniel hesitates. There’s soft sounds coming from within. 

He should leave it. Respect Armand’s privacy. Go to his room and get under the covers and wait for Armand’s silent body to slip in beside him. A polite, boundary-aware roommate.

Yeah, fuck that. He pushes open the door, ready to make some dig about the neglected puzzle, and halts in his tracks.

Armand’s sitting at his desk. His head is thrown back, one hand sliding up his bare chest, lamplight burnishing his skin with an amber glow. He’s naked. His other hand is working over his hard cock in tight little circles. There’s a slender black blindfold over his eyes, and he’s making these small, whisper-soft mewling noises. Girlish. 

There’s a laptop in front of him with the camera light blinked on.

A frozen instant. Armand, bound by mortal senses, hasn’t noticed him. Last chance. Daniel could still back out of the room. Retreat away and pretend this image won’t be burned into his immortal retinas. 

The flat of his palm is slamming the laptop closed before he even consciously decides to move.

Armand barely reacts. His hands keep pace without interruption, sensuous and snaking, shadowed light painting him in an obscene tableau. Mussed curls. Parted mouth. Dark red lips. For a horrible moment Daniel thinks it’s blood they’re stained with, but then he recognizes the waxy smear at the corner of his mouth. Lipstick.

His breathing is ragged in his own ears as he tugs the blindfold down from Armand’s eyes.

“The fuck,” he gets out. “The fuck are you doing.”

Armand frowns. “I had a patron,” he says, eyebrows dipping in a facsimile of irritation, but his voice holds only a ghost of the emotion, too far away to be real. His eyes are glazed. He’s in this room but somewhere else entirely. Finally the hand stills between his legs, but the one on his chest is still moving, spider-like, as if on its own accord. A chill rises on Daniel’s spine.

“A patron—?”

“You told me to get a job,” Armand murmurs. 

“And you have one! Smoothie King, not—this!” 

“My manager introduced me to it,”  Armand says, still distant, looking through Daniel to some spot on the wall. “He said I had the kind of mouth people would pay for.”

Something simmers in Daniel’s gut. Did he, now. Armand’s hand is still rubbing up his chest, faster now, neck rolling back, like the performance is building to a fixed climax it can’t derail from. Daniel feels a little sick. He’s desperate to stop it, somehow, but part of him knows that touching him in this state would only make things worse.

Armand gasps suddenly, the sound harsh in the taut silence. “I can’t—” Blank eyes, blank face, but his voice shudders. “I don’t think the mortal mind was meant for 500 years of memories. I— it’s all collapsing—” His hands reach a frantic pace, no longer stroking, but clawing. His fingernails are dirty, overgrown. 

They’re going to draw blood.

No. Not now. Daniel won’t be able to control himself. And fuck it, he does the first thing that comes to mind. He seizes Armand’s wrists to stop him. 

For a moment there’s only the pulse of Armand’s veins beneath his grip, slippery with sweat, bones sharp through his skin. Heavy, weighted silence. Then Armand’s eyes focus on him, his bound wrists. Something in him instantly seems to relax. His body slackens like a puppet with cut strings. 

He steps up and kisses Daniel. 

Waxy lips. Brush of tongue. Armand moaning into him, the sound high and false. Cock pressing hard to Daniel’s groin.

This is all Daniel registers before he’s pushing Armand roughly away.

Too roughly. Fucking vampire strength, Christ, he'll never get used to it. Armand crashes into the chair, lands hard on the floor. Curls around himself and looks up at Daniel from under his lashes, vacant pupils, body posing even now into something wanton and simpering. Beauty only magnified by the pain.

Daniel squeezes his eyes shut. “No,” he says, loudly, and fights to keep his voice from shaking. “You’re not doing that shit with me. I’m not your maker, or your maître, or your manager. Don’t use me for whatever sick games you need to play. That’s not what this is, you hear me? Try that again and we’re done here.” Harsh, even to his own ears. Has to be, or the alternative would be—

He opens his eyes. Armand’s still curled on the ground, the arch of his back too pronounced to be natural, but his hand is skittering anxiously on the floorboards. Somehow that image hurts the most.

“Just don’t,” Daniel says after a long moment. Quietly this time.

Armand still hasn’t moved when Daniel turns and walks out the door.

Chapter 4

That night, Daniel half-expects Armand not to come to bed. Half hopes, if he’s being honest. Fuck. 

But Armand crawls in eventually. Slight dip of the mattress. Blankets rustling. Daniel doesn’t look, but he knows by know every rhythm of Armand’s breathing, and it's obvious that he’s not anywhere close to sleep.

Daniel has the horrible thought that Armand might still be naked. Intolerable, suddenly, to be in this bed a moment longer. He slips quietly out the door. 

***

Richie lives in a basement unit not too far from the franchise. Daniel knows, because he’s followed him home. Several times. Out of sight, always. Paranoid that one day he’d see Armand going home with him. Never happened, and Daniel had felt better. Turns out the truth of it all was just as bad. Great investigative job, Molloy. Real shining star you are.

Now the lock gives way cleanly. No barking dogs, no sign of a wife, girlfriend, kids. Too easy. Daniel picks through the cluttered studio and finds the man sleeping without a topsheet, limbs splayed in a sweaty tangle.

There’s two ways this could go. 

Daniel pictures himself standing over Richie like the goddamn ghost of Christmas Future, intoning a warning about inappropriate managerial behavior and abuses of power and all that. It would be sufficiently scary. Richie might even be genuinely changed. Go on to live a different life, make a difference in the neighborhood, be good to people. Heartwarming tale for the ages.

Or Daniel could kill him.

It wasn’t really much of a choice.

***

“My manager’s disappeared,” Armand remarks one morning, after a few days have passed. He sips the coffee he’d made for himself. He likes milk and sugar, Daniel’s noticed, but not the flavored creamers Daniel sometimes picks up from the store. Daniel’s got this all filed away in the part of his brain that’s also cataloging the temperatures Armand prefers on the thermostat (way too warm) and the amount of blankets he prefers to sleep under (way too many). He tells himself it's useful—an anthropological study on the habits of the world’s first former vampire. Anyone would be interested in this kind of thing, not just him. Could even make it into a follow-up book, if he really works at it, right?

He keeps telling himself that. Sometimes he almost buys it.

“Huh,” Daniel says, bringing his own mug to his lips. Dark roast with a splash of O negative. He could take or leave the coffee part, but he likes the warmth, the steady heat of it in his hands. Likes when he finds Armand made his own cup and poured one for Daniel, too, waiting there on the counter, the sense of shared routine between them. He swallows, meeting Armand’s eyes. “That’s weird.” 

“Indeed,” Armand says. Moment of silence as they both drink.

Daniel waits, but Armand doesn’t call him on it further. What’s the point, probably, when neither of them are idiots. So he asks, “Are they bringing in someone new, then?” Daniel’s prepared to do some lurking and mind-probing. Some intimidation too, if necessary. Better to nip this shit in the bud before it takes root.

Armand’s spine straightens a little, a slight smile passing over his lips. “Actually,” he says, “it seems I’m to be promoted.”

“Well damn right,” Daniel says, and claps Armand on the shoulder, hard enough to make him slosh his coffee. “Nobody knows all 100 identical flavors like you—”

“They’re not identical, Daniel, and if you were mortal I would force you to try them all until you got it into your head that Power Meal Slim Strawberry and Strawberry X-Treme are the furthest thing from each other—”

“—and this is why there’s no one better for the job. I’m proud of you,” Daniel says seriously. There’s a moment where he feels caught in Armand’s brown eyes like a rat in a glue trap. Then Armand looks down, and Daniel realizes his hand is still on Armand’s shoulder. He removes it as casually as he can.

They’ve both avoided talking about that night. Armand had offered a stiff apology the next morning, a brief, dismissive comment about a momentary lapse in judgment. How he regretted that Daniel had gotten caught in it.

Daniel had waved it away gruffly. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, any of it. Not about Armand’s body on the floor. Not the way Daniel had spoken to him. Not the way Armand had kissed him, the slick-tongued performance of it, or the way, just for a second, Daniel had kissed him back. 

Daniel’s been murdering for weeks now but it’s the idea that Armand’s show had worked on him, even momentarily, that makes him feel the most like a monster.

“Never happened,” he’d said, and Armand had nodded. A lie that they would both live with. They were experts at that, after all. 

Now Daniel tries to nonchalantly shove his hand back in his pocket and remember how to walk  from one side of the kitchen to the other. 

New normals. They’ll adjust. They always do.

***

“What the fuck,” Daniel says, almost pleasantly. He’s displaying a frankly heroic level of calm for someone watching his roommate dump bag after bag of potting soil squarely onto the floor.

“Hello, Daniel,” Armand says. He tips out another bag. Half of the guest room floor is covered with it, now, and Daniel presses his hand to his temple.

“Can I ask,” he begins, “what the hell you think you’re doing here?”

“Starting a garden,” Armand answers, nonchalant as anything. “I had a magnolia clipping in Dubai. I liked taking care of it, I think. In Venice, too. Herbs on the balconies. The air was fragrant with it.”

“Okay,” Daniel says, pressing his fist to his forehead, “the only thing this place is going to be fragrant with is mold. Most people start with a few potted plants. Ever think of that?”

“Yes,” says Armand, smoothing out the soil with his hands, “but I ultimately dismissed it.” Daniel waits, but Armand doesn’t elaborate, as if that response had been in any way sufficient. Asshole. “And this room has above average ventilation,” he adds, “particularly with the double windows. I don’t anticipate mold posing a problem.”

Daniel sighs. But now he notices a thick, waterproof tarp spanning the area of the room, the layer of dirt piled safely on top. So he supposes he can unclench at the idea of soaking through the floorboards anytime soon. Though really, would even that be such a big deal? He has enough money now that any crises should be nothing more than minor headaches, but it’s still hard to wrap his head around. 

“Whatever,” Daniel grunts. Then he rolls up his sleeves and slides down into the dirt beside Armand. Armand looks up, surprised. His mouth curves into a small smile, genuine enough that Daniel has to look away. “What can I do?” he asks. 

“We need to pack the soil at least 4 inches deep,” Armand says. “Can you make sure it’s even? There’s more if you need it.” He nods at the bags of topsoil on the bed, which Daniel doesn’t even want to know how he dragged all the way up here. But he doesn’t voice this, just dutifully grabs a bag from the pile. Armand had pushed the bed into the corner to make more floor space, and now Daniel realizes the desk and chair where Armand used to sit—where Armand used to—Don’t think about it, Molloy—are conspicuously absent. He has the sneaking suspicion he’ll find them pitched to the curb later when he steps outside. 

Fine with Daniel. 

For the next few hours, he lets Armand put him to work. Spreads out the soil nice and thick. Tucks in seeds for tomatoes, bell peppers, squash. Basil, rosemary, coriander. A sapling goes in the corner. It’s almost meditative, after a while. The physical sensations of it. The cool, rich earth between his fingers, the damp press of it against his knees. The steady breathing of Armand working beside him. The way their elbows brush sometimes when they reach for the same supplies, warm flashes of skin, and neither of them pulls away.

When there’s no more seeds left to plant, Daniel sits back on his heels and takes in the room. A deep layer of earth coats the entire floor like they’ve built a portal to the countryside—if the countryside were hemmed in by 90’s floral wallpaper. It looks, objectively speaking, insane. Like the product of a mental breakdown (or two, in their case). Utterly unrecognizable from the classy little guest room his ex-wife had decorated, once upon a time. But that’s okay. Daniel’s life is pretty unrecognizable, too, and he’s always appreciated a bit of heavy-handed symbolism. 

He cuts his eyes over to Armand. There’s dirt smeared over his eyebrows and he doesn’t look happy, exactly, but he does look satisfied. Like the transformation of this room had been inevitable, and he’s relieved to see it finally come to fruition. 

Daniel claps Armand on the shoulder as he stands up, attempting to dust himself off but only succeeding in smearing more dirt down his front. “Alright,” he says, “just don’t come crying to me if everything croaks.”

***

But the garden doesn’t die. 

At least, not right away. There’s still plenty of time. When it comes to fucking up, the universe grants infinite chances; Daniel knows this all too well. But for now, Armand checks on it each morning before work, and there’s no disaster. The first green shoots appear within a few days, but Armand is contained in his excitement. Waters them carefully, mindful of over moisture. Feeds them supplements when necessary and winds in plastic supports to cradle the nascent vines. 

Sometimes when Armand is at work, Daniel just stands in the doorway and stares. There’s an honest-to-god garden in his apartment, which is probably no weirder than the fact that there’s an honest-to-god vampire in his apartment—or the fact that the vampire is himself— but sometimes he needs a moment to just take it all in. 

That’s what he’s doing when he hears the click of Katie’s shoes on the kitchen tile. Hastily, he shuts the guest room door, prays he’s not tracking enough dirt to be incriminating, and goes to give her a hug.

It’s an awkward visit. Daniel can tell she’s bewildered by his lack of deterioration, even despite the lackluster ‘dying man’ performances he’s been giving over the phone. “Medical miracle,” he tries weakly, but he can tell she’s not buying it. The wounded suspicion in her eyes kills him, and he almost caves and tells her the whole thing, right there. Opens his mouth, ready to point to the fangs and everything, but at the last moment he just can’t do it. He doesn’t know why. Self-sabotage, he has to guess, because at this point, what’s even the harm in her knowing? But he fails, like always, and she leaves frustrated, confused, disappointed. The way she’d probably left his visits for the past thirty years. Consistency, maybe that’s all he’s ever had going for him.

When Armand comes home, he can probably pick up on Daniel’s shitty mood. Daniel’s not exactly subtle about it, plunking away at his laptop with more aggression than the thing deserves, but he’s not in the mood to talk about it, either. Armand, of course, wouldn’t ask him about it even if he were. But he takes his post-work shower and surprises Daniel by not immediately sinking into his armchair to lose himself in his iPad game-of-the-week. Instead, he sits pointedly beside Daniel on the sofa, damp hair sprinkling Daniel as he moves. His face has all the grim determination of a soldier marching off to war when he says, “We’re finishing this puzzle tonight.”

“No,” Daniel groans, throwing up a hand over his eyes. “We don’t even have half her face…”

The puzzle is, from what they can guess, a poorly drawn portrait of Lady Gaga. Daniel doesn’t know why he has it. He certainly can’t remember buying it, but they’ve already finished Beers of the World and Bruegel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels, so mystery Gaga it is. Armand won’t let him slack off, either. When Daniel complains that it’s impossible, Armand grabs his hand and places a piece in the flat of his palm. His fingers linger for just a second, warm against the cool of Daniel’s skin. Then Armand points to the middle of Gaga’s face. “Put that in the nose area.”

“Nose? Are you sure?”

“Unfortunately,” Armand says. “Try not to get distracted by what a face should actually look like. That’s a losing battle, I’m afraid. Look for the edges of the pieces instead.”

Daniel elbows him, grumbling that he knows how puzzles work, thank you very much, but he grudgingly follows Armand’s advice. The puzzle starts coming together more quickly after that, but it still takes them late into the evening before Daniel’s holding the last piece and sliding it triumphantly into place. 

“Hey, look at that,” Daniel says. “We did it, Armand, we really—” he breaks off when he looks next to him, because Armand is asleep.

Ah. Armand’s head is pillowed between his hand and the crook of the couch cushions, his long limbs folded in on himself like the wings of a bird. Daniel takes a moment to watch the soft rise and fall of his chest beneath his thin cotton t-shirt. The stray curls that flutter with his breath. Then, carefully, he slides his arms under Armand to pick him up fireman-style, head cradled against Daniel’s chest. 

Armand stirs a little as Daniel walks, but Daniel shushes him. “Go back to sleep,” he says. “I got you.” Armand hums, eyes still closed, nestling his nose into Daniel’s shirt. He’s still too light for his six foot frame, but his body feels softer, less violent in its angles. His shirt had ridden up and Daniel’s forearm is burning against the bare skin of his back. Warm breath on Daniel’s shoulder. Warm veins pulsing in his neck. 

Daniel has the thought that he might never let go.

He does, of course, not twenty seconds later. The apartment’s not huge, after all, and so he deposits Armand gently on his side of the bed. Spreads him with the nest of blankets he’s grown partial to. Kisses the top of his head, the downy, strawberry-scented curls, then freezes. Hadn’t meant to do that part. 

But Armand doesn’t stir. So Daniel climbs in on his side of the bed, feels warm in a way that has nothing to do with the thermostat, and it’s okay. They’re both okay.

***

When there’s enough basil to grab a solid handful of leaves and the tomato plants have produced a few anemic fruits, Daniel decides it’s time.

“Alright,” he says. “Why don’t we put some of this to good use, huh?”

He’s standing at the edge of the doorway, watching Armand stoop to prune back the vines. Armand straightens when Daniel speaks. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning we cook some dinner with it. High time you get into something besides smoothies.”

Armand purses his lips. He swipes the back of his hand over his forehead, smears a little dirt in the process.

“Cans of soup aren’t much better,” Daniel adds, before Armand can try to argue. 

Armand heaves a huge breath, like Daniel’s asked for some unimaginable favor. “Fine,” he says at last, planting his hands on his hips and looking at Daniel expectantly. “What do you have in mind?”

A slow grin slides over Daniel’s face. “First, we’ll need to go grocery shopping.”

***

It is, as far as Daniel can tell, Armand’s first time in a supermarket. Daniel drags him through the aisles and tosses ingredients into his cart with a kind of giddy abandon. He finds himself almost wanting to impress Armand, nonsensically proud of it all, as if Daniel had personally played a role in the great human achievement of making twenty-nine flavors of potato chips. See this one? he’ll say. Fried pickle flavored. Amazing, right? Armand’s trying and failing not to look interested in it all, so Daniel takes pity on him by assigning Armand little missions. Go find the vegetable stock. Go find the onions. Armand rolls his eyes, but then he’s gone long enough that Daniel has to go look for him, and he finds Armand in deep concentration inspecting the boxes of Pop Tarts, reading the packages of beef jerky, shaking the containers of yogurt-covered raisins. Missions forgotten. 

They wander down the half-darkened aisles of the freezer section. They’ve got almost everything on his list, but Daniel finds himself wanting to linger anyway. He likes being out with Armand. Likes the way his black curls look almost blue in the phosphorescent light. Likes the way he looks at everything so intently, elevating the ice cream cartons and frozen peas to something holy under his attention. Likes the way Armand sticks close enough by Daniel’s side that their shoulders sometimes brush as they walk, a little too often to be accidental.

Daniel glances around. It’s twenty minutes to close and the store is almost empty. No better time. He nudges Armand. “Hey,” he says, and points to the half-full cart. “Get in.”

Armand’s shaking his head. “No. Whatever you’re thinking—no.”

Daniel clucks, ribbing his elbow into Armand’s side. “C’mon. Don’t you trust me?”

Armand seems to consider that seriously for a moment. His answering sigh is monumental—drama queen, Daniel thinks bitchily—but he climbs into the cart anyway, wedging himself between Cool Ranch Doritos and loaves of Italian bread. Delighted, Daniel starts to push, breaking into a run as they pick up momentum. Rattle of wheels over tile. Slapping of his own beat-up sneakers. The unexpected daybreak of Armand’s laughter, bright and luminous with surprise, and Daniel could fly to the goddamn moon on the high of that sound alone.

He picks up more speed as they round the corner, Armand hanging on for dear life, Daniel cataloging the exact timbre of his laughter, aisles flying by in an ever-quickening blur, and then Armand’s yelling stop, stop as he realizes there’s someone in their path. 

It takes all of Daniel’s vampire reflexes to stop the cart before it crashes into her. He grabs Armand to keep him flying out with the excess momentum, but the groceries aren’t so lucky. Cans of chickpeas and bulbs of garlic go shooting out like projectiles. Luckily, they all miss the woman, but Daniel still cringes, looking at her and opening his mouth to apologize. The words die in his throat.

Close-cropped curly hair. Short, bitten down nails. Belligerent set of shoulders, tensed beneath a beat-up leather jacket.

It’s Lenora. 

“Oh,” is all he can say, stupidly. 

Lenora’s gaze travels from Daniel’s eyes—amber, glowing in a way that cataracts can’t explain—down to his arm, slung tight around Armand in the cart, familiar in a way that speaks for itself. Then her eyes slide away, expression unchanging, like they’d been nothing more than an uninteresting seasonal display at the end of the aisle. She walks past without a word.

For a long moment, Daniel can’t move. She probably hasn’t left the store yet. Daniel could chase after her, could tell her—what? Whatever he has to say, she won’t want to hear it. Can’t blame her, even.

His arm is still gripping tight across Armand’s chest. He can’t quite figure out how to undo that, either. Armand does it for him, carefully extricating himself from the cart and gathering up the ejected merchandise. Daniel accepts them wordlessly. The cans are a little dented. One of the chip bags has exploded, faint orange dust contaminating its neighbors.

“She looks like you,” Armand says softly. 

“Yeah,” Daniel says, rolling the cart towards checkout, “she does.”

***

“Chop this,” Daniel says, and thrusts the handful of basil at Armand. When Armand looks at it blankly, Daniel rolls his eyes. “C’mon, I know you know how to use a knife. I cleaned up those bodies, didn’t I?”

“Ouch, Mr. Molloy. Always one to lob the bomb, aren’t you.”

“That’s right. And Mr. Molloy’s only gonna hit lower the more you piss him off, so get to it, capiche?”

Armand gives him a withering look, but begins dutifully chopping the herbs anyway. Daniel watches for a minute, satisfied that nothing crazy is happening, and goes back to stirring the garlic sautéing on the stovetop.

“Can I ask what we’re making?” Armand says.

“Yeah,” Daniel hesitates. “But look, don’t read into it, alright? Seriously. It’s just a name. But it’s called—ah, marry-me chickpeas.”

Armand’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline. “Oh,” he says, building into a grin, “I didn’t realize this was such a special occasion. Perhaps I should’ve done my nails—” 

Daniel swats at him with a dishtowel. “Bastard. Don’t get your hopes up, ‘cause I made it for both my ex-wives, and look how that turned out. Supposed to be marry-me chicken, anyway, but Alice was vegetarian and the other one was—well, not vegetarian, but I guess I didn’t care enough to change the recipe,” Daniel snorts. “Should probably call it divorce-me chickpeas, if we’re being accurate.” 

Armand hums. “Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.” He passes Daniel a can of tomato paste, and Daniel stirs it into the pan. 

“Just shut up and drain the chickpeas,” Daniel says. Part of him is regretting picking this meal. He’d wanted something easy, something comforting, but after seeing Lenora earlier—and now standing here making Alice’s favorite dish—the past is hanging low in the kitchen like a fog. Daniel can’t tell if he wants to wrap it around himself like a blanket, or wish for the sun to come out and burn it all away.

Armand hands back the chickpeas. He’s looking at Daniel intently. As if he can still sense Daniel’s thoughts, he asks, “Did you and Alice cook together often?”

The sauce is bubbling now, the heat a little too high. Daniel turns down the burner and says, “Yeah. More so in the beginning, but yeah.” He gives the pan another stir and brings the spoon to his mouth on instinct. Soap. Ash. He forces a grin to hide the bittersweet pang inside him. “C’mere. I need you to taste this and see if it needs anything, ‘cause I sure as hell can’t judge.”

Armand puts down the recipe he’d been squinting at and boosts himself up to sit on the counter beside Daniel, legs dangling. He accepts the spoon and gives it a cautious swipe of his tongue. “Salt,” he decides after a moment. “Add a little more salt. What was it like, when you and Alice cooked together?”

“Dog with a bone,” Daniel mutters, stirring in another teaspoon. “Why do you care? Here, try it now.” This time he brings the spoon to Armand’s mouth himself. Armand’s lips part around its base, and he looks Daniel coolly in the eye as he takes the entire thing into his mouth.

Fuck. Daniel would think there’s not a drop of blood left in his brain after that, but then the wet pop of the spoon pulling from his lips makes even more of it course southward. “Better,” Armand says. “And I don’t care. I’m merely curious.” 

The lie is so flagrant that Daniel barks a laugh. “Fine,” he says, wrestling back the heat from his voice. “Sometimes it was normal. We cooked, and talked, and did the dishes. Sometimes we fought, big screaming matches that made the neighbors hate us, tomato sauce all over the walls. Sometimes we fucked.” Daniel pauses. Stirs the pan. Looks at Armand, looks back at the dish. “Sometimes the fighting turned into fucking, and that was kind of my favorite way to do it, if I’m being honest.” He smiles a bit, in spite of himself. “God, if we had the radio going and her song came on—no matter what stupid thing we were arguing about—she dropped it all to dance with me. Could never resist. I couldn’t either.”

Armand smiles a little, too. Something sad about its corners. “What song?”

“Brown-eyed girl,” Daniel says. He swallows hard. 

“I’m not familiar,” Armand says. “Would you play it for me?”

And there’s no universe where playing Armand his ex-wife’s song, making Armand his ex-wife’s dinner, standing in front of the kitchen cabinets his ex-wife had picked out, would ever be a good idea. But Daniel’s been having bad ideas for months, and so he pulls up the song on his phone, cranks Van Morrison’s voice as loud as the tinny speakers can go, and starts to dance.

“Laughing and a running, hey, hey,” he sings along, offkey, uncaring. He’s really putting his hips into it, and Armand’s watching him from the counter like he’s about to burst out laughing. Like hell he is, Daniel thinks, and reaches out to yank Armand down with him. “Dance,” he orders. “I met you at Polynesian Mary’s, right? I know you know how. No grinding in the kitchen, though, I think that’s a health code violation.”

Armand does laugh now, and he lets Daniel grab his arms to rock him back and forth, and even when Daniel releases him he continues to move. His movements are off-beat, a little awkward, which surprises Daniel. Armand had always seemed so Swan-Lake elegant that Daniel had assumed he’d dance like he was born to it, but the lack of rhythm is terribly endearing. Armand, Armand. Daniel thinks of Armand throwing stones at Louis’ window, reciting hopeful verses of Shakespeare in the moonlight, and understands now why any of it had worked on Louis. He likes him so much in that moment that he’s sweeping Armand up into a clumsy waltz before he knows what he’s doing.

My brown eyed girl.

Daniel stumbles a little over Armand’s feet. Armand’s eyes are warmer than the stove. Gorgeous depth of them, reflecting all the lights of the kitchen. 

You, my brown eyed girl.

The song fades out, but Daniel’s still holding on. His hand is resting on the small of Armand’s back. The other nestled into Armand’s palm. They’re not swaying now. Just breathing. Just looking.

Armand wets his lips. Daniel thinks—

He thinks—

And then the smoke alarm goes off. 

“Shit,” he says, and finally registers the stovetop, where the chickpeas are smoldering to a blackened crisp. Fuck. Okay, now he’s remembering bumping something with his hip during a particularly energetic dance move—that was the burner, idiot. Quickly he shuts it off, turns on all the vent fans he can find, and hops on a chair to yank out the batteries from the alarm.

When he comes back down, Armand’s prodding at the charred mess with a spoon. “It might still be salvageable,” he says, because lying is in his nature. Daniel looks him square in the eye as he dumps the whole thing in the trash, pan and all. He’s rich. He’ll buy another.

“I guess the marry me/divorce me dichotomy didn’t know what to do with you. Had to self-immolate just to deal with it. Congratulations.”

“Lucky me,” says Armand. He drifts over towards his blender, but Daniel sticks his foot out to block him.

“Nope,” he says. “Fuck this kitchen. We’re going to a diner. C’mon.”

And Daniel leads him to a greasy spoon down the block, still bustling with life despite the hour. Slides into the cracked vinyl booth across from Armand and orders half the menu from an unblinking waitress. “Listen,” he says. “Just try a little of everything, okay? Don’t have to worry about finishing anything. Just little bites, that’s all.”

Daniel expects Armand to fight him on it. To push back, to bitch, to obey with only sullen compliance. 

But he doesn’t. Instead, the food comes out on a million steaming platters, and Armand, against all odds, eats. A bit of pancake, speared on a fork. Spoonfuls of savory onion soup. French toast ripped off with his fingers, sugary syrup dripping down his wrist. 

It’s not much. The staff will have to scrape most of it into the bins at the end of the night, and Daniel can add egregious food waste to his list of sins. But Armand eats like he’s actually hungry and smiles at Daniel like it doesn’t cost him anything, and if this is their new normal, Daniel thinks, then he could do a hell of a lot worse.

Chapter 5

Armand takes to going for runs by the river. 

Daniel hadn’t known what was happening, at first. Armand had stumbled into the apartment breathing hard, a V of sweat dampening his shirt, blood pumping hot and quick through his muscles. Daniel had been on his feet in an instant, fangs dropping as he’d scanned wildly for a pursuer. No one, of course, but Armand had smiled faintly to see him get worked up like that, which Daniel had to admit was its own reward.  

“I think I liked running,” he tells Daniel later, “when I was a boy. Before.” 

Daniel’s quiet. Armand doesn’t speak much about before—any of the befores—and he waits to see if any more details are forthcoming. They’re not, but Daniel tries not to mind. They have time.

The running does good things for Armand. He sleeps better since he’d started, the physical exhaustion of it drawing him into dreamless rest, and it makes him hungry enough that he eats better, too. He doesn’t let Daniel try to cook for him after the charred-divorce-chickpea incident, but Daniel’s allowed to sit on the counter while Armand experiments. He very nearly loses that privilege after one too many jeering comments about Armand’s flavor combinations, but it’s worth it for the way Armand’s nostrils flare as he defends himself, the way he finishes the whole of his plates out of spite.

Armand builds back the rest of his strength. Lean muscle first, then softened out with a layer of flesh. Daniel watches him kneel in the earth of his garden every morning, the muscles in his arms flexing, the vertebrae of his spine no longer navigable under his thin shirt. He looks healthy. He looks good. 

More than good, if Daniel’s being honest with himself, but he’s doing less and less of that lately.

Because the truth, when he acknowledges it, is this: Armand, against all odds, is doing—well. And Daniel’s floundering.

The book’s been largely untouched for weeks. Still Daniel opens the documents every day and clicks around for hours, accomplishing nothing. Fact is, the draft is as done as it’ll ever be, and that done is not great. When he’d started this project, back in Dubai, back in New York, even, from the moment he’d read Louis’ letter, he’d had some notion in his mind that the book would get to some deep, excoriating truth. Not just about Louis’ life, but about the nature of existence in general. Illuminate some great revelations about existence and humanity through the tale of monsters. 

Now he reads over his flat prose and knows he’s captured none of it. The details are there, but the work does not transcend. How can it? How can he possibly have anything to say about humanity anymore? Daniel’s not a part of it, not really. An extraneous cog in the machine. Sitting on his ass in his fucking tower with his fucking millions. Not like Armand, who, barring all disbelief, has managed to make himself integral to the smoothie-buying populace, at least. Daniel’s integral to no one. 

Well. He still does Armand’s laundry. Maybe that counts for something.

Bitterness comes too easily, seeping in with the winter chill, the weeks advancing in increments of ever-darkening gray. The shortened daylight makes Daniel feel restless. Overstuffed on energy and lacking sufficient release. When Armand’s out, Daniel paces the apartment like an abandoned dog. His agent’s phone calls pile up on the answering machine. His laptop acquires hardware-threatening dents from the amount of times he slams it shut. It’s a small miracle he hasn’t yet resorted to chewing up the furniture.

Sometimes the hours stretch long enough that his lingering resentments start to fester, fermenting into a rotten and swollen bloom. It’s Armand’s fault he’s like this, he’ll think. Armand’s fault that Daniel is severed from the one thing he’s always had to fall back on—and without writing, what the hell is his reason for still doing this? All these interminably stretching years that the Dark Gift’s given him, and for what. Pile of bodies in his pointless wake. Blood sucked into a vacuum, fuel for a fuckload of nothing. There are stories out there that need to be told. Yeah, and Daniel’s sure as shit not going to be the one to tell them. 

It’s way simpler to blame Armand than to probe a little deeper at any of that, so that’s what he does. Figures he’s earned that right. Plus, being pissed at Armand feels less asshole-ish now that the guy doesn’t look like he’s got both feet in death’s door. But no matter how Daniel tries, his resolve always crumbles when Armand comes home. 

Because what he again manages to forget, in those few hours by himself, is how much he’s come to depend on Armand. How desperately he needs the routine comfort of talking to him, the early mornings bantering through the steam-shrouded shower door, the late nights bickering while Armand combs oil through his hair, his posture slumping into a soft, tired curve over the bathroom sink. Needs Armand to order Daniel off the sofa to help with the garden, grabbing Daniel’s wrist and thrusting his hands into the cool shock of soil to demonstrate exactly how he wants it. Needs to watch Armand eat, curled in his chair with a random snack picked solely to assuage his boredom, an ordinary, mindless act that Daniel can’t ever seem to take for granted. Needs to watch him scratch out Sudoku, or scrape dishes into the sink, or hook up video game consoles and play the same three levels over and over with an eerie, unerring determination. Needs the way he feels when Armand is near. The passing heat of his blood-warm skin pulling on something in Daniel, something vital. Something alive. 

Almost alive, Daniel corrects, because the incontrovertible reality is, of course, that Daniel’s dead. A fact which has been true for months but only lately seems to take on real meaning. Dead organs. Dead blood. Dead bones shambling around in a farcical performance of his old life. No wonder he can’t write, can’t think, can’t talk to his daughters, can’t do anything but drift around Armand like a restless spirit. Isn’t that what he is, after all? A ghost. Empty and purposeless unless Armand’s there to animate him. Refract him into something of substance, tether him to life with that ironclad link between murdered and murderer. And wouldn’t that explain why Daniel can’t bear to be apart from him? Spirits don’t stray from the objects they haunt. Daniel’s seen enough horror films to recognize this.

He dreads those hours apart more and more, until it occurs to him he doesn’t have to.

***

Daniel wouldn’t call it stalking. Stalking has such a threatening connotation, doesn’t it? Strangers in dark glasses and malicious intent. Daniel’s got dark glasses, yeah, but that’s where the resemblance stops.

Following Armand is easy. He can move so quickly, as a vampire. Even the anonymizing swallow of a crowd doesn’t make him panic, because by now he’s familiar enough with Armand’s scent that he could find that thread among a billion.

Unlike the first time, he doesn’t go into the shop. Parks himself instead in a shady little cafe across from it, a spot that gives him a clear view of the window and Armand inside. He’s standing tall and straight, pointing with one downturned wrist at a spot on the counter. A red polo-shirted kid sullenly walks over, rag in tow, and starts wiping it down. 

Daniel grins.

He watches some version of this scene every day. Follows in the shadows while Armand goes for runs. Always makes it back to the apartment before Armand, acts like he’s been parked on the couch the entire time. Okay—that part does make it seem a little stalkerish. It's not. It’s just embarrassing, is all. How much shit had Daniel given Armand for his whole without him, I am nothing deal—and now here’s Daniel, arguably worse off, because Daniel’s acting like this and Armand isn’t even his lover. 

(There are times when Daniel thinks, well. The way Armand’s eyes follow him as he crosses a room; the way Daniel’s follow Armand, in return. Every unnecessary brush of skin and argument that heats his blood to boiling, the warmth of it sinking lower, the dark dilation of Armand’s eyes and the heavy swallow of his throat. He thinks: it might not take so much to tip the scales.)

(He thinks: would it be so bad, if they did?)

(He thinks: Don’t kid yourself, Molloy. Remember his kiss, waxy and false. Remember his history. Remember that if he’s with you, it won’t be because he loves you, it will be just another role he’s convinced himself it benefits him to play.)

(Daniel tells himself all this. Repeats it when he glimpses the damp skin of Armand’s bare shoulders after a shower; when he watches him yell at his employees through the shop window; when the crease appears between his brows as he fills out the crossword, the set of his jaw sullen and intent. Reminds himself over and over but remains tempted anyway, because Daniel’s a lot of things but he’s sure as hell not a saint.)

Anyway. It's not all pathetic plodding around, that’s the important thing. Because New York is a dangerous place, right? People go missing or get stabbed all the time. If Armand ever started realizing just how vulnerable his mortal frame actually is, he’d thank Daniel for his tailing service. And yeah, if there’s a selfish component to it, too—if Daniel feels a hell of a lot better about himself when he’s draining any creep whose eyes linger too long on the way Armand’s ass bounces as he jogs than when he’s sitting on the couch writing fuck all—so what. If this is his new purpose, would that really be so bad? It’s easier to square away needing Armand if Armand needs him just as badly. 

More phone calls pile up on the machine. Molloy, his publisher says. We’ve tried to be patient. The house doesn’t want to drop you, but—

He deletes them before they can finish their threats. They’re giving ultimatums that living Daniel might have cared about. This Daniel is dead, and he doesn’t want to hear it.

***

There’s a customer who goes to the Smoothie King every Tuesday and Thursday. Not unusual in itself. But the way he always lingers to talk to Armand is.

He looks maybe thirty years younger than Daniel. Dark hair. Dresses like a geeky lumberjack, flannel overcoat with wire-framed glasses resting on a straight, broad nose. Always orders something in a small cup that Daniel’s never seen him finish. Always leans enough on the counter toward Armand that his interest is clear. 

From his vantage, Daniel can never see Armand’s face when they’re speaking. It makes his palms itch.

Lumberjack comes back week after week. He stays longer each time, leans further, and Daniel simmers. 

When Daniel asks about work, Armand never mentions him. Complains instead about the whelps who work under him, exasperation masking what might be a hint of fondness, if you squint. Brags to Daniel about the sales numbers for the quarter, the optimizations he’s put in place to maximize profits. Kind of stuff that makes Daniel’s eyes roll back in his head, but he sees now how Armand and Louis had made such good business partners. He doesn’t have to ask if Armand misses Louis. When he talks about this stuff, it’s clear on his face.

(Lately when Louis calls, Daniel’s able to tell him not to worry, that Armand’s doing fine, and it’s not even a lie. And Louis will reply that he wasn’t worrying, which is a lie, but Daniel lets him have it. He’s not a reporter anymore. Who cares.)

Armand will hand out all these details easily, pushing around eggs on the stove or boiling a pot of rice, Daniel perched on the counter next to him and prodding him with his swinging feet just to be annoying, but he never mentions Lumberjack.

The absence is conspicuous. 

Daniel’s tried to read Lumberjack’s mind, but he’s too far for clarity, and he hasn’t managed to tear himself from watching Armand to follow him closer. He’s being paranoid, Daniel thinks. But then again, maybe not. The few glimpses he gets from Lumberjack are disturbing. Flashes of dead eyes and pallid skin. There's a smell to him like disinfectants and bleach, something sickly sweet underneath.

One Tuesday, Daniel’s sitting in the cafe, watching Lumberjack’s broad back, the top of Armand’s head, working himself up into a truly cantankerous scowl, when a waitress appears to pointedly ask if there’s anything else she can get him, sir? Turning the scowl on her, he orders another coffee and takes a mean, flimsy pleasure at the way she shrinks. When he turns back to the window, Lumberjack is gone.

So is Armand.

Daniel’s hackles rise immediately. He’s on his feet in an instant, bumping into the waitress in his haste, scalding coffee splashing down his front as he pushes out of the cafe. 

They’re still not there. The shaggy-haired kid Daniel recognizes as a shift lead is taking a customer’s order.

Daniel all but runs to the alley out back. 

There, leaning against the bricks, is his quarry. Armand’s beside him, and he goes ramrod straight when he sees Daniel. Lumberjack hasn’t noticed him. He’s got a cigarette dangling from his fingers as his shoulder brushes against Armand’s. It’s still in his hand as Daniel sinks his teeth into his throat.

The man goes down quickly. Daniel ate earlier and isn’t especially hungry, so after a few gulping draughts he lets the body drop to the pavement.

For a moment they both look at it. Dark blood spews sluggishly from the wound in its neck. There’s a sound from a little further down the alley, and Daniel freezes as an employee from another shop opens a back door to toss garbage into a bin. When the door shuts again, Armand rounds on him.

“Why,” he says, voice as taut and dangerous as a bowstring, jaw clenched so tightly it’s a wonder he can even speak, “did you do that.” 

Daniel blinks. Anger rises, swift and instinctive. “Why did I—why do you think? He was dangerous, pal.”

“No,” Armand says, still deadly calm. “He wasn’t.”

Daniel barks a laugh. Kicks at the thing on the ground. The body lets out a low groan, still clinging to what’s left of its life—which isn’t much. The ooze of its neck slows to a weak dribble. “Wanna bet?” Daniel asks. “This guy’s been staking you out for weeks. Probably trying to get you alone the whole time to do God knows what, and today he finally did. So you’re welcome.” 

“And this ‘staking me out,’ it’s different from the stalking you’ve been doing, how, exactly?”

Daniel stops. 

Armand nods, the muscle in his jaw flexing. “Yes, Daniel. I’m not a complete idiot, whatever you might think of me in your less charitable moments. I know when someone’s following me. I permitted it because it seemed to ease your mind, and I could sense that you needed it.” 

Oh, there it is. That lofty condescension, how Daniel’s missed it. Anger’s drenching him now, a noxious flood that nearly unseats him from the pavement. “Fuck you,” he says. “I just saved you, a thank you would be nice.”

Now it’s Armand’s turn to laugh, the sound harsh and cold. “Oh, you saved me, did you? From what?” When Daniel opens his mouth, Armand cuts him off, hard. “Go on. His heart still beats. Use your gift, the one that you so often squander like all the rest I gave you. Look in his mind for proof of the danger you saved me from.”

Daniel scowls. But he does as he’s bid, if only to prove Armand wrong. 

The man’s thoughts are murky, hazed with pain. It takes more digging than Daniel’s used to, but he flips back through his memories until something arrests him. Armand’s face. A stranger then, just a handsome employee handing the man a drink, polite smile slipping into something more interested when he noticed something on the man’s neck. Was that blood, he’d asked? Embarrassed, the man had touched it and said yes. But not his. 

It was his first day at his new job. Before this, he had worked IT in Queens; before that, he had driven tractors at an orchard upstate. His mother had clucked about the kind of example his haphazard career changes were setting for his daughter, but the man had shut her down. He wanted his daughter to see that you shouldn’t settle until you’re happy. Surely that was a better lesson than anything.

The problem, he had to admit, was his track record for guessing at happiness was worryingly terrible. His new start as a pathology technician was not going well. The first body had been savaged. Throat ripped out in a sick gash, too violent for a knife, almost as if made by teeth. His fingers, clumsy and sweat-slick under his gloves, had slipped while holding clamps during the autopsy. Things had gotten messier from there. By the end of it, his attending had been furious and the technician had stumbled into his street clothes after, head swimming, feeling vaguely on the brink of passing out. He’d spotted the smoothie shop, ordered the sugariest thing on the menu, and now he was here, explaining all this to this guy who’d given him the drink and looked at his neck and probably didn’t care much more than that, and the technician didn’t know why he was still speaking, only that it was inexplicably easy to talk to him. Armand, the nametag read.

The technician came back week after week, even after his skills improved and the shifts grew less and less disastrous. He didn’t particularly care for the smoothies, but his daughter liked to sip at them when he picked her up from school, so he bought them anyway. Mostly, they gave him an excuse to talk to Armand. Armand, who was interested when he talked, who was fascinated by the cases, the gruesome things no one else in his life ever wanted to hear about. Who asked questions even the technician never would’ve thought to. The man even slept better, on the days they talked, like purging it out loud kept it from entering his dreams.

Eventually the technician told Armand he could give him his boss’s contact, could arrange for him to shadow, if he wanted. Armand said he might like that. The technician had searched his smile for hints of something more, but found it unreadable. It was always unreadable. The technician remained hopeful anyway. He’d been unlucky in love and unlucky in work but he could feel the tides changing, and today, he was going to be brave. And then his world had ended.

Daniel wrenches himself free. His breathing comes out too shallow, a fist around his lungs. 

Armand’s staring at him impassively. “His name was Jon,” Armand says. He brings his vape up to his lips. 

“I—,” Daniel says. 

Armand toes the body, which has not yet fallen still. “Clean this up,” he says, clipped. “My staff bring the waste to this alley. I will not have them exposed to your mess.” He folds his arms and walks towards the door. When he reaches the handle, he looks back. His face is a blank mask.

“It would do you good to remember that vampires are never heroes, Daniel Molloy. I was not yours, and you are certainly not mine. If my—infirmities—had momentarily convinced you otherwise, then for that, I do apologize.” He slams the door without another word.

Daniel curls his fingers into a tight fist. Brings it ever so slowly to rest against the brick wall, tips his forehead against it and shuts his eyes.

He has been stupid. It’s possible he has been stupid for longer than he cares to admit.

The brick is abrasive on the skin of his forehead. If he were mortal, he’d have a bleeding scrape by now. He’s not mortal. He’s not a ghost, either. There’s a girl waiting for an after-school smoothie that’ll never come and a dead pathology technician at his feet to prove it.

Daniel thinks, briefly, about killing himself. 

It’s an old indulgence. He savors its relief for a few selfish moments, and then stows it away.

He needs to make some phone calls.

***

The first call goes to his agent. The second, his publishers. Both are deeply unpleasant and the apologies he grits out make Daniel feel like he’s swallowing hot coals, but he chokes it all down and eventually they come to an agreement. 

The book still sucks, but Daniel’s going to publish it anyway. What the hell. If there’s one thing the general public doesn’t have, it's good taste, so who knows. It could be his best seller.

The third call is to his daughter.

“Katie,” he says to her. “I have something—important, to tell you. In person. Bring Lenora.”

There’s a long silence. “I don’t know, Dad,” Katie says, gently. “She—”

“Whatever you have to do,” Daniel interrupts her, and leaves it at that. Shot in the dark, he knows, but he has to take it. 

When he hangs up the phone, Armand is looking at him with cool eyes. They linger like a burn on Daniel’s skin.

After the incident, Daniel had been certain Armand would move out. Pull away. Go back to his bedroom, at the very least, and sleep among the dirt if he had to. That hadn’t happened. Armand had come home, and he’d cooked dinner, and he’d been quiet. But he’d come to bed. 

Daniel had stopped shadowing Armand. He spent the whole first day apart fevered and restless, the urge to see him as nagging and severe as physical withdrawals. But Armand was normal when he’d finished his shift. Talked to Daniel, bickered with him over dinner. Almost more talkative than usual, and Daniel let himself wonder if Armand had missed him, too. 

He makes himself shut down that vein of speculation fast.

***

On mornings Armand doesn’t work, he still wakes up early to go for his run. Daniel listens for the creak of the door announcing his return. He doesn’t come immediately to take a shower, which is normal; sometimes he stops by his garden first. But it’s taking longer than average, this morning. Daniel gets up to investigate.

Armand is kneeling in the earth. He’s cradling a vine to his chest. The leaves have gone brownish-yellow and bone-dry. 

Daniel hesitates in the doorway, then kneels beside him.

“Is it dead?” he asks.

“Nearly.” Armand runs his hands over the length of it, fingers twitching. “I should dig it out,” he says, a little absently.

Daniel nods. Looks at it. There’s still a few lingering spots of green, but it’s probably just a matter of time. “Do you want my help? Or, sorry—don’t want you to think I’m trying to be a hero.”

Armand’s lip curls. “I think it’s root bound,” he says, answering a question Daniel hadn’t asked. “I suppose this wasn’t one of my more realistic ventures.”

“Oh, fuck that,” Daniel says. “Like anything in our lives has ever been realistic. And look—these ones over here are doing great.”

“Those are mint. Hardly an accomplishment, mint can grow anywhere.”

“Well,” Daniel says. “So what? It’s still growing. Fill the whole place with it, at least it’ll be something.”

Armand doesn’t say anything. He’s still holding the vine. 

Daniel runs his tongue over his lips. “The technician,” he makes himself say. “He talked to you about autopsy shadowing. Were you actually interested? Or just—trying to keep tabs on my, y'know. Indiscretions.”

“Both,” Armand shrugs. “Talking to him was a pleasant diversion. It occurred to me… there are jobs I could do easily that most mortals would find distasteful.”

“Right,” Daniel says. He’s conscious of an empty space in the air, just large enough for an apology. He won’t fill it. Armand put them in this mess to begin with, he reminds himself, so if anything, it should be Armand apologizing. 

Nice, Molloy. You can excuse anything, can’t you. 

Daniel forces himself to look at Armand, whose fingers are still working over the vine. Daniel watches the yellow leaves crumble to the ground as he says, “And now? Not to be glib, but they’re probably going to have a job opening soon, if it’s something you really want.”

Armand blows out a long breath through his nose. “I don’t know what I want,” he says, and sets the vine down gently on the soil. 

***

Daniel gets his first proofs in the mail on a Tuesday. The stack of pages is heavier than he’d expected. He thumbs through it once, then leaves it on the kitchen counter, where Armand pretends not to notice it. Yeah, right. Daniel knows he’s waiting for Daniel to step out and feed so he can get his big greedy claws on it in secret. Well, joke’s on him. Armand can either bear the shame of actually admitting his curiosity or just keep sitting there simmering like he’s been doing, because Daniel’s not going anywhere. 

It’s not that Daniel’s quitting hunting. He knows himself too well for that. He’s just taking a—tolerance break, if you will. There’s still a lot of blood left in the fridge, and what a waste to let it spoil, right? He’d even tried a rat in the stairwell—only to immediately gag at the taste—but it made the pouches a little more palatable in comparison. They’re still numbingly unsatisfying and taste like a punishment, which they probably are. 

Daniel doesn’t know if he’s broken something serious with Armand, or if among vampires, this was the kind of squabble that barely raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t know if he needs to make amends, or if he even wants to. Instead of trying to figure any of that out, he’s settled on this stupid self-punitive course of action that helps neither of them but gives him a sick sort of righteous pleasure anyway. Go figure.

He gets a text from Kate on Wednesday. We’re coming over this weekend, she writes. You better not fuck this up. 

Daniel has to read it several times before the we sinks in. Even then, he shoves the phone at Armand and makes him confirm that Daniel’s not seeing things, which he does, grudgingly bemused at Daniel’s agitation.

The rest of the week passes in a blur. Daniel wears tracks in the carpet pacing from room to room, picking up the same items and putting them back down, unable to actually tidy anything. And why should he have to? The girls know how he lives. But Jesus, he’s really gone full out on the stacks of books everywhere, hasn’t he. It’s almost a tripping hazard at this point, so he makes a few trips back and forth to dump them unceremoniously in the hallway closet. Each time, his eyes linger on the cardboard box tucked away at the top, a bright pink bicycle helmet and the soft, worn ears of a stuffed rabbit just visible over the sides.

A few trips were more than enough. The rest of the books can stay.

The day the girls are supposed to arrive, Daniel has to change his t-shirt twice to stop the blood sweat pit stains from making a scene before he can even get into it. He’s digging in his closet for something dark colored to wear when a knock sounds at the door. Daniel swears, grabbing the first thing he can find. But then there’s a click and the smooth velvet of Armand’s voice, welcoming them inside.

Daniel pulls the shirt over his head. He hadn’t told Armand to make himself scarce or anything. Had left it up to Armand on whether he’d wanted to be there, but had assumed he’d want to retreat. Well. Daniel should know by now his assumptions about Armand never seem to pan out.

In the living room, Armand is folded up in his chair, while Katie and Lenora sit tensely on the couch. Lenora’s tense because she’s always tense, at least whenever she’s around Daniel. Katie’s tense because her sister is. 

Daniel can’t remember the last time he’d seen them both under one roof. 

“Girls!” Daniel claps his hands, the sound too loud in the room. Lenora’s jaw tightens. Katie winces. Daniel’s getting the sense he’s somehow already fucked something up in the first thirty seconds, but he’s got no choice but to barrel on anyway. “Thanks for coming. Means a lot, really. There’s something I need to—shit. Lemme grab it.” He retreats back to the kitchen and snatches up the Interview proofs, then slaps them down in front of the girls.

They stare at them for a long moment. 

“What is this?” Lenora asks finally. It’s been years since Daniel’s heard her voice. She speaks lower than he remembers, but the tone is just as cold. Learned that from her mother, probably.

“My new book,” Daniel starts, and raises his voice when both of them roll their eyes. “No, listen, when this comes out, it’s going to cause a big fucking stir. I don’t want you to be unprepared. The media will have questions, and I need you to know that—”

“The media,” Lenora repeats, thin-lipped, and turns away from him to face Katie. “Okay. I’m not doing this.” She starts gathering up her leather jacket from the seat next to her, pulling it over her shoulders. “You can stay if you want, but don’t rope me into this shit. I can’t believe you actually told me he was asking us here to apologize. ”

Katie hisses, “He’s dying, Len, what else was I supposed to think?”

“Hang on,” Daniel interrupts. There’s an ache building in his temples. 

“Supposed to think that he’s the same shitbag he’s always been, that’s what—”

“Jesus, would you both just shut up,” Daniel says. Too loud, again. There’s a moment of shocked silence. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Armand, very delicately, looking away, which is just too fucking rich, and Daniel’s anger spikes even further. His head is really starting to pound now, and he pinches between his brows as he says, “You want an apology? Fine. Sorry I didn’t go to enough of your parent teacher nights, is that what you want to hear? Sorry I was at work, making the money that paid for your little NYU starving artist shticks—Sorry that the trauma of daddy having a drink every once in a while was so awful you had to self-publish not one, but two shitty poetry collections about it. Now can you please just listen for a second? I’m trying to tell you that vampires are real, and I’m one of them, and I’m about to publish a book that’s going to make a lot of people very angry.”

Lenora stares at him for a long, terrible moment. Then she pushes off the couch and starts heading for the door.

“Wait,” Daniel says, grabbing for her arm, but she shakes him off, and then Katie’s leaping from the couch to block him, fire in her eyes. 

“Oh, don’t you dare try that. You bastard. Do you know how many chances I’ve given you? How many goddamn chances? Len’s been right all along. I should’ve cut you out ages ago.”

“Let go,” Daniel grits. Lenora’s almost to the door. His head is spinning. Katie’s keeping pace with him as he tries to follow. Her face is reddening with fury. So much blood rising under her skin. So much heat. “Out of the way, Katie, I mean it.”

She doesn’t budge. “You should’ve walked out before I was even born,” she spits. “We would’ve both been better off if you’d never even tried.”

The door clicks open. The vein in Katie’s neck pulses, pulses, pulses. 

And Daniel’s fangs tear into it.

The relief is simultaneous with the horror. The blood flows easily. Katie doesn’t scream, just makes a half-choked gargling sound. Lenora screams enough for the both of them. 

Leather-clad arms beating at him, clawing at his face. Ineffectual. Wingbeats of a fly. I’ll kill you, his child is screaming. I’ll kill you. God, would that she fucking could. He tries to tear himself free. Katie. His Katie. Her toys in the hallway closet. Her flesh rending under his teeth. Her blood. He can’t move. Her blood. He can’t move.

But something else moves, instead. Something pressed in his face, warm and fragrant. Crowding into his teeth. Lodging between him and Katie. Armand’s wrist. Blood dripping freely from a precise slash. 

Without thought, Daniel latches on.

Katie slumps to the ground. Distantly, he hears the weak thump of her heart as Lenora drags her to her feet, the scuffle of boots as they stumble out of the apartment. But his world narrows to nothing more than this tender wrist, these sweet, gasping swallows, until the blood gives him enough clarity of mind to realize what’s happening.

The air sucks out of his chest in a glottal wheeze. He watches himself bring his own palm to his teeth and split the skin. Watches as he douses the wound on Armand’s wrist until the skin is shiny and whole.  

He doesn’t remember falling to his knees, but he must, because his head is buried in Armand’s thigh. His hands clutch at Armand’s waist. His mouth seethes with unswallowed blood. 

After a moment, Armand’s fingers slide into Daniel’s hair. So gentle, his touch. The brush of his thumb over Daniel’s forehead. The caress of his fingertips at the slick corners of Daniel’s eyes. The wet sound of them against his lips. “Oh, my firstborn,” he murmurs. “My sorry child.” So faint, his voice, but steady. “Did you think any of it would be easy?”

***

The next day, Daniel gets a text from an unknown number. Katie’s alive, it says. Never contact us again. When he tries to respond, the message comes back undelivered. She’d already blocked him. 

Armand is sat in his chair, a blanket pulled over his lap. Daniel had wanted to take him to the hospital. Armand had refused. Armand had wanted to go to work today. Daniel had refused. This is their stalemate: Armand calling out, fielding texts from his shift-lead about how to unstick the register and drinking the salty broth he’d made for himself. 

The blood loss wasn’t significant. Not unrecoverable. Barely any worse than a Red Cross donation gone a little overboard, a whoopsie from an unpracticed phlebotomist. Daniel knew this on an intellectual level. On a gut level, it was the most goddamn significant thing in the world. Daniel doesn’t even know why Armand had done it. Surely he didn’t give two shits about whether or not Katie croaked.

There’s only one other reason that seems halfway plausible. If Armand had thought Daniel would lose control, would drain him so utterly that he’d have no choice but to try to turn Armand if he’d wanted Armand alive. Banking that Daniel had wanted that.

He stares at Armand, blithely tapping out a text with his forefinger. Spilling a bit of soup in his distraction and sopping it up with a frown.

It’s possible, Daniel considers, that he might have even orchestrated the whole thing. Manipulated Daniel into reaching out to his daughters to begin with. Knowing, because he knew Daniel, that it would come to this. 

It seems outlandish. It shouldn’t. Daniel had sat at that table in Dubai and watched the lies spill from his lips without end. Where does the bullshit start?  

Well. He could probably ask himself the same question.

He looks again at his phone. Never contact us again. There’s a hollow pit widening in him at those words, and the worst part isn’t even that he’d been expecting this for years. It’s that a small part of him is relieved. 

He’d tried. At least, for a time, he really had. No matter what Alice or his girls or anyone thought. He remembers calling his mother from Paris. The heavy silence after he’d told her. Well, she’d said finally. Surely you two, of all people, are smart enough not to keep it. And the acidic spew of anger he’d volleyed back after her dismissal, surprising them both. How he’d gone out to the shops that very night, bought as much as his arms could carry—tiny slippers, soft lilac blanket, stuffed rabbit with floppy ears. Wrapped up Alice in his arms, burying his face in her neck, spinning her around their shitty little flat until her mistrust and hurt gave way to dizzying laughter and he told her over and over how excited he was, how he was sorry about his initial reaction, that she’d caught him off guard, see, but now he was ready, and now he was going to do it right by them. 

And hadn’t he, for a bit? But things had soured so quickly. Hard to remember the hows and whens. And now he’s got this text in his hands, absolving him of the need to keep trying. You’re a free man, Molloy. Aren’t you lucky. 

In the chair, Armand rests his forehead against the window.

***

“It was six nights we kept you on Divisadero street, wasn’t it,” Armand says.

He’s leaning over the bathroom vanity, fingers smoothing through his hair as he weaves it into two short braids. His routine to keep the curls from tangling, as he’d explained to Daniel, who gets a front row seat to this process every night from his bed. There’s something hypnotic about the way his fingers dart in and out of the dark strands, like gleaming fish dappling through sunlit water. Daniel has to blink himself back to the present.  

“Who’s we?” he asks. “Pretty sure you and Louis weren’t exactly making joint decisions at that point.”

“Mmm,” Armand allows. He’s silent long enough that Daniel thinks that’s maybe the end of that, because Lord knows with this version of Armand, conversations don’t necessarily have to have a point. Then, setting down his dropper of oil and picking up a bottle of face wash, he continues, quite conversationally, “I was tortured for six nights after our palazzo burned.”

Daniel sits up. He’d been about to flick off the lamp, but now his hand stays. Armand soaks a circle of cotton and rubs at his skin.

“By the ones who killed your maker, you mean. Your future covenmates.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Daniel says, trying to understand why he’s been given this bit of information. “So what’d they do to you? Slam you up and down in a chair? Throw you in a rat box? Cut your ankles to the bone? Is this you trying to explain where you’d gotten all your big ideas?”

“Not quite.” The mirror reflects Armand’s mirthless smile. “They simply denied me the blood. But for a fledgling as young as I, that was torture enough.”

When Daniel seems unimpressed, Armand sighs. “How long have you gone without it, since I made you? A day, if that. Perhaps eighteen hours?”

Daniel purses his lips, but he can’t argue. 

“You cannot imagine it,” Armand says softly. “The thirst was like nothing else. By the third night, I was insensate. Weeping and clawing gouges into my skin and lapping at the feeble returns. By the sixth night, I was an animal.”

His fingers hover over a pot of moisturizer. In the mirror, his eyes are twin pools of black.

“And then what,” Daniel prompts. He keeps his voice deliberately callous, trying not to broadcast the sick chill creeping down his spine. He’s not sure he succeeds.

Armand scoops out some cream from the pot, the label glinting under the mirrored lights. Daniel catches the words retinol and wrinkle renewal and age defy before Armand stows it back away. Daniel frowns.

“Then,” Armand lifts one shoulder in a bland approximation of a shrug, “they gave me a victim.” He taps the cream around the corners of his eyes. Into the apples of his cheeks. Smooths it over his neck in a motion that looks more like strangulation than self-care. Daniel’s frown deepens. “I cannot describe the unbearable bliss of that meal.” Armand’s voice is quiet, inflectionless. “To this day, nothing has rivaled it. I feasted. I devoured. I glutted myself until my throat choked and my stomach stretched and the haze lifted from my mind just enough that I could make out the thing’s face. And I recognized my brother.”

“Your brother,” Daniel repeats. 

Armand’s lips pull over his teeth. “Not by blood. Although given what I’ve just told you, you could make a distasteful joke there, if you wish. Go on, I’ve set it up.” 

For once, Daniel keeps his mouth sealed. Armand makes a small hmm sound before continuing.

“His name was Riccardo. He was perhaps a year older than me, though neither of us knew for certain. He was the first one I had met in my master’s house. Had protected me, had cared for me, had—loved me.” The barest waver over the word. When he speaks again, his voice is even more toneless than before. “Yes, he had loved me. And I had torn him apart so completely that his epidermis was shredded like rags and his organs wept a river of fluids. Do you know how much blood is in a human spleen, Daniel? A few hundred milliliters. When I was done, Riccardo’s was as dry and pale as a bleached sponge. Its pulp still lingered in my molars as I looked on the ruin of his face and lost what was left of my mind.”

“Jesus,” Daniel mutters. 

Armand tilts his head. “No, Jesus was not there. Fortunate for the Christians, for it would be difficult to raise statues of a man whose body parts were scattered like so much loose change—and that was the state of my lovely Riccardo. What was left after my feast, I had rent into fragments that I could force out through the bars of the cell. I could not—I couldn’t stand to look at it.”

There’s no more products for him to apply. No more hair to braid, serums to slick on. Still Armand does not turn from the mirror.

“And this was the coven you pledged yourself to for the next few centuries?” Daniel asks finally. “Wow. Hell of an enemies to lovers journey on that one. You vampires are better at burying the hatchet than I would’ve thought.”

At last, Armand pushes back from the mirror. When he climbs into bed, Daniel fights the urge to shrink back. He has to remind the animal part of his brain that he’s the predator, not Armand, despite whatever signals had been crossed.

“I’m telling you this,” Armand says, “because what happened with your daughters—you should know, it is not so unforgivable. It could’ve been far worse.”

Daniel rolls his eyes. “So I didn't take a crack at Katie’s spleen. Great. I’m not going to pat myself on the back about it. She’s only still alive because you—” He stops. No heroes between them, Armand had made that clear.  But he wants to say it anyway. You saved us both. Maybe you did it to manipulate me. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe I don’t care, either way.

Armand rustles himself into his nest of blankets. His skin glistens beneath its layer of products but he still looks wan, washed out. Tired. He’s silent long enough that Daniel thinks the conversation is over, and he’s reaching back for the lamp when Armand says, quieter than he’s ever heard him, “It’s terrible to be alone.” He turns his face into the pillow, and his foot brushes against Daniel’s as he adjusts. He doesn’t apologize.

Daniel turns off the light.

Chapter 6

Daniel had been prepared for a number of different reactions when Interview With the Vampire finally got published. Controversy and outrage. Disbelief and anger.

Apathy had not been one of them.

“Do you think they got the date right on the announcement?” Daniel asks under his breath. There’s a young woman browsing the stacks nearest to them, and she shoots a curious glance at his table. Daniel gives her a winning smile. She nearly knocks over a display in her haste to get away. The smile turns sour.

Armand, leaning against the wall next to him, raises an eyebrow and pulls out his phone. “February 4th, 6pm,” he reads, “join us for an exclusive book signing with Pulitzer prize winning legend Daniel Molloy—oh, they’ve called you a legend, that’s nice, isn’t it—“

“Okay,” Daniel interrupts. “I get it.” He thumbs the crisp stack of books on the table in front of him. The initial sales numbers have been, in a word, abysmal. A mere fraction of his previous works. And shit, it’s not like Daniel thought it was the best thing he’d ever done, but he’d still had to ask his team to repeat the number after they’d told him—seriously, that low?—his ego bruising like dropped fruit. But then the sales person had shrugged in her Zoom square, saying these numbers were typical for the genre—and Daniel had discovered that in the midst of his uncommunicative depression, they’d tried to square away his stubborn ‘anything but fiction’ demand with the apparent impossibility of his manuscript and landed on that nebulous genre of Spiritual. He’s shelved alongside Heaven is For Real and breathless accounts of angels saving puppies from drowning.

The bitch-fit that Daniel had thrown after learning this was not his proudest moment. The exasperated way they’d reminded him that you signed off on it, Mr. Molloy, we have all the paperwork here, did not help matters. 

Another person swerves around their table. “It’s only 6:05,” Armand says after a moment. “There’s still plenty of time.” His voice is uncharacteristically kind, which is so completely worse than if he’d been mocking that Daniel has to wonder if that was the point. 

Whatever. He crosses his arms over his chest and doesn’t bother to pretend he’s not sulking.

The minutes drag by. A cheerful, mid-forties bookstore employee named Linda comes over to ask if he’s got everything he needs, sweetie? Did someone show him where the potty was in case he needs it?  

“Sweetie,” Daniel repeats to Armand after she leaves. “Do I look like a fucking sweetie—oh, never mind, don’t answer that,” he says, when Armand’s expression turns sly.

He does end up signing a few books. Four of the people have never heard of him but are the kind of clout-chasing opportunists that’ll buy anything if they think it’s linked even tangentially to celebrity, and thank god for those. One of them has heard of him, and tells Daniel point blank that his career peaked with Shadow on the Skin and it’s all been downhill from there. “Agree,” Daniel says, and viciously scribbles out the guy’s name on the inside cover.

If there’s a silver lining to the evening, it’s that Louis hadn’t made good on his threats about coming to his signing. What, I don’t get to come see you profiting off my miseries? Louis had asked, and Daniel had replied, Sure, you and Armand can get real cozy comparing notes on your most hated chapters. After that, Louis had conveniently remembered how busy he was, a fact for which Daniel is now exceedingly grateful. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see Louis again. It’s that he wants his dignity intact when it happens, and sitting in what has to be the lowest turnout book signing that a city of 8 million people’s ever seen is not what he has in mind. 

After forty minutes of this, Daniel turns to Armand. “Okay. That’s it. Let’s get out of here, fuck it.”

To his surprise, Armand is unmoved. “You should stay,” he says. “You could have more fans than you realize.” 

Daniel snorts. Not likely. But Armand settles himself further back against the shelves he’s leaning on like he’s not going anywhere, so Daniel grudgingly sits back down. Screw it. 

He watches the shop’s patrons for a while. A sweating stockbroker type who spends an inordinate amount of time reading the back of self-help books. An elderly man, hair thinned to a few wispy strands—now there’s a real geezer, Linda, thanks very much—tottering alongside a similarly ancient woman. He watches them squint at the stacks of books, never letting go of each other's hands, until he’s inexplicably pissed off and has to look anywhere else. He settles on the two teenagers ambling in, and then blinks. The kids are staring back at him. They’re heading right for his table. 

Daniel braces himself. It figures that the only attention this damn book would get is from kids who’ve probably already canceled him on TikTok. Jesus, the vapid self-righteousness of 21st century youth culture, it makes him sick—

“Daniel Molloy?” the girl says. Daniel nods, and then, to his surprise, she and the boy snatch up two copies from the stack and shove them at him.

 “Huge fans. Love the book, already read it twice,” the boy says.

“Really?” Daniel asks. The kids nod, eyes wide and guileless. “Well, shit,” he laughs. Forget everything he’s said; youths are clearly the only ones with any sense in this country. “Hey, what was your favorite part? Let me guess— the Paris post-war exploration of identity and sexuality politics. I thought that might interest today's cadre of young and disaffected.”

“Totally,” the boy says, nodding.

Grinning, Daniel inscribes their books—Sybelle and Benji, respectively—and decides to reward them with a few extra details that didn’t make it into the chapters. He’s midway through explaining his unsuccessful attempts to determine if Baldwin ever made it to the Theatre in their one year of overlap when he realizes the kids’ eyes are glazing over. Benji’s shooting surreptitious glances at Armand, who gives a barely perceptible shake of the head.

Daniel pulls up mid sentence. He squints at the kids. The kids stare back nervously, and recognition falls into place. “Oh, Christ,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You’re the Smoothie King whelps, aren’t you? How much did this one—“ Daniel jerks his head toward Armand, who crosses his arms impassively, “have to bribe you to get you here?” 

Sybelle bites her lip, pained, but Benji answers immediately, “His whole paycheck for the month of February. Sorry dude, but no way I was passing that up.”

Daniel nods. Can’t blame him.

“We did like your story, though,” Sybelle interjects, trying for diplomacy. She’s older than Benji, maybe nineteen or twenty, and holds her book tight to her chest. “And now that we’ve got these nice copies, I’m sure we’ll definitely read them.” She elbows Benji. “Right?”

“Sure,” Benji agrees distractedly. “Hey, Mr. Molloy, are you Big A’s sugar daddy? Is that why he can afford to give up his money like that?”

Daniel chokes. Armand sweeps forward, looming over them in his big winter coat like a cartoon bat. “Benji, that’s enough,” he says menacingly. Sybelle has to cover her mouth to hide her giggles. “Mr. Molloy is merely my—” He looks at Daniel, and for a moment the hardness in his eyes falters. “My friend,” he finishes, turning back to the kids with a tightlipped smile.

“Friends who sleep in the same bed,” Daniel adds, just to be a little shit. Armand gives a long-suffering sigh as Benji and Sybelle gasp with an exaggerated level of drama, which charms Daniel so much he rewards them with his sauciest wink.

“Okay,” Armand says loudly, “Signing’s closed. Thank you. Farewell. I’ll see you both at work.” He ushers the kids out to the front of the store. 

When he returns, Daniel is grinning lazily, an eyebrow raised. “So, ‘Big A.’ Did you really think that would work? Steins 2.0?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Armand says, voice clipped. He resists Daniel’s ribbing as they help Linda pack up the display, but there’s a tiny smile playing at his lips whenever he thinks Daniel isn’t looking. When Daniel catches himself in the storefront glass, he realizes his face is doing the same.

Outside of the shop, it’s one of those snowglobe-perfect nights, the air drifting with big downy flakes and the lights of the city turned soft and muted in their refractive glow. Daniel takes in a knife-sharp lungful of cold air as Armand tugs a knitted cap over his ears, and wonders why the hell he’d even cared about sales numbers in the first place. 

They walk in silence for a moment. Armand shivers a little, bringing the tips of his fingers to his mouth to warm them, and Daniel has to fight what is momentarily the almost blindingly strong instinct to warm them in his own hands just to stop their trembling. Stupid, anyway. His hands aren’t much warmer than the snow, which, speaking of—“You go on home,” he says, nudging Armand with his shoulder. “I’m gonna stop for something to eat.”

He expects Armand to nod, to start high-tailing it out of the cold back towards the apartment. Instead, he cocks his head. “Mind if I come with?”

*

The body is slackening in his arms, but the heart still thumps weakly, so Daniel takes another sloshing mouthful.  He’s never been the most graceful at feeding—human or otherwise—and he feels the weight of Armand’s eyes on him like a physical tightening of the skin. Daniel can’t pretend it’s not more than a little arousing. Every sound he makes, every quick gasp or moan, he dials up just a little extra. He can’t help it. He’s always liked putting on a bit of a show.

When the body’s wrung dry, Daniel releases it from his grip. The snow cushions its fall, a dark stain blooming where it lands, slushing white to red. 

Armand steps forward from where he’d been lurking against the alley wall. “You’re sloppy.”

Daniel rolls his eyes. “Is that why you wanted to come along? Get in some good digs at my table manners?” 

“No,” Armand says. A bit of blood dribbles down Daniel’s chin, and Armand reaches out to wipe it away. “I like it when you let yourself go.” His thumb skates over Daniel’s lower lip. His breath makes warm clouds in the inches between them.

Daniel catches his wrist before Armand can draw it away. 

When Daniel was younger and stupider, he’d tracked down an assignment during an active tornado warning. He hadn’t seen the twister himself, but he remembers stepping outside into the eerie, yellow-tinged sky. The sharp taste of the atmosphere, metallic with unseen violence. The knowledge that somewhere out there, something terrible was happening, and yet all he could perceive was a staticky thrill on the length of his arms and a voice in his head whispering for him to drive into the heart of it, just to see what would happen.

The air feels like that now.

Daniel drops Armand’s wrist. It falls like a body between them, and when it’s hanging by their sides, he slides his hand back around it. “Come on,” he says. “It’s beautiful out. The night is young and we’re definitely not—you especially, old man—but I don’t want to go home just yet.”

Armand’s mouth quirks. “Then where do you want to go?” His cool fingers lace around Daniel’s warm ones. Neither of them look at their hands.

“Everywhere,” Daniel replies honestly. “Fuck it, let’s do it all.”

*

They don’t go everywhere.

The city is massive and Armand is human and Daniel’s not that much of an idiot. They don’t go everywhere, but where they do go is this:

Dive bars with lacquered wooden paneling and air that still smells like the 70s, stale hops and baked-in smoke and lemon Pledge. Armand’s eyes glinting in the multi-colored Christmas lights as he accepts Daniel’s challenge for a game of pool, trouncing Daniel soundly enough that the onlooking patrons boo at him to be nicer to his grandpa, come on. “Yeah,” Daniel says, sliding a hand in Armand’s back pocket that makes the smiles on the patron’s faces slip, “be nice to me.” And Armand leans in close to his ear and presses the tip of the pool cue into Daniel’s groin and whispers that it’s his right to treat his fledgling how he pleases, and Daniel has to step back before Armand brushes against exactly how Daniel feels about that.

It’s this:

Hole in the wall dumpling shops, so jammed with people they have to stand out in the snow after they order. The whole block smells like sizzling oil and the bright tang of herbs and Daniel should miss it—hot food on a cold night, the luxury of someone else’s cooking, scarfing it down so fast it burns your tongue—but somehow it’s enough just to huddle in this awning with Armand and watch him eat. The little sounds he makes. The movement of his masseters. The way the steam condenses on his face, his damp lashes, the tip of his nose. The bit of scallion caught in his teeth that Daniel dislodges with his own thumb.  

It’s this:

Upscale cocktail lounges. The kind of place where everything is minimalist and chrome and the drinks come in tall, impossibly clean glasses that match the tall, impossibly uncomfortable bar stools. Daniel orders a grasshopper for the hell of it, swirling his glass and breathing the minty aroma. Armand orders a Midori Sour and drains it to ice in nearly one swig. Daniel stares. “You trying to forget something?” 

“Of course,” Armand says, swilling the dregs, and doesn’t elaborate.

Twenty-four hour donut shops. New wave dance clubs that used to be shoe shops that used to be discotheques. Discotheques that used to be donut shops.

They haven’t gone everywhere, but they have gone practically every place Daniel used to go with Alice. He recognizes this fact halfway through and doesn’t know what to do with it once it materializes. He hadn’t intended it, honestly. His feet had simply carried him to places that felt good. And God, there’s nothing more tired and pathetic than an old man on a nostalgia-tour of his old haunts, but the thing is, it doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels embarrassingly, earnestly new. A night that could be ripped from a Hallmark movie. A night that has him waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Okay,” Armand says, nodding briskly on the street corner, “now it’s my turn.” He doesn’t acknowledge Daniel’s questioning brow, only holds out a hand to tug Daniel down the sidewalk. 

Armand leads him to smoky jazz bars. Underground dance clubs. Lounges so expensive that Daniel feels the vestigial panic of handing over his card even while knowing he’s rich, and he comes to understand that Armand, in turn, is taking him to the places he used to go with Louis.

Daniel wonders how long the two of them had lived here. Wonders if they’d overlapped at all. He remembers Louis saying he’d kept tabs on Daniel’s career, and indulges in a brief fantasy that they might’ve been lurking behind him all that time. The shadows on his street corners, the monsters under his bed. It thrills him more than it should.

In one grimy little club, the music unfamiliar but the distinctive graffiti peeking over the heads of thronging bodies somehow not, he tells Armand that it’s funny, he thinks he’s actually been to this one before. Armand nods, and there’s an almost suspiciously knowing look to his eyes that makes Daniel’s brows furrow. He wants to press for more, but then a song comes on that makes Armand freeze in his tracks, eyes narrowing to slits before announcing they need to leave. Only after they’re back on the street does he tell him that was the voice of Lestat de Lioncourt, which makes Daniel burst out laughing and demand to go back in. But Armand’s already turning away. Daniel hastens to follow.

The next club is exclusive enough that there’s no outside markings on the building, and Armand has to lean close and whisper something to the bouncer before they’re let in. Inside, the hallways are so dark they’re nearly black. The main rooms swelter with music from unseen strings, sultry and low. Small candles barely illuminate the bodies at the tables. A server appears to hand them both wine, then slips back into the haze that envelops the entire room. Armand sips his glass. “You’re not drinking?” he asks.

Daniel opens his mouth to say duh, but then Armand inclines his head toward the others sitting by him, and Daniel looks at them closer. People of every age and background, united only by the fine cuts of their clothes, the precise tailoring that smacks of wealth. That, and their glassy expressions. Armand picks up the wrist of the woman next to him, holds it high, and releases. It flops back to the table like a dead fish. She blinks sleepily at them, her mouth set in a vacant smile, but doesn’t speak.

“The fuck is this place?” Daniel asks. He’s both creeped the fuck out and halfway turned on.

Armand shrugs. “There have always been pleasures available only to an exclusive few.”

“Is that what they’re feeling? Pleasure?”

“Why don’t you find out?” Armand says. He picks up the woman’s palm again. Holds it out to Daniel in clear invitation.

Daniel takes it. The skin is soft and moist, tapering to manicured nails. Armand’s challenge lingers in his eyes. Daniel doesn’t know what the hell kind of situation this is, or what any of these people thought they were getting themselves into. It can’t be legal. In no way ethical. And look, he gets that killing people’s not exactly ethical either, and Daniel’s not exactly the Pope. But somehow this feels unquestionably more sinister. Predation driven not by a base instinct for hunger or survival, but only the selfish desire to take pleasure for pleasure's sake. The kind of sleazy abuse of power Daniel’s spent chunks of his career trying to expose. 

Armand’s gaze is cool. Daring him to protest. Daniel opens his mouth and brings the palm to his teeth.

Small, pinprick drink. There’s something in her system, but not enough to overwhelm him. Just enough to soften the night’s edges. The woman sighs, a dreamy sound, and beside her, Armand sighs too. Hungry-eyed. 

Daniel seals the wound and puts her hand back on the table. “Let’s have some fun,” he says. 

The night starts to blur after that. Daniel loses count of how many people he sips from. Palms, wrists, throats. Smooth skin and wrinkles. Cologne and perfume. Armand at his side, leaning close when Daniel drinks. “Describe it to me,” he commands after each one, and Daniel tries. Doesn’t know if he manages to capture any of it, but Armand closes his eyes and nods while Daniel speaks, tongue flicking over his lips, jaw working in memory of fangs. 

More wine for Armand. More blood for Daniel. It’s more than he’s had in any single evening, and he’s starting to feel floaty from it, a high that’s as much in his body as it is his mind. The candlelight is making everything unbearably sexy. The music. The press of so much anonymous skin. Armand at his side, the heat of his leg, the low murmur of encouragements he supplies whenever Daniel thinks he’s had enough. You can handle just a little more, can’t you, Daniel? Yes. Yes, he can. 

In and out of the maze of rooms. Cold string of pearls bumping into his face as he buries his head in a fine, goose-fleshed neck. Gripping the table as his fingers skate along a pattern in the wood that feels suspiciously like claw marks.

“Ah,” Armand says, fingers joining Daniel’s to trace the scratches. His voice is low, almost fond. “I believe Louis and I took each other at this very table.”

“That’s nice, dear,” an older woman beside them says, patting Armand on the cheek. 

Armand, taken aback, catches Daniel’s eyes. Both of them start to laugh. Once they start, it’s impossible to stop. 

They’re laughing as they navigate out of the dark hallways, down past the bouncer, down onto the frozen streets. They’re laughing as they stumble into each other in the movement of the train cars, as Daniel slips an arm around Armand’s waist to steady him. They’re laughing as Daniel tries to hold open the building door for Armand in an uncharacteristic moment of chivalry and slips on the ice in a fall that would’ve put him in a wheelchair if he were still human. They’re laughing as Armand pulls him to his feet and Daniel presses in too close and accuses Armand of making Daniel drink so much because he knew the blood would affect his libido, Armand shrugging noncommittally and saying “Does it? I’ve never noticed,” and Daniel snorting loudly enough to rattle the icicles, and then Daniel takes Armand’s jaw in his hand and kisses him, and everything is deliriously funny, until, abruptly, it’s not.

Armand is breathing rapidly into Daniel’s mouth. Daniel’s mind works in slow motion. Lips, tongue, teeth. Without meaning to, he finds himself kissing Armand again, and again, and again. Armand’s lips are chapped from the cold. His tongue is hot where it licks into Daniel’s mouth. His teeth catch on Daniel’s lower lip, his hand curling around the base of Daniel’s neck, a satisfied noise purring from his throat, and then Daniel’s wrenching himself away.

Armand sighs as if disappointed, but not surprised. “Daniel,” he says. 

Daniel blinks, shaking his head, trying to back up but finding the iron railing of the steps they’re still stuck on. “Wait,” he says, because he feels like he should. “This isn’t…we’re not doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“This whole shtick.” Daniel waves his hand in the space between them as if the aforementioned shtick were something he could disperse as easily as a cloud of smoke. He searches for a deflection and grabs onto the easiest one. “Whatever little play you’re directing this time, you’re not casting me in it.”

“Is that it?” Armand’s lip curls. “Not that you’re ashamed of how much you’d like me to?” His hand slides into Daniel’s coat. Teases under the buttons of his sweater. Something calculated and precise in the slow drag of his nails.

Everything in Daniel is coming undone.

“Nah,” he tries, swallowing thickly, “just a million other reasons.”

And that’s probably true. But the only one that matters is, of course, that Daniel loves him.

The love is new. The desire isn’t.

There hasn’t been a moment since laying eyes on Armand that Daniel hasn’t wanted him. Wanted to use him; the servant Rashid with that lowcut shirt and soft-lipped mouth just begging to be fucked. Wanted to be used by him. The vampire Armand floating from the ceiling like a black-winged angel, the voice in Daniel’s head telling him how good it would feel to just kneel down and take it. 

The human Armand, so vulnerable in his pain. The ridges of his spine in the bath. Sharp-boned and fragile under Daniel’s fingers. The flush of his cock and vacancy of his stare, the slick chill of his lipstick kiss. A mouth people would pay for, his manager had said. A mouth begging to be fucked, Daniel had thought of Rashid. Killed the manager but didn’t kill yourself, did you, Molloy, always too selfish for that. Too selfish to let Armand go, so just claim you’re taking care of him, when we all know you’re only the latest to claim him for yourself.

How vilely Daniel has wanted him. How terribly he wishes he could leave it at that.

Armand’s eyes are burning. His fingers are claws as he grabs Daniel’s face, trapping them both in the blaze. “I don’t care,” he says. “Did you think I didn't see all of your worsts and choose you anyway? Where have we gone tonight? What haven’t we already done to each other? I did not have to turn you. I held the measure of your life in my hands and still I sliced my throat for you to suckle. Even as the act doomed me to this I cannot bring myself to regret it.”

“You’re not doomed,” Daniel says tiredly. 

“Oh, but you’re so fond of acting like it.” Lips against Daniel’s ear, warm breath and a silk-edged laugh. “What am I to you, Daniel? Your malevolent tormentor? Your penance? The temptress of your lecherous heart? Make up your mind, but don’t forget that you were my victim first.”

His hips are crowding into Daniel’s. If Daniel steps back any further, he’ll topple over the railing. He doesn’t step back. He takes a single, very deliberate step forward, groin pushing into the hard length of Armand in his jeans, and sucks Armand’s bottom lip into his mouth. 

Everything else drowns out in the torrent of need. There’s no room for snow or ice or self-flagellation; there’s only the denim-rough grind of their cocks and the spit-slippery slide of their mouths (that mouth—), and then it’s crucially, vitally imperative that they both get naked as soon as possible. “Upstairs,” Daniel gasps. Armand doesn’t need to be told twice.

They’re all over each other up the stairwell. Daniel’s coat gets lost somewhere on the second floor, and Armand pulls his head briefly from Daniel’s neck to glance at it. Daniel clutches him back. “Leave it,” he pants. “You can buy me another.”

The apartment door’s still closing when Armand rips the sweater over Daniel’s head. It’s a crashing, spasmodic dance to get to the bedroom—stacks of books knocking into lampshades, lampshades crashing into collectible figurines, every few feet slowed by one of them trying to devour the other, until they finally topple into his bed.

Armand’s stripped down to his boxers. The muscles in his arms flex as he pulls himself back to lean against the headboard, and Daniel has to pump the brakes on their runaway train just to luxuriate in the full picture of him. The snow-damp curls plastered to his forehead. The well-built chest and broad thighs of an athlete. The soft, rounded belly of someone who eats well. The eyes that aren’t now smiling but nevertheless seem poised for it, the machinery in place, the mechanics familiar. Not the starving creature malingering in Daniel’s armchair. Not the sleek predator pulling strings in Dubai, either. Built from the scraps of both, yes, but fashioned into something new.

Armand snaps his fingers in Daniel’s face. “Today, Daniel.”

Daniel could snark back, or he could bury his head in the soft meat of Armand’s thighs. He gets his lips on that heated skin and sucks bruises up the spread of them until Armand’s fingers curl in the sheets and his head bangs back against the wall, and only then does Daniel pull off to say, “That desperate for it, huh?”

“Yes,” Armand says simply, looking down at Daniel under dark lashes, and enough blood zings to his cock that he has to stop himself from thrusting inelegantly into the mattress. Any other circumstances, and he’d probably ride off to the finish like that, but not tonight. Not when Armand’s looking at him so heavy-lidded, the promise of something so much better before the night's through. And so he focuses on his head between Armand’s thighs, the tent of Armand’s cock in his boxers, damp through the cotton where Daniel mouths over it. He works Armand to the point of breathlessness and pulls away just before he tips over the edge.

Panting, Armand draws his knees to his chest, stomach creasing to slouch gently over his waistband. Daniel closes his lips on it without thought. Impossibly soft flesh, pliant and yielding to the blunt insistence of Daniel’s teeth. His fangs only graze the skin. Tentative.

Armand fists a hand in Daniel’s hair. “Bite,” he orders. Still Daniel hesitates. His rational mind tells him it’s not a good idea. But his instincts, already blood-flush but ever-libidinous, want this.

His fangs pierce the skin. Armand sighs. 

Small, quick punctures. Daniel covers his belly with them, then cuts his own tongue to lick the wounds away. Thumb and forefinger grab the muscle to stop him. “Leave it,” Armand commands, smearing his fingers through the blood. Daniel complies.

Hands sunk into Armand’s hips, Daniel works his way up to the chest. Takes each broad nipple between his teeth, sucking and pulling, letting the weight of each breast linger on his tongue as Armand’s body writhes beneath him. Keeps working at him until the hand in his hair wrenches him upward to press his forehead against Armand’s. 

Daniel swallows. His hand scrabbles under Armand’s chin. The curves of their noses drag together, sweat-slick and frictionless. Armand’s fingers work into Daniel’s mouth, tracing over the shape of his fangs. “I like how you’ve turned out,” he murmurs.

Daniel grins. “Could say the same to you.”

Armand’s silent. The pad of his thumb presses hard enough into the tip of Daniel’s fang to draw out a single bead of blood before retreating. “Turn over,” he says. “I want to fuck you.”

“Yeah,” Daniel says, “Yeah, okay.”  Armand’s hands fall to Daniel’s hips and he nudges Daniel over onto his knees. The mattress squeaks as Armand lunges over to the nightstand, yanking open the drawer and returning with an old bottle of lube. 

“Forgot that was even in there,” Daniel says. “What other drawers have you been rifling through?”

“All of them. Come on, spread your legs.“ Armand snaps his fingers again, pointing, as if Daniel were an employee, or maybe his dog. It shouldn’t work for him as much as it does. By nature, Daniel’s a pretty contrarian guy, but the sharp, businesslike sound of it lights up something in his brain. He obeys without question.

Armand positions himself behind Daniel. His hands roam over Daniel’s flanks, and then he tugs Daniel’s boxers down, palms kneading into the soft parts of Daniel’s ass. 

Daniel’s mind is cleaving in two. Part of him is lost to the simple pleasure of a man with big hands who knows how to use them; the other part is too aware of the loose, wrinkled skin those hands are caressing. Too aware of the dozens of products on Armand’s counter promising to protect him from getting skin like Daniel’s. There’s a mean and hurting part of him that wants to press at that discrepancy until it bleeds. Which is it? Is a body like Daniel’s repulsive, or desirable? Is Armand getting off on his own disgust, some fetish for debasement? 

There’s no way to say any of that without sounding horrendously insecure, so he says nothing. Just braces himself for the first finger and makes an embarrassingly shocked noise when he gets the hot press of tongue instead. 

Armand’s grasping at every part of Daniel he can reach. The muscles of his back. The sag of his chest. The droop of his balls, tightening under his fingers as Armand’s tongue circles the achingly sensitive rim.

“Okay,” Daniel says, trying to maintain his dignity as Armand gets him acquainted with every ridge and knob of his knuckles. “You’re making me sound like a loser when I say this, but I’ve stared into these sheets for years, man, and they’re not that interesting. I’d really prefer to look at you.” He bites his tongue after the words leave his mouth, but it’s too late. Seventy-two and begging for missionary. There’s sure as hell no age limit on humiliating yourself.

Armand slowly withdraws a finger. Daniel doesn’t know if it’s in deference or punishment, but then Armand hooks his hands under Daniel’s hips and flips Daniel down onto his back. “Better?” he hisses, his body caging over Daniel’s, the pinpricks of blood on his stomach smearing across Daniel’s gut.

“Sure,” Daniel says, clinging to his composure as the wet tip of Armand’s cockhead nudges against his hole. “They say eyes are the windows to the soul, and I know you miss digging around in my head, so surely this is a good enough compromise—Jesus fuck,” he breaks off, as Armand pushes in. His body accommodates the stretch, absorbs it. Like it’s done for everything about Armand in his life, apparently—accommodating Armand’s fangs in his neck, his presence in his apartment, the penetration in his ass. Why not. Eager black hole, Molloy, no use pretending otherwise. 

While he’s thinking all this, he’s dimly aware that his mouth is running unceasingly, a steady stream of curses and nonsense and some bad quips baffling even to him. Armand rolls his eyes even as he’s burying himself to the hilt. “Can’t you ever be quiet? Here.”

He picks up Daniel’s palm and puts it in Daniel’s mouth to stifle him. It works for about ten seconds, and then Armand’s next thrust is so deep and slow that Daniel bites down hard enough to draw blood.

Coolly, Armand slips the hand out of Daniel’s mouth and brings it to his own, which, of course, was probably his plan all along. His tongue laves over the lines of Daniel’s palm. His eyelids flutter.

“Sneaky,” Daniel groans. 

“Mmm. Can you blame me?” Armand’s tongue splays between Daniel’s fingers, wiping clean the thin trickle of blood, the skin below already healed.

“Yeah. For a lot, actually.” 

“Well,” says Armand, bracing his hands on either side of Daniel’s waist, “if you want me to go, you need only ask.” He draws himself out excruciatingly slowly, his eyes magnetic pits, and the loss of him is so immediately awful that a whine escapes Daniel. Jesus, now that’s a sound he hasn’t made in fifty-odd years, but this isn’t the time for self respect, this is the time for getting fucked thoroughly enough he forgets all the reasons he shouldn’t be.

“Come back,” he grits, canting his hips to try and chase him, pawing at Armand’s waist to drag him back down. “You fucker, I’m—joking, man.” 

“No,” Armand observes, “you’re not.” But when he sinks himself fully in Daniel, the long, slow drag of him, there’s a satisfied little smirk playing on his lips, and Daniel knows that despite however true it is, Armand is just toying with him. Fuck it. He can make Daniel his goddamn Barbie doll if it’s going to keep feeling this good. 

Armand rocks into him again, and again, and again. He bites hard into Daniel’s shoulder when he comes. Daniel half expects him to roll off immediately and slink away, but instead he lingers in Daniel’s walls, hands wrapping around Daniel’s shaft and thumbing across the underside of the head. Finishing the job, Daniel thinks, and hates himself for the way his dick jerks at the implication. He pulls Armand down to lay flush on his body as he finishes between the mess of their stomachs.

Armand’s heart thumps in his chest, right above Daniel’s. His hands curl under his ribs. He seems smaller now, though his feet still hang off the edge of the bed and his weight on Daniel makes a comforting blanket. Smaller inside. Tired. Animating fever burned out to ash. Something in the twitch of his hand speaking of flight.

Selfish or selfless, Daniel holds him tight. He’s not giving him the chance.

Chapter 7

It’s a funny thing, how little actually changes. They’re not sappy or demonstrative. Daniel doesn’t start calling Armand babe or sweetheart (except when he’s especially tired, which happens more than he intends). Armand doesn’t start buying him flowers (except when he spots a particularly nice bouquet on his way home, which happens more than you’d think).

They don’t fight any less. Probably more, if anything. It’s just that now, the climax of their aggression usually funnels itself into Daniel grabbing Armand roughly by the hips, Armand biting his earlobe, and waking up tucked in each other’s arms to continue the argument while three knuckles deep.

So: maybe there are a few changes. But Daniel can’t help feeling like it’s only the foregone conclusion of everything else they’ve been through. A natural product of evolution. An inevitability. 

So it makes sense for Daniel to show up to Smoothie King to walk with Armand home from work, because he misses him, because he likes him, because they like each other. Because it’s just plain nice to walk side by side through the drip-thawing city, green shoots poking through melting snow.

It makes sense for him to go with Armand to Sybelle’s piano recitals (surprisingly brilliant) or Benji’s clarinet solos (enthusiastically terrible), Armand stoically clapping at each one even as he maintains to Daniel that he doesn’t care about the kids, that he’s only attending because employees respond positively when you take an interest in their lives.

Mint overtakes the garden. For a while they’re overflowing with it, and Armand’s kitchen experiments ramp up to keep pace—tabbouleh, mint chocolate mousse, mint mojitos that put him in a good mood and Daniel in an even better one when he tastes them on Armand’s blood. Still, they have too much, and together they make grudging visits up and down the stairs to pass off clippings to neighbors Daniel’s never even met. 

“You have got to be less charming,” Daniel gripes after they successfully unload a bundle on the middle-aged woman who lives below them, a woman who’d been wishing very loudly that Armand would unload something else on her, instead. “You’re going to be starring in her vibrator-fantasies for weeks, and I’m the one who has to hear all those thoughts. And they’re terribly uncreative, I should add. She wouldn’t know what the hell to do with you. ”

“I’m not being charming,” Armand says with great dignity, “I’m being polite.”

Daniel snorts. “There’s nothing polite about walking around with half your tits out.” 

“You think so?” Armand arches a brow, glancing down at his shirt. By the time Daniel knocks on the next door Armand’s undone another two buttons, and Daniel just leaves a bag of clippings on the mat and pulls Armand into the adjacent stairwell. 

“Polite,” Daniel repeats, bracing Armand against the wall as Armand pulls Daniel’s head into his chest. “You wouldn’t know polite if it bit you in the ass.”

“Mmm. Maybe you could try that, later, if you’re so keen to instruct.”

“Maybe,” Daniel says, and then his mouth on Armand’s nipple shuts them both up for a bit.

Later, Daniel gathers the leftover mint they hadn’t managed to pawn, toying idly with the stems. “I could send some to the girls,” he says casually. “I bet they could use some.” The blocking was only a technicality; it wouldn’t be hard for Daniel to find out where they live. He doesn’t even have to go in person to deliver it—a note in the mail would do. They couldn’t begrudge him that.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Armand says carefully, and Daniel deflates. Armand’s right, probably, but fuck if it doesn’t hurt anyway. 

His anger flares, sometimes, when he thinks about it, because come on . Louis had taken a bigger chomp out of Daniel than Daniel had out of Katie, and they’d ended up friends in the end. Was it really such a big deal? Then Armand will pass by his chair, trailing fingers over Daniel’s shoulders, and Daniel remembers that he’s currently shacking up with his murderer—his charming murderer, his polite murderer—and it’s probably a good thing his daughters aren’t so much like him.

*

They’re watching TV on the sofa one night. Daniel’s resting back against Armand’s chest, feet propped on the coffee table, while Armand snakes his arm around Daniel’s waist. It’s not cuddling—Armand’s rack is just way more comfortable than the beat up sofa cushion, and Daniel’s life is hard enough. He’s not in the habit of suffering needlessly.

At some point, Armand slips his hand into Daniel’s pants, as he often does. Daniel waits to see what comes next. Sometimes Armand rubs his thumb into the head of Daniel’s cock until whatever’s on the TV takes a backseat to the nerve endings under his slit. Sometimes Armand merely twists his fingers into Daniel’s pubes and seems perfectly content to stay there, raking absently through the wiry hairs while he opines about the program. It’s the latter tonight, and Daniel can’t complain, shivering against the scrape of Armand’s nails, even as he registers a tenseness in Armand’s neck that means he’s clenching his jaw.

“What now,” Daniel says, knowing from experience that Armand’s going to continue to frown and huff passive aggressively unless asked directly.

“All this money on electronics,” Armand says at once, like the words had been queued to go, “and yet your television set declines so rapidly in quality.”

“Planned obsolescence,” Daniel yawns, then blinks at the TV. “Huh. I don’t know, looks normal to me.” Kitchen Nightmares is on. Gordon Ramsay’s berating a hapless chef, and nothing about it seems overtly fucked up.

Armand scoffs. “The subtitles are barely decipherable at this point. You should request a company refund.”

Daniel looks again at the screen, then tilts his head to look up at Armand. “Babe. It looks fine. I dunno what to tell you.”

“Please. It’s clearly—”

“Maybe you need your eyes checked.”

Armand falls silent. His hand retracts from Daniel’s pants and returns stiffly to his sides. “I have always had perfect vision.”

Daniel laughs. “Joys of getting older, huh?” He drags his head down Armand’s chest to pillow in his lap, looking up at Armand and blinking cutely. “If you’re lucky like me, you might even need cataract surgery before sixty-five.”

Armand does not find this funny. He releases a thin stream of air through his teeth and turns back to the screen, stone faced, ignoring Daniel. But after a moment, his fingers stroke through Daniel’s curls, scratching at the spot above his ears, just the way he likes. “It’s the television,” Armand repeats under his breath. His stomach pushes softly into Daniel’s cheek as he exhales, skin warm through the thin t-shirt, the pulse of his abdominal aorta legible below the flesh. 

“Fine,” Daniel agrees, “maybe it’s the tube.” He noses up under the hem of Armand’s shirt and rubs into the thatch of hair dusting his belly. He can’t get enough of the smell of him. Salt and mint, the tang of his blood and the organic richness of living flesh. “But let’s get you in with an optometrist to prove it.”

Armand simmers. But when Daniel texts him a link, he winds up making an appointment anyway, just as Daniel knew he would. He comes back with a foul mood and a prescription in hand. Within a week, a pair of wire-framed glasses arrive in the mail.

“Oh, let’s see,” Daniel says, clapping his hands on his hips. Armand’s standing in front of the bathroom mirror, prodding at the frames tucked over his ears, and he turns to give Daniel an exasperated look.

There’s a moment where Daniel can physically feel his brain short-circuiting. “Hot,” he manages, a single strangled word. Daniel’s reminded suddenly and viscerally of every boss and professor he’s ever wanted to fuck, all cool intelligence and competence, the not un-erotic thrill of being corrected or criticized. Armand’s look of derision only heightens the impression. 

Daniel’s probably giving too much of this away on his face. To cool it down, he adds, “I think you’re finally starting to look your age, man. Thirty going on five-hundred-seventeen. Gotta say, it’s really working for me.”

Armand narrows his eyes. “Funny.” He looks back in the mirror again, tilting his head and frowning. Daniel leaves him to it. 

He spends the rest of the day having to step out of the room to palm his cock after every bout of eye contact with Armand in those glasses. That night, he can’t help pleading for Armand to keep them on while they’re fucking. Armand indulges him, and the sight of the frames slipping down Armand’s nose as he bounces on Daniel’s dick, hands squeezed into Daniel’s chest, eyes intent and glinting behind the lenses, is going to haunt Daniel until the fire.

The next day, though, the glasses are nowhere to be seen. “I’ve ordered contact lenses,” Armand explains tersely, and won’t give another explanation. Daniel tries not to be disappointed.

*

He wouldn’t call them an overly codependent couple. It’s true that they’re together more often than not, but they do some things separately.

For Daniel, this mainly involves standing hidden outside Katie’s firm, watching her duck from the brownstone steps down to the subway tunnel. She wears turtlenecks and high collars, large scarves, even in the summer. 

Other times he peers from a shop across the street into the gallery Lenora works at. It’s a small place. Mixed media. Photography and paintings. Privately, Daniel thinks it’s a lot of overdone hack jobs. But when a piece sits too long on the gallery wall, Daniel quietly and anonymously buys it. Some are by Lenora. Abstract, tightly cramped sketches, her signature a black scrawl in the corner. He spends too long looking at it, something about the lines of it nagging at his brain. Finally he digs out the ugly puzzle from the living room. The one he’d joked to Armand about being a shitty portrait of Lady Gaga. There, in the corner pieces, he finds the semblance of a signature just like the one on the sketches. Clumsier, coarser, but it’s easy to see how one matured into the other.

Daniel stares at the box for a long time, trying to make sense of it. He pictures a catalog advertisement for custom puzzles—unique gifts, turn your child’s art into reality!—and Alice, who’d always pored over those things, who’d always been so fiercely supportive of the girls’ art, always fuming at Daniel when he’d find some excuse to beg off their recitals and school plays—Alice, helping Lenora fill out the form, two heads of curly hair bent together, sending off a drawing of Daniel for a Father’s Day gift. Maybe birthday, maybe Christmas. He can picture all this, but it’s without the specificity of memory. Just spinning out details for an alternate narrative than the one he recalls. 

In the version he remembers, Lenora would’ve never expressed anything that fond towards him. She’d been cold toward him since she could walk, poisoned by her mother’s whispers. But there’s a truth in this box in his hands, a solid fact that exists regardless of memory. 

It is so easy to tell yourself a story. So easy to believe it.

His storage closet accumulates with artwork. The overflow he stacks in the living room. Armand, to his credit, does not comment on this. In turn, Daniel doesn’t comment on where Armand goes, when he’s alone. 

Daniel had followed him the first few times, just out of curiosity—sue him, okay, but 50 years of journalistic instinct don’t die overnight—and found Armand slipping quietly into the backs of churches. Cathedrals with stained glass martyrs. Mosques with stunning tile work. Temples with golden statues and neatly kept synagogues. Daniel never sticks around much longer after that. He figures Armand is looking for God. Daniel really doesn’t want to be in the blast zone if he succeeds.

*

Interview’s sales numbers are ticking steadily upward. Daniel doesn't understand it. It’s not a perfect metric, but generally his first week sales point the way for how the rest of it will go, with spikes of varying size coinciding with media buzz. His first week had been dogshit. His media “buzz” was a death rattle. And yet, all these months later and the numbers his team emails him each month are definitely getting bigger. If this keeps up, he’s in danger of hitting the bestseller list.

For lack of a better explanation, Daniel considers that maybe his talent is just shining through. Cream rising to the top, as they say. In the time since publication he’s warmed considerably to the book itself; screw that bullshit about capturing profound truths, it’s a solid piece of writing and he’s proud of it. It’s not until Sybelle points her fork at Daniel one night and asks, “So what’s the deal with the vampire Lestat?” that he gets an inkling there might be something else going on.

Next to him at the table, Armand’s hands tighten around his fork. Daniel frowns. “What do you mean? You read the book. Kinda already gave you four hundred pages about his deal, kid.”

“Felt like a thousand,” Benji snorts, oblivious to Daniel’s scowl, and reaches across him to grab a fistful of tortillas. 

Daniel’s still getting used to the semi-frequent presence of Benji and Sybelle at their dinner table. He likes the kids well enough, but it was more of an exchange-banter-at-Smoothie-King kind of affection than the come-into-my-house variety. The first time they’d filed in behind Armand after a Friday night shift, he’d only raised an eyebrow and said “By all means, make yourselves at home,” as Benji had dived immediately into the sofa cushions while Sybelle had drifted to thumb over his record collection. The next Friday, though, when they were back, happily chowing down on the noodles Armand heaped on their plates, Daniel had leaned back against the counter, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans, nursing an irrational and humiliating jealousy at watching the three of them take so much pleasure in an experience closed to him, and he’d said spitefully, “Your mommies and daddies know you’re spending so much time with a couple of old deviants?”

Sybelle had dabbed her lip primly and said that considering that their parents were dead, probably not, and since the older brother who the state deemed fit to care for them had, in turn, deemed it fit to blow the week’s grocery budget on coke, she didn’t think he’d mind either, but Daniel was welcome to call him and check.

“Okay, okay,” Daniel had thrown up his hands. “Wasn’t kicking you out, jeez.”

Sybelle had smiled beatifically at him in clear triumph. She had a smooth, persuasive way of talking that reminded him of someone in particular, and not just because that someone was sitting beside her with the corner of his mouth twitching up. 

The trio were going to be insufferable. Well, whatever. Daniel could out-insufferable anyone. Bring it on.

Later, when he was drying the dishes Armand handed him, Daniel had pressed him on it. “So, where’d this pseudo-parental urge come from? Didn’t feel the need to extend any of that to Claudia, clearly. Off with her head, right, but here come a couple of minimum wage orphans and you’re putting on an apron like goddamn Betty Crocker. I know you’re getting up there, but you do remember that biological clocks only apply to the ladies, right? You can be dropping seed for years to come.”

Armand had tightened his jaw. “Claudia was different,” he’d said, ignoring that last part, which was probably for the best. Daniel didn’t really want to think about Armand ‘dropping seed’ anywhere unless it was into one of Daniel’s own orifices. “Claudia was not a child. And I’m not their parents, I’m their boss. Are we clear here?”

Daniel had been clear. He wasn’t sure if Armand was, but he’d left it at that.

Now Sybelle takes another bite of her fajita. “No, I know the book part of it,” she says impatiently. “I mean, like, the famous singer guy. Is he the same one that did all that stuff to Louis and Armand?”

“Famous?” Daniel repeats. Armand’s eyes meet Daniel’s for a half second before sliding away. 

This was the awkward part about publishing a book you insist is nonfiction and encouraging people to read it. The details are a little personal. The kids know that book Armand is boss Armand, and that Daniel is a vampire. If it freaks them out at all that their boss has murdered for centuries, or that their boss’s boyfriend drinks from wine glasses of blood over dinner, they never show it.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Daniel says evasively. “And would we really call him famous? I’ve only heard one of his songs.” He thinks back to that night with Armand in the underground club. It was the kind of place that played weird, far left of mainstream music, so Daniel had figured Lestat was fulfilling a Soundcloud niche appreciated only by people who spent a lot of time in basements. Famous?

“Are you serious? The Long Face remix is, like, all over Tiktok. You really haven’t seen the dance? You must’ve. Here, I’ll do it for you.”

Before Daniel can protest, Benji’s chair clatters back as he leaps to his feet and starts performing a series of complicated hip thrusts and arm movements.

When it’s over, Daniel has to take a sip from his glass to steady himself. He’s suffering the sinking realization that his book is only selling copies because people have a hard-on for Lestat’s apparently illustrious music career. Fucker. I’ve gotta meet this guy, Daniel thinks, not for the first time. 

“So?” Benji prompts.

Beside him, Armand shrugs. “It is as you suspected. Lestat has always been quite desperate for attention.”

The kids are still looking between him and Armand expectantly. Sybelle says, “We mean, so, can you get us tickets?”

Armand reaches over and spoons more rice onto Sybelle’s plate. Daniel wonders if he’s going to ignore Sybelle completely, but finally he says, “You read the book. You are aware of how—strained, our relationships can be. It is not such an easy thing to just call and ask.”

“Oh, but—” 

“C’mon, can’t you just—”

“Enough,” Armand says sharply. His face brokers no further argument.

The kids slump back in their seats. Benji mutters “Lame” under his breath, but they drop it for the rest of the evening.

Daniel, on the other hand, can’t let it go. Not necessarily the concert—though he actually wouldn’t mind it—but the idea of reaching out. Meeting up with Louis, face to face, after all this time. Making his acquaintance with the legendary vampire Lestat. Now he’s starting to wonder what’s actually stopping them. 

It’s been over three years since Dubai. Since Daniel’s murder, since Armand’s incarnation. Since Louis found out his lover of seventy-seven years orchestrated his daughter’s murder. 

Look, Daniel gets that in the vampire-time scale, three years is a sneeze. A splash in the urinal. Hell, even for a normal seventy-two year old it’s nothing. But Daniel’s impatient. It’s a little bit of practical exasperation—if they’re all going to come back together eventually, as Daniel has a feeling they will, then why not now?—and a little bit of his puerile craving to bring combustibles together and watch them ignite. He wants to get this show on the road, and he doesn’t think he’s totally alone in this. 

Lately when he talks to Louis, he gets the sense Louis is dancing around proposing something similar. He makes more joking threats about dropping in, each one giving away when Daniel calls his bluff. The Louis-Lestat situation is a little unclear to Daniel; he knows Louis nominally lives alone, but he also knows that he makes a lot of transatlantic flights. And sometimes has a houseguest.

Daniel’s got no room to judge.

Armand, too, has been asking an increasing number of carefully casual questions after Daniel talks to Louis. It’s getting a little annoying to be the go-between. Games of telephone are less fun when you’re always stuck in the middle.

So when ads for Lestat’s Madison Square Garden date start popping up practically everywhere, Daniel suggests to Louis that they all meet up for drinks while they’re in town.

“Nope,” Louis says immediately, “not a good idea.” 

“Okay,” Daniel says, noting that Louis hadn’t bothered to refute that he was coming with Lestat. “Just thought I’d ask.”

He mentions it to Armand later, who makes similar noises of dismissal. “Lestat and Louis, together,” he says, lip curling. “No. I would not share a table with them, no.”

“Hey,” Daniel says, throwing up his hands. “Cool it, man, Louis already said no. It was just an idea.”

Armand lets it go. 

That is, for the next few hours, only to pick it back up while he’s getting ready for bed. “I cannot emphasize enough what a horrific idea it would be for all of us to meet in public.” He’s standing with his back to Daniel, but the mirror reflects his downturned eyes, the slight tremble of his hands as he sets down his toothbrush and picks up a small blue bottle. He rubs its contents between his fingers and massages them gently into his temples, where his hairline has started to creep back a bit.

“Heard you the first time,” Daniel says, passing by and aiming a kiss at the corner of Armand’s mouth. Armand permits this, and Daniel uses the moment of distraction to grab the bottle and squint at the label. Scalp density serum, it says, with some French subtitle that probably translates to ‘super fucking expensive’. Daniel snorts. “I think this stuff’s snake oil, babe. You seen a picture of Prince Harry lately? If it were that easy none of these rich coots would be balding.” 

“Your advice is as unasked for as it is unappreciated,” Armand says coldly, taking the bottle back and elbowing Daniel out of the bathroom. Daniel gives a bow of mock surrender, leaving Armand to the rest of his routine. Whatever. Lord knows there’s worse habits than a Sephora account, no matter how much it prickles.

When Armand climbs into bed, he presses close against Daniel’s side. “Foolish of you even to suggest a meeting,” he says into Daniel’s ear. His hands claw at Daniel’s hips, knee pressing into Daniel’s thigh. “Do you think everything between us is petty squabbles?”

“I get it,” Daniel says tiredly. “You’re all special snowflakes who couldn’t possibly have a grown up conversation. Point made.” He runs the pad of his thumb along Armand’s throat, feeling him shiver underneath, and turns to lick a stripe across the line of his jaw, up to his temples, sweeping back his bangs to mouth at his hairline. He pulls back with a low whistle. “Whoah, maybe you were right to try that serum. At this rate you’ll be bald by forty. Take all the help you can get.”

Armand hisses through his teeth and yanks himself away. Daniel laughs, rolling over to chase after him, getting his hands around Armand’s pecs and kneading into them until he’s forgiven. 

Armand is, of course, the most gorgeous being Daniel’s ever seen. It’s a language-breaking beauty. Brain-breaking. In his more cynical moments, Daniel thinks that something in his sulci and gyri must’ve gotten messed up amid the torture and lingering high and soft-toned voice in that Divisadero apartment, something that left him imprinting on Armand like an animal unable to detach from its keeper. Point is, beauty is a word with Armand as its definition, and nothing, nothing will ever change that. Which is precisely why it’s so fun to tease him like this; how worked up Armand gets over nothing. But Armand knows Daniel doesn’t mean it, really. He’s had enough people in his life calling him beautiful. He doesn’t need to hear it from Daniel, too.

*

To Daniel’s complete lack of surprise, Louis calls him up the next day. 

“So listen,” Louis says. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh huh.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Just a quick meeting, that’s all. I'm in a new phase of life. I don’t like leaving bad blood out there.”

“Right,” says Daniel. “You have a place in mind?”

“I’ll text you the address. Put it on your credit card, Mr. Best Seller.”

Armand stands up when Daniel enters the kitchen, then sits back down again, then raises his mug to his mouth without drinking. His bottom lip is reddened and split, like he’d been worrying at it with his teeth. “You know,” he says, steepling his fingers, “if you talk to Louis again—”

“I already did.” Daniel picks up Armand’s mug and refills it from the pot by the stove. “And I got us a table at a fancy little wine bar. You’re welcome.”

“Mmm,” Armand says, either in reference to Daniel’s statement or his fresh mouthful of coffee. His eyes are half-baleful and half-relieved. “It’s probably still a bad idea, you realize.” 

“Probably,” Daniel agrees cheerfully, sliding into the stool next to Armand’s and yanking over the paper to fill out the blanks Armand had left in the crossword. He’s banked enough bad ideas by now that he figures the universe owes it to him to cash some of them out for good, which is a faulty and self-serving logic that he’s aware of but unwilling to divest from. Truth is, it’s hard to care about bad ideas when the worst one Daniel’s ever had is currently hooking his calf around Daniel’s, sleep-wild curls brushing Daniel’s neck, warm coffee-breath kissing Daniel’s cheek as he leans in to argue over the answers.

*

The concert is months away. They live with the fact of its imminence for long enough that its power should diminish—and for Daniel, it mostly does. He thinks of it every now and then with a small bloom of anticipation, and nothing more.

It’s a different story for Armand. Each week winds him up tighter, a clockwork figure building to a joint-grinding snapping point. He disappears for longer stretches than usual. When he comes back, attar and incense cling to his clothes, and his skin is tacky with drying sweat as it drags against Daniel’s. He doesn’t want to talk about it, which Daniel should probably push back against, but the sex is good enough that Daniel’s able to convince himself it’s not a big deal. There’s hardly an inch left in the apartment that Daniel’s bare ass hasn’t gotten friendly with. Armand rides him like he’s training for the derby and fucks him like he’s auditioning for the role of power drill number three, and Daniel has to feed twice as often just to keep up with the amount of fluid he’s expending. 

Sometimes Armand’s teeth close over Daniel’s throat. Incisors tearing ineffectually at impervious skin. When he retreats, Armand is always in a worse mood than before. It’s something Daniel always tells himself he’s going to press at, but the orgasms that rip through him shortly after seem specifically timed to fog his concentration. 

They spend a lot of money on cleaning supplies.

At dinner, Benji prattles on loudly about what he wants to be when he grows up—a famous Twitch streamer, because, no offense to Big A, but he sure as hell doesn’t want to be middle aged and still slinging smoothies—and Armand, who had been twisting his napkin to shreds under the table, finally snaps at the kid to shut up with such cruelty that even Daniel winces. 

The silence that follows is enormous. The lentils Armand had made are still steaming on the table in front of them, fragrant with mint, and Daniel looks at them instead of Benji as the kid’s eyes well with tears. Sybelle’s chair scrapes backward as she gets calmly to her feet, grabbing Benji’s wrist and pulling him toward the door. They get enough of that shit at home, she says, and don’t need it here, too. Armand makes no move to stop them as the door slams shut.

The dinner table is empty next week. Armand has Daniel bent over it before he can even formulate his question.

Later, all of these moments will recontextualize themselves for Daniel. Warning signs that he’d have to be an idiot to miss. But in the moment, Daniel is just a guy having extraordinary amounts of mind-bending sex, and maybe he is a bit of an idiot, but he thinks that Armand’s anxiety is probably good for him, self-actualization-wise. The guy’s about to have drinks with the one that got away and the ex whose daughter he had killed. The dread is probably his most human response yet.

Still, Daniel does manage to feel a little bad for him. “We don’t have to do this,” he says unwillingly, because he’d actually be extremely bummed if they didn’t. “Don’t want your hair falling out over it, man. You don’t have the follicles to spare.”

“That delightful wit of yours.” Armand presses his lips into a thin line and shakes his head. “No. We should get it over with.”

When the date comes, however, it’s Daniel who’s running late. T-shirts and blazers tangle with denim on his closet floor as he tries to come up with an outfit that says ‘chill’ and ‘put together’ and not ‘intimidated about a reunion with his sexual partner’s past sexual partners.’

Armand pushes open the door without knocking. “Are you quite finished, we’re nearly—oh.” He takes in the mess on the floor, then Daniel’s still shirtless form. His brow raises fractionally. “Which one are you trying so hard to impress? Louis, or Lestat?”

“Neither,” Daniel says automatically. Then, “Why, do you think I’m impressive?”

“To certain appetites.” Armand lays a hand on Daniel’s bare chest, the other curling into the dip of his lower back. “If you went like this, I know some tastes that would be quite impressed indeed.”

“Yeah?” Daniel hooks his fingers in Armand’s waistband, pulling their hips flush. “Guess it won’t matter much, anyway. Don’t know how anyone’s taking their eyes off all this.”

Armand is dressed more finely than Daniel’s seen him since Dubai. His slacks are precisely tailored to the flare of his hips, his plum-colored silk shirt buttoned low enough to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of his lush chest. Subtle kohl lines his brown eyes and his hair is oiled neatly to a shine. He smiles faintly at Daniel’s comment, but otherwise seems oddly calm. It’s in such sharp contrast to his behavior over the past months that Daniel wonders if he’s taken something.

“Here,” Armand says, stepping away from Daniel to pluck a dark t-shirt from the hanger. “Pair this with your leather jacket. Those jeans are acceptable.”

When Daniel doesn’t move fast enough for Armand’s liking, he sighs and pulls the t-shirt down over Daniel’s head, yanking his arms through the sleeves. Daniel doesn’t complain. It’s always nice getting manhandled by Armand, especially when it leads to—

“No,” Armand says, swatting away the hand pawing into his pants. “We don’t have time. Come on, we should’ve left ten minutes ago.”

“Fine.” Daniel shrugs on the jacket and hurries to catch up with Armand’s long strides out into the hallway. “But tonight, me and every button of that slinky little shirt are getting intimately acquainted. Got it?”

“Tonight,” Armand echoes, but his eyes are on the door.

*

The bar is crowded. Daniel gives the name at the door and the hostess tells them their party is already seated, and they make their way through the swathes of tables, searching the sweating mortal faces at each one. 

“Daniel,” a voice cuts through the noise, softly resonant with the one in his mind. And then there’s Louis, lifting a hand at him from a small round table. 

Understatement of the century: Louis looks good. His clothes are designer but relaxed, accentuating the easy set of his well-made shoulders. The low candlelight of the table renders his eyes a luminous emerald, and Daniel’s caught in the old tug of needing to impress him—the twenty year old fumbling tapes in the bar, the sixty-nine year old hopping a plane in the middle of a pandemic. The fledgling now gripping his maker’s hand like it’s his lifeline.

Armand brushes his thumb over Daniel’s knuckles. Daniel makes himself let go before he accidentally crushes Armand’s palm.

Beside Louis is a shortish white guy with brassy blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Daniel’s gaze skips over him in search of Lestat, and then he blinks, and realizes the shortish white guy is Lestat. 

Maybe Daniel shouldn’t be so surprised. Besides what was relevant to the book, Daniel hadn’t sought out much info on the guy, but from the music video clips he’d seen he’d assumed Lestat would be something larger than life. Extreme bombast. Wild fashion. Drop-you-to-your-knees sexy, from the way Armand and Louis had talked about him.

Instead, the guy is…normal. It’s not that he isn’t handsome; he’s sporting an admittedly enviable jawline and simple but stylish clothes that showcase the frankly outrageous curve of his waist. Still, Daniel can’t help thinking, really? This is who all the fuss has been about? 

Then Lestat smiles at them as they sit down. It spreads over his face slowly, as unhurried and inevitable as the tides, glittering with all the magnetic pull of the moon, and Daniel thinks, Ah. He kind of gets it.

“The fledgling Molloy,” Lestat drawls, placing an elbow on the table and leaning forward. “And his maker, the vam—pardon, the former vampire Armand. My, what a succulent treat you’ve become. I expect your companion can’t keep his tongue out of you.”

“Actually, we’re pretty equal opportunity on the tongue front,” Daniel says breezily, as Louis sighs and presses a hand to his temple. “Louis, nice to see you. Lestat, good to meet the guy who’s getting me on the bestseller list.”

“Ah, that.” Lestat shrugs modestly. “Unintended consequence. The public is quite taken with all things me.”

“Give it another fifteen minutes,” Daniel says. “You’ll be canceled soon enough.”

Lestat’s answering smile is all sharpened teeth.

Louis had given Armand a small nod when he sat down, which Armand returned. Apart from that slight dip of chin, Armand could be a statue. It’s a body language that now seems foreign to Daniel, though he remembers Armand had sat with that same eerie stillness in Dubai. In the years since, he’s taken on a more frenetic energy. Forever tapping his hands, bouncing his foot, fidgeting. Daniel assumed it was a side effect of being human. Now he feels the stillness like a separate body beside him and wonders how much else of himself Dubai-Armand had kept hidden under that mask of control.

A waiter comes by, some kid with ginger hair and a lopsided bow tie not much older than Sybelle. Lestat beckons him close and informs him in low tones that he’d arranged ahead of time for a special bottle to be served, and could he be a dear and fetch it? The name is under Lioncourt. The waiter nods, a little starstruck, while Lestat gives the rest of them an enormous wink.

Armand orders a house red. He has to repeat it twice before the waiter takes his eyes off Lestat long enough to write it down.

When they’re alone, Lestat leans forward, voice dropping to a husky stage whisper. “The bottle I arranged is actually—”

“Blood. Big surprise.” Louis rolls his eyes. “They’re not stupid, Lestat.”

Lestat sits back and folds his arms, visibly miffed at the lackluster reaction. But after a moment Louis slips a hand onto his thigh, and the tension eases, just like that.

Well. Some of the tension. 

Armand’s fingers are twitching minutely, his spine ramrod straight. “You look well,” he says to Louis.

 “Yeah,” Louis says. “Been feeling well, too.” His eyes only meet Armand’s for the barest of seconds before sliding away. 

Daniel gets his first inkling that this could be a very long night.

The server reappears with Lestat’s bottle, matte and unmarked. Dark liquid sloshes viscously into each of their glasses and there’s no pretending it’s anything other than it is. What will the server say about this night, when he goes online, when he goes to text his friends? Maybe Lestat is planning to eat him before he gets the chance. 

The boy starts to pour into Armand’s glass, but Lestat grabs his wrist to stop him. “No,” he tuts, “house red for him, souviens-toi? Do you forget all your instructions so quickly?”

“So sorry,” the boy mumbles, cheeks reddening. The single drop that had made it into Armand’s glass slides thickly down to the base.

“It’s fine,” Armand says. His eyes are on the crimson smear. “My friend is rude.”

The server looks between them and steps quickly away, bringing Armand a fresh glass and a whole bottle of red, on the house. 

Daniel gestures between Louis and Lestat as Armand pours himself a hefty glass and begins to drain it with dogged determination. “So, fellas. How’s remarriage treating you?”

“Oh, we’re not,” Louis says. He gives a politician-smooth chuckle. “We’re just two people with a very long shared history—”

“—who find there are certain things only the other understands.” Lestat finishes the last part in unison with Louis, treating Armand and Daniel to a knowing look, which makes Louis heave a sigh and sip from his glass. The irritation isn’t enough to make him pull his other hand from Lestat’s thigh.

Daniel can feel Armand watching all this, the coiled-up tension in his still frame. He’s trying to figure out if he can touch Armand’s thigh, too, or if that will just make everything worse, when Armand laughs coldly and says, “A mere thirty years, is that what we’re now considering a long history?”

“Hey,” Louis starts, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t—”

“Ah, mon cher,” Lestat cuts him off, shark-smile fixing on Armand. His hand presses to his own heart as if mortally wounded. “I would not scoff at such a number, if I were you, when that one scant year of our coupling in Paris seems to have dominated the course of your life quite completely.”

Armand’s fist strikes the table. 

It’s not a blow of vampiric strength, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s the fist of a six-foot adult man and it nearly unseats the wood from its moorings. Bottles rattle. Blood slops over the rim of Daniel’s glass, blooming red on the white tablecloth. A few of the neighboring tables glance over nervously. The waitstaff whispers with the maître d’. 

Armand ignores all of this. He’s glowering at Lestat like there’s no one else in the room. Lestat stares back, eyes intense, and it’s clear there’s a conversation happening that only the two of them can hear.

“Oh-kay,” Louis says, drawing out the syllables. He frees his left hand from Lestat’s thigh and claps it against his right, standing up from his seat. “This has been—great. Probably what we all expected. So how about you two catch up alone for a while, if this is how you want to play it. Daniel and I are going to hang out now.” 

When Daniel doesn’t move, Louis repeats meaningfully, “Right, Danny?”

“Right.” Daniel gets to his feet unthinkingly, then glances back at Armand.

“It’s okay,” Armand says softly. His eyes haven’t left Lestat’s. “You should go with him.”

And Daniel, God forgive him, does.

*

Louis leads him through the hallway to a back staircase, up three flights, through another hallway, and then there’s the night-cool kiss of fresh air as they exit to a rooftop fire escape. Louis tucks his knees to his chest and sits down on the concrete. After a moment, Daniel joins him.

“That went…well,” Daniel lies. He looks at Louis sidelong. “And you’re sure that's still the guy you want as your family for the next however many centuries? Not too late to get out.”

Louis takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offers one to Daniel, who shakes his head. Shrugging, Louis blows smoke through his lips and says, “Good of you to ask about family, Danny. I know that’s a priority for you. Speaking of, how are those daughters of yours lately?” His smile is quick and sharp like a knife, and Daniel mimes taking its blow to his gut.

“You’ve been paying attention to that, huh.”

“Lenora has a book coming out soon. I believe the blurb described it as a ‘prose-poem masterpiece excavating a childhood spent with a father more narcisticially vampiric than even the subjects of his books.’”

“Jesus. Well, sounds like it’ll be a good one.” Smart, too, to get it out on the heels of Lestat’s fame and Daniel’s coattail-clinging ascent. The drama of it all will drive up sales for both of them. Clever girl. With a head for business like that you’d think her gallery would actually turn a profit.

“I don’t know. I’m well-acquainted with the subjects of Mr. Molloy's book, and I think calling him more narcissistic than the others might be a stretch. Equal to, now that’s more fair.”

“Shucks. You sure know how to make a girl blush, du Lac.”

“Yeah,” Louis says, “Can’t help it when it makes you look so pretty. Should’ve seen yourself when Lestat made that tongue joke, you went redder than the wine.”

“Great. Didn’t actually know I was still capable of that, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to pretend you never said anything. Not going to think about what else I’ve been blushing at over the past few years. Christ.”

Louis’ laugh is soft. His eyes trace the bright glow of the skyline, facsimiles of stars reflected in their depths. 

“Does it bother you?” Daniel asks finally, because it’s the question that’s been weighing on him from the very beginning of all this. The one he’s been too selfish to ask. “That he and I are—you know.”

“Yes,” Louis says. He glances at Daniel, takes a drag, lets his shoulders dip. “No. I don’t know.”

“Thanks,” Daniel says. “Really cleared that up.”

Every muscle in Louis’ jaw tenses. For a moment, he’s a study in anatomy, veins and tendons starkly insistent against bone. Then he exhales, and he’s just a man again, breathing out shaky clouds of smoke on a summer’s evening. “You think it’s easy for me?” he asks. “You think this isn’t beyond complicated? Sometimes I don’t think I’m sure of anything beyond my own name, and the fact that I can’t forgive either of them.” His fingers tremble as he stubs the cigarette on the concrete between them. “But I can’t stop loving them, either.”

Horns honk below. Shrill wail of an ambulance. The worst day of someone’s life, rendered small and toylike from their vantage above.

Louis’ voice is catching in his throat. “And what does that—what does that mean for her? If I love them still, when—”

“Hey,” says Daniel. Without thinking too hard about it, he puts his hand on Louis’ back. The bowstring-tight muscles don’t react to his touch, but he leaves it there anyway, rubs a small circle over the knot of his spine. “You didn’t expect to sort all that out in a single dinner, did you? Gimme a break. We’ve got enough problems between us all to fill libraries, and I’ve only put out one book. There’s no rush, man. You’ve got a million sequels to work through it all.”

“Exploiting our pain to the last,” Louis says, but his voice breaks into something like a laugh. He knocks his shoulder into Daniel’s, and Daniel knocks back.

“That’s me. Daddy Narcissist, remember?”

“I take back everything. Lenora was totally right about you.” 

“Aw, but you love me,” Daniel says. Louis makes a noncommittal sound, but doesn’t turn away when Daniel swipes the tear from his cheek. A perfect bead of red on Daniel’s thumb. He brings it to his mouth as their feet make a swinging tangle over the side, and Daniel thinks about the height it takes to crack a skull, the heat needed to burn alive, of brothers and daughters and how time is a circle of mistakes you can’t stop making. 

Louis puts his head on Daniel’s shoulder.

“Speaking of narcissists,” Daniel says after a moment. “I think your husband’s knocking at my mind palace.”

Daniel had learned to lock the door in his mind early on. There were certain things he felt that a developing friendship couldn’t survive, and inadvertently having to witness all of the graphic fantasies Daniel had about being used by Louis’ ex-husband was one of those things. Now he feels the presence of Lestat outside that carefully-constructed door, looking for a way in.

“You gonna answer him?”

“Nah,” Daniel decides, threading his arm around Louis’ waist.  “He can wait.” 

It really is a beautiful night. Despite everything, Daniel feels good.

*

When they retrace their steps back down to the restaurant, the table is empty, Armand and Lestat nowhere to be seen.

“Lord knows what they’re up to,” Louis groans, toeing back the chairs and peering underneath, as if they might’ve scrawled out a message like the colonists at Roanoke. “Told Lestat not to kill anyone famous while we’re here, but he was still smarting about some Late Night snub…”

“We’ll check on the Jimmys later.” Lestat’s presence pulses at Daniel’s mind again, somehow more insistent this time, and Daniel rolls his eyes.  “Uh oh. Think I’m about to find out. If it’s something X-rated, I reserve the right not to tell you.”

Louis laughs out his protest, and Daniel opens the door.

Instantly, ice chokes out his veins. All the lightness sucks out of the room and filters down into the heavy pang of dread. When he speaks, Lestat’s voice is tight with barely controlled panic.

Mount Sinai emergency department, he says. Come at once.

Chapter 8

Notes:

tw for medical discussions/hospitals/illness

Later, Daniel will have no memory of how they get there. There will only be the echo of Lestat’s voice in his head, the ordinary candlelight flickering in the lounge, the wry amusement on Louis’ face giving way to something terrible as he takes in the look on Daniel’s. 

Maybe they ran. Maybe they flew. Maybe they jacked a car or pushed some poor sonuvabitch off his Citi Bike. He’s only aware of himself again when his fangs pierce his gums and a warning hand grabs his wrist. “Cool it,” Louis says lowly. 

But this is the first time Daniel’s fangs have encountered a place so flooded by blood. 

It’s everywhere in this choking, teeming ward. Soaking through gauze and dripping from noses and infusing cleanly into silk-thin veins. Cooling in the young woman propped in a hallway bed, one of many in a corridor-clogging queue, the man next to her giving fast-talking directions to someone on the other end of a cell phone. He should hang up. Whoever’s rushing is already too late, Daniel thinks, and then the kick-drum of panic seizes his chest. They have to move faster.

Nurses call for him to slow down, sir; patient beds get knocked askew in his wake. Mothers pull their squirming children closer to their chests to keep out of his storm. Every head of dark curls is a skip of Daniel’s heartbeat, but Armand’s not in the hallways. Not in the open bay. Keep looking. Don’t think about the chilled room so many floors beneath, the coagulation of still liquid in stiff vessels. Not too late. It won’t be. Blowing open doors to each of the private rooms, vaguely aware of yelling something, or others yelling at him, and then there’s Armand’s body in the bed.

That’s the only word for it. Body. IVs snake into its veins. Gauze blankets its wrists. Its skin is so pallid it looks almost a thing in grayscale, devoid of any animating force. He has to think of it as a thing. To think of it as Armand is unbearable. 

He’s distantly aware of Lestat rising when they enter. Of Louis grabbing him immediately by the throat, of nurses flying to call for help and then freezing in place with a flick of Lestat’s wrist.

Erratic lines on the monitor track the beating of the heart. It’s the only thing keeping Daniel from flying to pieces.

“Had no fucking right,” Louis is snarling. “Shoulda been me, if anyone, but I thought we were more grown up than that.”

“Cher—you misunderstand—”

“I don’t misunderstand shit, that thing is barely breathing. Leave you alone for an hour and you attack him like a goddamn animal—”

“Louis.” A word boomed out loud enough to flutter the sheets, loud enough that even the glaze-eyed nurses stir. “I did not attack him. He asked for this.”

Daniel turns slowly from the body to look at Lestat. Lestat meets his eyes over Louis’ shoulder, clear and uncompromising. 

“He asked you,” Daniel repeats.

Louis’ grip slackens, just barely, but it’s enough for Lestat to roll his neck and nod. “Such a pitiful thing, couched in all that fragile flesh. How miserable he was. How desperate. How he pleaded for me to turn him back. What can I say? I love him, and he was suffering. I could not refuse.”

The implication is clear. Daniel had let Armand suffer. Daniel is the reason this came to pass.

Louis is shaking his head, but it’s futile. They both know Lestat is telling the truth. 

“Sure took care of his suffering, didn’t you,” Louis says, voice quiet. “Won’t be suffering when he’s dead.”

For the first time, Lestat’s smooth face starts to crack. His teeth bear down on his lip. “I do not understand it,” he admits. “A dozen fledglings I’ve now made, and never once have I miscarried. He tried to drink, but it just—” He lifts his shoulder. “Came back.”

Came back. Daniel thinks of Armand retching in his bathroom sink, the blood pouring out of him like a rejected organ. 

Daniel forces his feet to move. “Hey,” he says, snapping his fingers in the face of the nearest person in scrubs. “What’s the—what are we working with.”

“Severe blood loss,” the woman says robotically. Her hair is pulled back in a tight braid, deep circles under her eyes. Probably she has other patients, the line of them choking the hall. Probably this spell Lestat put on her is slowing her down from treating them. Possibly more will die because of it. Daniel doesn’t care. “Hypovolemic shock. Multi-system organ damage is likely.”

“Okay. But he’s. He’ll be okay, right? That’s all—fixable.”

“The patient’s condition is critical. Prognosis uncertain.”

“But he’ll be okay,” Daniel says, louder. The sheets on the body’s chest barely move. The doctor says something else, but Daniel can’t hear it. He’s looking at the blanched, spidery veins, so stark against the body’s eyelids. So still, but it would never pass for sleep. You’d have to be deluded or an idiot to mistake its misery for peace. 

“Daniel,” Louis says. 

But Daniel’s already turning on his heel and staggering out of the room.

*

He walks until he’s numb, and then he walks until he’s angry.

The anger is easy. It carries him all the way to the Bronx.

Hate churns in him like a fount, indiscriminate in its targets. The warm wind that lifts the curls from his nape. The moonlight that looms over everything with its truculent glare. The people he passes, delivery vests glinting or lighters flicking or weary shoes loosened after long shifts, all of these people, stuffed to the bursting with blood that none of them ever think about unless forced to. Daniel hates them all. This whole stinking, rotten city. Never should’ve left Modesto, he thinks, which is a depressing and false enough thought that his anger gutters for a moment. The next breeze is enough to blow it out completely, and all that’s left is a marrow-deep exhaustion that has nothing to do with the miles walked. 

He thinks about going home. He thinks about pushing open the door and walking past the armchair where Armand had smiled at Daniel over his coffee while plotting this behind Daniel’s back. The indent in his mattress where Armand had held tight to his middle and fucked him slow and let Daniel think he was actually happy.

The world is blurring a little. Daniel sinks down into the street. Stays there until dawn washes the blackness to gray. 

It’s easy to blame it all on the master manipulator at work. Daniel may be wearing the fangs now, but he’s still the victim, right? Armand had told him so himself. Can’t fault Daniel for falling for the rest of it when the guy he’s up against has been pumping out lies since the Italian Renaissance. Yeah. Easy to blame it on that, but it’s all bullshit. Because Daniel knows that Armand can only manipulate people who already want to buy what he’s selling. And Daniel, aimless, purposeless, pathetic Daniel, had apparently been sitting there like the biggest chump in the world, so desperate to believe that he’d finally made someone happy.

Something silky slips through his fingers. He looks down, and finds he’s been crushing broken bits of pavement to dust.

The worst part is this: he still hopes, terribly, foolishly, that some part of that happiness had been real.

More dust under his fingernails. He has been on this stretch of pavement for so many hours. Prognosis uncertain. 

It’s possible some of it was real, but it’s also possible Daniel might never find out.

The anger comes back, just a spigot this time. It only needs two targets. Not even Lestat, not really. Pointless to hate the wind for blowing. Armand and himself, though. The force of it drives him back up to his feet, sends him retracing his steps through the city back to the hospital. 

The room is quieter than he’d left it, but the steady beep of the heart monitor makes the fist around his lungs loosen enough to breathe. Louis sits in a folding chair beside the bed, Lestat beside him. No longer fighting, but both bear the worn-down shoulders that say it hadn’t been easy. Probably they hadn’t slept, here in this fluorescent-harsh space. Lestat’s hand rubs small circles into Louis’ palm.

“He’s stabilized,” Louis says. He gets to his feet, pulls Lestat with him. “We’re going to step out.” He doesn’t ask anything about Daniel’s disappearing act, which is a kindness Daniel doesn’t deserve.

Daniel nods at them, then takes the spot Louis had vacated. The chair is cool to the touch; he remembers that they hadn’t exactly made it through their drinks before everything went to shit. Hopefully Louis is getting something to eat. Hopefully he and Lestat aren’t causing an international incident.

Daniel takes Armand’s hand before he lets himself look anywhere else.

The skin is lukewarm, unresponsive to his touch, but the pulse flutters softly in his wrist. Daniel drags his hand over every contour and knob of those long, graceful fingers, those hands that have pushed inside him and rearranged him so completely. Slowly he lifts his gaze to the face.

“Wake up, you fucker,” he says softly. “I’m furious with you, you know that? Wake up and have it out with me, or I’ll…”

But it doesn’t matter what he would do. Armand continues to sleep.

*

Louis and Lestat return by dusk. Daniel’s only conscious of the time passing by the swapping of the nurses on shift, different haircuts above identical navy scrubs, filing in quietly to change the bags of fluid dripping into Armand’s veins or type things in a computer.

Eventually Armand gets moved to a room outside the emergency ward. A good sign, Louis says. Means he’s improving, even if his unresponsive face hasn’t outwardly changed. 

The three of them make a bizarre, unspeaking parade behind the tech pushing his hospital bed. They line up side by side in the new room, three sets of eyes fixed on the sleeping body, and Daniel’s struck by the semi-hysterical image of them as the three Fates, sitting here in a row, old as dirt. Just give them some thread to weave, scissors to snip. Their pasts and futures are all tangled together anyway. 

“You should go home,” Louis murmurs. “You’re still young. You need rest. Food.”

Daniel shakes his head, but his body trembles, betraying him. He has been awake for over forty eight hours. Even in this protected place the somnolent pull of the sun drags at him. 

“Go,” says Lestat, sounding bored. “We will call for you if anything changes. But pick up this time, yes?”

“Yeah,” Daniel says, not even bothering with an argument. He goes.

*

There’s a package waiting outside his front door. It strikes Daniel as strange that it hadn’t been delivered to the mailroom, but then he rips open the paper, and his confusion dissipates. An advanced reader’s copy of Childhood with the Vampire, left here for him by Lenora. He shakes the pages, but there’s no note, no other message besides the one in the manuscript.

He thumbs her name on the cover. He is so very tired.

The book sits heavy on his nightstand as he crawls into bed. 

Sometime later, he wakes groggily, thinking he heard something. He’d been worried, before sleeping, that in the moment of disorientation after waking he would forget why the bed was cold, and the act of remembering it all fresh would hurt worse than the first blow. He needn’t have worried. There was no chance for forgetting. It never left his mind, even in his restless sleep. 

Stumbling to the bathroom mirror, he dampens a cloth to wipe away three days worth of collected city grime and accidentally knocks over half of Armand’s Sephora stash with a misplaced elbow. Swearing, Daniel stoops to pick them up. Some of the bottles have smashed, milky white creams slicking over the tiles. Youth Preserve. Cellulite Repair. Age Defy. A dozen different products promising to lift and tighten, smooth and firm. How doggedly Armand had applied them each day. How relentlessly Daniel had mocked him for it. How much petty pleasure had he taken in pointing out that the regimen failed to prevent the gentle crow’s feet from forming by Armand’s eyes, that the oils didn’t stop the slow march of silvers from twining in with his dark curls. 

None of that shit’s going to stop you from looking like me one day, he’d said on more than one occasion, and each time his belligerence had couched the plea underneath. Tell me it wouldn’t be so awful. Tell me it wouldn’t repulse you. 

But Armand would never look away from the mirror, and Daniel, hardening, would never give up his ribbing. 

It had seemed such a small thing, in the scheme of it all. And maybe it was. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it hadn’t pushed Armand closer to that hospital bed. 

Daniel sweeps all the bottles into the trash anyway.

The sound from earlier rings out again, and this time Daniel’s awake enough to distinguish it as hesitant knocking on the door. The girls , he thinks inanely, and goes to open it wide.

It’s not the girls. Duh. It won’t be the girls, he tells himself, not ever again. He’d had his third and fourth and fifth chances and blew them all. That privilege is done. 

Benji and Sybelle stand in the hallway instead, matching in their red uniform polos and twin expressions of unease. 

“Mr. Molloy,” Benji says, which is probably the first time he’s ever called Daniel that since they’ve known each other. “Is Big—I mean, is Armand around?”

“No,” says Daniel, voice flat. He tries to shut the door, but Sybelle sticks her arm out to block it.

“We’re sorry to intrude,” she says. “It’s just… he hasn’t shown up for his shifts in the past few days, and we were wondering if he’s coming back anytime soon—”

“—cause this guy they have filling in from the other location is the worst, dude, fuck Staten Island Steve for real—”

“—and we know Armand had been, um, upset with us, so we wanted to see if we could maybe apologize—”

“No apologies,” Daniel says. “Armand was being an asshole. You can call that when you see it.”

“Told you,” Benji whispers to Sybelle, who elbows him.

“Can we talk to him?” she presses. “I know they canceled the TVL show, but I still want to thank him for the tickets.”

Daniel’s heart is sinking. He hadn’t known Armand had gotten them tickets in the end, but he’s also not surprised. Canceled the show? That, on the other hand, is a surprise, though it really shouldn’t be. Lestat has been with them in the hospital room each night. No time for a pop-rock extravaganza in between all that. 

Canceling something like that last minute would mean a huge headache. At least a quarter million in lost revenue, more in expenses. It was the kind of thing Daniel would expect to be brought up at every opportunity, but Lestat hadn’t even mentioned it. Daniel would not forget that.

The kids are still blinking at him hopefully. Daniel’s heart sinks even further. “Sorry,” he says. “Armand’s been…sick. Really sick.”

“Oh,” Sybelle says. She chews her lip. Both kids look unsure with what to do with that. Finally she asks, “Is he getting better soon?”

“Yeah,” Daniel says. The kids nod. They have no reason not to believe him.

*

He brings a mint clipping back to the hospital with him, props it up in a glass of water. 

“Charming,” Lestat says, wrinkling his nose. “The smell of cheap dental supplies. Certainly this will ease the patient’s woes.”

“Aww, is someone cranky ‘cause he missed out on getting to gyrate for an arena full of teenagers?”

“Cranky cause he’s hungry, that’s what,” Louis says. 

“What the hell do you even know about dentists, anyway?” Daniel says, just getting started. “You’re lucky old Bluebeard got you while you still had your teeth.”

“And you’re lucky our sleeping friend got you, as you say, before today’s overzealous surgeons went after your prostate. Terrible how common tumors are among men of your age—“

“And we’re going,” Louis says. “He needs his nap and his feeding or it’ll just get worse. Call us if you need anything.”

Lestat scoffs at this, but doesn’t protest when Louis elbows him up from the chair. “Take a shower while you’re at it,” Daniel says. “I think a bird could die in that nest on your head and you wouldn’t even notice.” 

Lestat curves his lips, and Daniel sits forward, waiting for him to fire back. “We’ve felt his mind grow more active,” Lestat says instead. “It should not be much longer.”

Daniel sinks back into the chair. He nods.

Nurses come in and out. They never speak to Daniel unless spoken to, and they seem to forget his presence immediately after. Daniel doesn’t know what variety of the Mind Gift that is, but he’s grateful he doesn’t have to worry about this little excursion adding to the media attention.

Minutes float stickily by. Daniel holds Armand’s hand and scuffs his feet under the chair and counts the tiles in the ceiling. He’s on twenty-seven when a scraped-rough voice nearly makes him jump out of his skin. 

“Pity…you must’ve missed the concert.”

Brown eyes blink at him through cracked lids. Daniel’s pulse uncouples itself from his heart.

“Yeah, well,” he says, “something came up.” He has to count twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty before he can look back at Armand, his anger stirring, rising to volley back everything he’d been keeping in. But before he can get out the words, Armand is sinking back into sleep.

Daniel waits. And waits. Armand surfaces a few more times, foggy and absent, looking past him before slipping back under. Daniel, against his better intentions, dozes too, back slumped in his chair and palm gripped tight to Armand’s.

When he wakes, his empty hand is the first thing he notices. The second is Armand propped up on his pillows, arms folded stiffly over his chest. He looks alert. He looks wary.

Unconsciously, Daniel mirrors his posture. “Lazarus wakes.”

Armand’s looking at him like he wants to bolt. Maybe he would, if there weren’t still a web of lines and monitors hooked into him. “Lestat told you,” he says. Not a question. His lips are dry enough to crack at the corners.

“Yeah, he fucking told me.” Daniel hands him a cup of water from the tray by his bed. Armand accepts it, but only peers at its contents with lackluster interest, and that pisses Daniel off too. “Told me after we tore through the city not knowing how deep you’d stuck yourself in the grave. How could you just—” Daniel swallows suddenly around an apple-sized lump in his throat. “I thought you were doing—better. Accepting it.”

He’s aware of how stupid that sounds even before Armand levels him with a look. Five hundred years versus three and a half. He thinks of Armand in Dubai, the panicked insistence as he’d said you’re over this, Louis, the pain of this has left you, and wonders if vampirism inherently damages your intelligence, or if everyone is this stupid over the ones they love.

“I had to try,” Armand says. There’s no apology in it. No explanation.

“Oh, cut the shit. You did not have to. You wanted to. Care to tell me why?” 

Armand presses his lips into a thin smile. “I’m tired,” he says, and turns his face away, lets his eyelids fall closed. 

“Nope. You don’t get to do that,” Daniel says. “I’ve watched you sleep long enough you’ll never get away with faking it again.” When Armand doesn’t stir, Daniel’s anger flares anew, voice hardening to flint. “Fine. You want to be a dick, be a dick. But shit, for your own sake you should at least tell me now if everything between us was part of the act. ‘Cause I’m more than happy to get out of your hair and let you find your next victim.”

“An act? Is that really what you think?” Armand speaks without opening his lids.

“Why the hell should I think anything different?”

A dolorous brown eye splits open to glare at him. “Because I know you’re smarter than that.” 

Daniel holds his sideways gaze for a long moment. Finally Armand blows air through his lips and lets his head swing back towards Daniel, lifting one shoulder in an artless shrug. “Okay. Fine. You want an explanation, you’ll get one.” His jaw works back and forth like he’s chewing on the words before delivering them. “You told me once that I enjoy having an excuse to be damned.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“While it was an over-simplifying assertion that sacrificed nuance for punchiness—”

“Punchy headlines sell papers.”

“You’re not selling papers anymore,” Armand points out, which, fine, true. Spiritual nonfiction flying off the shelves because of celebrity culture doesn’t count. “In any case. Your statement did have a kernel of truth. I don’t enjoy it, as you imply, but it’s unquestionable that I am damned. Living flesh does not change that. Only hastens me to its reckoning.”

“What—you’re telling me all this is ‘cause you’re afraid of going to hell? Bullshit.” Daniel lets out an incredulous laugh, looks around for support from an invisible audience. Finding none, he braces his hands on his knees and leans forward. “And you thought cozying up to Lestat was your best ticket out of that?”

“Either it would work, or I would die. Either way, I’d be spared the agonies of waiting. What difference does it make?”

“A hell of a difference to me,” Daniel says. “You think it wouldn’t affect me if you died? Asshole, you know that I—” He runs his hand over his face. “Fuck, man.” He tries, bites his tongue and tries again, but there’s no way to reconfigure this to sound less sincere. For once, he has to just come out and say it. “You know I need you.”

“You’ll lose me, no matter what,” Armand says. “You’ll live on long enough that the time we spent together will seem nothing but a distant dream.”

“Shut up,” Daniel says, closing his ears to it the way he does whenever it crosses his own mind. “And it’s not just me, jackass. Those kids you’ve got, they need you too.”

Armand makes a dismissive sound. “They need someone better.”

“Probably. But for whatever reason, what they want is you. Alive-you. Not some dead fucked up corpse to put in their memoirs one day.”

“And you think that couldn’t happen anyway?” Armand says. “You should know better than anyone how precarious this is. The human body is so delicate. Cancers, viruses. Car wrecks. A stopped heart in the street. Even those few decades you claim make all the difference—they are not guaranteed. Your only guarantee is continuing on without me far longer than you ever had me.”

“Stop it with that. I don’t want to hear this right now. We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about y—“

“Oh, but aren’t we?” Armand sits forward. “Isn’t this all about what you want to hear? The reasons you won’t accept unless they make sense to you , you and your narrow, conventional, childlike, worldview—“

“Childlike, now that’s rich coming from—“

A nurse pushes open the door, badge slapping against her hip. They both fall silent. Armand biddably answers the questions about how he’s feeling, holds out a docile arm for her to check the IV line. Daniel makes it to forty-three on the ceiling tiles. When she leaves, he’s quiet a moment longer. 

“Fuck hell,” he says finally, “and fuck God. Say I’m narrow minded if you want, but after all the incomprehensible shit I’ve seen I’m finding it pretty hard to believe some guy’s going to know how to judge us at the end of it all.”

“Then don’t call it God.” Armand shrugs again. “Call it Allah, Waheguru, Brahma. Call it Osiris, if you wish, weighing my heart against a feather. A cosmic force. The scales of the universe. I do not know. I only know there is not a world in which all I have taken will go unpunished.” His breath quickens, rising to a high wheeze. “And despite what you may think of me, I am not—unafraid.”

“Do you think you're special?” Daniel pushes up from his chair. “Most of humanity’s scared shitless. Existence is fucked. Why do you think we’re all constantly trying to distract ourselves? Why do you think I spent the seventies fucked out of my mind? The way I see it, we can either avoid anything that makes us think about it, or let it ruin us, or just try to make the best of what we’ve got while we’ve got it.”

“Don’t say we.” Armand’s mouth forms a bitter shape. 

“Yeah, I'll say we.” Daniel raps his knuckles on the railing of the bed and paces to the opposite wall, then turns back. “Because you know what? Acting like you’re apart from humanity is just another lie vampires love swallowing. We can still bleed and die and fuck each other while fucking each other over. Call me Plato with his chickens, but that’s human to me.”

“False equivalencies,” Armand mutters. 

But Daniel, who had, in all honesty, been talking out of his ass, finds the words lodging like stones in his own chest. All his self-indulgent moaning about being cleaved from humanity, sequestered outside of it, unable to write or do anything but mope impotently around—it was all bullshit, wasn’t it. The only thing keeping him apart from humanity had been himself.

“You don’t have to believe me right away,” Daniel says. “Or ever, if you’re that goddamn stubborn. You just have to stick around long enough to find some way to convince yourself.”

Armand tilts his head away from him on the pillow and doesn’t respond. Maybe he’s had his fill of Daniel-platitudes. Maybe he actually is tired. Maybe both. His color’s still not quite right. Deep circles shadow his eyes. The machines he’s hooked up to make a low, grating symphony. He looks like he’s suffering, because he is, has been for a long time, whether or not Daniel’s wanted to see it.

“Hey,” Daniel says, quietly now, brushing the back of his hand against Armand’s cheek. “Guess I haven’t said it in so many words. But I’m really glad you’re not dead, alright?”

Armand doesn’t say, me too. Doesn’t say I love you, Daniel, I’m sorry for the heart attack. But he turns his head slightly into the touch, eyelids dipping as his mouth parts, so Daniel keeps stroking him gently, the dull roughness of his perfect face.

“Your blood,” Armand says, at length. His voice has gone faint again, softened with sleep.

“Sorry?”

“Lestat’s did not work. I could not keep it down. But you,” Armand’s breath sighs out of him, “yours has healed me before.”

Daniel’s hand stills. “You’d better not be suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

Armand’s lips turn down unhappily. “No. I would not ask you to do that. Not after this, I think… it may not be possible. And regardless of how I feel, I can see how it might destroy you to have that end delivered from your own hand.”

“Got that right.”

“But I would ask for a drink.”

Daniel thinks of the doctor’s words, that first night. Multi-system organ damage. He should’ve been reading the updates in his charts. Should’ve been talking with the nurses and physicians, doing anything but clutching uselessly at unmoving hands. Armand looks—not well, but not totally in the grave, either. Not as bad as the wasted bodies he’d spent the eighties visiting, but hell if Daniel knows what early stages of organ failure look like. “‘Course,” he says gruffly, and now he’s pissed at himself for not trying it earlier.

His wrist opens with a quick drag of his nails. Armand takes it between his lips, swallowing, coughing a little as it comes on too strong. Daniel tries to pull away, but Armand shakes his head and tightens his grip, relaxing into it, and Daniel lets him have his fill. 

*

They’re both tidied up and clean by the time Louis and Lestat come back in. The monitor betrays Armand’s increasing heart rate, but there’s no avoiding this. Daniel abdicates his chair. 

“I’ll let you catch up,” he says, and Louis, whose eyes don’t leave Armand’s, nods.

Outside, the night is humid and drizzling. Daniel’s hair feels woolly on the back of his neck, and he tucks himself under an awning, head tipped back against the bricks. After a moment, there’s the movement of air as another body joins him.

“You weren’t staying?” Daniel asks.

Lestat shrugs. “They have much to discuss, I think. But Armand and I, we have an understanding between us. It has always required fewer words than our dearly verbose Louis.”

“I’m guessing those few words don’t include apologies, do they.”

“Between who? I would have wanted him to do the same if I were in his position. I am not sorry, and neither is he.”

Daniel rolls his eyes, but really, he shouldn’t have expected anything else.

The rain picks up. People dart into storefronts and struggle to push open umbrellas.

“I can see he cares for you a great deal,” Lestat says conversationally. 

Daniel eyes him. “Is this where you give me the ‘if you hurt him, I’ll kill you’ type of speech? Because I don’t care what’s in your ‘understanding,’ I think we’re all past that by now.”

“Indeed,” Lestat agrees, “but no. I only want to say that it impressed me. I confess, before our meeting I did not believe it. I assumed he was merely using you for all the usual things. Security, safety, sex.”

“Gee,” Daniel says, “thanks, mister.”

“It is an exceedingly rare thing for Armand to care about anyone besides himself. Perhaps it does not make you fortunate to receive it, but I believe it does make you special.”

Rare thing. Daniel thinks about that. Thinks about Armand’s voice faltering as he’d spoken about Riccardo’s death. About Armand heaping food on Benji and Sybelle’s plates, watching carefully to make sure they got enough to eat, boxing up leftovers to send home with them. Armand asking too-casual questions about how Louis was doing. Armand getting Daniel’s mug out in the mornings, finishing their puzzles in the living room, shoving his wrist between Daniel’s fangs and Katie’s neck before the worst could happen.

“I don’t know if you understand him as well as you thought,” Daniel says.

Lestat’s reply is drowned out by the thunder. Daniel doesn’t want to hear it anyway.

*

The bed’s railing is warped in a pattern that agrees with the size and shape of a man’s hand. Red tear tracks paint Louis’ face. But there’s an ease in the space between Louis and Armand that hadn’t been there before, a reduction in the poison enough that it’s possible to breathe.

When the doctor comes back, they all hound her for details. She tells them it’s remarkable how well Armand had recovered, after that level of blood loss. The damage to his kidney and lungs was minimal. She’s advising them on medications he’ll have to avoid and other measures to prevent further kidney inflammation, telling them she’ll also write a script for a bronchodilator to keep on hand, when Daniel stops her. 

“Hang on. I thought you said the damage was minimal.”

“It is,” she replies, sounding tired, “relatively speaking. But some residual symptoms are to be expected. He’s lucky, in the scheme of things. Escaping without brain or heart damage is a miracle.”

Daniel meets Armand’s eyes. But I gave him the blood, he thinks. He hadn’t ever tested the limits on what the blood could heal. He wasn’t sure if anyone had.  

“It’s fine, Daniel,” Armand says. “You heard the doctor. Lucky.”

*

Armand’s getting discharged to bed rest at home. Before they check him out, Lestat decides it’s time to get back on tour, and Daniel sees him and Louis off at LaGuardia, where their private jet is waiting. “Vampire capitalists,” Daniel says, shaking his head. 

“I’m sorry, what was that? You wanted to return the ten million I wired you? Stunningly generous, Daniel.”

“Bastard,” Daniel says. When Louis holds out a hand to shake, Daniel pulls him into a tight hug.

He says goodbye to Lestat, who delivers his farewell in the form of an open-mouthed kiss that leaves Daniel feeling vaguely deflowered.

“Europeans,” Louis shrugs, and Lestat winks. 

They walk off together, Lestat’s hand curving into the pocket of Louis’ jeans, Louis bumping his shoulder into Lestat’s, and Daniel watches them until they’re out of sight. 

The city feels emptier without them. But Daniel has a feeling they won’t stay away forever.

At Mount Sinai, Armand signs his papers while Daniel arranges a cab. Armand makes slow progress down the hallways, but he’d refused offers for a wheelchair, so Daniel just sticks close by his side. “Put your arm on me,” he says. “Everyone’ll think you’re helping dear old gramps to shamble home.”

Daniel’s apartment feels foreign. Something about the smell of it is off, a faint mustiness, the air too heavy. But Armand sets himself up in his favorite armchair like nothing had happened, and the relief at seeing him there is so crushing it settles on Daniel like a weighted blanket. He wants to pull that feeling up to his chin, hide under it, forget about the rest of his misgivings. 

He mostly does. That is, until he’s pulling new sheets on the bed and opening the window to air out the room, and it occurs to him suddenly that he can’t remember if he’d left the windows open in their stupid garden. 

Once he opens the door, It’s immediately clear he’s reached the musty smell’s Ground Zero. The room is summer-humid and sweating. Most of the plants furred with thick white mold. The rest of them are brown with rot.

“Mother of fuck,” Daniel groans. 

He’s trying to think of some way he could surreptitiously replace all of them without Armand noticing when the slow padding of footsteps sounds from behind him.

Daniel’s afraid to see what Armand’s face looks like. “Yeah. Sorry. This one’s my bad,” he says, chancing a glance at Armand and finding him inscrutable. “We could try again…?”

“No,” Armand says after a long moment. “It was my folly from the beginning. Plants are not meant for the indoors.”

 “Well,” says Daniel, though he probably shouldn’t push it. “That’s not strictly true, is it? Potted plants do fine all the time. No one forced you to go all or nothing and ruin it.”

Armand narrows his eyes. “I do hope you’re not attempting to draw some parallel between my situation and that of this garden.”

“Me? Never. Why, do you feel represented by it? You wanna write some poetry? I know a publisher that’ll take anything as long as it’s bashing me, doesn’t even have to be good.”

“You’re insufferable,” Armand huffs, and then he slinks off to burrow into the bed Daniel had made up. 

Daniel half-heartedly scoops some of the dirt into a trash bag before giving up to join Armand under the covers. Fucking hell. He’ll be shoveling that dirt until he’s a hundred. 

Armand is already half-asleep, but he stirs enough to sling an arm around Daniel’s waist. His hair is unbraided, the rest of his routine foregone in his exhaustion. Daniel trails his fingers over the ends of his curls. Wishes he knew how to do it for him. Alice was always getting mad at him for the state of the girls after they’d visited, but the braids always seemed to involve more tears and pulling and screaming than they were worth. Then Lenora had learned to do them herself, and she’d taken over for her and Katie. Daniel had been proud. See, he’d taught them independence. Good for kids to do their own work.

He can recognize the cop-out now, but he can also recognize that it’s not totally wrong. It’s true that he’d been selfish and lazy. It’s also true that his girls might’ve learned a lot from that. Does it matter what the intentions are if the end result is positive? Probably. That’s a cop-out, too.

He nestles himself in the crease between the pillow and Armand’s neck, inhaling deeply. The smell of him is better than any anxiolytic. Daniel starts drifting off, thinking about the tension between opposing truths, the potential merits of child labor, how much work it’s going to take to finish emptying the guest room, and then he gets an idea.

*

“Why do you have all this, again?” Benji asks, shoveling another scoop of dirt into the garbage bag Sybelle’s holding open. “Are all vampires just crazy people?”

“It wasn’t my idea, kid,” Daniel grouses for about the fiftieth time, but they never seem to believe him. 

They work until the kids’ arms start to drag and the floor is mostly clean, and then Daniel grabs the bags back from them. “Alright, you’re done. Pizza’s in the kitchen. Shoo. Scram.”

He finishes the rest of it by himself. The stretch of muscles across his back feels good. 

When he hauls out the bags to line them up by the front door, he finds the kitchen empty. Frowning, Daniel glances at the living room, but the kids aren’t there either. Huh. Maybe they’d taken off. With Armand napping it’s not like they had any reason to wait around to hang out with Daniel, anyway.

As he heads back toward the guest room, a noise from his bedroom makes him pause in the cracked doorway to look.

Armand’s propped up against the headboard in the middle of the bed. Benji’s curled next to him on his left side, Sybelle on the right. An empty pizza box is kicked to their feet. All of their lips are painted with grease. They’re watching something on the little bedroom TV, and Daniel notices Armand’s eyelids slipping closed. 

He gets tired early, these days. 

Daniel passes quietly by the door. 

*

Recovery goes slowly. They finish every puzzle and crossword in the house by the first week. They’re bored with every television program by the second. They get on each other’s nerves more often than not, and Daniel feels himself forced into the role of jailer, nudging Armand back to bedrest. Both of them hate it.

By the fourth week Armand insists he’s well enough to go out for his jog. Daniel’s tired of arguing, so he throws up his hands and says fine. But he follows a little ways behind and watches Armand struggle down his old path, stopping after a fraction of the time he normally would and bracing himself against the wall of a nearby building. His wheeze is excruciating.

Daniel waits for him to turn around, but instead, Armand hurls his fist into the wall. The punch is infinite. On the other end of the swing, the audible cracking of bone. Armand swears, cradling his hand to his chest. Tears track down his cheeks. He’s never cried in front of Daniel, not once, after all this time. 

Daniel doesn’t say anything when Armand comes home with bloody knuckles. Just holds out his hand and licks them clean, then calls the number on an urgent care.

Armand’s knuckles heal in the next five weeks. His lungs, though, never fully recover. He goes back out every morning until he can finish the whole route, but even years later he’s never again as fast as he used to be. He’s started to keep his inhaler with him in his pocket now, and Daniel keeps an extra in his. 

New normals, Daniel thinks. 

*

Armand hadn’t mentioned the tossed out products from his bathroom counter, but it’s clear he’s noticed. Small cardboard boxes have been gradually delivering replacements. Daniel doesn’t want to ruin the fragile peace they have by bringing it up, but the bad taste in his mouth intensifies with each time he has to read Rapid Wrinkle Repair in front of the mirror while checking his teeth after a feeding. The tension lingers. 

One night when Daniel’s lying on his side, face to face with Armand, who’s running his fingers over Daniel’s cheeks, Daniel feels warm and liquid enough that the words he’s thinking just spill out. “Do you wish you could’ve turned me earlier?”

Armand’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” Daniel says. “Some alternate universe where you could’ve gotten me before I sailed past the ‘best by’ date.” He tugs on the loose, crepey skin below his neck in case Armand wants to keep being obtuse. 

Armand hisses through his teeth and surges forward to nip at the skin, following its path to kiss up along the jaw. “Never,” he says into Daniel’s ear. “You’ve grown into precisely what you were meant to be.”

The movement had brought him almost on top of Daniel, so Daniel takes it the rest of the way, rolling on to his back and bracing Armand’s hips to keep him on top, thighs bracketing Daniel’s waist.

“Then is it really so hard to think I could feel the same way about you?”

Armand doesn’t react. 

Daniel rubs his thumbs steadily into the softness padding Armand’s hip bones, just looking at him.

Finally Armand rolls his top lip into his mouth, weary, like he’d been expecting this for some time. “If I tell you it’s—different, for me, I don’t suppose you’d believe it.”

“Try me,” Daniel says. His hands slide around to cup Armand’s ass under his loose pajama shorts. 

Armand puts a hand on Daniel’s bare chest, squeezing into his breast, but it's more contemplative than sexual. His face is somewhere far away.

“I was already one of the oldest boys in the house when I was turned,” Armand says. “And still it was only the illness that forced my master’s hand.” He pauses. “Which, of course, is why I inflicted it on myself.”

He looks at Daniel, who only nods. It doesn’t surprise him.

“In our house, beauty was—everything. I can see you preparing some comment about our perceived shallowness, but I would advise you to save it or risk betraying your ignorance.” Armand’s mouth flattens briefly, jaw working in a tight circle. “You cannot understand the world we inhabited. Beauty was not just an aesthetic sense, but an aspect of the divine. Baked into the framework with which we made sense of the world, the morality that guided us in life as much as art. Beautiful work was celebrated; ugliness was a sin. And I was… very good.” His hands squeeze tighter into Daniel’s skin. “Beloved of God. Of my master. But with each year I knew my sins accumulated. I could see a time when it would stain me so much that He would never again take me to his bed. So I acted.”

“You do realize how crazy that sounds.”

“Did you want to listen, or not?”

“Sorry. Can’t help it.”

Armand sighs. His thighs clench around Daniel’s waist. “I’ve been a slave. A son. A muse. A broken doll pulled from dirt with ribbons tied in its hair. A beautiful bit of revenge on the arm of one even more beautiful than me. These are what my body has equipped me to play. If I no longer fit those roles, then I don’t know what to…”

“Then you can be whatever you want,” Daniel says. “Do you know how freeing it was once I’d finally aged out of that bright young reporter bullshit? No more trying to make it onto forty under forty lists or early career prizes, as if there were some big fucking expiration in middle age. Spoiler—there’s not.”

“Hardly the same situation.”

Daniel rolls his eyes. “I know. It’s called me trying to relate.” His fingertips drum into the cushion of Armand’s ass. “You can be whatever you want,” he says again. “It doesn’t matter what you look like. But so we don’t get it twisted, I want to go on record now and say you’re only getting hotter every year. There’s not a body part on you that wouldn’t make me come in my pants if I thought about it too long, now or when you’re eighty.”

Daniel loses himself for a moment in kneading into Armand’s skin. Then Armand says, a little unsteadily, “You jest.”

Daniel realizes that Armand, improbably, wants reassurance. Maybe had been wanting it this whole time, and all Daniel had given him was jokes about premature grays. Something constricts around the vessels of his heart.

“Never,” Daniel says. “Why, do you want me to list them all? Cause I can.”

Armand looks like he wants to say no. Looks like he wants to run, actually. But Daniel’s got him in this grip and starts talking before he can protest. 

“Well, I love your ass, for starters. But that’s an easy one. Where your ass meets your thighs, though—” Daniel rubs his hands down, feeling the slight dimpling and lumps striating the velvety skin. “That’s what really gets me. Sometime I’m going to fuck that crease and you’re going to let me.”

“That could be arranged,” Armand says.

Daniel moves his hands around to the front. “I love your cock. It’s about the prettiest damn one I’ve ever seen, you know that?” He runs his hand along it through Armand’s boxers, half-hard, long and thick. “And I’m coming back to it after we finish the grand tour.”

The corners of Armand’s mouth are twitching up.

Daniel moves his hands up to Armand’s stomach, the softly plump curve of it nudging into Daniel’s. “I love your belly,” he says. “You know how relieved I am every time I see it? I didn’t know what to do with myself when you weren’t eating. I had a thousand nightmares about Louis tearing me a new one for letting you starve to death.”

“I looked more like this before my illness,” Armand says, glancing down at himself. His mouth turns wry. “My master always liked his boys cherubic.”

“Fuck that,” Daniel says. “I’m sorry, but you don’t look like a cherub to me. You look like a grown man with a bit of a gut, and as another grown man with a bit of a gut, I hope you can agree that’s an upgrade.”

Armand shrugs his concession.

Daniel slides his hands up to his chest. “I love your tits, clearly,” he says, pausing for a moment to rub his thumbs into the nipples until Armand’s squirming on top of him. “To a frightening degree. Probably suck them more than I ever did with my ex wives.”

“What an honor.”

“I love your earlobe,” Daniel says, tugging at the side that’s shorter than its match. “I love your chin. I love your jaw, the way I can see it clenching when I piss you off.”

“Everyday, you mean?”

“Exactly. And I love it when I catch you before you shave the five o'clock shadow and it prickles my skin when we’re kissing.”

“I’ve thought about growing it out,” Armand says. “I’ve never seen it full. I don’t know if I would even recognize myself.”

“Shit,” Daniel says. “Go for it, then. Why not, right? Guessing Marius wasn’t too big on facial hair ruining the nubile fantasy.”

Armand’s body contracts slightly at the name, and Daniel bites his tongue. He’s never sure which buttons are risky to press, and half the time he’s got an inkling but presses them anyway. But Armand merely readjusts his grip on Daniel’s chest and says, “True enough,” and Daniel moves on.

“Your mouth. How it looks when it’s shiny with my spit. How it looks when it’s frowning or smiling, yup, there we go. And these lines around your eyes, the ones you’re always trying to erase with all those fancy creams. I know,” he says, when Armand starts to interject. “I’m not judging. Okay, maybe a little. But I can’t help it.” He thumbs over them, whisper-gentle. “God, you’re beautiful.” 

Armand’s face heats under Daniel’s hand. 

“The lines in your forehead when you raise your eyebrow at me after I say something stupid.” Armand demonstrates, and Daniel laughs, stroking over them.

“This head of hair. Sometimes I get hard just thinking about how desperate I am to see you go gray.” 

“That’s an awful lot of things you claim to love,” Armand says. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty easy when I love you.”

It’s the first time he’s said it. Armand sucks in a breath, the air wheezing slightly in the cage of his lungs. Daniel waits, but Armand doesn’t seem keen on speaking, just leans across Daniel to dig in the nightstand drawer. 

“You looking for your inhaler?” Daniel asks, concern slipping past his annoyance at not immediately getting the words returned to him.

“No,” Armand says. He comes back not with the medicine but a bottle of lube, and then he’s grabbing Daniel’s hand from his hip and slicking up his fingers. Armand gets his shorts down around his knees, the gorgeous line of his cock bobbing free, damp and hard, and Daniel’s hand draws to it as if magnetized before Armand snatches his hand away and guides Daniel’s index finger into his hole. 

“Knew I forgot one,” Daniel says, sliding in and out, relishing the tight heat relaxing around his finger. “I love this goddamned hole.”

“I should hope so,” Armand says, adding another of Daniel’s fingers. Daniel lets Armand take the lead, but once he’s inside him, he curls his fingers in, brushing the prostate and making Armand moan until Armand gasps and removes them both. He yanks Daniel’s boxers down and rubs a wet palmful of lube over his shaft. 

Daniel’s hard. Been hard, for a while, since the beginning of his little ‘these are a few of my favorite things’ song and dance. Armand’s hands are a little playful over his skin, exploratory, rubbing into his balls and nudging the head before he maneuvers himself up to sink down onto it.

Daniel gasps. Armand rises on his thighs and sinks down again, wet and warm against Daniel’s cock. He finds a rhythm, rocking to hit the spot he likes. “You love me,” he says, each time he hits it. “You love me.”

“Yeah, don’t let it get to your head,” Daniel says. “Are you ever going to say it back, or do I have to regret everything I’ve—”

Armand captures Daniel’s face between both hands. Three little words, said a million times a day, all over the world, uttered with deadly seriousness or tossed around without meaning, starting fights and sparking madness and giving everyone a reason to keep waking up in the morning. When Armand whispers them against Daniel’s mouth, Daniel’s come spilling inside him, the beat of their hearts close enough for blood to remember blood, they’re just another pair of bodies running on the same stuff that’s been shared by everyone who’s ever lived.

How do I know I’m still human? Daniel thinks, and the answer is as easy as anything. Because I love him.

*

In his journalism classes, a professor had once told him that happiness writes with white ink on white paper. They’d been quoting someone else, he thinks, and they’d meant that happy stories weren’t the ones worth writing. Go for the grit, go for the pain, that’s what matters.

But Daniel’s not sure he fully believes that, now. For once, he’s happy. It still feels like a story worth telling.

He’s writing again. Not any drawn out investigations; he’s had enough of that for a while. Probably he’ll slip back into them at some point, if he’s really going to be dicking around here for another few centuries. But for now, he finds himself driven by the same impulse that got him into this life in the first place. Interviews. All these stories out here, shit locked away in people that you’d never dream of. Daniel’s burningly curious to know all of it.

He starts with his neighbors. It happens naturally when the woman from downstairs comes by one evening and asks if they’ve got any more of that mint they’d given her. “Sorry,” Daniel says. “Farm’s closed.”

She looks disappointed, but it probably has more to do with the lack of Armand in the doorway than the lack of herbal goods. It strikes Daniel then that though he’s heard her vociferous Armand-related fantasies, he’s never even caught her name. He invites her in.

By the time Armand comes back from Smoothie King, Daniel had learned her name is Rachel, matched the slight accent on her vowels with her teenage immigration from Northern Ireland, and was just approaching brother number three in a long and sordid tale of how she’d married and divorced four brothers in the same family. “I’m their siren,” she sighs. “They can’t stay away from me.”

“Could argue the reverse is true.”

“Ach. Can’t fight the inevitable, I suppose. Not that I wouldn’t mind giving it a go,” she adds with a meaningful look at Armand, who’s come to perch on the sofa beside Daniel, and Daniel decides it’s time to wrap up that interview.

“Making friends?” Armand asks, after she leaves.

“Nah. Exploiting stories, you know me.”

Armand nods, looking pleased, tired. Daniel pulls him off the sofa arm and into his lap. He works his hands into the knots in Armand’s shoulders, feels him groan under the touch.

Armand hasn’t said anything about it, but Daniel can tell his shifts are wearing on him more than they used to. Sybelle and Benji had either quit or been fired before Armand had gone back—they were cagey about the details, but it seemed to boil down to Staten Island Steve being a real asshole. Couple that with the loss of his manager position—the corporate overlords had found some legal excuse to revoke it in the wake of his medical leave—and whatever fulfillment Armand used to derive from the franchise seems to be souring rapidly. His resignation comes without surprise. 

Meanwhile, Daniel conducts more interviews. He digs out his old tape equipment and uses those; paradoxically, people are more open with it than a phone or laptop. They dig the retro. Maybe it’s because they think it won’t get immediately uploaded to social media—and they’re right. Daniel’s not trying to be another Humans of New York. He’s not sure what he actually wants to do with all of it, but that doesn’t feel as important at the moment as getting it all down on paper.

Armand tries out different things. He rents a plot in a community garden, but complains that his neighbors fail to properly care for their plants, their coarse and vile weeds contaminating Armand’s noble work. Daniel’s not sure it really works like that, but Armand stops complaining about it after a little while, so Daniel figures he’d gotten over it. 

One day when Armand’s not feeling well enough to go, he sends Daniel to water it in his stead. Daniel immediately discovers why Armand’s stopped complaining about the neighbors: he no longer has any. There’s an empty ring around Armand’s garden two plots deep in every direction. When Daniel asks him about it later, Armand shrugs. “Poison can be effective in ensuring privacy,” he says. It’s unclear whether he used it on the plants or their caretakers. Daniel doesn’t ask.

Armand gives the autopsy tech training a shot, after all. It seems to be going well until he gets home early one day and shares, quite placidly, that he’d been dismissed for conduct violations. He’s nonforthcoming on details, but with enough pressing something coalesces around the subject of ‘experimentation.’ When Armand puts his glasses on that evening—he’s been ditching the contacts more and more, at least at home—Daniel calls him Doc Frankenstein until Armand gets his mouth too occupied to call him much of anything.

There’s a few more false starts, a few stretches of sofa-dwelling unemployment. Then Benji mentions over dinner that his school needs a director for its spring musical, and Armand’s eyes brighten with a gleam that Daniel knows too well. “I know what you’re thinking,” Daniel snorts at him, “but there’s no way you’re passing the background check.”

“I’ll consider that a challenge,” Armand replies.

It’s a challenge Armand wins. Two centuries of repertoire theater experience are soon inflicted on the undeserving citizens of a public school arts department. Now Armand’s coming home every evening complaining about the immaturity of his cast members, the limited scope of their vision. Daniel braces himself for the worst. Wonders who he’s going to have to pay off to get the child abuse allegations dropped when Armand inevitably yells at a snot-nosed teen until they kill themself and cite his name in the note.

Daniel pulls Benji aside after dinner one Friday and speaks lowly while Armand’s in the bathroom. “How bad is it, kid. Tell it to me straight.”

“How bad is what?” Benji, with all of his trademark charm, is playing an extremely loud game on his phone while talking to Daniel. It’s a wonder he even processed the words.

“You know what I mean. Just tell me how long you think before he gets fired.”

“What, you mean Big A?” Benji laughs, actually looking up from the screen at that. “You kidding? We’d riot. Best director we’ve ever had.” 

If that’s true, Daniel thinks it probably speaks more to the failings of the previous hires than any superlative qualities on Armand’s part. But hey, he’s only heard about the Théâtre second hand—and Louis, for obvious but biased reasons, hadn’t been the most complimentary—so Daniel tries to keep an open mind. 

They make it to the end of the rehearsals without any suicides or administrative incidents. On the night of the first performance, Daniel, curious as hell, breaks what are probably a few child endangerment rules himself by ducking backstage before the first curtain.

A storm of costumed teenagers whirl around in varying degrees of distress. At the eye of it stands Armand, towering over them all, frazzled strands escaping his ponytail as he barks orders. “Macavity, fix your ears at once. Rum Tum Tugger, is that the way a Jellicle cat would conduct himself?” 

A girl with a lopsided headpiece sullenly straightens it, while Benji reluctantly climbs down from a huge wooden set piece. Armand doesn’t spare them another glance, just turns to a tall, broad shouldered girl sobbing under her gray wig. “Grizabella, don’t you dare ruin your grease paint. What is this? Why are you crying?”

Grizabella hiccups. “I can’t do it, Big A, I can’t—”

“You will do it,” Armand hisses, “because you made a commitment. To your cast, and to everyone out there who purchased a ticket. Do not embarrass yourself before them.”

“It’s terrifying,” she sobs. 

Armand bends to look her squarely in the eye. “Do you think Grizabella wasn’t terrified? Alone in the world, making the terrible decision that her only option was to leave it behind. Trying desperately to reach the Heaviside layer, a realm opaque to her, wholly unknown. Do you think she was unafraid? No. But how brave she was to meet it anyway.” He points a finger at Grizabella’s sternum. “I wouldn’t have cast you in this role if I didn’t think you had at least a fraction of that strength—but if you are truly so weak, then so be it. But be warned. I don’t take kindly to being proven a fool.”

With that, Armand spins on his heels, looking for the next crisis, and his eyes land on Daniel in the doorway.

“Out,” he says. “This is too important for distractions. Skimbleshanks! Put down the broomstick, that is not how we respect our props.”

Daniel gives him a salute and creeps back to his seat, wondering if he should make an anonymous donation to cover the kids’ therapy bills.

The curtain rises. Daniel holds his breath. The first cats slink onto the stage, ears straight and costumes in one piece, and by the time the curtain drops for intermission Daniel’s nearly blinking back tears. The show is resplendent. 

The songs are more than a little out of tune. The dances chase after the rhythm just a half step behind. But the passion animating the cast transforms them into something stunning, luminous, a true work of art. When Grizabella sings “Memory,” her voice soaring and afraid and resolute all at once, she brings the house down.

At curtain call, the kids take their bows. Daniel spots Armand in the wings, the corners of his lips tugged up in the faintest of smiles. Then two of the kids break off from the line and run to the side of the stage, grabbing Armand by the wrists. Armand, taken off guard, can’t fight back, and they drag him out to the center, giving him just enough space to make one wry bow for the audience before the entire cast crushes him in the middle of a group hug. 

Daniel can’t see Armand’s smile, but he can feel its warmth from all the way in his seat.

*

Lestat’s tour stop finally gets rescheduled. Daniel, seeing his chance to score some cool points, arranges for them to get four front row tickets with Louis. 

The reaction over dinner isn’t what he’d expected.

Sybelle, who had started at Julliard by that point, wrinkles her nose. “Um, cool…” she says, “but I think I’ll pass.”

Armand sets down his fork. “I’ve told you I don’t blame Lestat for what happened.”

“Nah, it’s not that,” Benji says, talking around a huge mouthful of tofu. “It’s just, no offense, but the Vampire Lestat is kind of cringe now.” 

Armand sits up a little. “None taken,” he says. “In fact, I’d quite like to hear more about that, if you don’t mind.”

So it’s just the two of them at the surprisingly sparse barricade, the rest of the arena dotted with empty seats. When Lestat comes onstage, he’s nothing but himself—pure cringe or pure charisma, depending on how you look at it. They make it through five songs before Armand’s fatigue wears on him and they decide they’re not missing much by ducking out the back.

When they meet up for drinks the next day, Louis confides that the tour is hemorrhaging cash. “I think we’re burning money at this point,” he groans. “We had to sell the jet. Do you know what a pain it is to fly commercial?”

“I’ll pray for you,” Daniel drawls, and then Lestat comes back from terrorizing another sommelier, and Daniel and Armand give their best performances to date as they try to convince Lestat that they really had liked the show, they really had stayed the whole time, honest, didn’t he see them?

*

Sybelle loves Julliard immediately. It doesn’t change much, at first; she still comes to dinner on Fridays, shares stories about the techniques she’s learning and the pieces she’s getting to play. But slowly, her attendance becomes more sporadic. Her friends have performances. Late nights rehearsing. Benji’s still there, most of the time, but he’s a little distracted. He’d met a boy playing Fortnite and they’ve been texting nonstop. Sometimes Armand has to ask him twice if he’s finished eating before he gets an answer.

One night, Daniel gets back from an interview in the Bronx and finds Armand alone at the table. Black bean patties rest neatly on a platter in front of him, nestled beside juicy red tomato slices and fresh green lettuce. Three empty plates sit untouched. 

Daniel pulls out one of the chairs cautiously. “Everything alright?”

“Oh, quite,” Armand says. He’d started busily folding and refolding his napkin once he’d noticed Daniel’s arrival, and he nods at the plates with a thin-lipped smile. “I think they might be running a little late.”

“Sure,” Daniel agrees. They’re silent for a moment. The napkin is getting torn to shreds. Finally Daniel says, “Look, I gotta tell you about this guy I met. Insane story. So he’s this tiny little theology professor at Fordham, right? But it turns out he spent his thirties as a bear wrangler in Wyoming, tranquilizing or shooting the ones that got too close to the humans, until one day he killed one dead and swears on his life that it had the eyes of Jesus Christ.” And he tells Armand the rest of it, hamming it up as much as possible, until the false smile cracks into something smaller and warmer. While he’s talking, Daniel slides one of the burgers onto Armand’s plate, and he eats it without protest. By the time he gets to the last part, it’s clear the kids aren’t coming. 

“Hey,” Daniel says. “Don’t worry about it. They’re just growing up, right? They might be busy now, but they’ll come back to you. You haven’t ruined anything.”

Armand’s shoulders are tense as he gets up to scrape the leftovers in the garbage. Probably wondering why Daniel’s giving parenting advice, of all people. Daniel’s kind of wondering the same thing. 

Well. Daniel might’ve ruined his relationship with his daughters, but it galls him to see that he hasn’t ruined their lives. They’re both doing fine without him. Better than fine. It hurts, but there’s pride in it, too.

*

They have a good life, Armand and Daniel. 

It’s not perfect. There’s plenty of things both of them avoid thinking about, conversations they shut down whenever the other tries to raise them. Daniel knows they’re burying their heads in the sand a bit, but he thinks they deserve to, when there’s nothing either of them can do to change it.

He wants to be happy. He thinks Armand does, too.

A decade slides by like this, then another. The kids graduate and move away, but they never stay gone for too long.  When Sybelle’s tours take her back through New York, Armand and Daniel sit front row, clapping until the very end. When Benji’s travels blow him back into the city, Armand makes up the guest room. They never use it. They stay up talking in the living room until they can’t keep their eyes open, slumping against each other in sofas and armchairs. 

The world changes and stays the same, as it always has.

Some of Daniel’s stories get published. Some don’t, until years later, when the right magazine or call for submissions shows up. Some of his subjects meet an untimely and violent demise, and their obituaries appear stunningly and bafflingly detailed with contributions from an anonymous source. 

Armand’s hair salt and peppers, then goes gray completely.  He wears his glasses all the time now, and behind them his eyes have deep lines in memory of smiles. Smiles Daniel had brought to life. That this world had brought to life, just by sticking around it. He’s got a paunch to equal Daniel’s, and when they hold hands in public, no one bats an eye. It never mattered before, but it still makes Daniel happy, the more they start to match.

*

Daniel’s pouring coffee when a loud thud echoes out from the shower. He waits for Armand to curse out the bottle of shampoo or something, but there’s only silence and the unbroken rush of water. 

Daniel’s running in an instant.

He finds Armand blinking at him from the base of the tub, a bruise already spreading darkly across his back. “Sorry,” he says faintly. “Just got dizzy, for a second.” 

But Daniel’s heart is falling down, down, down. He already knows. 

The doctors say it’s early stage glioblastoma. No one says prognosis uncertain this time.

When they get home, Armand sits quietly in his chair by the window while Daniel rages. “Those doctors were assholes. They gave up on you too quickly, the fuck is that about? There’s got to be more we can do. I’m making us an appointment for a second opinion.”

“They outlined the treatment options quite clearly,” Armand says mildly. “It’s not their fault you didn’t like any of them.”

“Because none of them end up with you surviving more than eighteen months. You’re damn right I don’t like them.”

“Daniel,” Armand says.

“No. No, you’re not accepting this. Stop it. After everything we’ve already been through, there’s no way this could be—” 

But of course it could. Past suffering is no inoculum against future. Daniel knows this, has known it, and chooses to disregard it anyway.

He starts making Armand drink as much of his blood as he can hold. Armand obliges, and Daniel accompanies him to the follow up appointment ready to be told Armand’s a medical miracle.

There is no miracle. The cancer hasn’t changed.

Daniel trawls Webmd, Pubmed, Nature Medicine. Teaches himself as much as he can about cancer and immunotherapy in the span of a week. CAR-T is still struggling with solid tumors. There’s a STING agonist out of a lab in Tennessee that’s showing promise, but it’ll take years to move out of pre-clinical models. They don’t have years.

The doctor had said that Armand might experience confusion. As the disease progresses, symptoms of dementia are quite common, he’d said. And Armand, stoic through all of it, had gripped Daniel’s hand tight enough to crack the skin of his knuckles.

One night Daniel had knocked over a glass of water on the bedside table with a sleep-errant limb. Swearing softly, he’d groped for the light, and in the half-twilight of sleep Armand had sat up and murmured “Marius?” And Daniel’s heart had broken. “I'm sorry,”  Armand had said immediately, realizing his mistake. “I was dreaming. Don’t look at me like that, I’m not crazy, I’m not—”

Daniel can’t bear it if Armand gets stuck in the past. Nearly six hundred years of accumulated trauma, now. He can’t imagine it. Armand has tried so hard to be brave, but Daniel knows this is the part that terrifies him more than anything.

They see every doctor in New York. Most of the ones in Boston, Philly.

Nothing changes.

*

They’re holding each other in bed, and Armand says what they’re both thinking. The last option they’ve both been dancing around. “You could try it,” he says. 

“Are you still afraid of dying?”

“No. I'll meet it, if I have to. But I don’t want to leave you behind.”

And Daniel cries. He cries, and cries, blood tears slipping between their skin, and Armand holds him, takes him against his neck like he had in that dark San Francisco apartment, all those years ago. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay. I’ll hold you.”

Daniel fits himself in Armand’s neck. The fine, mottled skin, thin as paper against his lips, trembling at his touch. And he bites.

Armand makes a soft sigh, fingers twitching in Daniel’s hair. Daniel drinks him down. His gorgeous, gorgeous blood. Tastes the memories of their life together, then all the years before. Every horrible thing Armand had ever done, every evil, every small moment of beauty or terrible kindness; he tastes it, and loves it. Wills that love to suffuse through him, manifest itself in his blood. Then he opens his own throat and gives it back to Armand to drink.

Armand does, weakly at first, then more strongly. He drinks, and drinks, and then falls back from him, a limp shape on the bed.

Daniel feels wasted. Armand’s chest is rising and falling, eyelids fluttering. Please, Daniel thinks. 

And when Armand opens his eyes, they’re a glowing, firelit amber.

Notes:

and they lived happily ever after because i'm clearly a sentimental sap <3
Thank you for making it to the end with me! I’m really grateful for everyone who read and commented along the way!! Huge special shoutout to my lovely friend gi pinkmoons armandology who was nicer about this than I deserved and whose enthusiasm was a big part of why I didn't abandon this <3
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