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1507, Venice, Italy
Amadeo does not know much; later on, he will not remember much. He only knows the stinging sheen of sweat dripping into his eyes, the feeling of his throat on fire, his lips cracking. Sometimes, he isn’t sure he’s present at all.
His body hurts. It burns.
He’s vaguely aware of his master holding him in his arms, washing every speck of dirt off his nude body, tucking every hair in place.
“There. Perfect,” he tells Amadeo, from some great beyond.
Then pain, sharp and excruciating in his neck; then the swoon, the bliss. And then death.
1557, France
The catarrh follows Armand like a shadow, now under the name of coqueluche. It feels fitting. Amadeo is no longer Amadeo; why should anything else go by its older name.
Disease sweeps across the city, emptying the streets, leaving behind only the weak and the desperate. Lungs rasping, they stumble about wraith-like, scavenging for food; Armand and his coven follow them like shadows in the night. Their blood tastes sour, on the verge of rancid, and the coven often retch well into daybreak, deep in the catacombs, their bodies purging the disease.
Days pass; nights pass.
“Are you an angel?” a shivering woman asks, eyes shining with fever, lips cracked with dryness.
“Yes,” replies one of Armand’s coven. “Yes, he is. Be not afraid.”
The woman reaches out with both trembling hands, falling to her knees on the muddy cobblestones.
“Take me,” she begs. “Take me with you.”
And Armand does.
1666, London, England
Death stretches its wing over London, and two words precede its flight: the Plague; the Plague; the Plague.
A city of half a million is decimated, then more so. Plague pits are dug daily, bodies piled high. Entire streets and neighbourhoods close off, people herded into buildings that are then boarded shut: plague houses. Miasma hangs thick in the air. Men with bird-like masks, their beaks stuffed with fragrance, roam the desolate streets, tending to the sick; Armand lingers, watching the bulbous black glass of their eyes, the curve of the beaks.
Armand and a handful of his coven, here to conquer London’s vampiric leadership, starve slowly. Plague tastes bilious, the blood rotten and dead within its host; the humans take a little longer to follow it to their graves.
By the time they return to Paris, successful in their mission, they have lost two members, and a quarter of London has perished.
1830, Paris, France
Cholera, they call it. It leaves a sharp, unbearably bitter tinge in human blood, even when they’re at the very start of the disease.
It harvests at least 100,000 humans in France alone, and leaves many others unsuitable for feeding for weeks.
Lean times for the coven again.
1872, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire
A touring performance makes for a good disguise for a troupe of vampires on inter-coven business. It does not, however, give them an easy way to leave the country once pestilence spreads. Not that there is anywhere to go in Europe that will be different — smallpox, the new plague, is engulfing the continent.
It renders human skin deformed and unappetising. It tastes even worse than it looks.
Vienna’s boisterous nightlife falters and sputters; entire streets empty and die off, windows shuttered, humans either too ill or too afraid to venture out. Occasionally, a nook or a street attempts to party the plague away, dancing into the night on the edge of extinction, but the disease snuffs them out quickly. When it happens, another mutinous street takes its place. Remarkably resilient.
Eventually, Armand loses his patience; he cannot leave Paris unattended any longer, and so he leads his coven out of the city and then the country. He kills and drains one of the guards attempting to stop them leaving the quarantined area; the man was infected; Armand retches for three hours out of the window of a moving train.
1951, Cotswolds, England
Polio. Entire villages freeze still, devoid of life as people shelter their offspring behind closed doors.
Louis takes pictures of haunting, empty streets and closed-down pubs; he does love miser, Louis. Armand considers mentioning that at night most streets in small towns are empty anyway, but decides not to. Louis gets a few shots at dusk, where the effect is more appropriately felt. His pictures don’t sell.
Armand tags along, but less and less so, instead preferring to linger and smoke, take in the quiet. Give Louis his solitude; watch him always come back. One night, he lingers by the village hospital; it’s filled with children. He peers through the windows, watches the so-called iron lung at work; he’s captivated, the tubular, complex machine gleaming, and he wonders how it works. He comes back to the hospital several nights in a row, listens to the doctors and nurses console distraught parents, watches sheets drawn over small figures, and he learns how the iron lung works. Cycles in internal pressure prompting the half-natural expansions and contractions of the chest cavity. Fascinating.
A little girl spots him one night as he perches on the upstairs window sill. She tries to wave, to not much success. Later, when she sleeps, Armand sneaks in and pours a few drops of blood in her mouth. The next day, the child’s recovery is proclaimed a miracle, and the whole village gathers in the local church to give thanks.
Does that make Armand their god?
He waits for Louis to awaken come nightfall; he wonders if Louis will scream at him once he realises what he’s done. If he’ll be angry. If he’ll be crushed. If he’ll look at Armand for more than five minutes.
Louis doesn’t notice.
They move on to the next village.
(Elsewhere in the world, an ocean away, as thousands of children struggle to draw breath, a newborn soon to be named Daniel takes his first.)
1968, Hong Kong
Influenza again. It spreads and swallows the world. In Hong Kong, people panic in their tightly packed skyscrapers. The streets die out. Hospitals overflow. Millions die worldwide, and yet fewer by percentage than Armand can remember dying in the past.
Curious.
1972, USA
The flu is in the USA as well. Life carries on here, the epidemic now in its tail end, burning itself out.
Louis carries on with his boys, luring and draining them for sport.
Armand relieves a few sick souls of their suffering.
1973, San Francisco, California, USA
Fascinating.
1974, Oregon, USA
“Are you sure this is wise?” Armand asks, leaning against the door frame and surveying the modern sickroom.
Four beds, spaciously separated, and with curtains drawn around them; three humans sleeping, one of whom will not see the next day; one awake, sluggishly relating her story… and Daniel. With his head of dark curls and scrambling thoughts, his leather jacket, bag dumped by his dust-caked boots, a notepad in hand. A tape recorder whirring away.
“I mean, I’m probably gonna get kicked out soon, so I should get this moving,” Daniel tells Armand, glancing at him over his shoulder. “Hi. Thanks for the camera, by the way.”
“You are quite welcome. And I meant the diseases. This is a hospital, after all.”
Daniel shrugs.
“I’m good.”
The woman frowns.
“Sorry… who are you?” she asks hazily.
“You didn’t see me,” Armand tells her softly, and she nods, eyes going blank, then turns back to Daniel.
“Aw, fuck’s sake, you’ve just messed up my interview, man!” Daniel groans, snapping his notepad shut; he’s so wonderfully irreverent; Armand’s blood flows warmer and faster than it has in decades. Centuries.
It sparkles with joy, too. He imagines it feels the way champagne’s taste was described to him.
“How, pray tell, have I done that?”
“You’ve tampered with my witness. Messed with her perception. Memories are fucking fragile, pal!”
Armand sighs demonstratively; he can’t recall having a better time in at least a decade. He snaps his fingers, and the woman looks at him again.
“Sorry… who are you?” she asks in the exact same tone of voice.
“A friend of Mr Molloy’s,” Armand supplies, then raises his eyebrows at Daniel. “Please continue.”
“Yeah, I do my best work solo…”
Armand grins, quick and sharp. “That’s not what you thought when you saw me at Polynesian Mary’s.”
Daniel blushes, and it smells so sweet that Armand’s mouth waters.
He stays patiently while Daniel finishes his interview. Well, mostly. He does summon a nurse to stumble upon Daniel’s unauthorised presence and throw him out after about seven minutes, but by then Daniel claims he has most of what he needs; he’s buzzing with energy as he packs his notepad and tape recorder away in the car park outside the hospital.
“Fucking insurance companies screwing people over, I have something here.”
Armand hums politely; human affairs hold little interest to him. Only Daniel. Daniel, incessantly fascinated by his fellow humans’ lives, always chasing a story. And Armand, chasing Daniel.
The smell of disease and disinfectant clings to Armand’s hair; he doesn’t care for it. He surveys Daniel, imagines all the germs and miasma crawling all over him.
“Perhaps you should bathe,” he suggests. “And wash your clothes.”
“What?”
“The hospital. It’s full of diseases.”
“Nah, I told you, I’m fine. Besides, you gotta be crazy if you think I’m washing this leather jacket.”
A beat of silence; someone passes them by, walking hurriedly in the late autumn drizzle.
“Hey, uh…” Daniel hooks his thumbs under the strap of his bag; he fidgets, but tries not to. “I hear a really cool hollow trunk of a giant redwood washed up on the beach. It’s like an hour-long drive, but it sounds creepy as shit — you know, your kind of thing. Wanna come check it out?”
Armand tips his head to the side; Daniel has met Armand fourteen times so far (Armand keeps careful score), and yet he has formed some ideas of what Armand might enjoy. Not only that, he has heard of something that made him think of Armand, and he suggests partaking of it. An invitation. Armand blinks; he hears the subtle rush of Daniel’s blood to his face, the sudden uptick in his heartbeat, sees him attempt nonchalance as he takes one hand off the strap and puts it in his jacket pocket.
Daniel is… Daniel is asking him to—
“Yes,” Armand’s mouth says, smiling, before he’s even made his decision (or, more accurately, before he’s realised and admitted that he made it). “Yes, I would like to.”
Daniel smiles, a little crooked and suddenly so sure of himself.
“Cool,” he says. “C’mon. We can hitchhike, and if someone turns out to be a serial killer, you can just eat them.”
The tree is indeed as creepy as advertised, and the grey skies and lingering mist only add to the impression; a small gaggle of onlookers is there, but Armand sends them away with a thought, and he and his boy have the find all to themselves.
Armand enjoys the outing more than he has enjoyed anything in a while.
1975, Pompeii, Italy
Daniel likes to snuggle. Armand had a feeling he might — for all his attempts at a nonchalant, callous exterior, he’s fragile; Armand has peeled back the layers more than once, seen him weep.
Just now, during their first time making love, Daniel wept too. Afterwards, he clung to Armand most sweetly, pressing so close they might as well share a body despite the vast expanse of the bed, and he mumbled dazed nonsense about how good that was, how amazing he felt, holy shit, holy shit, what just happened, oh my god, oh my god…
Armand held him quite happily, pressing kisses into his hair, whispering sweet nothings of his own, showering him with praise. He’s quite overcome himself. His heart has never felt so full, not that he can remember; not so full of an emotion that feels like the reddest, most velvety blood.
A while later Daniel settles down, and so does Armand. They remain curled close together, bodies entwined, basking in the new familiarity that comes with it; Daniel is smiling, sweet and still flushed, and they take their time exploring each other’s bodies now that the urgency of desire has been sated. Armand enjoys Daniel’s warmth, the softness of his pale skin, the smell of it, of the life that suffuses him; Daniel’s hands roam lazily over Armand’s body in return, though they keep coming back to his hair, twisting its strands around his fingers.
It’s bliss.
Armand is just trailing lazy kisses up Daniel’s left arm (such lovely arms, so pleasingly strong, with solid muscle, the brachial artery so well accessible) when he comes across two round scars, one under another, over the bicep. He touches them curiously, presses the pad of his index finger into one, then his middle finger into the other.
When he looks up from his inspections, Daniel is smiling softly at him; his wonderful, luminous green eyes are misty, his dark curls mussed; there should be a medallion on a thin chain pooling over his chest, Armand thinks distantly. Better yet, a locket.
Armand presses the pad of his index finger into the larger scar again.
“What happened here?” he asks; they look like burns, but not quite.
“Hmm?” Daniel glances at his arm. “Oh. They’re my vaccine scars. Smallpox and, uh, TB, I think. I forget which is which.”
“TB,” Armand repeats; it rings a bell. “Tuberculosis?”
“Yeah.”
Daniel is smiling, playing with Armand’s hair; he looks ever so beautiful like this, besotted and happy, but Armand’s curiosity is piqued.
“What is a vaccine?” he asks; it’s the first time he’s said this word, and he copies it in Daniel’s American accent before rolling it around in his mouth a few more times, until it sits comfortably in his own voice. “Vaccine, vaccine… Vac-seen…”
Daniel laughs, delighted and disbelieving.
“You don’t know what vaccines are?”
“Vax-een… No,” Armand says, then gives it a moment of thought. “I have heard the word, I think. But I don’t know what it means.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not.”
“Come on, how can you not know? You’re, like, insanely brilliant.”
“Flattery is a cheap trick,” Armand tells him with an indulgent smile.
Daniel frowns briefly. “I wasn’t—”
“I don’t follow along with every new thing humanity chooses to occupy itself with as it squanders the opportunities to grow given to them.”
“Wooow, okay, there’s my condescending little monster,” Daniel says, patting Armand’s thigh, and Armand shows his teeth, charmed by the brazen disrespect. “Okay, get ready to get your socks blown off.”
“I am fully nude at the moment, as I’m sure you’re aware,” Armand teases. “I am not wearing socks.”
“Cute. Anyway, vaccines are awesome, man. It’s medicine, only it doesn’t cure you, it keeps you from getting sick in the first place. I have the smallpox vaccine, so I can never get smallpox, ever.”
Curiosity floods Armand’s entire body, live like water and electricity; he shifts even closer into Daniel.
“How do they do that?” he asks.
“So they take, like, a low dose of the virus, put it in a syringe — that’s like a small glass or plastic tube with a needle—”
“I know what a syringe is.” Armand waves him along. “Keep going.”
“Yeah, so they put that in a syringe and inject you, and it trains your immune system to fight off this safe, small sample of the virus, and a few weeks later you’re fully immune. Pretty awesome, people don’t die en masse from smallpox any more, how’s that for squandering our time on this Earth, eh?”
“But how do they do it?” Armand insists. “The viruses are invisible to the human eye, how do they put them in the syringe?”
“In, like, a lab, in a special liquid.”
“But how do they put them in the liquid? What is the liquid made of? How do they choose the correct dose? Do the doses vary? Do—”
“Hey, hey, whoa, okay, slow down! Look, I’m not a doctor, I don’t know more than the basics, so just pick up a book or something, okay? Go to a library.”
A good idea; Armand rewards Daniel with a kiss.
“My clever boy,” he hums against those shapely, full lips, then throws off the covers. “Come on.”
Daniel sputters. “Wait, what, now?”
“Yes.” Armand throws Daniel’s t-shirt at him, then starts picking up his own clothes. “I must know more about this. We’re going.”
He throws Daniel’s jeans at him as well.
“We’re in Italy! I don’t know where any libraries are, I don’t even speak Italian!”
“Yes, but I do.” Armand pulls on his trousers, then tips his head to the side, surveys Daniel’s confused sprawl; an incentive, perhaps. “There will be a reward in it for you.”
Daniel laughs, shaking his head, then starts putting on his shirt.
“Keep it. Okay, let’s go, you crazy weirdo.”
Later, after they’ve returned laden with books, and after Armand has read through all the relevant parts, they make love again as night stretches over the city. Daniel was uncharacteristically shy about it at first, wanting it so very terribly but unsure how to ask, and Armand toyed with him a little before giving him exactly what he wanted, watching the pink rush of blood into his cheeks, into his lips, watching the misty eyes haze with pleasure as he rolled his hips slowly, pushing into Daniel at a slow, measured pace.
Afterwards, he gathers his boy in his arms; he’s loose-limbed and smiling the smile of the well-fucked. Armand arranges him the way he wants him and presses two slow, gentle kisses to the vaccine scars. He thinks of plagues and outbreaks and devastation, of entire towns and villages wiped off the map, and he thanks the round, punched-in marks for keeping his boy safe.
1978, Salamanca, Spain
“Hey, babe, check this out!”
Armand stares with growing horror.
“Daniel, what have you done?”
“I pierced my ear! Cool, yeah? I did it myself.”
Armand drops the bag of turróns he has brought home for Daniel. He can indeed see the small, shiny silver hoop in Daniel’s left ear, probably crawling with grime and germs; a tiny bead of blood has crusted around the hole, the smell of blood still fresh on Daniel’s ear, on Daniel’s fingers, curling through the air.
Armand is on him in a second, cupping that precious face in his hands, gently rotating his head.
“Hey, what—”
“What have you done!” Armand frets. “What if it gets infected? Blood poisoning can take a life within hours, we have to treat this immediately!”
Daniel laughs, of all things.
“Relax, it’s fine. Not the first time I’ve stuck myself with a needle, yeah?” he adds, as if his occasional forays into heroin were any better; Armand’s anxiety only increases.
He drags Daniel to the bathroom, removes the earring, then thoroughly washes out the puncture wound with soap. He puts Daniel in bed and sternly tells him not to move; Daniel still seems not to grasp the gravity of the situation, so Armand handcuffs him by one wrist to the bed frame, to which Daniel alternates wildly between cursing him out and bursting into peals of laughter. A symptom of delirium? Armand makes a note to look into it.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells Daniel sternly, then leaves.
It takes him just under two hours to get the necessities: an array of antibiotics stolen from the nearest hospital (he picks up a bag of blood while there — a curious invention), a thermometer, several bottles of disinfectants and hydrogen peroxide (perhaps Daniel could be induced to bathe in them) and a selection of books from the university’s medical library.
“Hi, honey, have you calmed down a little?” Daniel greets him, smoking with his free hand; Armand plucks the cigarette from his lips, takes a drag himself, then stubs it out.
“They’re bad for you,” he says.
“So’s dehydration — you didn’t leave me any water, thanks very much.” Daniel demonstratively rattles the handcuffs.
Hmm. An oversight. Armand leaves the bag by the bed and goes to the kitchen, where he fills a large glass with water and fetches it to Daniel.
“Okay, thanks, but you could also just uncuff me?”
“Take your medicine and we’ll see.”
“What medicine?”
Armand picks up the bag and upends it over the bed; he picks out the antibiotics and deposits the eight boxes in Daniel’s lap.
“What the fuck…”
“These are all different — which ones seem best suited to your predicament?”
“Predica— oh my god, man, you can’t be for real!”
Armand frowns. “Daniel, please. This is serious.”
“I mean… it’s really not.”
“Blood poisoning is, in fact, extremely serious, beloved. Now please, tell me, which of these should you take?”
Daniel sighs and half-heartedly looks over the boxes; his Spanish, recently bolstered by his determination to write an article about the impact of Spain’s post-Franco power struggles on its citizens, should be sufficient.
“Uh, these are all pretty strong, I don’t need any of these.”
“Yes, you do.”
“It’s not healthy to take antibiotics for no reason!”
Looks like Armand will have to crush the pills into his food.
“Very well,” he says, pushing the antibiotics aside and picking up the disinfectants. “Let’s properly treat your wound—”
“It’s not a wound!”
“It is, technically speaking, a puncture wound, and those have a much higher bacteria retention rate than open cuts or slices. I just read about it. Now, let’s clean it properly, and your earring should be submerged in disinfectant for at least twelve hours. Oh, and also.” Armand picks up the thermometer and takes it out of its protective packaging. “Open up.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Very. Keeping track of body temperature is a key step in monitoring for sepsis.”
“Okay, you know what, fine. If this’ll make you happy—”
“You’re my happiness,” Armand tells him with a frown. “I need you in good health.”
Daniel stares at him for a moment. “Oh my god. Oh my god, how can you simultaneously be a complete psycho and so incredibly sweet? Gimme that thing.”
He takes the thermometer from Armand, gives it a shake and sticks it in his mouth. Armand ponders this for a moment.
“I’ve been told that taking the temperature rectally can yield more—”
Daniel pulls the thermometer out.
“Do you have a medical kink you never told me about? Cause I can roll with that.”
“No. I merely wish you to not get septicemia.”
Daniel sighs. “Yeah, just my luck. The kink would have been easier.”
Armand puts the thermometer back in his mouth. “No talking.”
He picks up the book on septicemia and begins to read where he left off.
(Daniel lives. He explains what a tetanus booster is. Armand reverently kisses his vaccine scars again.)
1981, San Francisco, California, USA
“Where the hell have you been!” Daniel lunges at Armand like he’s about to shove him, but instead he grabs the fabric of his jacket and hauls him close, eyes panicked and wild. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours—!”
“I came as fast as I could,” Armand tries to reason, curling his hands around Daniel’s wrists; his beloved is drenched in sheer terror, body trembling and coated in cold sweat, heart hammering, eyes wide; his thoughts are a blur. And not a drop or speck of drugs in his system. “Daniel, please, you need to—”
“What if I have it?!” Daniel asks, voice cracking, unable to carry the burden of his fears. “What if I have it, it’s fucking everywhere, Armand, it’s just… it keeps coming and coming, more people, more guys are getting sick, and no one fucking knows what to do!”
“Daniel…”
“And it’s guys like me!” Daniel drops Armand’s jacket, spreads his arms open, takes a step back; his entire body is trembling, high-strung, a jagged smile on his lips.
“What?” Armand asks quietly.
“You know!” Daniel says, voice still broken; he barks a sharp, nervous laugh. “Young. Dumb. Recreational queers and junkies who blow strangers in club bathrooms for a line of coke!”
Armand feels something cold and heavy swoop inside him.
“Stop it, Daniel,” he says quietly, but he can see the shadow of what Daniel is about to say looming large already.
Daniel laughs again, but it turns into a moan halfway through.
“You know what, serves me right! Fucking— sticking myself with dicks and needles, I’m—” he laughs brokenly again. “I’m young, dumb and full of cum! Whoring myself out for a fix, of course I’m gonna get it, fucking junkie whore—”
“Stop!!!” Armand screams; he has never screamed at Daniel like this; it’s his voice that breaks now, black swimming in front of his eyes and blurring his vision for a moment. He lunges at Daniel, grabs him in turn. “Do not ever say that again!” he yells, hoarse. “Do not ever say such things, do not ever talk about yourself like this!”
Daniel gapes, stunned into silence; his eyes are clear at last, the racing panic in his brain cut with a knife. Armand takes a breath; for a split second, he feels a thousand hands grasping at his body, tearing at his clothes, ripping costume jewellery off his neck. It’s gone as quickly as it came, and there’s only Daniel. Daniel, his beloved, who is in such distress.
Armand exhales, cups Daniel’s face in his hands.
“You do not have it,” he tells him at last.
“What? How… how do you know?”
“I can smell it,” Armand explains. “I can smell it on the people who have it, and you… you don’t. Your blood smells the way it always does.” He gently strokes Daniel’s tear-stained cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Fresh. Healthy. Sweet.”
Daniel stares at him for a moment longer, then collapses, burying his face in Armand’s chest. He trembles all over, begins to sob as panic and adrenaline leave his body in sharp, tugging waves.
“Are you sure?” he mumbles weakly.
“Yes. Yes, beloved, I am sure.”
“Okay. Okay.” Daniel breathes, sobs some more; Armand holds him through it.
Just two days later, Daniel is recovered from his distress, and he’s a fierce creature to behold as he dives, determined, into this new plague that sweeps over those whom society would like to forget, to see perish. He follows people, visits the dying, writes down their stories. In his own way, he makes them live on forever.
As ever, Armand is awed by his perseverance.
But it doesn’t take long for Daniel’s thoughts to turn where they often regrettably do. He asks Armand to turn him again. A ‘gift’, he calls it, foolishly — it’s a curse, a disease worse than the one hollowing out Daniel’s own community, and Armand will never, ever condemn him to it.
“It’s not a curse!” Daniel is screaming at him. “Fuck off with that, you sanctimonious bastard! Do you have any idea what these people would give for that right now?!” he yells, shaking a battered tape filled with names and stories and waning time.
“You know this, Daniel. I will give you anything you want, grant your every wish, but I will never give you this. I will not infect you.”
“Hey! Fuck you! Don’t you dare, don’t you dare use that word!”
Armand gives him a cold look. “It’s purely a matter of perspective.”
“The hell it is! Jesus, I can’t believe you. You— you could make me fucking immune! To everything! I could be with you, properly, forever! Jesus Christ, do you even realise how much I love you?!”
“I think so.”
Daniel huffs, arms falling limply by his sides.
“Well, great. Then I guess you just don’t love me as much as I love you.”
Armand is by him in a second.
“I love you more than anything in this world,” he says fiercely. “Which is precisely why I will spare you this terrible fate.”
“Terrible fate?! I live with you, man! Remember? I know exactly what your life looks like! You’re… you’re amazing! You’re completely fantastic, you’re the most insane, wonderful, incredible person I ever met!”
Armand blinks. He has heard those adjectives, many times, every single one. It’s just that none of them have ever been used to describe… him. Apart from ‘insane’. But the way Daniel said it is… quite different from the way others did.
Unfortunately, Daniel takes this pause as a sign to keep going.
“I know what I’m getting into, I see your life, and I want to be a part of it!”
“You are,” Armand says numbly; it’s that numbness that allows truth to slip out, he thinks. “You’re the centre of it.”
“Then fucking prove it, man!”
Wrong thing to say. In fairness to Daniel, there was never a right thing to begin with, here, but this one is particularly removed from anything that could entice Armand to comply.
“I will not play this game,” he says coldly. “Asking me to yield in order to prove my love, like a juvenile asking for sex. I love you most in this world, and the greatest proof of it I can offer is refusing to turn you. What would you be, Daniel? Hmm? A miserable creature of the dark, compelled to kill nightly, all your addictions increased a hundredfold. An un-life of hunger and insanity. No. No, I will not condemn you to this: that is proof of my love. If you don’t find that sufficient, then I have clearly failed you and have nothing left to say.”
Daniel is shaking his head, a grimace twisting his face as tears start streaking down his cheeks.
“Fuck you,” he says weakly, then turns on his heel and runs, slamming the door.
Armand counts the seconds; fourteen of them later, the door to their building slams shut as well. Daniel is gone.
He’ll be back, Armand thinks. It’s not the first time he’s run off, and he always comes back. Sometimes, Armand wishes he wouldn’t — for Daniel’s own sake. It would be better for him, to be free of Armand, free of his addiction to Armand: his affections, his blood, his company. And to be free of his own affections towards Armand.
(Armand is a weakling and a liar: he wishes Daniel would run off for good, but for his own sake. So he can be spared doing what he knows he’ll one day have to do: cutting Daniel off. Setting him free. Making him forget.)
Daniel comes back three months later.
The disease rages on, burning human lives out with cruel slowness, denying them touch and blood and love, and leaving them as shells, hollowed out and crushed by a paper cut or the common cold.
They call it AIDS.
1985, Paris, France
It’s fitting, Armand thinks. A city of all ends, for him. The end of his innocence. The end of his faith. The end of his leadership. The end of his fantasy and idea of Louis.
And now the end of him and Daniel. But not the end of Daniel. In fact, the preservation and continuation of Daniel’s precious existence is precisely the point. Armand can shoulder the pain of his immediate absence, as long as he exists, bright and wonderful, out there in the world.
Daniel’s body is at its limits; he craves Armand, claims to love him, but he yearns for his blood. An addiction, perhaps less immediately harmful than cocaine or any other drug, but no more sustainable in the long run. It will kill Daniel eventually.
And Daniel deserves his life. Most of all, he deserves to live. He deserves to stay vibrant and boisterous and filled to the brim with life; Armand cannot risk snuffing him out.
He knows what Daniel will ask him, and he is ready, he thinks.
He is not ready. He could not have been ready. Not for the ring Daniel shows him, smile crooked with awkwardness, misty-green eyes so luminous and hopeful, already glowing with pre-emptive happiness.
He is not ready for that word either.
“Please…” Daniel finishes his plea, his request. His proposal. “Please make me your companion.”
Armand’s heart yearns, every drop of blood in his body sings, says yes, yes, yes, glowing and reaching out to Daniel, desperate to share. Armand closes his eyes. Allows himself one second; he stretches it out like molasses, makes it drag on (he is a weakling and a coward, after all), warms himself in the glow of Daniel’s words.
Then he opens his eyes and tells Daniel ‘no’.
1986, Melbourne, Australia
Armand sleeps for six months. Louis frowns, strokes his cheek, asks if he’s all right. Armand tells him he needs rest. Louis does not bother him awake.
2013, Dubai, UAE
A groundbreaking study firmly reasserts the genetic factor in addiction. It’s all over the news.
Armand hides from Louis, lies in a hotel bed and slowly smokes six cigarettes in a row while looking at the ceiling and trying not to think of anything at all.
2018, Dubai, UAE
The discreet eyes he’s put on Daniel deliver the news in a perfunctory, dry email. Parkinson’s disease. Armand lingers, staring at the screen unseeingly. For a minute? An hour? A day?
Once he’s up, he becomes a hurricane, spends a year tracking down anyone and everyone working on Parkinson’s and drowns them in money, floods them with threats and incentives alike. He feels frantic and desperate, an entire self-sustaining combustion raging inside him, unable to burn itself out. He aches for action, for agency. For control. He has none.
2020, Dubai, UAE
Covid-19. A pandemic. It spreads like the new black death, devouring thousands, then millions. Doctors weep, tossing coins over their patients’ beds to decide which one they will help. Armand could not care less. He rages at the recipients of his funds, but none of them have the progress he needs — medicine is simply too slow.
Armand knows the exact statistics for Parkinson’s patients upon contracting a respiratory disease. Inside his own lair, he becomes an animal with a limb caught in a trap. Desperate, he begins to gnaw it off.
He begins to plant an idea of a second interview in Louis’s head.
2022, Dubai, UAE
Daniel. Daniel. Daniel.
2024, off the coast of Florida
“You!” Daniel cries out.
It’s so angry and yearning and loving that something breaks deep inside of Armand, something that has been lodged obstructively at the very core of him for over half a millennium, and suddenly there’s unyielding clarity. Distantly, he thinks of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and how, upon being perceived, an object will collapse into a single, defined state: that is him.
Daniel grabs him, desperate and angry. He does not slam him into a wall. He does not hit him. He does not beat him in any way.
They yell; they talk; they yell some more. They’re talking yet again when the sun crests over the horizon, and Daniel fights desperately against its pull, grabbing at Armand, at his clothes, but Armand slips out of his grasp to adjust the dimmable windows into almost full blackout. He will not risk his beloved Daniel.
Daniel whimpers on the floor, a fledgling helpless against the sun dragging him under, but still he fights and reaches out like Armand is water in the desert.
“No,” he mumbles.
But he is not the only one who has collapsed, after all. Armand feels… quite more defined than ever. And for the first time, by himself.
So he’s back by Daniel’s side within moments, lying down on the floor with him, allowing Daniel to grip him in an embrace, hands curling into fists in the fabric of Armand’s clothes; within seconds, he’s passed out, body loose and at ease. Armand pushes his nose into the diamond-like storm of Daniel’s curls and breathes him in.
Daniel. His Daniel at last. He has come for him. He has come for him. He did not cast Armand off like everyone else.
(Back in the Renaissance, and earlier still, love meant being known. Perhaps Heisenberg spoke the same language as the godliest of humans. But do spinning photons yearn so desperately to be known?)
The day passes, and Armand remains, but as dusk approaches, he sits up, slips out of Daniel’s grasp once more. It will not do to repeat half a millennium of old patterns now. He must be sure. He must be sure. And after so long, he suddenly, bloodily and tearfully, thinks he’s allowed that much. He gets up and leaves the room. He does not leave the villa, not quite; he is not strong enough for that, but he does go elsewhere, to another room. He sits and listens to Daniel’s heartbeat as he slowly wakes.
Steady. And then a jolt, a burst of panic quickening it, rage and anguish flooding their bond.
“No!” he hears Daniel from the other room. “Fuck, fuck, hell fucking no!”
The pain dips into furious determination, hard and compressed like a diamond, and a second later Daniel bursts out of the bedroom only to find Armand sitting on the plush sofa; Daniel sags against the door frame.
“Oh, you fucker,” he moans on a reedy breath.
“I’m sorry,” Armand’s mouth says honestly. “I… had to. Make sure.”
“Okay,” Daniel breathes, collecting himself, coming shakily over to sit next to Armand on the sofa. “Okay. Tell me why. Tell me… tell me about it. Please.”
And Armand does.
They talk again. There’s less yelling than the night before. Daniel explains things to Armand as well. They go out to feed, together, their bond thrumming with it. And when they come back, they talk yet more.
The night after that, they make love. After thirty-nine years, it feels like coming home. It’s frantic, but not angry; instead, it’s a scrambling outpouring of need and a desperate sating of yearning. Two very old people feeling loved at last. After, once they’ve briefly rested and gone again, slower this time, Armand is laying kisses over Daniel’s body at long last again. His soft, pale skin, the marks life has imprinted upon it, the smell of him, so soothing and familiar, filling Armand’s lungs once more. He never wants to be without it again. He smiles, nosing along Daniel’s left arm, and presses two kisses to his familiar vaccine scars.
Daniel smiles, crooked and dreamy and sweet.
“I remember you doing that,” he says, stroking his hand through Armand’s hair.
2026, a brick row house, New York City, USA
Daniel is laid out on his back in their bed, grinning fondly as Armand takes his time. Kiss after kiss: each scar, each mark, each easy survival that would have been impossible in the vast majority of Armand’s time. He likes to do it at least once a month — give them his gratitude for keeping his beloved Daniel safe.
Daniel hums when Armand finishes off with the TB and smallpox scars, as always.
“You know, you keep missing a really big one,” he says, one arm folded under his head, his free hand reaching up to tuck Armand’s hair behind his ear.
Armand tips his head to the side.
“Do I?”
“Yeah. A really important one, saved my life, like, literally.”
“All of them literally saved your life, Daniel.”
“Okay, sure, from your medieval perspective—”
“I never lived in medieval times.”
“—but I’m talking the real deal, babe! Brink of death, literally snatched me back!”
“That’s your appendectomy scar,” Armand says, tapping the slightly raised silver line. “I kissed that.”
“Even more important than that. I keep waiting and waiting, but you miss it every time. It’s kinda embarrassing for you.”
“Hmm.” Armand narrows his eyes; he cannot resist a challenge, not when cataloguing is involved. “Very well. You’re not leaving this bed until I find it.”
“Oh, hey, twist my arm.”
Armand gets to work.
“Lukewarm,” Daniel says when Armand slowly runs his hands over his belly, looking for anything he might have missed.
“Did I ask for hints?” he says archly. Hmm. No visible marks here. “...you may continue.”
Daniel laughs. “Okay, warmer,” he says when Armand moves higher and to the left.
There are scars in the crook of Daniel’s elbow, where his veins sing close; the scars are puckered, slightly butchered little pinpricks, more of them on the left arm than on the right, and most of them faded. Armand knows these are not the ones, but he kisses them reverently nonetheless. It’s not the drug he kisses, but Daniel’s perseverance in the face of it.
“Okay, move along, pal,” Daniel rushes him, patting his back. “Don’t get side-tracked.”
“Very well. Roll over, please.”
“Oh, now he says ‘please’. Half an hour ago it was ‘on your hands and knees’ and not so much as a ‘by your leave’,” Daniel mocks and teases, but does as he’s told, making entirely too much of a production out of it; Armand adores him completely.
He slowly drags a hand down the broad expanse of Daniel’s back, relishing the touch. He finds a scar from where a bullet grazed his beloved while he was reporting from the Bosnian war zone, but he has kissed that already as well. Nothing else seems noticeable there. Hmm.
“Colder, by the way,” Daniel chooses that moment to say, and Armand pinches his arse for it.
“Roll over again.”
“Uh, kinda warmer? Bit tricky, honestly.”
“Intriguing.” Armand moves his hands higher, up Daniel’s sides, over his pectorals, presses his thumbs into the dips of his shoulder joins.
“Okay, warmer.”
Armand delves his hands into Daniel’s snowy curls (so beautiful, an entire symphony composed to honour his life), cards it this way and that, looking for any scars from incidents he may have unfathomably missed (not possible). Daniel laughs.
“Overdid it, now cold again.”
With a huff, Armand withdraws his hands and sits back on his haunches, straddling Daniel’s lap.
“I’m beginning to think you’re doing this on purpose.”
“I’m not, I swear.”
“Then I give up. I have no idea what you could possibly mean.”
“You’re shitting me!”
“No. I do not ‘shit you’ any more,” Armand says with a frown, because he’s been rather good in that department, since their reunion.
“Uh-huh. What about last week, when you blew the fuses with your blenders, again, and tried to pretend you didn’t know what happened?”
Armand purses his lips. “I no longer shit you about emotionally important matters,” he amends. “And they were toasters, not blenders. Now will you please tell me?”
Daniel tilts his head to the side; he looks like a vision against the dark-green pillowcases, and Armand might be caught up in it for a minute, because Daniel arches his neck a little more and taps his fingers against a rough, familiar scar.
Armand frowns.
“Your bite scar?”
“Our bite scar, babe. And yeah. You turned me. You saved me.”
“I think now you’re the one who’s shitting me.”
“What? Why?”
“You said it saved your life. Technically, me turning you did the exact opposite — I killed you, so this phrasing renders the challenge null and void.”
Daniel laughs. “Oh, my god, this is just like that Settlers of Cataan incident…!”
“Clarity of rules is important, Daniel, and the rule book clearly stated that—”
“Okay, forget the Settlers thing. Babe, c’mere. Listen.”
Armand narrows his eyes but warily obliges.
“I’m sitting on top of you, I’m already here. And I’m listening.”
“Good.”
Daniel sits up as well, wrapping one arm behind Armand’s back, gathering him close; he cups Armand’s cheek in his free hand, strokes his thumb back and forth in a soothing motion. It settles something inside Armand; it feels nice. Daniel’s eyes, violet and lovely, crinkle fondly when Armand meets them with his own.
“This scar? It’s my favourite.”
Armand scoffs. “You are free to have your sentimental favourites, beloved, but—”
“Okay, is that listening?” Daniel jostles him briefly in his lap; Armand purses his lips and narrows his eyes, but allows him to continue. “Yeah. I love this scar, because you saved me, babe. For real. My vaccine and surgery scars, they saved me from diseases or bacteria or infections, and yeah, they’re marvels of science and all that, some more fallible, some less. But this?” he taps the scar on his neck again. “You? You saved me from Parkinson’s. You saved me from an incurable autoimmune disease, you saved me from old age, and you saved me from fucking time itself.”
Daniel’s eyes are so bright, a watercolour purple now, darkened around the edges, as they stare into Armand like a man experiencing rapture. To Daniel’s 21 st century sensibilities, he perhaps is. It makes Armand’s breath catch in his throat.
“I could not lose you,” he tells Daniel, stroking his cheek. “When it came right down to it, I could not… I could not.”
Daniel nods. “Yeah. I know.”
“I love you,” Armand whispers fiercely. “I love you more than anything.”
“Yeah. And I sure as shit hope you finally know I love you too. You. Not your blood or your gifts. Just you.”
Armand nods too, a little shamed. “Yes. Yes, I know that.”
“Good.” Daniel kisses him. “My personal immune booster.” He kisses him again, then grins, and Armand knows he’s about to say something absolutely heinous. “The Vaccine Armand.”
Heinous, as advertised. It’s also preposterous, and horribly undignified, but something about it makes Armand laugh nonetheless. Perhaps it’s simply the fact that it’s… Daniel. Daniel, who is still grinning, bright and beautiful and happy, as he tumbles Armand down onto the mattress, and yes, all the indignities in the world are worth that look in his eyes.
A little while later any indignity is forgotten anyway, as Daniel rocks into him at a steady, measured pace, the push and drag of him so perfect inside Armand that he allows himself to just drift on the currents of pleasure tugging through his body.
“Fuck, you’re so beautiful like this, sweetheart,” Daniel moans quietly, reverently.
“Mmm.” Armand cracks one eye open. “On your cock?” he teases, smiling.
Daniel shakes his head, bracing himself, hands planted on either side of Armand’s head; his eyes are violet like an amethyst again, and full of open adoration.
“Nah. Enjoying yourself.”
Armand blinks, then pulls him into a kiss, hopes it manages to say all sorts of things that his voice cannot carry right now. He nicks his tongue on Daniel’s fangs (they still come out whenever they fuck, the wires in his brain so endearingly intertwined), hopes the blood shows Daniel what he means.
“Okay,” Daniel says, seeming to read him loud and clear. “Okay.”
Armand hums again, then smiles, kicking a heel into Daniel’s arse, making him yelp and laugh.
“Get on with it,” he says, because Daniel has paused for this sweet moment of sincerity.
“On it, boss.” He snaps his hips, making Armand moan.
Afterwards, when they’re enjoying the afterglow and slipping into an indulgent midnight nap, Armand traces the scar on Daniel’s neck. Saving Daniel from time itself; he likes the sound of that. Likes the story Daniel is writing for them. Likes the way it settles something inside him, something that still skittered and agonised over turning Daniel.
Beside him, Daniel hums, tilts his head to give Armand better access; his hand glides up and down Armand’s side, so loving and easy.
Armand presses a kiss to the scar.