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Armand bursts into the living room. His usually unflappable persona flapping like a sail in a squall. Daniel’s churning emotions had pinged on his radar and reverberated down their bond, and naturally, he had come running.
“Beloved! What on earth is wrong?”
The usually orderly living room looks like Tokyo after a visit from Godzilla. Hundreds of Armand’s old video and audio tapes, which he had carefully stacked like a miniature city for Daniel to peruse, are scattered all over the floor. As for Armand’s beloved, well, he is hunched on the sofa, shoulders heaving, blood tears streaking unchecked down his cheeks. He has Mittens in a stranglehold against his chest, the kitten’s silver fur stained pink, and Daniel is raining kisses on his tiny, adorable head.
“MITTENS!” Armand cries, crossing the room in a heartbeat and dropping to his knees in front of Daniel. “He got out again didn’t he? Tell me he hasn’t been struck by a car! Daniel, tell me our son is going to be all right!”
Daniel ceases his incessant kissing of the kitten to gaze reassuringly into Armand’s terrified, tangerine eyes. He doesn’t speak though. His throat is too choked up with tears. But there is the ghost of a smile on his trembling lips, and that—along with the mutinous look in the captive kitten’s orange orbs—is enough to tell Armand that Mittens still has all nine lives left, and that Daniel better hide his favorite footwear when the feral feline finally breaks loose. So Armand lets out a shuddering breath he technically did not even need to be holding.
“Then what is it, my darling?” Armand says, cradling Daniel’s face in his hands, and stroking his thumbs across his one and only’s tear stained cheeks. “Please talk to me, beloved. What is troubling you?”
Daniel gives Armand another wobbly smile. He tries to speak but another sob snatches his words away.
“Daniel, you are scaring me.” Armand says, running his hands soothingly up and down his lover’s back. “Please, my darling, whatever it is you can tell me.”
“The…the…hoo…hoo…hooded…c…c…c…claw,” Daniel chokes out the words, then lifts a shaky hand and points at the television, before dissolving into another flood of tears.
Armand follows the direction of Daniel’s digit.
There is a cartoon on the television.
It is paused.
Armand recognises it at once.
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
The cartoon had been a favorite of the devil and his minion, and the moment Betamax video recorders hit the shelves in 1975, Armand bought one and recorded every episode.
“I don’t understand,” Armand says, turning his attention back to Daniel, fearful his freshly made fledgling’s freaking out will turn into something fatal. “It’s just a cartoon. We used to watch it all the time, don’t you remember? I know Penelope’s tied to the railway tracks right now, and her chances of escape seem slim. But I assure you if you hit the play button on the recorder she will be rescued. She always is. The Hooded Claw’s plans are always thwarted.”
Daniel nods, then releases the miffed Mittens and pulls Armand up, and into his lap. “It was you. It was always you.” He finally chokes out. “Whenever…I…”
Armand’s eyes are the colour of hot caramel fudge, and they would look almost human if it was not for the mist of pink tears welling perilously close to overflowing.
“Valentine’s Day, 1986. Polynesian Mary’s,” Daniel’s says, his voice little more than a whisper. “The Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood starts playing on the jukebox and I fucking crumbled. I didn’t know why it hurt so much, you know?”
Armand nods. “I know, beloved, I know,” he says, and twines his long, elegant fingers through Daniel’s silver curls.
“That’s why I ran out into the street,” Daniel continues. “To get away from it—the pain I mean. I never meant to run in front of that car. I didn’t even see it coming. I couldn’t see anything I was crying so fucking much. Alice said she didn’t remember hitting the brakes; said it was a miracle she didn’t run over me; said I must have a guardian angel or something.”
Armand works his jaw in the way he does when he is trying to hold everything together and not dissolve like cotton candy in the rain.
Daniel cups Armand’s face in his hands. “You know, when Alice looked at me with those big brown eyes that night…I thought…somewhere in the back of my mind…and her black curls…so much like…”
The dam finally bursts and tears spill down Armand’s cheeks, Daniel kisses each one of them away. Then Armand buries his face in the crook of Daniel’s neck, and wraps his arms around him so tightly that if Daniel had still needed to breathe he would not have been able to.
“Then another time,” Daniel continues, “I was at a bar with Alice. That song started playing. Before I knew what was happening I was blubbing like a baby. Then some asshole called me a faggot. I knew him from Polynesian Mary’s. I was scared shitless of what Alice would think of me. So, I punched the asshole in the face. You know, like a real man. Broke his fuckin’ nose too. His buddies were waiting for us outside. One of them grabbed Alice, the others started laying into me. I thought they were gonna kick the living shit out of me, and I don’t even want to think about what they might have done to Alice. But somehow they didn’t. Alice said it must have been my guardian angel watching over me again.”
Daniel runs his hands up and down Armand’s back as the ancient vampire silently sobs.
“Then one time I got into a fight with Alice. We were always fighting. So I went back to old Mary’s. I put that song on the jukebox and I picked up some guy that kinda looked like...” Daniel’s voice cracks. “The guy was bad news.” He drops his gaze and shakes his head at the memory. “Anyway…someone pulled him off of me and tossed him out of my old AMC Gremlin. I don’t remember the drive home. I just remember Alice’s face when I stumbled through the front door. I was pretty fucked up. But she was just grateful I was in one piece. But I wasn’t in one piece was I?” He says, fresh tears brimming in his eyes. “How could I be when there was a huge piece of me missing.”
Armand’s voice hitches. “Oh, my darling, darling boy.”
“Then, one night as I was driving home from work, I played that song in the car. That line about the Hooded Claw hit me like a sledgehammer and had me crying so hard I couldn’t see a fucking thing. But I could remember all the times my “guardian angel” had come to save me. That’s why I drove the Gremlin straight into that tree.”
Armand is wrapped around Daniel like a boa constrictor now, like he wants to crawl inside his ribcage and curl himself around his beloved’s heart and never leave.
“The doctors said I was a goner. Told Alice to say her goodbyes. But all I remember about it are the dreams.”
Armand lifts his head and peers blearily into Daniel’s misty eyes. “The dreams?”
“Yeah. I dreamed of an amber eyed angel with a halo of black curls. An impossibly gorgeous,” Daniel kisses Armand’s nose, “obsessively loving angel. I called him the good nurse. He seemed to like that. He came to me every night when Alice and the girls went home to get some rest, when my only company were pinging machines. But then I woke up. Everyone at the hospital called it a miracle. But it didn’t feel like a miracle to me.” Daniel’s voice is getting shaky again. “Not then anyway. Back then it felt like a kick in the balls. Because you were gone again.”
“Oh, my darling!” Armand rains kisses all over Daniel’s face, over every line, and crease, and wrinkle. “I was never far away from you. Not once in all of those fifty-two years we were apart! I promised you I would protect you from all the Hooded Claws that seemed always to be pursuing you and placing you in all kinds of peril.”
“And your blood kept the vampires from my door too,” Daniel quips. “Babe, you really should consider suing those Frankie Goes to Hollywood guys for plagiarism.”
Armand laughs then, and Daniel thinks it is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.
“But seriously, you did keep the dark away. You were a force from above. You cleansed my soul over and over again with your death-defying love. You kept bad at bay. You scared the dark away. Your voice was in my head. You saved me over and over again. Your words were my lifeline. And they’re etched in my memory. Have been since that day in the hospital just before I woke up: This room doesn't matter, this night doesn't matter. You're not inconsequential... or a junkie. You're a bright young reporter with a point of view. There are stories that need to be told. If things ever get bad again, these are the words you'll hear in your mind… like a tape playing over and over, like a song stuck in your brain. These words will hold you up and carry you. They are your lifeline. That song never bothered me again after that, because your words held me. Babe, I’m so in love with you.”
Daniel marvels at Armand’s angelically perfect face; marvels that this ancient, ethereal being loves him like no one has ever loved him, or ever could love him. Then he crushes their lips together and kisses him like he has never kissed him before. Like his unalive life depends upon it. Like each kiss is oxygen he still needs to survive.
“Jesus fucking Christ, babe!” Daniel says, suddenly breaking the kiss as a thought dawns on him for the very first time. “I was Bella fucking Swan, wasn’t I? I was doing all that crazy self-destructive shit so you’d come rescue me.”
Armand’s eyes are warm, and filled with love, but his head is slightly tilted and he is wearing the haughty expression he wore in Dubai that never failed to make Daniel horny as fuck.
“Daniel, don’t be absurd! How could you possibly think you were anything like Bella Swan? It is clearly established in the text, and in the films, that Miss Swan is particularly partial to canines. While you, my darling, have more than proven yourself to be a fancier of the feline species.”
Fuck. Daniel is grateful that he is already dead because he is pretty sure his heart might just explode. He loves that ancient weirdo so much and never more than when he is being unintentionally hilarious.
“Speaking of felines, this was actually all Mittens doing,” Daniel says, making a sweeping gesture to the tumbled video and audio tapes littering the living room.
Armand raises a single perfect eyebrow. “Curious. Do tell?”
“Well, Mittens got a case of the zoomies—if I were you, princess, I’d check your Docs before you put them on—”
Armand stiffens. “Tell me it wasn’t my Hieronymus Bosch Dr Martens.”
Daniel nods gravely, like a doctor delivering bad news to a patient. “I’m afraid so, babe. I don’t think they’re gonna make it.”
Armand huffs and pouts and looks so adorably put upon that Daniel’s train of thought is almost completely derailed.
“Anyway,” he continues, struggling to get back on track. “Mittens got the zoomies and knocked over the tapes, and then batted The Perils of Penelope Pitstop straight to me like he was Ilya Rozanov playing a slapshot for a goal.”
If the look on Armand’s face is anything to go by, Daniel is pretty confident the mention of Armand’s latest TV crush got his mind off his desecrated Docs. Just as Daniel hoped it would.
“Our son is a prodigy, beloved," Armand stares off into the middle-distance. "Hmm...perhaps there is something to the stories about cats being otherworldly creatures?”
“At this point, babe, nothing would surprise me. But one thing’s for sure, that boy of ours is a menace and a miracle, just like you, kitten.”
Armand flutters his eyelashes. “Thank you, my darling.”
“Anyway, as soon as I saw the label on that tape the memory unlocked. You, me, in bed, watching Penelope get tied up by the Hooded Claw and placed into perilous situations.”
Armand hums and runs his claws down Daniel’s back. “While I tied you to the headboard.”
Daniel had forgotten about that delightful detail.
“Fuck babe, that sounds hot.”
“Indeed,” Armand replies with a glint in his eye, “it could get extremely…heated.”
Bait taken. Hook. Line. And sinker.
But seriously,” Daniel continues, before any more blood leaves his brain and heads south, “Alice was right. I did have a guardian angel—I do have a guardian angel. It’s always been you. You’re a miracle, babe. You’re my miracle.”
Armand hums happily, and gazes adoringly into Daniel’s eyes. “I have been called many things in my long-life, but never once has anyone ever called me a miracle.”
“Well, you are! What else could you possibly be?” Daniel says, stroking Armand’s jawline with his thumbs. “You were born half a millennium before I ever existed. We should never have met. Yet here we are, and princess, you’re the fucking love of my life. You always were and you always will be.”
The ancient vampire blinks back tears, “I’m so sorry for everything, beloved. I never wanted you to forget me. I just wanted you to live your one precious, beautiful, human life. The world needed to know the Daniel Molloy I knew. Please forgive me.”
“Forgive you?” Daniel shakes his head. “What for? Sweetheart, there’s nothing to forgive. I should be thanking you. A shitty kid like me, from Modesto? Fuck, I would never have made it to sixty-nine without you. You gave me my whole life. You gave me my girls. You gave me my career. Without you, I probably would’ve ended up dead in a pool of my own vomit and shit and piss in some putrid alleyway.”
Armand releases a breath he did not even need to be holding.
“I love you, Daniel Molloy. I love you so very, very much.”
“And I love you, kitten.”
Armand tilts his head, like a predator who has just spotted some helpless prey in his periphery. His eyes are burnt orange.
“Daniel?” he says.
“Yeah, babe.”
“Did you say… Ilya Rozanov?”
Daniel nods, so does his cock. Because he is pretty certain he is the one who is about to score.
Armand hums. “I have some rope, and a hockey stick in my atelier. How about I retrieve them, and we can restart the tape?”
"Do you still have the Hooded Claw get-up?"
“Yeah."
“Yeah?”
