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ESTELLE: But we're going to — to hurt each other. You said it yourself.
INEZ: Do I look as if I wanted to hurt you?
ESTELLE: One can never tell.
INEZ: Much more likely you'll hurt me. Still, what does it matter? If I've got to suffer, it may as well be at your hands, your pretty hands. Sit down. Come closer. Closer. Look into my eyes. What do you see?
— Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
“My martini glass got concrete dust in it,” Daniel says, waltzing back into the room several minutes after the end, holding the smoldering remains of his laptop and waving the glass around expectantly. “Make me another?”
Armand scowls at him — and does it.
They sit in silence while Daniel sips his way through two martinis; when he’s sipping the dregs of his first, Armand stands from his seat opposite Daniel’s and dutifully collects his glass to make another. The house shifts around them, wind continuing its constant assault outside and cracks in the wall slowly deepening their fractures.
“Is this place going to collapse?” Daniel asks eventually, swiveling around to look at the concave wall. “I mean, you’d think the structural integrity would be able to withstand a little combat, but then these new buildings…”
“You will be long gone,” Armand reminds him.
“What, and you won’t? Hoping that when Louis comes back he’ll collect you from the wreckage, pull you to safety?”
“I will kill you.” A banal threat.
“We’ve all had that firefighter fantasy,” Daniel reassures. “You won’t.”
He could. He might. He wants to. Still. “Louis said—”
“Louis said," Daniel mocks, scoffing, “that he’d kill you. Which he wouldn’t. He likes me, but he doesn’t like me that much. He couldn’t, even, not unless you were lying about your strength. I’m surprised you let him throw you up against the wall.”
“It came as a shock.”
“If you really wanted to get to him, you should have torn me apart in front of him. Missed your chance for that.”
“I could tear you apart now.” He wants to. He is not hungry, but his fangs slide out to poke the inside of his mouth. His fingers flex.
“That’s your problem,” Daniel says. “You don’t know how to find the happy medium. Either too cruel — killing Claudia, almost killing him — or not cruel enough — sparing my life. Lestat’s the real master. His phony shit works."
Armand’s eyes flash. His body is sprung tight like a coil, ready to pounce. Daniel radiates fear, radiates arrogance, and yet he looks at Armand head-on. His eyes are just as bright, just as firm. The alcohol has made the blood rise to his cheeks, which are flush and warm. Armand could bite him there. Could slice across his neck once and let the blood spray out.
Louis hadn’t stayed to fight. Daniel has. If only it would not be so easy to tear him apart. If only he could fight back with more than his smart mouth.
Daniel’s phone rings, face up on the table, interrupting their staredown. It punctures the tension, sends it whooshing out of the room. An unknown number. The car service, informing Daniel his getaway is at hand.
Daniel leans forward, easy as anything, and declines the call. Armand blinks at him.
“When I started out,” Daniel says, leaning back against the sofa, “working night shifts, I ended up on the crime beat when there was shit else to do. Some jackass killed a single mother walking home from work. Not premeditated, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I get my quotes and ditch the scene. Quarter of an hour later, the guy comes back to move her body. Cops catch him. Some fucker from the Examiner got it all. Pictures and everything.” He smiles with teeth. “I never leave the scene of a crime early.”
“I can think of other lessons to learn from this story that are more apt.”
“I don’t have to tell you not to kill single mothers. You’re a monster who only consumes ethically sourced product. So, how about it? One more drink before we call it a night?”
“You’re pushing your luck,” Armand says, but he makes Daniel one more anyway.
The fourth martini of the night turns Daniel’s face red and flushed, makes his eyes go somewhat glassy. His limbs are relaxed. His hand shakes slightly less.
“Gotta wonder whether Louis knows about the cloud,” Daniel says once he’s through, lifting his foot to kick at the burnt-out remains of his laptop. He leaves his leg propped up, bent at the knee. He’s almost reclined against the back of the sofa. “Maybe a little bit of stress relief, setting all the local files on fire; maybe a genuine attempt to erase the evidence. Have to assume he does not know about the cloud.”
“You would still write and publish this book, even though the one person who wanted you to write it has changed his mind? You would write it knowing you condemn him to death?”
“Yeah,” Daniel says. His shoulders arch in a lazy shrug. “Look at it this way: if I write this book, maybe some other vampires will kill him for you.”
“I don’t want—”
“Louis to die? Yeah, I know. You’re still pitifully head over heels. What I want is a new laptop. One that I don’t have to ask the Talamasca for.”
“I no longer live to serve your every whim, Mister Molloy.” Armand’s face is still, lips pressed into a firm, thin line.
“No way you don’t have a guy for last-minute deliveries. Come on, just one last show of extravagant hospitality to make up for the fact that this apartment almost exploded with me in it. I’ll email Louis first thing and tell him what an accommodating host you’re being.”
“Louis does not use email,” Armand tells him, standing to go. Daniel barks out a laugh that echoes off the walls. “If you are going to stay, you will be responsible for your needs and your whims. I will not be available.”
“Have fun licking your wounds!” Daniel calls, turning to watch him go.
When he wakes, it’s the middle of the afternoon, his mouth is dry as the desert, and there’s a new Macbook laying at the end of his bed.
He goes to the kitchen first thing — never did get that dinner, did he — and finds it near-empty, stocked with just a few days more of provisions for the human staff. Sears a filet of fish, throws together a side salad with the greens and uncoordinated toppings from the fridge, takes a bottle of chilled white, and leaves the dishes for himself or Louis or whoever comes in to clean this place up now that it’s a broken home.
Armand joins him in the dining room just minutes after he takes his first bite, sitting in the chair adjacent.
“My circadian rhythm is fucked,” Daniel says as greeting, cutting off another bite and shoving it into his mouth. “Fish for breakfast. I don’t even eat fish for dinner. I’ve had enough fish for a lifetime.”
Armand is clean, his hair slicked back. The scratches on his face are gone, healed with a touch of blood. His shoulders are straight, his shirt sleek as it hugs the curve of his shoulders. He is restored to outward perfection. “No one is keeping you here.”
Daniel smiles at him. “No one’s keeping you here, either.”
Silence ticks past. The wind gusts around the building, encasing them in an everlasting yawn.
“He’s not coming back, you know,” Daniel tells him.
“I know.” He does.
“It’s good to have somebody tell you things like this,” Daniel carries on, his spiel bearing the load of heightened self-importance. “Everybody needs a wake-up call every now and then.”
“You attempted to win your first wife back after she moved out,” Armand finishes for him. “Late night phone calls, love letters, increasingly convoluted reasons to meet for a drink. It extended your marriage by six months.”
“She was plowing her new next-door neighbor for five of those months. It was not worth it.”
“One night you took her home, in a taxi.” He can see it, gathered in pure form from Daniel’s memory. He with laugh lines and graying curls, she with dark hair that spills over his shoulder while she rests against him. He stares out the window, watches people and cars zip past in the late night. “You took her home, tucked her into bed, and did not presume to stay.” A kiss to her forehead, his fingers slipping through her hair. Surprising tenderness. “She loved you then.”
“She loved me when I was out of her life,” Daniel says, amused, “and I can guarantee you she doesn’t love me anymore. He was looking for a reason to go back to Lestat.”
“So you gave him one, succumbing to the whims of your subject. How fares your journalistic integrity?”
“If it makes you feel any better, Louis leaving was only 75 percent your fault.” He scrapes the last remnants of his meal from the plate, then pushes it aside. “If it wasn’t me, it’d be something else. Still, you held on as a rebound for almost a century. Outlived the original relationship by 30-something years. It’s no small feat. You should be proud.”
Armand’s brow furrows. “Only it was you. You, who opened him up. You, who made him remember Lestat—”
“And we all know how much you hate that, people remembering things.” Daniel turns his chair toward Armand, and their eyes meet for a brief flash. “I mean, why not blame Sam? His little scheme ran longer than yours. He was once a member of the coven who mistreated you and betrayed you, but he’s a vampire, so he has your loyalty forever?”
“Someone so fickle-hearted would not understand.”
“He’d be a fun kill,” Daniel muses. “Little bit of Talamasca resistance, though they’re easy enough to work past. Like mall cops with archives. He’d be difficult to track down, though. You’d have to fight. It’d probably be cathartic.”
Armand’s jaw twitches, mouth pressed into a scowl.
Daniel reaches for his wine glass, traces his finger halfway around the rim of the base. He occupies the whole of the seat and stretches beyond it, knees spread wider than necessary. He slouches in a straight-backed dining chair as though he will turn it into a chaise through willpower alone. He is obscene.
“So what’s next for you?” Daniel asks, with the easygoing smile and half-assed charm of a television host. “Finally time for a midlife crisis? You could throw yourself into work, like the rest of us do. Open a beachfront gallery in Miami that deals exclusively in neon.”
His face softens before he knows how to stop it. How strange, how specific. Does he—?
“I bet Christie’s is hiring. Entry level,” Daniel continues, as Armand curls into the racing track that is Daniel’s mind and searches for the memory he wants. It is not there, not in full, but this vision is the strongest in Daniel’s imagination. Waves crashing gently against the shore, moon shining unnaturally bright above. Armand ankle-deep in the surf, looking just past him. No such memory exists, but it is close enough to the truth.
Daniel notices, blinks, shakes his head a bit and carries on, “What did your lunch recommend?”
“Buy a Bugatti and crash it into the guardrails, I believe,” Armand hums.
“Still an option,” Daniel agrees. “There’s nothing like a midnight joyride.” At least, he thinks, he’s not going to kill me in the next few minutes.
“Still an option,” Armand tells him, smiling at last.
It straightens Daniel’s shoulders slightly, at least. “Stay out of my head,” he snaps.
“You have invaded my home, and still you refuse to leave. Surely I am entitled to some of your privacy in return?”
“There’s nothing in there for you.”
“On the contrary,” Armand says, leaning forward only slightly. His forearms press to the tabletop. Such a temptation to pry, to wriggle in through the cracks and prod until he reaches a deeper understanding. He would, if it did not pose such a high risk.
Daniel attempts to close himself off to Armand’s presence, construct high walls and shove him out. His mind is strong, more than it was those decades ago. He could stay, could topple these walls with a thought, but it isn’t worth the fight or the risk. Reluctantly, he removes himself, and he watches Daniel all the while.
“You want your privacy,” Daniel concedes, lifting his hands slightly in surrender. “Have your privacy.” He doesn’t take his dishes when he goes, but he does take the glass and the bottle.
Daniel is the one to find him, hours later. In the bedroom, he stands over an open suitcase laid out on the bed.
“My privacy?” he asks, before Daniel has the chance to announce himself.
“Yeah, I changed my mind.” Daniel hardly looks at him as he steps past the arch and into the main room, observing from ceiling to floor, from side to side. “I figured you’ve been in my head enough to warrant a little invasion. All in the spirit of fairness.”
Armand confirms this by saying, “You were writing. The beginning of the book came to you easily. You have not felt this hopeful about a project in many years.”
Daniel smiles at him and thinks, very loudly: Armand is a massive cunt.
Then he says, “This bedroom. Wow. I’m getting a little déjà vu. Have I been to this kink club before, or am I only dreaming?”
“It was much easier to speak with you,” Armand admits, “with Louis as a buffer.”
“S&M toys on the wall, erotic art of — I can only assume that’s you, the muse formerly known as Amadeo? I’m curious, which one of you made those choices?”
“There are many works I sat for once that are not on display here,” Armand says. “Many in private storage. Many that are part of the permanent collections of museums worldwide.”
“Must be flattering,” Daniel says, traipsing his way around the room with his hands clasped behind his back. A mockery made of a critic, or even a layman. “Or it’s miserable, now that you’re no longer a sought-after muse. Then again, your face is really too classical for modernism.”
“I enjoy the act of collection,” he demures. “As you’ve said, it is very rare to have a muse sit for a portrait. Only those of particular relevance.”
“You’re a 500-year-old vampire. I’d consider that relevant.” Daniel, at last, turns to face him. He stands at the top of the steps, looking down. “You almost told me your story once, and then you stopped.”
“I saw sense,” Armand says. He is cornered by Daniel in this section of the room. He would have to dart out like prey in order to escape. “You were a child who didn’t deserve my story. You still don’t.”
“You let Louis tell me your story.”
“Perhaps I should not have told him either.”
“It’s an open offer.” Daniel shrugs, like it doesn’t matter to him either way. That he’s offering to listen to Armand’s story for Armand’s sake. “That’s all. You give a good interview. Maybe you’d like not being second string.” He waves his hand in the direction of the suitcase. “Packing?”
“There is very little I need.”
“Life as a nomad,” Daniel says. “Romantic. You could put the regular adherents of asceticism to shame, if you really put your mind to it.”
“What would you keep, from a life such as this one?” Armand’s tone is petulant, accusatory. “Little reminders of your love, your home? You would torture yourself with the reminders?”
“Sure. My second wife got big into scrapbooking. I hated them then; I hate them now. I still have them. Every single one. She scrapbooked pictures of me and Alice. It’s weird shit, and that’s just scratching the surface.” Daniel shrugs. “Millennial self-help books would suggest you take their clothes and burn them. It’s supposed to be cathartic. I don’t know how well it worked for Louis when he did it, but you could always try.”
Armand doesn’t bother with a reply. Doesn’t protest about the home, the clothes, the millions of dollars of artwork, the tree he’s cultivated since he took the cutting in Paris. He just looks vaguely aghast at Daniel’s suggestion.
Daniel offers him a consoling grimace. “Yeah, I know. I hate talking about my ex wives. Not necessarily thrilled to talk about Louis with you, either. Let’s drink instead.”
Martinis and comfortable silence in the sitting room — they run the risk of having this become routine. Daniel takes his drink and wanders the perimeter, pausing to observe the skyline. There isn’t much to see inside the room, nothing that would reveal anything about the vampires who lived here together other than the fact that they were desperately trying not to reveal anything about themselves. When he’s tipsy enough, he gets comfortable in what’s become his spot. Armand watches him curiously from across the room, a zoo visitor observing a chimpanzee behind sheet glass.
“Want some?” Daniel, expectantly, holds out his arm. He’s been plied open with three martinis, is relaxed and affable.
Armand stares at him. “If this is your way of seeking revenge — ”
“I’m not John Wick,” Daniel says. “Just don’t like drinking alone.” He shakes his forearm. An invitation. Armand watches every movement of it, traces the veins which now stand out in greater contrast against pale skin.
“I’m not hungry,” Armand protests, even as he steps closer. Daniel just rolls his eyes, leans against the back of the sofa and leaves his arm outstretched, a feast on display.
Armand kneels so as to keep Daniel’s arm parallel to the floor. He is careful, concise. His fangs protrude. Daniel’s fingers twitch. Armand holds him steady and bites into him with practiced tenderness; Daniel groans quietly at the needle-sharp sting, then goes loose-limbed.
His blood needs no coaxing into Armand’s mouth, thinner and smoother and easy, as it slides down his throat. Armand has just a taste, enough that he feels warm with it, gin and Daniel’s life fizzing in his veins. Daniel peers down at him while he pulls his mouth away, and Armand keeps his firm grip on his forearm. Armand licks the blood that trickles down until it clots, slices one index finger with his fang so he can seal the punctures closed with a bit of the blood. He is reluctant to let go; Daniel smiles at him, seeming to know this.
When Armand stands, he is wobbly on his feet. Daniel, more lightheaded than before, grins lazily at him. “Better?” he asks.
“Thank you,” Armand says, bowing his head once. He sits on the sofa with Daniel, on the opposite end, legs pressed together and hands tucked into his lap. He looks straight ahead while Daniel’s head rolls in his direction, while Daniel’s eyes track the exposed line of his throat.
“It’s weird at first,” Daniel says, after an extended bout of silence. “Quieter. You do that shit from sad movies where you think you’ll find them in the same space, passing behind you in the kitchen and patting your hip. Then, after a little while, you realize you like it quieter than you like living in a house with somebody who not-so-subtly hates your guts.”
“I prefer companionship,” Armand says. He does not turn his head. “This will be the first time in a lifetime I am without it.”
“Without him, you’re nothing,” Daniel parrots, shoulders lifting in a little harrumph. “Wasn’t sure if that was real or just a good line.”
“We did not survive for longer than a century,” Armand laments, “and yet…”
“Is there Grindr for vampires? Well,” Daniel hedges, and when he shifts in his seat the arm stretched out along the back of the sofa moves just that much closer to Armand’s shoulder. “It’s a little low commitment for you — and I guess you don’t need an app, considering the neural network.” Armand looks at him at last, unblinking. “Okay, regular human Grindr, then. You could use a summer fling.”
“You can’t stand being alone,” Armand says, his eyes flashing. “Each minute you spend by yourself in your apartment is like an eternity. You think of calling your daughters, but you are too cowardly to do so. You read books you don’t like, watch television that fades noiselessly into the background. You are terrified of dying alone but will do nothing to prevent it.”
Daniel’s eyes are despondent; his face falls. It shudders through him, the truth and the feeling, and then he groans, tipping his head back and releasing it into the air. “You haven’t had enough to drink,” he says, directed toward the ceiling.
A fair assessment. Daniel drinks another martini and a half, says, “You’re lucky I’m on blood thinners. I used to handle my liquor way better,” as he sets the unfinished drink on the table and offers Armand his arm again.
Armand sits next to him this time, their bodies turned in toward each other as he cradles Daniel’s arm and drinks. The blood gives him a headrush, and he blinks rapidly to attempt to clear his vision. This time he leaves the wound for longer, lets blood drip down toward Daniel’s wrist before he laps it up.
“Fuck,” Daniel murmurs as he watches. “That’s more like it.”
Armand remains next to him, their bodies parallel. He sees no reason to move. The quiet is almost pleasant.
“What about you?” Daniel asks eventually, nudging Armand’s thigh with one hand.
Armand’s head tips toward his, brow furrowed in mild confusion.
“What do you do all day? All night. What did you do, with him?”
“We traveled. We had our shared love of art. Our work. We spent the days together in comfortable companionship.” He sounds unfortunately bereft when he says it.
“You barely had anything in common,” Daniel points out. “You had a great honeymoon phase, sure, but then it was all let’s torture Lestat and nothing else. In the 70s, he spent, what, a year? Half a year? As San Francisco’s most prolific unknown cruiser. Doing that all by himself. Leaving you to — pick lint off the sofa.” Daniel laughs and laughs and laughs at this, his head tilted back. Armand scowls, but it does not stop him.
“It’s bleak, man,” he says, as soon as he’s regained his breath. “Did you ever go with him? Did you ever watch?”
“No.”
“Okay, so. The 70s, the 80s — ”
“Inconsequential. Your point?”
“You’ve been in Dubai fifteen years. Things had gone stale, but they were stale before that. I mean, with me around, you at least had something to do.”
“I did not need anything to do,” Armand informs him primly. “I am watching the 32nd season of Survivor. The reality drama.”
“I know Survivor,” Daniel says. He laughs and laughs and laughs. It is loud and strange and pretty. “You don’t even have a TV in here.”
“Louis does not like technology, prefers not to use it if possible.”
“See?” Daniel taps his leg again. “Incompatible. Get a bachelor pad somewhere nice with a big flatscreen and then tell me you hate being alone.”
“There are not enough episodes of Survivor to occupy a lifetime,” Armand says. His lips are pursed together in a pout.
“Something only someone who’s confident they have 500 years of life left would say,” Daniel says. “You’ll be fine. You can watch Man vs. Wild next.”
Daniel wakes with a pounding, pulsing headache, the likes of which he hasn’t had since he was a much younger man. He drags himself out of bed and finds aspirin, swallows it with handfuls of water scooped from the sink. His phone tells him it’s just past 5 o’clock. God, he’s fucked. He’s going to have to get his doctor to prescribe him Ambien when he gets back if he ever hopes to adjust back to a normal sleeping schedule.
He’s dragging on his clothes when Armand knocks softly on the door. “Daniel?” he calls, as if it’s necessary to announce his presence. As if it could be anyone else.
“Reading my mind to figure out when I wake up is just as freaky as reading my mind for anything else,” Daniel calls back.
“I thought you might like some breakfast,” is Armand’s reply, polite as ever. And yeah, well. He can forgive the mind reading if there’s food waiting for him. Especially if it’s still warm. “I have been keeping it warm,” is Armand’s reply to that.
Takeout is laid out on the table when he arrives. There’s still steam floating up from the containers of rice. It’s too much for one person, an irresponsible quantity. Daniel’s stomach growls. Armand watches him curiously from his seat, chin propped in his hand. He sits and starts helping himself.
“My doctor is always getting on my ass about high cholesterol,” Daniel tells him, licking grease from his thumb. “I gave up smoking when I was forty-seven, I get my steps in, and I go to physio twice a week, so he’s insane for asking for anything else. I’m just saying, if your ears are burning a week and a half from now, know it’s because you’re getting thrown under the bus to the specialists at Mount Sinai. Every single one.”
This information is all trivial, inconsequential. He would not think to search for it in Daniel’s mind because he does not care to know. He has been offered so much of it so quickly, without second thought. It overwhelms him.
“You will be dead soon regardless,” he says.
“I know,” Daniel says, smiling like this is funny. “Can you not say it like I’m a lamb up for slaughter?” He tears into the corner of a sambusa with his teeth, steam coating his glasses. “Or is that the point? Guess I thought you’d be the type to go for organic, grass-fed, not fatty blood and a shriveled liver.”
“What I prefer is adrenaline. A touch of fear.”
“Enhances the flavor, yeah?”
“You are not afraid of dying by my hand,” Armand observes. “Not anymore.”
“That, or I’ve just accepted it as an unlikely possibility.” Daniel shrugs. “There would be worse ways to go. I’d really rather finish this book, though, if it’s all the same to you.”
After he eats, Armand goes through the books from the floating shelves, reading through each one. Daniel sits across from him at the table and works. Daniel stops working to observe him, sets a stopwatch on his computer. He gets through ten in less than an hour, a longer one in seventeen minutes. In that hour and seventeen minutes, he blinks a sum total of four times. One small stack of books remains untouched, unacknowledged on the corner of the table.
“There is no need for these archives any longer,” he explains once he’s finished, pushing himself off of the ground and sorting these back where they came from. “Some have been digitized. You will record the memories in your book to Louis’ liking, and then the past years will fade away.”
“One last trip down memory lane?”
“There is much of my former selves I do not remember,” Armand says, feet landing softly on the floor so he can collect the next stack. “The archiving began as a way to rectify that. To provide a foundation for our shared history. Now our history is but a roadblock on Louis’ way back to Lestat. The coven is gone—”
“Or a traitor—”
“So such detail will not be necessary. I would like to let it fade.”
“You know, it really would be great if you did a follow-up interview. ‘Here’s What I Learned from My 77-Year Long Relationship,’ or, ‘I Was in a 77-Year Long Relationship That Just Ended. Now What?’”
“No.”
“Okay, if you say so.” Overconfident, insolent— “I’ll call you in a couple of months anyway to see if you’ve changed your mind. It’d work great for Modern Love. You could have the author credit; I’d ghostwrite.”
“What is Modern Love?”
Daniel stands, gathering his laptop with him. “I’ll send you some links,” he says. “You’ll like it. Always good to be reminded you’re not the only schmuck in the world with a fucked up love life.” Then, with little additional fanfare, “I’m going to bed. See you.”
In the next several minutes, Armand’s iPad floods with links, all of which he reads. Dead fathers, dead husbands. Strange fetishes, bad marriages, compelling addictions.
They are exactly the kind of stories which would appeal to Daniel, mundanity and human affliction elevated into prose. Puff portraiture, of course, the elevation of self from each author into something complex and worthy. The craving for love and legacy immortalized.
It is his privacy and this thought that urges him to reach for the final stack of archives — newspaper clippings of Daniel’s work from his first days in print, many Daniel had bought himself and proudly showcased in return for Armand’s praise. His first appearance in a Sunday edition, which Armand had stolen from the mess of his bedside table in San Francisco. His cover feature for Life, which they’d bought together before dawn during a chilly New York winter. Pressed close while the newsstand attendant grumbled about opening early, and impatient brats, and Daniel had leaned in close to him and said, “Man, you really don’t do much in the way of body heat, huh,” and had smiled and smiled.
Stories he’d watched Daniel call into his editor, leaning against the corner of a phone booth with his legs crossed at the ankle; resting on his stomach in a hotel bed, rotary phone dragged over to the mattress so he could recline and smoke and talk at once. Stories Armand had watched him write, hunched over a typewriter and chewing at his nails. Nights he’d begged for the blood for a little extra clarity. Nights he’d twist on Armand’s lap, arching against him, would breathe, “If I switch the third and fourth grafs it’ll make more sense. Fuck, baby, yeah, like that.”
Armand slams the book closed, inhales through his nose. Daniel is unfathomably close. There is no distraction, no reason to stay away. His fingers curl inward, nails pressing to his palms. He stands, leaves the books where they lay, and goes.
He wakes Daniel with a hand pressed to his chest, perches atop his legs.
“What the fuck,” Daniel says, fruitlessly kicking his legs. “Fuck,” he breathes, “I thought you’d paralyzed me. I’d rather wake up to a fire alarm than you sitting on my legs like a gargoyle.”
“May I have you?” Armand asks, voice hushed. His eyes are like headlights in the dark of the room.
“Have me — ” Daniel parrots back, only semi-conscious and confused, but then Armand curls his fingers into the fabric of Daniel’s sleep shirt, and he understands. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I’ll be a rebound for the marriage I ended, why not. Good luck getting the rest of me to cooperate.”
“It will be no trouble,” Armand says, quirking a smile.
As it turns out, it’s no trouble. Armand spreads across him like a weighted blanket, fingers dragging down Daniel’s chest. His nails snag on the material of Daniel’s t-shirt, flick over the surface of his nipples. He teases his hand over the curve of Daniel’s stomach, dipping fingers below his waistband. Scratches light circles on his thigh, shoving up the legs of his boxers to reach the soft inner expanse of skin. He touches and teases and nuzzles Daniel’s temple until Daniel is a hard line in his boxers, arching into the touch.
“Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth,” Daniel tells him, hand sliding down his thin waist. “You want to, ah—”
“Of course.” Armand extracts himself, disappears into the en suite, and returns with an egregiously sleek amber bottle. While he’s away, Daniel drags his boxers off and kicks them over the side of the bed.
“I bet you fuck all the guests you have here,” Daniel says, breathless, while Armand pumps oil onto his fingers.
“It is better to be prepared.”
“Is that safe?” Daniel winces in anticipation, watching the sharp points of Armand’s fingernails slip down between his legs. A twitch, a huff, as one fingertip presses over the entrance.
“I’m careful,” Armand tells him on the hitch of a breath. “If I was not, would you really be so horrified if I fucked you through a little bit of blood?”
Daniel’s dick twitches against his stomach. “No,” he says, “I would not be.”
Armand is careful and cold, long fingers spreading him open with abundant patience. Daniel gets impatient, grinds down against him, feels the prod of a fingernail, groans. Armand’s free hand presses his hip down, holds him in place.
When Armand deems him ready, he turns Daniel onto his stomach. Dick sliding against a throw pillow that props his hips up, knees digging into the mattress. He slides his hands down the bumps of his spine, presses his thumbs in the divots at Daniel’s back. He presses in slow, careful, forcing a groan out of Daniel’s mouth that he muffles into his pillow.
Armand is gentler with him than he ever has been, driving into him smooth and steady. Daniel is hot like a furnace at the core of him, breathtakingly alive. He drapes his weight over Daniel’s back and, fangless, nips at his shoulder.
It’s Daniel who gets restless, grinding down against the pillow and up against Armand and pleading, “Come on, come on, come on,” until Armand fucks him harder, holds him down.
Daniel shudders when he comes, a full-body release, and he bites into the pillow and whines, woeful and relieved.
Armand follows not far behind him, the comfort and warmth and ease of Daniel’s orgasmic bliss seeping in past his temples, becoming one with his own.
He removes himself once they’re finished, offers Daniel a warm towel to clean himself with. Watches with barely-concealed fascination as Daniel does so carelessly, sweeping the spend off his thighs and, once he’s rolled over, his stomach. “Not much hope for the pillow,” he remarks, drily, tossing the towel toward the bathroom. He is loose-limbed, pompous, entirely satisfied.
Armand, following the sharp tug of his desire, burrows himself against Daniel’s front. The minutes tick into an hour. Daniel dozes. Armand breathes in the smell of sex and his sweat and commits it to memory, to the kind that will not fade.
This done, he feels satisfied at last. At the gentle nudge of his leg, Daniel wakes.
“Daniel,” Armand murmurs, face pressed against Daniel’s breastbone.
“You want to watch Survivor?” Daniel asks, petting his fingers through Armand’s hair.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Daniel says. “Get me a glass of water while you’re up, would you?”
Armand kisses Daniel’s chest before he goes, slips on his briefs, and returns with his iPad, a glass of water, and Daniel’s laptop. When he crawls back into the bed, he hooks his leg over Daniel’s thigh.
They remain that way for several hours, Armand’s iPad tucked up by his chin. Daniel types several paragraphs of his book, free and clear-headed and almost celebratory in his speed. He gets up to piss once; Armand makes a disgruntled sound at having to be dislodged from him, and scoots that much closer once he’s back. The only real interruption comes when Daniel’s stomach growls, and he puts his laptop onto the bedside table to pursue his next meal.
“No one’s watched Survivor since 2013,” Daniel tells him, leaning over to catch a glimpse of the screen.
“They are cruel for sport,” Armand says with a tiny smile.
“And Instagram followers, sure.”
“The participants on The Bachelor and its subsequent offshoots are far more in pursuit of clout, I find.”
“Jesus,” Daniel mutters, bewildered. “I don’t think I even know what clout means.” For lack of something better to say, he kisses the top of Armand’s head.
“Ah. But you are hungry. I will order dinner.”
The show continues to play from a tiny box in the corner as Armand navigates to the food delivery app and orders just over $200 of food from three different restaurants. Armand cranes his neck to look up at Daniel, smiles. “It all arrives at the same time.”
“Yeah,” Daniel says, breathless. “Can I suck your dick? You can keep watching Survivor while I do it.”
“Alright,” Armand says. His smile twists at the ends, growing slightly wider as he taps the video back into full screen.
Daniel gorges himself on food from a dozen different takeout containers, not one of them with fish. Shawarma, machboos, kebabs, luqaimat for dessert.
He packages the leftovers and shoves them into the fridge once he’s finished; by the time he gets back, Armand awaits him with a martini already prepared. “A drink?”
“You’re pleasant when you’re sated,” Daniel says, smiling. “It’s weird.” He takes the drink, of course, and Armand trots after him to the sofa.
Armand perches next to him and watches each sip: traces fingers over his cheekbone, down the slope of his throat. When Daniel finishes one drink, Armand makes him another, another, another. With the fifth, Armand climbs into Daniel’s lap, pressing to his front. Daniel sips his drink over Armand’s shoulder, and all the while Armand drags his fangs over the skin of Daniel’s throat. Just enough to leave little red scratches in his wake. His fingers curl over the back of Daniel’s skull, threaded between the soft strands of his hair.
“Drink up,” Daniel says once he’s through at last, boozy and hazy with pleasure. He mirrors Armand, carding fingers through dark curls, holding his head in the crook of his neck. “Go on.”
Armand makes a sound, caught somewhere between pain and pleasure, then he sinks his fangs in and drinks. Daniel groans, curling an arm around his waist to hold him close. Armand keens and arches into him like a kitten being pet, laps up blood like he’s starving for it. Daniel relaxes beneath him and his head swims, and at last he pulls away, licking clean the blood that drips down to the divot of his collarbone.
“Okay,” Daniel says, after Armand has licked his wound closed and leaned back on his thighs enough to meet his gaze, “I’m ready to be an adult and apologize.”
Armand looks at him expectantly. There is no word that could change his feeling for Daniel, the whole terrifying, swirling knot of it, but still he would like to know.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel says, “for fucking up your 77-year relationship because of a lie you told.” Armand does not attempt to interject, but Daniel holds up his hand to ward off questions or objections. “I’m not the most honest man to have walked the earth, and frankly I don’t give a shit about Lestat. You fucked me over, tortured me and took my memories, and I was pissed at you. I had a chance to get back at you, so I took it.”
“A strange form of justice,” Armand says, remarkably still. Honesty in his words — Armand is almost inclined to forgive him completely.
“It’s not about justice,” Daniel says. “It’s about knocking more teeth out of the other guy’s mouth than he knocks out of yours in the street fight.”
“It was for your own good.”
“It was so I wouldn’t publish the book,” Daniel argues. “Which is — sure. I get it. It was so I wouldn’t call Louis up in ten years and say hey, remember that time you burnt yourself to a crisp while I was held hostage in your apartment? I get that, too.”
“It saved you a great deal of personal anguish — ”
“You know, it’s weird, because I’m not like Louis. He’s glad you did it. He asked for it. But I can’t get over it. I’d rather have the PTSD than the mindfuck. Am I crazy?”
Armand thinks of Daniel’s tears, the way he pawed at Armand while he begged: Love me, love me, give it to me, Armand, give me forever with you, and this is the first time Armand has seen him in over a decade, and it turns his stomach, and he thinks of leaving Daniel asleep once he’d done it, and he thinks of the inevitable end, when Daniel will leave, when he will leave, when Armand will have no reason to follow him beyond a nauseating, pervasive desire, and his eyes are somewhat glassy with unspilled tears when he says, “I would ask for it, if I could. There are things better off forgotten.”
“No way,” Daniel says. “It’s like I’ve got a massive scab, and I can’t figure out how to pick it off.”
“Scabs are made to heal, are they not?”
“Fuck off about my metaphor,” Daniel says, laughing on the edge of his breath. “Both times I’ve remembered, I’ve just remembered seeing your face some place I haven’t seen your face before. That’s how it starts. Your gorgeous face.”
Armand blinks at him in slow-motion. His hand lifts to frame Daniel’s face, fingers fanning out across his cheek. He leans in for a chaste kiss, their noses bumping.
“Weird that I ever forgot you at all,” Daniel says, cloying and romantic.
This is Daniel’s flaw — one of many. He falls in love fast. His heart is wild and fickle, and it latches on to people and places and stories with hardly any provocation at all.
“I guess it’s fine,” he goes on, “so long as I didn’t forget anything else.” He grins at this, believes he is making a very funny joke. “Nah, but I’d know if you’d kissed me like that before.”
Armand freezes. His eyes go dark, his pupils blown wide. He could hide it, he should hide it, but—
“Oh, fuck you.” Daniel’s eyes go wide, incredulous. He fights for sobriety and only gains slightly more clarity. “Fuck you a million times, forever, what the fuck is wrong with you, man? What the fuck?”
“Daniel.”
“What else is there?”
“Daniel, please, you must understand—”
“Does Louis know?”
“Louis would not tell you. Don’t ask Louis—”
“Have you? Kissed me like that before?”
“Beloved.” It comes out as a whine, a thready plea.
“Fuck,” Daniel says, and shoves him. It lacks strength, but Armand is just wobbly enough that it moves him, makes him wobble backward until he lands on the table behind him. Daniel stands, his eyes alight with fury. His hands shake at his sides. “I need — a cigarette, or. Fuck. Fuck you. Do not follow me.”
He stalks off, down the hall. Armand sits where he was left and lets his fingernails dig divots in the wood of the tabletop. He expects that Daniel will return with a packed bag, car waiting for him below, but Daniel only returns with a pack of cigarettes. He doesn’t look at Armand as he walks across the room and out onto the balcony.
He doesn’t look at Armand even as he realizes he’s forgotten a lighter and leans back inside to say, “Armand, light this for me.”
The cigarette between his lips, Armand obliges, a wiggle of his fingers setting off a spark at the end.
“Thank you,” Daniel says. “Fuck.”
Armand watches him from inside, leaning on the railing. He smokes half a cigarette before pacing to the other side and smoking the other half. He stubs the end out before dropping it, then takes another from the pack.
“Is it some kind of fetish for you? That I don’t remember you?” He’s peeking back in again.
Armand lights his cigarette. “It was for your own good,” he repeats.
“Yeah, right. I’ll never forgive you, you know.”
The thought of it curls sick and tight around his insides. Daniel will die hating him. It was always an inevitability, of course. Daniel would have died hating him in 1985. Armand gave him decades more, allowed him the chance for a full life. Allowed himself the knowledge that once, for a short while, Daniel had loved him.
As Daniel stands on the balcony, he closes his eyes and tries to remember. He thinks of Armand’s face, his eyes. He searches for them in his mind, determined to find a loose thread to pull. There are vague, shifting shapes. A shadow in the dark, bodies twisting in ecstasy, the bright bell of a laugh, but nothing comes. Daniel’s heart thumps quickly in his chest.
Armand stands, because he has to, and joins Daniel on the balcony. Daniel doesn’t turn to acknowledge him, but he doesn’t protest, either.
“I bet you felt pretty good about yourself. Playing the seductress. What was it for? Giving the old man one last joyride before he kicks the bucket? A series of pity fucks to commemorate your recent divorce?”
“I like being with you.” Armand’s voice is small, petulant. His arms cross over his chest.
“You like being with anyone who’ll give you the time of day. It is so,” Daniel says, laughing humorlessly, “fucked. This. All of this. I came to Dubai to revive my shitstorm of a life before it ends, and come to find out my life is even worse than I thought. I mean, it’s one thing to know you fucked up your memories being a junkie. It’s another to know your ex vampire lover took them from you.”
Blood-tears pool at the corners of Armand’s eyes; one slips, racing down his cheek.
Daniel’s shaky hand ashes his cigarette and brings it back to his mouth. “What’s worse is that I fell for it. I mean, fuck me. Am I the dog to your Pavlov, some kind of latent sexuality reactivated, or am I just that desperate for a lay?”
Daniel can’t die hating him. It isn’t right. It won’t do. All he’s done, all he’s sacrificed. This one thing, for himself: he needs more time.
“I will give them back,” Armand says, blood streaking down his cheeks. His eyes are big, wobbly. “I will make it alright again.”
Daniel laughs. Harsh, grating, angry. “Yeah? What’s your plan?”
Armand latches onto Daniel like a parasite, long lines pressed against his spine. Daniel squirms, but Armand holds him firmly in place. A little bit of fear. Daniel should not be afraid. Armand is going to give him everything he wants, everything he’s ever asked for.
“You are beautiful in the night. You will fit in well,” Armand tells him, and then he bites.