Archive of Our Own ^beta

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?
Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.
Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.
However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

[…]

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.
“Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale.
I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

— Meditations in an Emergency, Frank O’Hara

There’s a body slumped against the wall at the entrance to his apartment. Bound, gagged, unconscious. 

Daniel, still in his pajamas, stands and stares at him. 

It should click sooner, how he got here, what his purpose is, but Daniel just woke up and it’s barely past dusk and he’s still drowsy with the pull of the sun, so it doesn’t click into place until— 

“For you,” Armand says, stepping into his line of sight and preening, proudly presenting this freshly-caught meal. “Please, eat.” 

“Fuck off, Vincent Price.” Daniel would like to say Armand didn’t startle him. However, Armand is possibly the only person left who can startle him, whose thoughts and intentions he can’t hear, who moves silently through the night. Daniel has not stopped thinking of him, but he had stopped thinking he’d see him again. 

“You are hungry,” Armand says, and a look flickers across his face that suggests he’s genuinely upset about this. “I feel it.”

“I can feed myself,” Daniel says, but still he approaches the body. He is hungry. He’s fucking starving, actually, and as much as he likes the hunt, there’s dinner laid out and waiting for him. “I have fed myself,” he says, approaching the body, “every night. For the past three years.” 

“You aren’t eating enough,” Armand insists. 

“I have the appetite of a sixteen year old football player,” he says, crouching to the floor. “I’m trying to figure out my diet without becoming easily recognizable as New York’s latest serial killer.” 

Daniel hunches over the body, pulls his head to the side, and sinks his fangs into the man’s throat. 

Armand approaches him from behind, stands in silent observation while Daniel drinks, and, after a few moments of consideration, begins carding his fingers through Daniel’s hair. 

Daniel flinches: his second surprise in the past handful of minutes. He doesn’t pull away to protest or shake off the touch, however. The blood is good and warm and he’s growing closer to the end. Armand’s hand stills but doesn’t draw away. 

“You have the hunger of a fledgling,” Armand tells him, sounding somewhat awestruck. “It’s natural. You must eat, Daniel, until you are full and strong.”

The man dies with a final, shaky breath, his skin ghostly pale and all his features lax. Daniel withdraws — turns to face Armand, looks up at him from where he’s perched on the balls of his feet. His teeth are covered in blood, his lips stained bright red. 

“Still hungry,” Armand observes, looking down at him with wide eyes. He pushes curls reverently off of Daniel’s forehead. 

The blood he’s consumed has returned his cognition back to normal, which is to say back and better than fucking ever. Competing thoughts flit through his mind: One, how’s he tracking Daniel hunger levels? Two, fuck holy fuck Armand is here his maker is here it’s Armand he’s here. 

Lastly, possibly most importantly, he is still hungry — and Armand is only wearing thin linen pants, and Daniel’s fangs are long. 

Without further consideration, Daniel bites into the meat of Armand’s thigh. 

Armand gasps a high, thready, “Oh,” his body jerking forward. How’s that for a fucking surprise? 

But he’s sucking the blood through the linen, which feels like trying to eat an oyster through a paper towel, so he has to pause to rip a hole big enough to slot his mouth into. Another bite, and this time Armand’s response is more measured: just a short, breathy sigh. He doesn’t attempt to push Daniel away, but Daniel curls his hands around the backs of Armand’s thighs to hold him in place anyway. Gravity works in his favor, pouring blood into his mouth, and he drinks until the hunger is gone, until he feels overfull, until he can stand to pull away. 

He wipes his mouth with his forearm, the blood smearing as he does, and he attempts to ignore the fact that he just had what tasted like a Michelin-star meal on his knees five feet from his front door. That this is the first taste of his maker’s blood he’s had since his turning. 

“Thanks for dinner,” Daniel says. “Is that all?” 

The hole Daniel ripped in his pants gapes open; blood stains the rim and trickles down his leg, leaving a red streak down the cream fabric.  

“That is not all,” Armand says, frowning. “You have been going hungry.”

Daniel presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, sighs. “I haven’t. I have one, sometimes two a night. I’m not Louis, starving myself for some bullshit morality thing. Louis, in fact, is reluctantly impressed by my body count.”

“I kept Louis well-fed.” 

“I have been,” Daniel interrupts, before Armand can squeeze in any more post-divorce wailing, “figuring this shit out on my own, because my deadbeat, piece of shit maker abandoned me in Dubai after he turned me.”

“It seems you are incapable of taking care of yourself,” Armand says. “Your efforts are so pitiful that I have been forced to intervene.” 

“Fine. Good. Intervene, then. It’s about time,” he says. “Step up, maker. Be my teacher. Let me sit at your feet and learn all your monstrous ways.” 

“You are off to a good start,” Armand says. “The blood of the ancients will make you stronger by the day.” 

“So, what, I don’t actually have to go to school, I just have to practice semi-regular feedings, and then I’m Superman?” 

“I will watch you hunt,” Armand says, “and give you guidance. No fledgling of mine will be feeble and incapable.” 

“I’m not, actually. Either of those things. I’m doing great, no thanks to you. You could be doing a little better, though. Answering a few questions, for a start.”

“I will return for you when I am ready.” Armand hoists the corpse up with very little effort and turns back toward the door. 

“Great, so, three years from now? Four?” 

No answer, as Armand slips into the hall. Daniel pelts questions at him all the way to the elevator: “How’d you get in? Is that a mind trick, or did you take a lockpicking class? Where are you staying? How long have you been following me? Why step out of the shadows now?” 

Daniel is good at rapid-fire, did his due at press conferences and gotcha interviews in the 70s. It’s just that Armand is an annoying brat who thinks there’s an ongoing competition for most mysterious man in the world, and he’s determined to win it every year. 

What Armand doesn’t expect, judging by the way that his eyes briefly flash, is for Daniel to shove his feet into his sneakers and jog after him. 

“I don’t know how you thought this would go,” Daniel says, once the elevator door is closed and they’re moving downstairs. “But if you’re going to do the whole thief-in-the-night routine to critique my eating habits, you’re going to stick around to help me out with the things I actually need help with. How can you feel my hunger?”

“You can’t see it, the bond we share—”

“Don’t parrot Lestat to me. I wrote the book. So it’s a maker-fledgling thing. Does it go both ways?”

As they exit the lobby, Armand gently scrambles the brain of his doorman so as to conveniently forget the body draped over his shoulder. He does the same for all they walk past. He lets them remember, however, that Daniel is an old man in plaid pajama bottoms, a thin white t-shirt, and padded sneakers, and that he’s trailing after someone who looks like he belongs on a billboard in Soho. 

“Funny,” Armand says. “You did not show this level of initiative at any point during the past years.”

Daniel balks at him. Thinks, where the fuck did he get the audacity — and then he laughs.

“What, you thought—” he manages. “Oh, that’s really sweet. You thought that I’d chase after you. That after you killed me, turned me, and abandoned me, we’d start an international game of hide and seek. Why, because you used to get your rocks off playing the hunting dog to my strong scent of lust and desperation?”

This time, Armand’s silence is telling. 

“No,” Daniel says with another laugh, adds, “fuck you, no,” for good measure. “I mean, first, I had an insanely successful book to write and tour. Second, I was rightfully angry at you, because what you did was shitty.” 

He feels it, then: something like nausea. Armand’s stomach drops. Worry gallops through him. 

“I am sorry—” Armand begins. 

“The leaving, not the turning,” Daniel specifies, before he goes on, before the fear turns to dread. “We both know I wanted to be turned. I wanted it three years ago; I wanted it fifty years ago. My hands don’t shake anymore and I’m going to live forever. I don’t care if you regret it. I don’t.” Tentative calm restored. “Third, and to the point: I don’t consider myself someone with a lot of dignity, but I at least have enough not to stoop to the level of recreating a decades-old game with you because I finally remembered how you fucked me over. How did you know it would work, would give me my memories back?”

“The bond between maker and fledgling is entirely different from any other. Your blood is my blood. In many ways, we are one.” 

“We can’t read each other’s minds because we share one,” Daniel extrapolates. “I mean, I get the logic, but I’m not sure I see the real benefit. Apart from the reassuring knowledge that you can never fuck with my head again.”

“We share a heartbeat,” Armand insists. Sounds like he’s about to repeat—

“My blood is your blood,” Daniel fills in. Armand huffs. “I get it. I can’t know what you’re thinking, and we have to have all of our conversations out loud, but I have you like a little mood ring wrapped around my finger.”

“Yes,” Armand says, looking pleased with this description. 

They slip into the loading dock behind a shopping center to discard the body in a dumpster. With any luck, it’ll be emptied into the garbage without a second thought. 

“I want to know you’re not going to make me wait years to see you again,” Daniel says, once they’ve stepped back onto the street. 

“Would you chase me now?” Armand asks. “Now that we are in the same city? Now that you know how to reach for my heartbeat?”

“The chase was fun for you because you could read my mind and show up in my life whenever you wanted,” Daniel counters. “If I was interested in a wild goose chase, I would have started straight from Dubai. Thing is, you’re not interested in one, either. Or would you like me to be the one running again? No regular apartment, no tour schedule pinned to my Twitter you can follow.” 

“A pleasant way to spend a decade.”

“I want to see you. This is me telling you I want to see you. Isn’t that enough?” 

Daniel stops him on the sidewalk, stands face to face. Armand’s eyes flash yellow at him. 

“You are young and impatient,” Armand says. “A decade is nothing. Three years is but a breath. If you wait another year, it will be a useful lesson.”

“Yeah, but I know you don’t think like that,” Daniel says. “We were together almost every night for eight years. You said,” he plucks the phrase from the marinating mess of his memory, “one year with me was fuller than a lifetime. I know you want to see me.” 

Daniel reaches out to touch his face — and Armand darts away, with the wide-eyed and horrified look of someone who’s just realized he can’t mind control the guy he really loves to mind control. 

Daniel laughs at him, and he lunges fast enough to catch Armand. To, instead, roughly palm his cheek. Armand blinks, tilts into it briefly, then darts away again.

“Enough, now.” He says it magnanimously, gently, like he used to tell Daniel to rest. Daniel snarls at the tone. Armand has begun a more measured retreat, inching off down the silent block.

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” Daniel tells him, though there’s not much point in following. “They don’t give out prizes to the most withholding vampires!” 

Armand rounds the corner to the right and disappears.

“Stupid fucking chase,” Daniel mutters under his breath, once he’s alone. “Of course you like it, motherfucker. You like any game you know you’ll win.” He resents that Armand left, resents that Armand can’t hear him, resents that Armand can feel how angry he is. Maybe he does need a year before he sees the bastard again. 

At home, he records the memory in a spiral notebook: 

Armand: This year with you has been fuller than a lifetime. 
In bed. Curled up against his chest — post coital. Armand freaked to hear this — means something to him too
Which year was this?

He underlines the question, and that completes the entry. The notebook is tossed back on a stack of seven others, already filled. One of them contains a rough outline: 

- Happy torture funtime, SF ‘73
- Armand in SF again, ‘74???
- The game is aftoot, ‘74 – ??
- Barcelona
- Istanbul
- Tokyo 
- Reykjavik 
- Madrid – Spain twice? Part of the game or did I forget again?
- Rome 
- Budapest 
- Positano – Surely A was bankrolling
- Stuff I’m saving for my career in erotica 
- London / New York / Miami 
- Night Island is such a pretentious ass name. Research later
- Fights about becoming a vamp – the downfall of every good marriage
- Big breakup, ???? 
- Married Alice in ‘85. Surely over by then? 
- NYE, Y2K?
- ?????

The rest are half-baked rememberings from the twelve-ish years he and Armand were together. For the more detailed memories he gets, he sits down in front of his computer and records retellings, which vary in length. He transcribes them all, saves the audio and text files together. Recovered Talamasca files were helpful at the start, yeah, but the pictures and documents and proof of them together became more sporadic once they apparently realized Armand wasn’t doing much sinister shit, was just whipping Daniel around the world on an extended, fucked up sex vacation. 

There is proof, though, hundreds of pictures of he and Armand all taken by their resident photographers. He’s scanned through them dozens of times, has selected a few favorites. They are as follows: 

He and Armand in some roped off section of a nightclub. There are a few others with them on the half-circle bench they occupy, friends and companions picked up for the week or just the night. They may as well be alone, though, oblivious to the world around them, comma-curled into each other and talking over the roar of the music, the crowd. 

Daniel, on a midnight train to Boston, sleeping against Armand’s shoulder. It’s just the backs of their heads, the photo taken from a few rows back, Daniel’s curls and the curve of Armand’s elegant neck and the side of his ear. 

Half a street, a dark alley. The barely-there outlines of their bodies pressed up against a wall, caressing in the dark. 

An all-night diner, harsh white light. They’re not Hopper’s Nighthawks, but it’s a near thing: they’re alone, save for the line cook and the waitress. Daniel can tell by the way he’s smiling that his ankles are hooked with Armand’s under the table.

That’s what his favorites have in common — they provoke the strongest reactions, phantom sensations. Cold hands on his hot chest, Armand’s breath wispy over his ear. The way Armand looks when his fangs poke out against his bottom lip. The way their bodies slot together, the crude and beautiful glide. 

Tracking down these memories is his only project now that Interview has been written and published and aptly promoted, now that the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame have passed. He hasn’t been in such dogged pursuit of something since he was twenty and thought his reporting was God’s gift to the world; now he’s 72 and determined to prove that he was once God’s gift to the vampire Armand. 

So he does this thing, right, where: 

“Hey, man,” he says, toppling over onto the shoulder of some unsuspecting drunk. Daniel is good at acting it before he’s had a sip. The sunglasses at night help.

“Hey,” the unsuspecting drunk says, at first a little wary. Which, you know, fair. Why shouldn’t he be wary? He’s a miserable cunt who’s miserably drunk and alone in the financial district on a Wednesday night. He could, if he wanted, go for one of the coworker groups that gather out on the cobblestone street between bars, could lure them out by the water and suck them bone-dry like they’re the ever-popular chicken wing happy hour deals all the bars on this street offer, but that’s not really what this is about. 

This guy is divorced, with three kids, and he’s working in consulting to pay alimony and child support and for the lifestyle of the intern he’s fucking — not the one that caused his divorce, but the one after. That’s what it’s about. 

Daniel buys them two rounds of drinks and shoots both of his — they taste like nothing and don’t get him drunk and feel room-temperature — and chats about sports or whatever until he can slide in a well-placed, “Women, right?” and then he tolerates less than ten minutes of ranting on his ex-wife and his girl before he gets to what he really wants to say, which is: 

“You know, I don’t have the smoothest love life myself. Ask me about that.” 

Either Daniel is already powerful enough or the guy is drunk enough or caught off guard enough that he always agrees, asks: “Oh, uh, what’s going on in your love life?” 

He says, always, without fail: “Once upon a time, my ex erased all my memories. Now he’s back in my life, and he’s so fucking unhelpful. So you’re going to ask me questions until we figure some stuff out, okay?”

It’s not as useful as his memory-recovery intensive with Louis in Dubai, the threat of Armand’s return looming — but then again, nothing is. Even Louis isn’t as helpful as he was back then. Louis lectures in his head for minutes at a time about the past, and about healing, and about how it helps to cradle pain close but not allow it to sink its roots in to blacken one’s heart, and about how he and Lestat are coexisting with a peaceful distance, and blah blah blah blah blah, and Daniel would be better off if he let Armand remain in the shadows, and Daniel thinks it’s all very nice and is very happy for him, but he would really just like to know where he fucked Armand, where Armand fucked him, why they loved each other and how. Along with everything else. 

And at some point, eventually, the guy is slumping over and he mumbles, “Should go, I’ve gotta get the train,” and Daniel snorts, “To where, Jersey City?” and he, completely earnestly, says, “No, Harrison,” and Daniel feels righteous, feels hungry, and lifts him to his feet with preternatural strength. Says, “Yeah, buddy, let’s get out of here.”

There is an end to this. There must be. He’ll unearth every memory, every detail he can eke out, and he’ll catalog every one, in his head and in the cloud, and Armand can’t fuck with him anymore, no one can, and then—and then— 

Armand is back at his door in less than three weeks. Well, not at his door. On his couch. Daniel wakes up to the sound of Rachel Ray loud as fuck on the TV. 

He shuffles out into the living room, still yawning — scratches his lower stomach before his nails catch on his shirt and snag and he remembers he has a full set of claws now and forever. “You could not have picked a worse TV chef,” he says. 

Armand sits primly in the middle of the sofa, legs criss-crossed. He looks insane. He looks like what owls would look like if they were gangly little beasts eternally preserved in their twenties. Daniel was only ever really scared of him once, and even then other feelings were quick to override the fear. Now he’s amused. Pleased. At home. 

“I prefer Ina Garten,” Armand tells him, eyes still glued to the screen, “but I enjoy the commercials.” 

“You’re getting the shit end of the stick there, too. Commercials aren’t as good as they used to be.”

“Very many of them are for medications meant to treat skin blemishes,” Armand agrees sagely. He taps the spot on the sofa next to him, then says, “Come and eat.” 

Daniel does, sits on his knees perpendicular to Armand. “So,” he says, “twelve years. No memories. That was a pretty shitty thing to do. Should we talk about that?” Then he leans in and bites, hands bracketed on the back of the sofa on either side of Armand’s shoulders. 

“I did what I had to do.” Armand’s hand curls politely around Daniel’s shoulder. 

Daniel pulls back before he’s finished, watches the holes on Armand’s neck slip closed. “Yeah, you can do better than that. Come on.” He taps Armand’s neck like he’s prepping the veins. “I want a real answer.” He bites again — not particularly gentle. 

“Ah,” Armand says, as his fangs sink in, and then: “Do you expect me to tell you I regret it? I don’t. It was either take your memories or watch you die, and I refused to watch you die.” Daniel makes to pull away again, but Armand’s hand, in a flash, pushes his head back down. “You were a reckless, foolish boy, throwing a tantrum because I did not give you what you wanted. It was time to end things. It was for the better.” 

This time, when Daniel pulls away, he laps up a few drops that had slipped away from his mouth. “You were pissed because I started seeing someone while you fucked off to do marital maintenance. You wanted me all to yourself while you slowly amassed a sizable harem.” 

“You got a girl pregnant before you’d ever once thought of having children on your own. It was only your aggrandized sense of duty which persuaded you to stay with her, to help raise the child. In that sense, I gave you exactly what you wanted. I removed all complications. You got clean.” 

“For, like, five years at a time.” Daniel snorts. “Making me forget I was addicted to your blood doesn’t change the fact that I’m an addict. What’s it been like,” he taps the side of Armand’s temple with his fingertip, “being the only one who remembers?” 

“Strange,” Armand concedes, “and difficult. If I had been able to discuss these things with Louis—” an extended pause, in which Armand’s expression sours somewhat. “But I instructed him, early on, never to ask about you. My one request of him.” 

“You’re a possessive asshole and a control freak with a self-focused competence kink,” Daniel says. “It adds up. You got a little sick pleasure from it, knowing you were the only one. It’s a wet dream for an archivist like you.”

“How much do you remember?”

Daniel is suddenly aware of the fact that he’s curled above Armand’s lap, their faces mere inches apart. He breaks apart, reclines backward against the arm of the sofa and props his feet on the cushion in front of him. 

“The memories are back, sure, but they’re memories that’ve been run through a garbage disposal. It’s like watching my own life back through a surveillance cam. All I do is enhance, enhance, enhance. Why, are you going to help me?” 

“No,” Armand says. He lapses into silence — the commercial break’s begun. 

After a few moments of staring at him, Daniel takes the opportunity to dress for the night. When he returns, Armand is waiting for him by the door with hands tucked into his pockets. “Tonight you are going to show me how you hunt,” he says. 

“Sure,” Daniel says. “I could eat.” 

His hunger is slightly more manageable than it was when he was first turned, but the hunt has remained this all-consuming thing. When he goes out with the intention to eat, everything narrows on that one goal. His senses sharpen; the call for blood roars in his ears. 

It’s only their beating hearts that reminds him Armand is there at all. 

They walk south for several streets until the crowds start to thicken. Daniel opens his mind to the relentless chatter, food and money and sex and heartache and heat — falls into step behind a guy who’d just left the Equinox. He’s a swimmer, lithe and tall. His hair’s pulled back into a ponytail, muscular neck on display. He’s the one, the obvious choice. His hunger curls, hot and needy, in his stomach. 

He follows the guy off to a side street. They’re as alone as they need to be. Daniel takes a breath in preparation. 

“Hey!” he calls, cheery, jogs just slightly to catch up and allow himself to be seen. “Are you new to the neighborhood? I’ve been around for ages, never seen you before.” The role of the bumbling, if not slightly athletic, old man. It’s a pretty good act. Sometimes gets weird looks before he strikes, but who gives a shit — and anyway, this guy’s friendly. 

“Yeah,” he says, bright eyes and bright smile. He thinks concurrently about Daniel’s property holdings and about befriending him, if in a way that feels based in a kind of latent pity. He must be lonely, the guy thinks, which is how Daniel realizes Armand has hidden himself from his dinner. “Are we neighbors, then?” 

“Not for much longer,” Daniel says, his fangs sliding out into view. 

He drains the guy tucked away on a stairway leading down to the basement of an apartment under construction. Armand watches — and this he’s aware of, strangely, the phantom presence at his back — a few inches away, peering over his shoulder. 

The hunger fades, and Daniel feels himself relax, return to some kind of stasis. It feels good to breathe, once he’s done this, the exertion relieved by catching his breath. He leans against the wall, tipping his face to stare at the sky. 

“Quite the messy eater,” Armand remarks, standing in front of him. He gathers his sleeve and uses it to dab at the corners of Daniel’s mouth, at his chin. “You will be more innocuous once you learn the art of control.” 

“I take it back,” Daniel says, though he keeps still for Armand to clean him. “I don’t like you watching me eat.” 

Armand remains just as close when he’s deemed Daniel spotless; they’re almost pressed chest to chest. When Daniel looks down, he meets Armand’s bright, unblinking eyes. Strange affection flows between them. 

“Your fangs,” Armand says, “really are quite long.” He pries Daniel’s mouth open with two fingers, then traces down the length of one until he’s reached the razor-sharp tip. It’s sensitive, he’s startled to find. A brand new erogenous zone. Armand presses the pad of his finger to the point, watches the skin indent. The only reason Daniel doesn’t bite in on impulse is the fact that he’s just eaten.  

Daniel sways forward, trancelike — unsure what to say, he simply bares his fangs for Armand and hisses. Showing off. 

This delights Armand: he laughs, bright and startled, then presses his hands to his mouth. 

He reaches out, then, touches the hair curling over Daniel’s ears. Daniel, sated and quietly curious, merely lets him. He wants to see what Armand will do. 

What Armand does is kiss him: just once, just a chaste peck. He rolls around the taste and the feeling of it like he’s conducting a scientific study while Daniel considers licking into his mouth and rolling around with him on the sidewalk. 

“Yes,” he decides, and Daniel thinks he knows, then realizes he can’t, and Armand finishes: “I will teach you the gifts that will make you strong, Daniel. A powerful young fledgling.” 

This is great news, really, and he wishes he could appreciate it, but he’s pretty sure he’s getting hard. Even worse, his ears are flushed pink. All this goddamn blood in him. Hard after one kiss. God, there’s something so incredibly wrong with him. His synapses are so fucked. 

“Great,” he says. “Okay. Sure. Thanks, Mr. Miyagi.” 

Armand smiles, and at last steps back. “Come, now,” he says. “Chopped will be on by the time we return.” 

Through the summer, Armand makes good on his promise. When he visits, he feeds Daniel from his neck or from his wrist. They hunt together, most nights. Armand offers him demonstrations, offers him guidance. 

The mind gift comes easy. 

They sit on a bench together in Central Park just after dusk, Daniel’s arm stretched out behind Armand’s back and in a comfortable slouch. 

“Your posture should be better,” Armand nags. “You lack focus.”

There’s a jogger striding past on the road ahead of them; Daniel vividly imagines her tripping over her own feet and she does, scraping her knees on the pavement. “Oh, fuck,” she says, cheeks flushed with embarrassment more than any real pain, and Daniel, laughing, calls out, “You okay?” to make it worse. 

“Yeah!” she calls out, voice cracking, and practically sprints off and away from them once she’s back on her feet. 

“Blood in the air,” Daniel remarks to Armand. “I’m like a shark.”

“It will grow more manageable with time,” Armand reassures. “I suppose it is fitting that this would be a natural ability of yours.” 

“It is fitting, isn’t it. I’m a sharp journalist who stayed sharp.” 

“No.” Armand’s brow furrows. “I was a master of the mind gift, even from the start. It is the unique blessing of my blood.”

“Oh, sure.” Daniel rolls his eyes. “I’ll be stealing memories from my young lovers in no time.” 

Armand tenses at this and says nothing. 

The fire gift is trickier, tricky enough that Daniel nearly gives up on it. 

Standing in his living room, shaking his wrists, groaning aloud. 

“I don’t need this,” he says. “I’m not a Boy Scout or an archaic old cunt. Maybe I’ll come up with a reason to use it in a century, when it presents itself to me.”

“Wouldn’t you like to defend yourself?” Armand asks. “You insist on wild recklessness, and yet would leave yourself vulnerable to attack by vampires that would like to tear you apart.” 

“I don’t need to defend myself. You’ve killed every vampire who’s so much as sniffed in my direction.” He listens for it, some nights, like police radio: their pleas for mercy, their snarls of anger. He wishes Armand would let him watch. He wishes for a lot of things. 

“If you were at all capable, this would not be necessary.” 

It comes eventually, of course, with the blood and with their nights of work. Daniel cradles the little ball of flame in his palm. He’s awash with pride he’s pretty sure is Armand’s — he can tell by the eyes, which are richer and darker than the flame, and trained intently on him. 

“Great,” he says. “Now I don’t have to carry a lighter around in my pocket anymore.”

They pour generous vials of blood into cocktail glasses on a swanky rooftop bar in the East Village. Armand’s insistence they come — Daniel is confident he found this place via TikTok influencer. The crowd is all money or wannabe money, talking the New Yorker article of the week and mild, haughty politics and the local foodie scene. Worse, he’s been recognized a few times. 

Armand is wearing silk unbuttoned to his navel, though, so, you know. 

Daniel waves away a young couple from the corner table with the best view, and they sit; Armand is framed by lamplight and the skyline behind him, the Empire State Building visible in the distance. 

“I doubt,” Armand says, licking the taste from his lips, “that you will acquire the flying gift anytime soon.” 

“I figured,” Daniel agrees, and he shrugs. “If I have to reach something on a high shelf, I’ll just call you, yeah?” 

It’s what he’s always done. Well. Metaphorically, anyway. Whether or not high shelves are involved doesn’t matter — once he’d found out Armand could fly, he’d been insatiable. Made him do it on a whim, whenever he realized it was possible. Armand had indulged him, as Armand was regularly very indulgent of Daniel’s whims, and had at the very least lifted himself a few inches off the ground whenever Daniel asked. He had lifted Daniel, too, to Daniel’s clear delight: he held Daniel under his arms and lifted them until their heads brushed the ceiling, Daniel whooping and laughing and grinning at him all the while. 

Just before the turn of the 80s, Armand is on an Old Hollywood kick, and they watch An Affair to Remember with Daniel’s feet kicked into Armand’s lap, and when at last they don’t reunite on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, he points at the screen and says, “That’s where I want you to take me. You’ll be like — my vampire elevator.” 

So Armand does, long after the deck had closed and the tourists had cleared out. His hands secured under Daniel’s arms, Daniel standing on the tops of his feet. 

“Oh shit. Oh, fuck.” 

“Stop squirming, Daniel. I would prefer not to drop you.”

“Oh, god. Please don’t drop me. Fuck.”

His squirming turns to trembling as they float higher and higher and he tries to keep still. Tries to keep from ducking his face into Armand’s neck. Up above the tops of the buildings, then higher, higher, higher. Until Armand lifts them over the top of the railing, deposits him gently on the deck, and they’re alone, soaring over the city, bright lights shining back at them. 

“Wow,” Daniel says, darting to the edge to gaze out now that he’s no longer at risk of falling to his death. “God, this is incredible. We have the whole place to ourselves.”

He leans as far as he can manage, shouts, gleefully, “Helloooooo, New York!” High on adrenaline, the belated thrill of flight. He grabs Armand’s hand, kisses his face. 

He had, inevitably, started a fight about it — wouldn’t it be better if he could fly himself, wouldn’t it be better if he couldn’t ever die, couldn’t Armand just turn him — but, you know, for what it’s worth, it had been a nice night while it lasted. 

“What are you thinking about?” Armand asks him, his brow furrowed. 

“I know you’re trying to dig into my head,” Daniel says, reaching forward to smooth the creased skin between his eyebrows. “Give it up. It won’t work.” He smiles. “Next time you come over, we’re going to watch Sleepless in Seattle. It’ll drive you crazy.”

One of his old J-school professor friends from CUNY calls him up to come do a lecture on journalistic integrity in the middle of the fall semester. Well, he says friend. Friend in the way journalists are friends, which is in a way that involves envy and hatred and competition. His friend wants to use him for cool points with his Zoomer students because he’s the hottest shit on the market right now; his friend also wants to give a lecture the week prior in which he points out all the ways Daniel’s book is potentially not reliable and should be questioned heartily, as any material presented as nonfiction would be. He’s a passive aggressive little shit. Daniel agrees because there’s only so long he can do public appearance shit before it gets egregious and because his friend is a piece of shit professor who Daniel is going to upstage by miles — and because he gives a fuck about the future of journalism, or whatever. 

It’s a Tuesday night class, and when he walks in early, Armand is already sitting in the back row. His iPad is open to a blank notes page. Daniel knows him by the slope of his shoulders, then the more obvious spread of his sharp nails on the table. 

“You’re good,” Daniel says on his way to the front of the classroom, hand passing lightly over Armand’s shoulders. “I should hire you on my research team.”

“No thank you,” Armand says politely, smiling at him. “I already have my hands full.”

He’s right about his effect on the class: they’re all enraptured, save for a few who couldn’t give a shit either way. Daniel respects them all equally. They ask questions about Interview, of course. Basic shit. How long it took to write, what gave him the idea. He feels Armand seethe when he says, “Well, I actually met Louis in the 70s, and we’re still close now. Yeah, we call each other all the time.” Then, at last —

Armand, with the air of someone who isn’t wearing a shit eating grin but would certainly like to be, raises his elegant hand in the air. 

“Many people have accused your work of being fictional. They imply it’s untrustworthy, outlandish—”

“And nowhere have they implied it’s poorly-written. It’s funny how that works. Your point is?” 

“I just wonder, as a journalist who prides himself on justice and truth, how this makes you feel.” 

“It makes me laugh. What do you think? Do you find the book untrustworthy?” 

“You describe Lestat as a giant, an Adonis, a paragon of masculinity—”

“Louis describes Lestat that way, and—”

“I mean, he’s kind of a piece of shit, but I get it,” chimes in a kid who’s, for the last several minutes, been picking at their fingernails. “I’d do anything to fuck him, too. Are he and Louis together again?” 

“Yes,” Daniel lies, and relishes in the sound of Armand’s nails digging into the tabletop. “They’re together and loving every minute.”

“Are you kidding?” This one on the opposite side of the room. They’re exes, the two of them — Daniel uncovers it without thinking. “Lestat is a textbook abuser. Louis never really grew at all if he went back to Lestat. He sounds like a sweet guy, but, I mean, come on.”

“Yes,” Armand says, unusually loud, and Daniel laughs, and the professor, overwhelmed with this budding open forum, says, “Remember, guys, let’s all raise our hands before we ask Mr. Molloy a question, okay?” Then he nods to Armand, says, “Young man,” a term which makes Armand balk, “did you want to finish your thought?”

Armand sniffs, straightens, and nods. “Your first three books are meticulously researched. Your memoir, on the contrary, is written from the perspective of an addict who himself admits to struggling with the art of recollection.” 

He can’t help himself. “There is no way you’re serious about—”

“Then you open yourself to more critique, more danger, by boldly declaring vampires are real. Something very few humans or vampires want to hear.” A light snicker around the room at this. 

“I’m not so worried about the threat of danger,” Daniel says, grinning his unabashed shit-eating grin. “I have a very powerful ancient vampire on my side. Look, I’m not sure what you want me to say,” Daniel says. “I wrote Interview with the Vampire the same way I did The Internet’s Gavel — according to you, my last legitimate book.”

“No,” Armand says, his brows furrowing in careful thought. “It seems, to me, much more like A Shadow on the Skin. The same openness, the same passion. In both books, you write about many things, but most importantly you write about love.”

It takes all his willpower and then some not to lunge across the room and tackle Armand to the ground, to kill him or fuck him or both. “Long time fan, huh?” 

“Yes,” Armand says, and Daniel is suddenly hit with the vivid, graphic, all-night-long memory of Armand attending the launch party for Hate and Ashbury, loudly reflected off the mind of a girl in the front row. “I have several more questions, if you—”

“Yeah, that’s nice, but we have to move on,” says an admittedly frazzled Daniel. “Just see me after class.” 

Armand is the first out the door as a handful of overachievers corner him after class and ask him a few follow-ups about his work, about internships. He signs several books and hands out his work email and then shakes the students off, turns down the repeated offer of drinks from his friend, and, once he’s alone, lights a cigarette and smokes it leaned against the side of the building. 

Armand emerges, somewhat cagey, with his own cigarette. Daniel offers the embers of his to light Armand’s, and their eyes meet as the ends touch. 

“So,” Daniel says, “you came to see me in 2010.” Armand’s gaze darts away. “I’m sure the nice young lady in the front row enjoyed the demonstration of your deepthroating prowess.”

“She was thinking of having sex with you the moment she walked in the room. She masturbates while she scrolls through your Twitter.” 

“Oh, and you don’t? I thought you weren’t going to help me remember anything.” 

It’s silent for a long while — long enough for Daniel to light a second cigarette, which he does by brushing his thumb over the end. 

Armand, still staunchly refusing to look at him, finally says, “It’s a favorite of mine.” 

“I think the weirdest thing is,” Daniel starts, then rolls the idea around on his tongue for a minute. “I’m not surprised you read my first book. That was your job, I think. Boyfriend duty. But you’ve read the rest of them.”

This is what gets him to look up, eyes flashing indignantly. “I have read everything you’ve ever written.” 

“Did we call each other boyfriend? Surely not. Sounds weird even saying out loud.”

“You were my beloved,” Armand says. “My lover. My boy.” 

“Your human pet. Your mortal fool. I get it,” Daniel says, not neglecting to notice his use of the past tense. “You want to go see a movie?”

This is like a carrot on a string for Armand. Easy money. “Yes,” Armand says, and Daniel stubs his cigarette out on the brick and feels pleased with himself for securing his attention for that much longer.

They walk to Times Square in companionable silence, slipping through the throngs of tourists with relative ease. Daniel entertains elaborate fantasies of killing each one of them that bumps against his shoulder, and he has to keep his mouth shut so as to contain his fangs, sure, but his spatial awareness is better than it was when he was alive. 

Daniel buys them tickets to the new Mission Impossible in 4DX and a cherry ICEE, which he passes to Armand once he’s sliced his wrist and emptied enough of his blood into it to make it pleasant for him. 

“It’s a new thing,” he explains, while they coast on the escalators up to their theater. “Well, new-ish. Supposed to be immersive, with all these special effects. Smoke and water and wind. Don’t worry about the plot, really, or whether or not you’ve seen any of the others. You know, in fact, don’t expect anything at all. If you really hate it, we’ll just drain Tom Cruise and Robin Hood his cash.” 

Armand does not hate it. Armand, for the first half hour, holds his ICEE cup with both hands and sips through the straw, his eyes glued to the screen. Once the cup is empty, he discards it and presses his arms along the length of the armrests like he’s trying to become one with his chair. His eyes flash like LED headlights with finesse, yellow-orange-yellow-red-orange. When his seat rocks and vibrates, he lets out delighted peals of laughter. His eyes dart to seek the source of the wind, the fog, the changes in temperature and smell. 

Daniel, mostly, watches Armand watch the movie — seeing as Armand hardly registers he’s there at all, it presents a good opportunity. Affection spools out and away from him dangerously, and morphs into wanting, and Daniel would paw at Armand to demand his attention if only he wasn’t aware that would produce Armand’s ire and would generally sour the mood of the evening. 

A memory tugs at him, hot off the presses, and he’s thankful for the distraction, sits back in his seat and closes his eyes and tries to remember in the midst of the surround sound gunfire. 

It’s: he and Armand in a seedy theater in the Village. They sit in the back row. Armand is leaned over the armrest between them, his long fingers wrapped around Daniel’s dick. On the screen, one beefy, oiled up dude is well on his way to fisting another beefy, oiled up dude. He could have come twenty minutes ago, probably, but Armand is doing some fucked up thing with his mind that means Daniel can’t, so instead he’s near tears and leaking precome all over his lap. 

He’s not the only person in the room with his dick out — in fact, Armand might be the only one in the room who’s still fully clothed — but he is one of few who’s here with someone. 

They’d whistled at the pair of them when they strolled in, Armand’s arm tucked in his. They whistle at Armand because he’s pretty, because he has nice tits and that appealing androgyny thing going for him. Because he’s well-groomed and has a sharp gaze and is lovely. They whistle at Daniel because he’s a boy with curls to tug and a mouth that looks ideal for cocksucking. They whistle because they’re jealous, because they’re rabidly horny. Armand tells him, sometimes, what they imagine, looking at the pair of them, things that run the sexual gamut: he, over there, wants to be Eiffel towered. This one wants Armand alone. The other wants Daniel. He wants to watch, and he wants to invite them both back to a party with his other handsome, young friends. It’s not that any of these things are inherently lesser, it’s just that Armand has a plan when he brings Daniel places like this. 

His plan, tonight, is this. The new kind of edging he must have invented, and the things he murmurs in Daniel’s mind. Such strong arms, such thick legs. He could hold you down for hours and watch you struggle. The flex of his muscles. You can think of nothing else. You want to know what he smells like. His musk. Ah, look at the way he takes it. Could you ever hope to accept something so big? To stretch your hole until it gapes?

“Please,” Daniel begs, delirious with pleasure, and he squirms in his seat, and fat tears drip down his face and stain his collar. “Please, baby, please, please, please …”

Armand, eventually, takes pity, opens the floodgates. Daniel comes with a shout, arching taut off the seat. His shirt is ruined, he’s sure of it — Armand won’t care, but he’d liked this one. Silk, a dark green. Armand kisses his temple sweetly, his praise for the whole ordeal, and is delighted when he says, “You were responsible for the orgasm of a man in the front row. Such pretty sounds. He has never come so hard before in his life.” 

Just a moment of respite before Armand is touching him again, stroking his spent and sensitive dick to renewed hardness. He comes twice more before the film ends: by the third, is essentially shooting a blank, his dick twitching pitifully in Armand’s hand. He’s delirious and brainless, and when the credits roll, Armand tucks him into his jeans and holds Daniel’s weight as his legs tremble. His head lolls as they exit onto the street, and Armand calls a cab, to go wherever they’re going next, and Daniel thinks, near-incoherent, haven’t I been good, don’t I deserve a taste, and Armand thumbs his bottom lip, says, “They want you now more than they did before, spent and fucked out thing,” and then he cuts his forearm and offers Daniel his lifeblood to revive him before their night goes on. 

He, now, is not so thankful for the distraction. Daniel curses his bad timing and his dick straining in his jeans and the fact that it’s been months with no sign of a renewal on their sex life. He curses the fact that he’s been too wrapped up in this interpersonal drama to celebrate that his dick works like a twenty-year old dick again with an actual fuck fest. He curses Tom Cruise for being Tom Cruise and, maybe, for holding Armand’s attention so well. 

Daniel refuses to get up and go jerk off in the bathroom, so instead he grips his thighs and waits for his erection to fade, which it does eventually before the lights come back up. Armand has lost none of his shine — the opposite, in fact. He clasps Daniel’s hands in his like a 50s heroine, is near-breathless when he says, “You have shown me something strange and delightful. I must know how it works.” He’s out of the theater in a flash, and Daniel follows close behind. Armand has managed to corner a uniformed employee, who he’s bombarding with questions. Said uniformed employee looks concerned for their safety, and is repeatedly insisting they don’t know, that they just work the concessions and clean the bathroom sometimes when they’re short-staffed. 

Daniel’s teeth ache. 

He tugs Armand’s elbow, tosses an apologetic grin to the poor kid. “Come on,” he says. “You can look it up on Reddit later. I’d like to grab a bite to eat.” He’s decided that if he’s not going to satiate one hunger — dragging Armand to the nearest horizontal surface and having him over and over and over until he can’t get it up anymore — he can at least satiate the other, this roaring call for blood that remains ever-present. 

Armand, devoted as ever to seeing him fed, allows himself to be pulled away. Daniel finds their late-night snack, one of those assholes who charges people twenty bucks to use his flashy, 360° selfie stick. As he drags the guy away by the neck, he crushes the guy’s speaker, blaring “New York, New York,” with his foot. 

He bites first while Armand watches, several safe paces away, but pulls off to nod his maker forward. “C’mere,” he says, blood dripping down his chin. “Have some.” Armand, for once, doesn’t protest. He tucks in on the other side of the guy’s neck; their foreheads nuzzle while they eat. He closes his eyes and sees Armand, his bell-bright laugh, his feet kicked up on a couch, the long length of his spine as he bends over the bargain bin at a video store. Remembers nights spent at home, at the movies, his fingers greasy with popcorn butter as they trace over Armand’s skin, as Armand drinks from him, and Daniel asks, hazy, “Is it saltier than normal?” 

He remembers, remembers, remembers, and at last he tears his teeth away, laughing: “Fuck you,” he says. “I’ve seen Star Wars. You made me forget Star Wars.” 

Armand licks his lips clean as the body slumps into sweet death between them. “We saw each installment of the original trilogy together. It was another necessary removal.”

“I went on two dates with a really hot girl in the 90s who refused to fuck me because I hadn’t seen Star Wars.”

Armand shrugs. “You could have offered to watch them with her.” 

“Why would I do that? I was a decade late, and I’d already seen them with you.” Daniel hoists the body up over his shoulder. “You’re going to watch them again with me. You owe me that.” 

It feels like an obvious ploy, a Netflix and chill type thing. It maybe is that. Daniel replaced his couch in 2015 and has never once fucked someone on it; why shouldn’t it be his maker/ex lover/creature determined to eternally vex him? It is, without a doubt, that Daniel has him on the hook. He was starved for movies in Dubai, and they’re better with a fledgling/ex lover/hopelessly and unwillingly devoted parasite. 

Armand says yes. They start the next night. 

He brings Daniel fresh blood in a massive, bright blue cup with a straw; there’s a matching thermos sticking out of the top of his messenger bag. 

“It’s a Stanley cup,” Armand tells him in his infomercial voice. “It keeps hot beverages hot, and cold beverages cold. It is a clean girl staple.” 

“I’m not either of those things,” Daniel says, with a quirked brow, “but thank you.” He takes a sip: the blood, to Armand’s credit, is still hot. 

It becomes another of their standing dates: Armand brings him blood or Daniel hunts, and they work their way through as many movies as they can before Daniel starts to nod off around dawn. 

From what he understands, this is when Armand starts spending days in his apartment. For the first time since Armand’s arrival back in his life, they see each other more than one night at a time. Armand asks him questions and tells him things about movies they haven’t watched together; more than once, he’s found Armand in his kitchen when he wakes up, carefully and cleanly extracting blood from a body into his thermos. 

They flip through genres, through decades. Armand has a penchant for sci-fi, still, but he glues himself to the screen for an action flick with good special effects and is enchanted by, honest to God, the shittiest comedies Daniel has ever seen. 

Armand has a surround sound system installed in Daniel’s living room. A week and a half later, they watch Interstellar for the first time. A week and a half after that, when he’s been woken by blaring Hans Zimmer one too many times, Daniel buys Armand noise-canceling headphones. 

One morning, Daniel becomes briefly lucid in his bed — only he’d been on the couch, last he remembers. He blinks, twists around, and finds Armand hovering above him. His head bent down, his eyes dark and serene. His hands are outstretched, flitting inches above the duvet. 

“You tucked me in,” Daniel murmurs, smiling. “Bed’s big enough for two, you know.”

“I won’t join you,” Armand says, his brow furrowing. “There’s no need. If I needed to sleep, which I don’t, I would simply rest on the couch.”

“You know there’s no need to pretend we haven’t fucked in ways that would make Hugh Hefner blush, yeah? You’re allowed to lay down beside me.” 

Armand, with that same, puzzled look, strokes his thumb over Daniel’s eyebrow. He pushes his fingers through Daniel’s curls and tenderly strokes his scalp. 

Daniel’s confident that if he could work at it for a few minutes longer, he could get Armand to stay, but he’s soothed, and sleepy, and he’s pulled under before he can do anything about it. 

When he wakes, the other half of the bed looks the same as it had before, and Armand is long gone. Daniel doesn’t see him again for months. 

He sends each of his daughters half a million bucks over the holidays, then endures the follow-up holy shit, thank you, are you okay? calls from both. 

He tells them, “I just didn’t want you to have to wait for me to die.” He ends each call by saying, “Maybe we’ll get together next year, yeah?”

On New Year’s Eve, he goes out alone, drains a happy couple, and gets riotously drunk. He waits out the winter and comes to love it for the extra darkness it grants him. It’s still a barren and starving thing, the winter, and it only takes him until the first snow of the season to figure out the hunger is Armand’s. 

The Armand Project grows over a thousand pages long and stalls, because there’s only so much he can do without Armand giving him memories by osmosis.

In lieu of a lead, he pitches the idea as a book to his agent, who responds with: Molloy, you’re a decent writer, but you’ve lost your mind. 

He doesn’t stop trying, though, as winter melts away into tepid spring. Is, in fact, leaned over a bartop reading the room for the night’s research assistant when Armand slips in the space next to him. 

Daniel scowls at him. 

“You won’t find what you’re looking for here,” Armand tells him. 

Daniel’s scowl grows deeper. “Those lines don’t work when I know you can’t read my mind. Doesn’t make you cool and mysterious, just makes you seem like an asshole.”

Armand looks a little — well, heroin-chic, if he’s doing the Manhattanite thing of trying to make bad behavior sound sexy. He lacks the flush, plump glow of fresh blood. His eyes are without their usual shine, a little unnervingly dull. 

“Come with me,” Armand tells him, then he turns and goes. 

“Fine,” Daniel says, though it’s drowned out by the crowd, the top 40s coming through the speakers. “Your mistake, though, handing me what I’m looking for on a silver platter.” 

They take the train uptown, hands curled adjacent on the subway poll. “Does it not make you hungry,” he asks, “being in the middle of the proverbial buffet?” 

“No,” Armand says, his eyelashes fluttering. “I am not such a wild thing.” 

“Would it kill you to be, every now and then?” 

“Yes.” 

Armand slips them in through the staff entrance of the Morgan Library, through winding hallways and up the stairs, into a private collection room. 

“Any particular reason we’re here?” Daniel asks. 

Armand frowns at him. “The Morgan contains one of the most treasured archives for literature and art in the world.”

“Ooh,” Daniel says, “did you read that on the website?” 

Armand is trying to impress him, then. It’s not really working. He’s being forced to worry about his maker’s wellbeing, which is something he’s been trying to avoid, as it makes him want to throw an explosive tantrum for reasons he doesn’t understand. 

Daniel obliges him, still, because if Armand gets any fussier it’s going to light the spark in him — he sinks into a plush armchair and waits for Armand to join him in the one adjacent. 

Then it’s just silence. He waits for Armand to provide him with any clue about what he expects, what he wants, why he’s back, why he was gone so long, but nothing comes. 

“Should I be offended,” Daniel asks finally, fingers splayed across his stomach as he stares up at the ceiling, “that you’re wooing me by recreating the most memorable dates you shared with your ex?” 

“That was Paris,” Armand points out. “This is New York.” 

“Right,” Daniel says, rolling his eyes. “That makes all the difference. So, because we’re in New York, what’s happening is you’re recreating the most memorable dates you shared with me. The ones you made me forget?” 

“We have never been here before,” Armand says. “You know that as well as I do.”

“I’ve gotta say, it was bold of you to bring me on a date that just involves us being trapped in a quiet room. If there’s anyone who likes hearing himself talk more than Louis, it’s me. Did the two of you ever fuck on one of those museum tables in Paris?”

“We went every night for a month.” Armand sounds affronted he even had to ask. 

“So I can’t even make it unique by pulling my dick out. That’s a real shame.”

“I’m sorry,” Armand says, voice reedy and tight, “are you not having a good time? Are you bored?” 

“I’m having a great time.” Daniel scoffs. He’s affronted Armand even had to ask. Still, he pushes up from the chair, swings his legs over the side, and crosses the distance to Armand, who’s still staring straight up at the ceiling and ignoring him as much as possible. His fault for picking a quiet room. “I’m not bored,” he says, reaching for Armand’s fingers and interlocking them. “I feel like you’re courting me, and it’s freaking me out.” A gentle tug to his hand, and Armand finally looks his way. “Come on. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.” 

He’s not, not in any way beyond the way he always sort of is, the newborn fledgling’s curse, but Armand’s hunger is as such that he doesn’t notice. It’s nice that Daniel can lie to him — he should do it more often. 

Daniel tears into their prey, first, though he’s very nearly holding her at arms’ length. Trying to entice Armand, who stands a few feet away looking perplexed. 

“Come on,” he says when he pulls away. She groans lowly, blood oozing down her neck. “Have a bite. What is this, some kind of special fast you’re doing?” But Armand remains far and away, so Daniel finishes her alone. There’s a dumpster he tosses her into, and Armand has remained all but frozen in place by the time he returns. His jaw flexes, his lips part, and Daniel sees his fangs extended. 

“You’re hungry,” Daniel says, prowling closer. He knows he’s never had anything half as good as Armand’s blood — once because he was human, now because Armand is his maker. He figures, surely, that has to work the same in reverse. He reaches up and cuts a gash in his throat, lets the thick blood drain out, stain the collar of his shirt. “You’re hungry and you’re driving me crazy. Come on. Come here. If I can’t wait too long between meals, neither can you.” 

Armand looks down, exhales like he’s punching out his own breath. He looks chastised — looks half-starved. 

In the next second, he pounces, pinning Daniel back against the wall and tearing into his throat. 

He doesn’t bother trying to masquerade the pain, doesn’t stop after a polite sip. He drinks like a glutton, sucking down great gulps. His hands are curled in tight fists at Daniel’s shoulders. Daniel luxuriates, stretches his neck back high and laughs. 

It’s better than it’s ever been, this feeling, better than when Armand drained him to the point of death and better than any time before. 

Daniel palms at his waist, and Armand makes a sound, pushing himself flush, and Daniel feels with overwhelming delight the curve of Armand’s erection pressing against his thigh.

“Yes,” he breathes, as Armand whines, and his hands curl in tightly to drag Armand closer. Until he arches prettily into Daniel’s front, until his hips rock up in tiny, helpless thrusts. He babbles incessantly, stroking his thumbs over Armand’s sides: “God you’re so hot, yeah, like that, come on, baby, come on, isn’t it better when you’re eating right? Want you to come on my leg, want you, come on—”

And then Armand fists his collar, pushes at his shoulders, tears away from him with a strangled little cry. 

“We were just getting started,” Daniel says, reaching out his hand. 

“You vex me, fledgling,” he spits, says fledgling like it’s a curse. 

“Come on,” Daniel says again. It’s the best he can do without begging outright. He stalls, sputters, lands on: “You want to fuck me. I want to fuck you. Why aren’t we at it like animals? Why have you let me leave my apartment at all?” 

“You have no concept of what you want,” Armand hisses. “You are greedy, a thing of destruction.”

“Tell me you regret it,” Daniel goads, feeling mean and vindictive and always, forever hungry. “Tell me you regret making me and I might believe you don’t want to fuck me so bad it makes your blood boil.” 

Silence, from Armand. A dangerous sort of quiet. 

“I know your blood,” Daniel says, scoffs. He pushes off the wall, steps close enough to Armand that their shoulders brush. “It’s all mine. I know what you want better than you do.” 

He knows, too, that it’ll be devastating to them both to part — so he rips the band-aid, stalks off furiously into the night.

She’s good, which is why Daniel lets her do the work rather than meditating until he remembers the cross streets of every place they ever stayed. She directs him to a townhouse in the West Village that he doesn’t remember — that he’s apparently owned since 1980. 

He goes on a Wednesday, stands outside and listens for the thoughts of anyone living inside. Nothing. Which could mean Armand is sitting inside watching QVC on cable, or it could mean he’s on a fool’s errand. A little bit of force and he knocks open the door without really trying, eases himself into the darkness. 

The place is quiet, dark, eerily clean. Either Armand has been living here or Armand hired people to clean it regularly in 1980 and, inexplicably, they never stopped. There’s an imposing pile of mail in the front room that’s untouched; Daniel vows to himself that he won’t go through it unless he gets really desperate. 

The kitchen is the most crowded, countertops lined with blenders and toasters and more novel items: electric knives, deli slicers, a percolator, a slow cooker, a hand mixer, a few teapots. 

“True crime podcasts would have a field day with this place,” he says aloud, because there’s at least a chance Armand will hear him — as opposed to the normal routine, which is squeezing his eyes shut, clicking his heels together, and thinking this time he’ll really hear me, and it’ll be just like before. “‘It seems like this guy was some kind of wannabe Hannibal Lecter. What was he doing with all those blenders?’ And cut to commercial, ‘Maybe you’ve also found yourself with an overcrowded kitchen and blood and guts splattered on the wall. Well, have we got the meal subscription box for you…’”

He plugs one blender in, curious, and runs it for a few seconds. The whir of the blades is grating, rougher than newer models and coarse after years of disuse. The memories nudge their way into his head: waking up to the sound in the middle of the afternoon, shoving his pillow over his head to try and drown it out, get some more sleep. Blenders, blenders, blenders, and the blare of at least one TV, until his anger reaches a fever pitch and he stomps to the kitchen to demand, “If you’re going to keep me up all night, you can’t make this much noise during the day!”

Armand, wild and wide-eyed, his hair tied back, blood on his cheeks. “Did I wake you, beloved?”

Daniel always found himself roped into some kind of indulgence. Perched on a seat in the corner, bleary-eyed, while Armand created a series of inedible concoctions and showed them off to Daniel one by one. Follow up questions: You like the blue, yeah? Oh, that one’s smoother than the one you made yesterday? Well, did you add more water? You know they make food coloring you can use to dye what you eat?

Promises to find food coloring when they next went out for groceries, Daniel slumping further and further down in his seat, Armand eventually realizing the sun was still out and Daniel was still being pulled under by exhaustion. Daniel cradled in his arms as he was carried back to bed, Armand soothing him back to restful sleep with his gift.

It could have been here; it could have been anywhere they stayed. The memories are still just memories, hazy and separate from reality.

The strange, gnawing fondness that accompanies is harder to describe out loud. This time he’ll really hear me, and it’ll be just like before.

Electricity’s still on, he notes. Bizarre. Armand, the flighty and extravagant spender he is, never kept up with bills and the actual management of his money more than he had to. There’s most likely a bank somewhere that’s still writing regular utility checks for this place, the expense a drop in the bucket of whatever multi-millions he has. Doesn’t let him know whether or not Armand is still here. 

The bedroom upstairs is just the same, pillows fluffed and creased, sheets tucked properly under the mattress. Clothes in dust bags hanging in the wardrobe that don’t appear new or modern. No signs of life or death.  

He tells himself he didn’t expect Armand to be here, that he knows Armand picks up and discards real estate at random. The idea that he’d return to one property of dozens, that he’d even remember it, is laughable. 

But it’s an offense. All of it. 

The neat corners and the sterile rooms and the clean slate on which it all rests, revealing nothing. He rages, a sudden uptick — hears himself snarl as if it’s someone else. He is hungry, always hungry, and craves only destruction. His nails rake divots into the wooden bedposts as he goes, down the kitschy wallpaper that lines the hall. 

The front door opens: he leans out, snags the first thirtysomething asshole to stroll by alone. 

“You,” Daniel growls lowly, tugging a tight lasso around his mind and yanking him up the stairs. “Come with me.” 

Back up to the bedroom where they’d once slept, fucked, read. Daniel makes him sit on Armand’s side of the bed. He bites into the jugular carelessly, lets the blood spray into the room. 

Armand likes a mess, doesn’t he? He probably flinches every time somebody spills a drink. So Daniel will make a mess for him. Something big. Something that will infuriate Armand, that will give him an urge to chew Daniel out for his recklessness that’s so strong he won’t be able to resist. He won’t be able to resist, and it’ll be just like before.  

More blood ends up coating the walls and the bed than it does in Daniel’s mouth. He lets the guy scream and groan and twitch until he’s lifeless, slumped against the headboard. 

It’s not enough. The pressure builds behind his teeth; the hunger gnarls into something uglier. He flips his belt open, drags his jeans down. Throws himself face-down onto the bed straddling the leg of the lifeless corpse. 

He jerks himself roughly to full hardness like he’s doing it competitively — and it isn’t a difficult thing. He’s pent up, frantic, has been ignoring his dick in favor of other noble pursuits. 

It’s easy to imagine his shadow in the corner of the room. The lamplight barely reaches the chair there, meant to obscure its resident. Daniel had told him, once, that people didn’t mind when he watched — it was just creepy, the way he did it. Set in his ways, he’d remained a haunting silhouette in the corner. He’d been an active participant, directing Daniel like a puppet, sometimes. Not always. Sometimes he’d be silent, which was worse. 

He’s silent now, will be forever. Daniel imagines him like he once had: ankles crossed primly, hands laid across his lap. Eyes unblinking. Thinking — thinking what? Well done, Daniel. That’s what he’d imagined, once, while he was sweating and grunting and making love to Armand’s chosen. 

Now it’s different. Now, as he grinds his dick against the rapidly cooling thigh beneath him: You want me. I see that now. I was blind before. Oh, Daniel, I see it all.   

Daniel comes like a faucet, leaves a nasty stain on the Brooks Brothers trouser of his chosen. His eyelids are still half-open, his body contorted into an impossibly uncomfortable recline. 

He stands as he buttons himself back up. Observes the blood and the come and the ruined bedroom. Tentative stasis achieved. He’s proud of his work. 

One final touch: he finds a Sharpie in one of the drawers downstairs that still contains miscellaneous collections of Armand’s fascinations. 

Scribbles his phone number on the dead man’s forehead, along with “Call 4 a good time—” 

He wonders how long it’ll take for the body to rot, for the smell to reach the neighbors. Wonders how long until the place, the body, gets traced back to him. Wonders just how scorched earth he’ll go, when it comes down to it. Maybe to the end. 

Or maybe he’ll fuck off somewhere Armand can’t find him, somewhere hidden, somewhere he has to comb the globe to get to. It’ll be just like before. 

It occurs to him, as he’s observing his fangs in the mirror the following night, that he doesn’t actually have to put up with Armand’s shit. So Armand is determined, for whatever reason, not to fuck him. He’s been polite, and he’s pounced, and neither worked, and so fucking what? He’s too young to be hanging his hopes on a maker who doesn’t want to be a maker, who’s too scared to fuck him despite the fact that they’ve done it thousands of times already. 

He’s also too old to put up with a couple dozen twinks on Grindr itching for a daddy routine, so he sticks to what he knows — buys a basic harness and goes cruising in a leather bar the old fashioned way. 

He and Armand had come here a few times, back in the day, though it was in a different spot then. The vibe of it hasn’t changed much, which is a small miracle: there are guys with their tongues down each other’s throats the second he steps inside. Guys in jockstraps and denim cutoffs and in various states of leather and undress. The room smells of sex and sweat and humanity, a potency which still retains appeal. There’s a guy, he notes, amused, who’s blowing his boyfriend in the back corner. Hearts are pounding; blood is pumping. It’s a heady thing, and he’s half hard before he gets past coat check. 

He’d worn his harness under his jacket, which he discards, and he leaves his jeans on. No points for effort, really, but who gives a shit? He moves with a confidence, with eternal grace, that’s unmatchable. He’d left his sunglasses at home, lets his eyes shine ethereal violet (because he’s not thinking about Armand, he’s not he’s not he’s not). 

The rest is easy. He buys a drink at the bar and listens for someone whose gaze has snagged on him. Who’s into old fucks but doesn’t want to be dommed within an inch of his life and doesn’t want to play out some rote stepdad fantasy. 

Leaned back against the bar, his elbows placed behind him, his hips jutting out. His dick a solid line in his jeans. There — mid-50s bear over by the sound system eyeing him up and down. Daniel smiles. 

Daniel curls around his amygdala and posits the thought: I want to fuck him. I bet he’d be easy.  

He approaches, a marionette on a string, and buys Daniel a drink. He’s too affable to be quick about it, and he chats with Daniel for several excruciating minutes. His name is Damien and he’s a social worker, and he finds this whole scene relaxing, and when Daniel tells him he writes books he insists on pulling up his website so he can check out his stuff later, and Daniel kisses him to shut him up at his first opening, drags him in the direction of the upstairs bathroom at his next. 

He lets himself be shoved up against the wall, palms pressed flat to cool tile. Some things different than they used to be: he could shove the guy off of him in a heartbeat, if that’s what he wanted, and he can see every obscured detail in the dark. Some things the same: the guy grinds his clothed boner against the cleft of Daniel’s ass and shoves a popper under his nose. 

He inhales, full and deep. No headrush, no heat trickling down to his toes, but the phantom memory of it. 

The guy unbuckles Daniel’s jeans and shoves them down to his thighs, grinds against him some more. Slow, filthy thrusts, rubbing the wet tip of his dick against Daniel’s ass. He’s gentle from the start, all things considered. He pushes the tip in, waits. Fucks in inch by inch, giving Daniel time to adjust. It’s excruciating — it’s heaven. He’s thick and he fills him full, stretches him to the point of delicious, throbbing pain, and when he really gets going, he fucking gets going. 

Damien fucks him hard, then, and Daniel rocks back against him with a series of relieved groans, and he grabs Daniel’s head and shoves it forward ‘til his cheek is pressed to the wall. 

He blinks.  

Armand.

Standing against the wall, just past the door. He stands there primly, hands — encased in sleek leather gloves, the motherfucker — clasped in front of him. A full leather getup that seems to have been molded around the shape of him: slim pants tucked into polished ankle boots, a vest that zips up the front and hugs the dip of his waist, cradles the heft of his chest. 

His eyes are bright and focused. Daniel’s eyes flash orange back at him, calling out: hey! You’re here! I missed you! It’s demeaning. He might as well have a tail to wag. 

Armand watches and Daniel watches him and arches into the thrusts and groans like he means it, and he thinks, piteously loudly, This was so much better when you were in my head, before he realizes Armand can’t actually hear him, and that’s the point. At some point Damien moves his hand from Daniel’s head back to his hip so he can hold him there as he fucks him, but Daniel doesn’t move his gaze, and he notices, and when he does he turns his head to meet the shock-warm light of Armand’s eyes. 

“C’mere, baby,” Damien says, beckoning to Armand. Daniel tenses, feels fury start building behind his breastbone. “Your eyes are fuckin’ something else. Like a cat’s. Shit, that’s somethin’. You want a better view? C’mere.”

Armand tilts his head curiously, like he’s surprised to be acknowledged, but he obeys, gliding across the room with all the grace of an heiress. He steps out of Daniel’s sight, and Daniel does the very courageous thing of not twisting around to look for him like he’s an infant with no object permanence. 

Daniel plunges into Damien’s head instead. He doesn’t discriminate: he’s just as pleased about the fact that some pretty young thing is giving him the time of day as he is that he’s balls-deep in a geriatric hole. Daniel watches Armand from his eyes, sees the flash of his vest’s zipper and the outline of his silhouette but not much else, strains to make out more details in the dark. 

Armand steps close enough to touch and Damien does, slinging an arm around his waist. “There you are,” he says, and Daniel seethes, clenching around his dick. 

But he’s not alone, he realizes, in the pleasure-center of Damien’s mind. Armand is there, too. They don’t blend, oil and water, but rub together like socializing cats, a warm and welcome thing. Armand gives Damien the thought — slim, dark, gloved hands on Daniel’s waist, trim hips snapping into him — and Daniel receives it, loud and clear. Daniel reciprocates: both of them on their knees before Armand, Damien with his mouth warm and wet around Armand’s dick and Daniel drinking enthusiastically from his plush inner thigh. He hears Armand exhale behind him, hears Damien make a strung-out noise of delighted confusion.

“This is fucked,” Daniel breathes. His laugh is giddy; his dick twitches in midair. 

“Touch me,” Damien says, desperately, so Armand does, gloved hand raising to stroke his bare chest. Daniel’s jaw clenches. It’s asinine, it’s juvenile. He’s the one bent over getting fucked, the one who’s taken initiative. Armand is smooth and calm and looks like he’s enjoying this, actually, but then he always did, didn’t he? Maybe it was never about the mindgames and he’s just a bonafide voyeur, and Daniel is fulfilling a fantasy for him, so he should chill the fuck out and let his hole get pounded into oblivion while his maker watches from the front row. 

“Kiss me,” Damien says, so Armand does, hand cradling his cheek, and he does it so sweetly, and Daniel’s hunger howls, and in a second he has the guy pinned back against the wall, forearm spread against his broad chest. 

He hardly has the time to look shocked before Daniel’s fangs sink in; he shouts when they do, and it blends seamlessly into the pounding, throbbing roll of the couples in the room and the bass downstairs. Daniel drains him in minutes, sucking down big and messy gulps, blood dripping onto his chin and onto the floor. He grinds his dick into the meaty curve of the guy’s stomach while he goes slack, then limp, then cold; Daniel discards him thoughtlessly, lets him slump to the floor with his head tucked to his chest. 

The taste of him doesn’t register — nothing registers, not until his fingers curl in the shoulder strap of Armand’s vest and yank him forward. “I always hated,” Daniel tells him, his wild eyes the color of blazing sunset, “when you made me sleep with other people. Did you know that?” 

Armand’s eyes are wide, searching, as Daniel pushes him to his knees. Pushes him further, has him sprawl next to the body with his legs outstretched. As Daniel mounts him, grinds against the bulge in his pants. “I was a whore, yeah? It just made me feel like one.” Not the right words, but Armand is hardly listening. 

His bottom lip is lax, his mouth open, his fangs pointing out. He cradles Daniel’s head, thumbs his ear. Daniel drags the zipper of his vest down so he can palm Armand’s tit, sharp nail flicking over the dark peak of his nipple. He gasps; Daniel tightens his legs down around Armand’s waist and grinds down.  

It jumpstarts Armand into speech, dazed as it is: “Ruthless boy,” he breathes. “Hungry little fledgling.” He leans forward and kitten-licks the drying blood on Daniel’s chin. 

“Fuck me,” Daniel says, shoves his hand between them so he can pull apart the buttons holding Armand’s pants together. Draws his dick out, warm and swollen with blood. “Armand, baby, fuck me already.” 

They gasp in a conjoined breath when Armand sinks home; Daniel throws his arms over Armand’s shoulders, nails digging into the flesh of his back. The rest is easy. Their heartbeats fall in time, thundering like racehorses in the space between them. Daniel presses his forehead to Armand’s like it’ll get him any closer to crawling inside, digs beneath his blazing desire to find the shared thread of their bond and latches onto it. He comes on Armand’s vest, hips rocking down into it, and Armand trips and follows after, pulsing up into Daniel and letting out a sweet keening sound. 

“Clean me up,” Daniel requests, jutting out his chin, and Armand does. His tongue wets the blood that had dried and, with a few passes, it carries into his mouth, until Daniel is no longer stained with his kill. 

Daniel wipes his hand through the mess on Armand’s vest, smearing most of it but gathering some, and he stands to grab for a paper towel. Before he can, Armand snatches his wrist and licks his fingers clean. “Leave it,” he says of the rest, and it’s nearly enough motivation for Daniel to sink down and go in for another round. But if this turns into a marathon thing, this kill is going to firm up next to them, and he knows that if they try to haul a contorted bear out the door it’s going to raise some questions. Better while he’s still pliable. So Daniel tucks himself away into his boxers, refastens his belt, and lifts the guy to balance against his shoulder. His toes hang, drag the ground. 

Armand, adjusted to rights as well as he will be without a shower and some laundering, obligingly fits himself at the man’s other side, and carries him with Daniel down the stairs, out onto the street. Nobody pays them any mind as they carry the body, step by step, the few blocks it takes to get to the pier. The worst part of it is having to pretend they’re struggling under the weight of him, that either one of them couldn’t just toss him over the shoulder and run. 

Once they’re to the water, certain they’re alone, Daniel takes him and hoists him over the railing. Watches him float, bobbing as the waves lap up against the shore. “Not my favorite method of disposal,” he says conversationally, “but you can’t deny the location’s convenient.”

Armand hangs back, observes him with a cool gaze. 

“I want to know,” Daniel says, approaching him like he might a feral animal, “if you had all of this in your wardrobe already, or if you just have a leatherworker on speed dial.” 

This loosens him, somewhat. Almost a smile, but not quite. “It was inevitable you would come here, or to a place like this.”

Daniel presses his palm between Armand’s shoulderblades. “What other outfits do you have prepared for my inevitable excursions?” His thumb rubs over raised skin. “I scratched you up. Want me to fix it?”

“No,” Armand says, petulant and defensive. 

Daniel smooths his palm over the scratches instead, smiling. 

Doing good, almost there, making him comfortable, bringing it home, and—

“I love you,” Daniel says. “For what it’s worth.” He doesn’t look at Armand when he says it, instead stares at the reflecting light of the city on the water.

Armand tenses under his touch, balls his hands into fists and hunches his arms in at his sides. He says nothing. 

But he doesn’t run, either. 

“I always have,” Daniel continues, taking advantage of his captive audience. “But you know that. I used to tell you all the time. The doubt is whether I’d love you still — well, I do. I think—” his lips purse together and then separate, making a tiny smack. “I think I have a pretty fucked up idea of what love is. I don’t know if that’s your fault, or if I was always that way. You were my first love, and I know that. The first something I had that went beyond a schoolyard romance or a sex-crazed fling. That’s not to say I’ve never loved anyone else. I loved Alice. I still love her a little, in the only way you can love someone who hates your guts. I loved my wives and my girlfriends and, yeah, I don’t know, the first guy who kissed me after I sucked his dick, maybe. But it was never so — ravenous.” 

Ravenous feels like an understatement. Even now, Daniel wants to climb him like a tree, wants to fuck him right here until the sun comes up. There’s an itch under his skin that’s not so dissimilar from needing a fix; it’s just the fix is the lovely, slim thing next to him. His maker. His blood, his flesh, his soul. He needs skin-to-skin-contact or marathon sex or both, or everything, forever, until the world burns. “The love I have for you is a different shape. It’s just for you. I mean, my blood is your blood. Simple as that.” 

With each word, Armand coils tighter and tighter. By the end, he’s a loaded spring. Daniel pets soothingly down his back once, twice, three times, then releases him, steps back and observes the whole anxious mess of him. 

“It’s fine,” he says, with only a small amount of bitterness. “Don’t say anything. I don’t need you to. I have a clear enough picture of what you want. Hey, why don’t we take a load off? Go hit a couple of galleries before dawn? There’s a couple you’ll love not far from here.” 

For the first time in several minutes, suddenly blessed with a lack of hesitation, Armand speaks: “No,” he says. “I would rather not.” 

“Holy shit,” Daniel says, and he laughs, incredulously. “Okay. No, you’re right. Bad idea, spending more than a couple of hours together at once. We might reach the horrifying conclusion that we like it.”

“I have many things to consider,” Armand says, like it’s the perfect excuse. 

“Bullshit. You’re scared.”

“No.”

“Would you at least tell me what you’re so scared of?”

Armand fixes him with a look which reads, essentially, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure it out, dipshit, and then he says, “If you’ll excuse me,” and that’s it, before he departs, spinning on his heel and stalking down the pier. 

Daniel doesn’t follow him — he watches the body float, bloating with water, in the river, until it’s out of sight. He strolls, silent and seething, and barely makes it back to his apartment before dawn. 

His phone rings three nights later, not long after the sun has set. 

“Are we having fun with the scavenger hunt?” Daniel greets him. “I should get you into geocaching.”

“I am calling you,” Armand says, calm and quiet, “from a payphone.”

“Oh, good. You’re nearby.” He smiles despite himself. “I don’t know why you’re worried about me tracing your number. We could text.” 

“I would like you to accompany me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tonight.” 

“Baby, I’ve lived here for decades, and we’ve been before. You’re allowed to call it the Met.” 

Silence, on the other end of the line, for a very long time. Daniel starts to wonder whether the line has gone dead, save for the occasional street ambiance floating in through the glass. 

At last, Armand’s voice slices back in: “When we’re together, I will give you my number. Then we can text.” 

“I’ll eat, and then I’ll meet you there?” 

“Yes,” Armand says, and his voice is tinny, far-away when he says, “Goodbye, beloved,” and clicks the phone into the receiver. 

Armand is there when Daniel arrives a little while later, reclining across several of the front steps. His elbows propped behind him, his long legs stretched out. It would be so nice, he thinks, to not give a shit. Daniel craves indifference — but it would be impossible, he knows, not to love him. 

“Hey, good looking,” he calls, standing at the bottom of the steps, his hands tucked into his jacket pockets. 

Armand’s head swivels. He smiles. Their hearts greet each other in a giddy dance. His eyes flash orange, he knows, and he pulls his sunglasses off to show it. 

It’s easy to slip in unnoticed, the power shared between them, and they wander aimlessly in the dim light.

Through the Egyptian wing, the temple room, the courtyard. When they cycle back around to the Great Hall, Daniel nudges him. “Take me where you want to take me,” he says. So up the stairs they go. 

He’s surprised, really, that he’s able to spot Amadeo. It’d been a worry, that he’d blend in with all the other baby-faced, nude cherubs exalted and made to be muses. 

This one, though, is obvious: Amadeo is glorious and resplendent — an angel bearing a sword, crushing the face of evil beneath his heel. 

“It was one of the last,” Armand tells him. “Before my illness. Before I was given the gift.”

“Your triumph over death,” Daniel hums. “I hope the both of you felt very satisfied with your dramatic irony.”

“I brought it on. I was hungry, Daniel. I demanded that which I did not have.” 

“Sounds like someone else I know.” It pleases him to know this. Their sameness, five centuries apart. 

“I would mix the paints for his works,” Armand says, stepping ahead with his arms tucked behind his back. “I was invaluable to him — loyal to death.” 

“Is this your way of suggesting I’m not as useful of a fledgling to you as you were to him?” Daniel asks. “I’m not opposed to doing whatever it is you feel like you need, but, you know, it’s something to consider before you make your one and only fledgling. I’ve got a very specific set of skills.” 

Armand turns to grace him with a furrowed brow and a tiny smile. 

“What,” Daniel asks, “Were you planning on making another after all? This first experience was just so pleasant that you’re ready to go again? Before you know it, you’ll have a whole litter.” 

“You have a special set of skills,” Armand corrects. “If you were attempting to reference Taken.” 

“What do you miss most about it?” Daniel asks, gazing up at the work. “You know you’re beautiful. You don’t like being told where to stand, what to wear. Not now, anyway.”

Armand thinks on this for some time. Says, finally, “There is a certain fulfillment that comes only from being the sole focus of a lover’s attention.”

“Oh, but when I do it—”

“Yes,” Armand says. “I am courting you. Attempting to. But you insist on — derailing my plans.” 

“Because there’s a certain way it should go, I imagine. Like, for example, the way it went with Louis?”

Armand frowns at him. 

“I get it. It’s easy, I’m sure. Foolproof plan, so long as you don’t kill my daughters and lie about it.”

“Louis and I were together for seven decades—”

“And you’re thinking, ‘yeah, that’s a fine cap on a relationship; let’s shoot for that again?’ Baby, I’ve been divorced twice already. I don’t want another one every century for the rest of time. If you start chasing somebody else thirty years from now, I won’t be as chill about it as he was.”

“You would posit yourself my companion.” This said tentatively, as though Armand fears the answer. 

“Yes,” Daniel says, near-exasperated. “Was it not already painfully evident that’s what I’m trying to be? As if it wasn’t bad enough before, I’m now predisposed to be obsessed with you forever. I get the feeling it’s not going to fade, whether you like it or not.” 

“The feeling will not go away,” Armand says, sounding very vexed, “no matter the distance.”

Daniel takes his face between his hands and holds him there; Armand’s eyelids flutter shut. 

“I can’t lose you,” Armand admits at last, quiet in the space between them. 

“Okay,” Daniel says. “So don’t let me out of your sight. Lock me up and throw away the key. I don’t mind.” 

Armand’s long fingers curl around his, remove his hands from his face. They hold, just there, for a moment, and then Armand says, “To the southwest, there is a taxidermy deer adorned with various glass baubles.”

“Cool,” Daniel says, smiling at him. “Show me.”

Dawn is still hours away by the time they step outside again, the street near-empty and quiet. Only the occasional car drives by. 

“Come home with me,” Daniel says. 

“Will you keep asking?” Armand’s eyes are big and dark. 

“Yeah, I’ll keep asking.” 

It doesn’t hurt so much this time when Armand goes his separate way. 

Summer comes again, pleasantly warm at the start. It’s a nice night. He goes for a walk — feeds early, snags a patron coming out of the opera and lures her away from the crowd.

His walk takes him north, and he watches people spill out of bars and kiss outside of apartment buildings and revel in the night. 

He notices Armand when he passes by the Museum of Natural History. Armand is good at this, really. Following a block or two behind, moving completely silently, looking innocuous. It’s just that Daniel is better — better, especially, at feeling his maker. Tracing the thud of his heartbeat, the undercurrent of his mind. 

He’s close. Daniel’s heart sings. 

He ducks into the park eventually, assuming Armand will prefer a private place to confront and pester him. Makes his way toward the North Woods — still nothing. He looks over his shoulder a couple of times, doesn’t see Armand there. Starts to doubt himself until he turns and sees glowing eyes peering out at him from behind a stone arch. 

“This is fun,” Daniel calls out. “I feel like I’m the first girl to die in a b-horror movie.”

No answer. Armand blinks. 

Daniel laughs, waves his hand as he turns around to continue his walk. 

Out of the woods, past the pool, past the lake. “I’m not doing anything interesting, you know. Not worth observing. Why don’t you come walk with me?” 

Armand doesn’t. Daniel sits on the lawn of the Conservatory Garden until Armand at last gives in, stands above him with piercing eyes.

“Forgive me,” Armand says. “I was admiring your legs — something best done from a distance,” and then he drops like a stone and kisses him. 

Daniel is pinned down by the whole extended weight of him; he groans, pleased, and grabs handfuls of Armand to haul him closer. 

It’s remarkable how easy it is to lose himself in it. How quickly the world narrows to the defining point of just they two. Twin hearts thud out in a steady rhythm as they roll around in the grass — as Daniel nudges Armand onto his back and presses atop him. Armand claws at his back through his shirt, arches up into him. They press as close as they can manage without taking their clothes off, which neither are particularly inclined to do. 

Armand tilts his head to the side, and Daniel kisses his face, down the side of his neck. 

“Daniel,” Armand breathes, and Daniel gives a noncommittal, “Hmmm,” while he scrapes blunt teeth over the skin of Armand’s throat. 

“We should stop. We must. Dawn approaches quickly.” 

Daniel glances up for the first time in a long time. Hours, then. Hours. The sky is graying with the signs of morning, with the impending sun. 

“Funny,” Daniel says, and kisses his jaw once more. “I don’t feel tired at all.” 

He reluctantly gets to his feet and offers Armand a hand up; Armand doesn’t release his hand once he stands. They walk to the street together, which isn’t far, and Daniel turns to face him. 

“I’ll get a cab,” Daniel tells him. “You want to come with? Tuck me in?”

Armand looks at him like Daniel’s just punched him square in the nose. 

Then he says, “I will see to it that you arrive home safely,” tilting his chin up nobly.

“Wow,” Daniel says, “thanks. What would I do without you, maker?” Dripping with sarcasm, but both their hearts skip a beat, and Daniel, to cope, bites another kiss into his mouth. 

Armand sits in the middle seat of the cab and nuzzles his jaw all the ride home, holds tight to his hand in the front door and up the elevator.

This time, he’s awake when Armand handles him into bed, clothes shed down to his boxers. This time, he lifts the duvet up on the other side of the bed and murmurs, “C’mon, baby, don’t make me wait all day,” and Armand strips to his undershirt and boxers and crawls inside. This time, Armand stays. 

He wakes, several nights later, with Armand curled on top of him, sucking kisses across his cheeks, on his jaw, down his neck. 

“The difficult woman who organizes the garden has made arrangements for my tree to be planted,” Armand tells him, giddy with excitement, before he even has the chance to ask.

“You can’t mind gift people into doing your bidding over email,” Daniel says, lips curling into a grin. “No matter how hard you try.”

“Your mind is strong, fledgling,” Armand says, pressed against his neck. “You would have the whole world at your feet.”

“She and I fucked in the 90s,” Daniel tells him, palm sliding down the sweet arch of his spine. “Between marriages, when I was killing time community organizing and fucking the people I met community organizing. I hardly had to do anything at all. Come here and kiss me.” 

Armand does, lifting his face and pressing his lips to the curve of Daniel’s mouth. He’s the one to pull away, quiet and insistent, his fingertips pressed to Daniel’s breastbone. “You are going to fuck me,” he says, “and then I’ll take you to see my tree.”

“Baby,” Daniel says, “You come up with the best plans.”

Armand is sweet, and pliant, and Daniel takes him apart slowly. He undresses them both, and Armand keens and arches against him. He could spend nights like this, one after the other: rolling in the sheets, pressing fleeting kisses to flesh where they can reach. But Armand arches into him, hard and leaking, and says, “Now, Daniel,” and Daniel hates making him wait, especially when he asks so nicely. 

He fucks Armand slow and deep and thorough, weight pressed atop his body and Armand’s knee stretched up by his chest to better accommodate. They come in hot, pleasant waves, and Armand clings to him to keep him inside, and they take turns biting each other, lazy nips on the neck, in an exchange of blood that shouldn’t fill them but does all the same. 

Daniel lets Armand dress him, lets him fuss over the buttons and zippers and imaginary wrinkles. He holds Armand’s hand as Armand all but drags him up and over the few streets to the garden. 

The soil is freshly upturned, the cutting somewhat meager in the ground where it rests. It has ample room, though, which they’ve made sure of. The two of them stand, side by side, and observe like new parents. 

“This tree will live for thousands of years,” Armand says, speaking with a focused intensity. “It will outlive this city. It will live until you are old enough to step into the sun and see its blossoms without burning. It will live until the world withers and ceases to be. This tree will be the last and most precious living thing.”

“Yeah, okay,” Daniel agrees. “I love you, too.”