Chapter Text
By the time Daniel had arrived back in New York, he felt tired. Not physically; he hadn't felt fatigue in his body for so long now, which was still frankly weird to try and get used to after decades of various aches and pains plaguing him.
No, Daniel felt a certain wariness in his spirit that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He had chalked it up to the months he'd just spent documenting the infamous Vampire Lestat on his North American tour, managing every outburst, every instance of diva-like behaviour, consoling him every time Louis would show up for a moment for a night of romance before skulking off the next.
"My Louis is still healing from all that has happened. It is understandable that he should take time for himself." Lestat had said in that fake-nonchalant tone he was certain he had used on Louis too.
Daniel had once mentioned this feeling of wariness to Lestat one night when they had drained two drunk concertgoers in the band's trailer. Lestat had told him;
"It is the wariness all abandoned fledglings feel without their maker; it is such cruelty that you are bonded to the gremlin of all people. If I had to share that awful creature's blood, I would have thrown myself into the fire."
He imagined that Lestat's words were meant as a condolence, but they were so casually harsh that they made Daniel wince. Later on, in a moment of drunken weakness, he begged Lestat to use his powers to find Armand among the many. All he wanted to know was that he was alright, that he was receptive to maybe talking to Daniel. And to The Brat Prince's credit, or maybe it was out of pity, he tried. To no avail.
"It seems your maker doesn't wish to be found, mon ami."
Whispers among the many that Daniel and Lestat were looking for him must've reached Armand somehow because just a week later, envelopes of postcards, dried flowers, small sketches, bus tickets, and money started showing up in their destinations with Daniel's name written on them in delicate penmanship, to Lestat's bemusement. Child support, he called it whenever money was sent. Daniel didn't use the money and instead sent it to his daughters.
Louis had been there to see one of these envelopes, and his jaw visibly tightened, and he looked away. Daniel couldn't blame the guy, but it was becoming increasingly difficult not to talk about the giant, orange-eyed elephant in the room, and maybe he started to resent Louis for that.
There was also the unfortunate, maybe fortunate—actually he hadn't decided yet—case of the memories. Floods and floods of memories that came back when Armand had turned him.
Bar hopping in San Francisco with Armand tucked into his side. Fucking. Walking along the cobbled streets of Montmartre with their pinky fingers linked, sharing wry smiles. Fucking. Heated arguments in London pubs about why Armand kept refusing to share the dark gift with him. Even more fucking. A decade on-and-off of the craziest, steamiest, whirlwind romance that not even the likes of Mary Fucking Gaitskill could dream of suddenly made manifest as though they had been there the whole time.
Daniel had kept this to himself for his own sanity. He didn't need Lestat's spiteful glee, clamouring to hear every last detail of the gremlin's latest indiscretion, and he didn't need Louis's anger or for him to tell him how he should feel towards Armand. Because the fact was, he had loved Armand once. Loved him more than fucking anything, and now he was able to remember it.
Maybe that was the source of his wariness, finding out that he had lived a whole other life and the one guy he could talk about it with, who would understand, who could answer his questions... well, he just wasn't around. So eventually, he left The Vampire Lestat tour and came home to New York to lick his wounds and make sense of his new immortal life—or death.
He caught an overnight, half empty flight from Miami International to LaGuardia and then managed to catch a cab coming out of LaGuardia to take him back to his apartment in Williamsburg, asking the driver to drop him off a block away from his building so that he could pull some unsuspecting hipster Brooklynite into an empty alley and have dinner. Probably not putting as much effort into this kill as he should've, but hey, he was tired. All he wanted was to climb into his coffin, read until dawn, and sleep until whenever he next got hungry.
It would seem the night had other plans, however, as once he was up the single flight of stairs leading to his apartment door, he sensed somebody. Another vampire. It wasn't entirely surprising; since the book became a success, there were plenty of his kind who wanted to make their unpleasant feelings known to him, but unlike Louis, who bore the brunt of it, he had remained relatively unbothered. Nobody, it seemed, dared to fuck with the only fledgling of a five-hundred-year-old vampire. For a moment he considered going to the bodega across the street and calling out into the ether for Louis to come help him.
But then what if it's him?
The thought pierced through Daniel like a cold knife and took his breath away. Maybe his maker had finally had enough of the distance and was deciding to throw him a bone, to throw him something.
So he let himself in, maybe expecting to be pounced on or have one of his lamps thrown at his head by some strange asshole, but instead it was quiet. Too quiet. Armand quiet. And Daniel let out a sigh of relief as he closed the door behind him, standing there for a moment and waiting for Armand to melt out of the shadows with those two headlight eyes of his. But nothing came.
"You can come out of hiding now, asshole. I know you're there." Nothing. He must be trying to mess with him or something, forever playing the mind games even now.
Putting his keys in the dish by the door, he turned the lights on and inspected every room. In the closets, in the bath, behind the curtains. Still nothing.
"What the fuck?" Daniel grumbled to himself, tossing his sunglasses on his dresser as he entered his bedroom and shrugged off his leather jacket. Maybe he was just imagining things and his instincts were bullshit, christ, maybe he missed that old fucker more than he wanted to admit. More than he should.
He didn't know why he didn't expect it, maybe because such a simple, intimate act of intrusion didn't befit a master manipulator like his maker. Yet when he opened the lid to his coffin, he was met with the peaceful, sleeping form of The Vampire Armand, wearing Daniel's Ramones t-shirt and a pair of his boxers to boot.
He looked small like this, lying on his side and curled in on himself almost protectively, hand clutching the fabric of Daniel's t-shirt and face smushed into the thin head cushion of the coffin. That gorgeous midnight-black hair of his was longer than it had been the last time they crossed paths, and it was now tied back haphazardly, the front strands now loose around his sculpted, angelic face. What an asshole, turning up here, looking like that.
It wouldn't last long, but Daniel savoured the fleeting moment. Armand's eyes slowly opened in the seconds following, and he made a barely audible, softly disgruntled noise as he turned onto his stomach and stretched himself out, giving Daniel an eyeful of those dark bronze and impossibly long legs before propping himself up with his hands and sitting up to face Daniel, his eyes still slightly bleary. He wasn't what Daniel was expecting at all; he looked almost normal.
And what were The Vampire Armand's first words to his only fledgling after abandoning him for eighteen months?
"My apologies, Daniel; I am not quite so fully functioning when I have just woken up. I had hoped to catch you at a better time."
Asshole. Daniel wanted to rip his throat out.
What Daniel wanted to do didn't matter much because his fucking body and mind wouldn't cooperate with him; rather, he just kneeled beside the coffin, dumbstruck and staring at his maker. He was offended that Armand clearly thought so little of how angry Daniel must be with him that he didn't even have the courtesy to look sheepish or worried about how he might react. Instead, he decided to let himself into space and take over where he slept like some bug infestation.
"You've got some fucking nerve." Was all Daniel could manage, his tone and face incredulous.
Armand let out a long-suffering sigh and moved to cross his legs, drawing his knees up and hugging them. "I didn't mean to oversleep; my journey was long and arduous... I will spare you the details." He explained casually, as if oversleeping in Daniel's coffin was his worst offence.
"You've been radio silent, dead to the world for eighteen months, and you think I give a shit about your arduous journey?" Daniel did in fact care about Armand's journey. He wanted to know everything, in fact. Where he'd gone, who he'd seen, who he'd eaten—why he left and decided to come to New York and darken Daniel's doorstep.
"Rude, but not entirely unwarranted." Armand didn't sound much affected by Daniel's anger. "Still, I see you're upset and that perhaps my coming here was a mistake." He moved to stand up in a graceful motion. That was so like him—to do everything in his power to avoid confrontation. Luckily Daniel's instincts were sharp now, and he quickly reached out to capture Armand's wrist in his hand before he could leave.
"Not so fucking fast, pal. Sit down." He gestured his head back towards the coffin. Armand regarded him for a moment, tilting his head in one slow, methodical movement as those giant candle flames bore into Daniel's face. He decided that he liked Daniel's boldness and decided to sit back in the coffin, returning to his cross-legged position.
"Did you get my letters?" He asked then to break the silence, seeming almost hopeful.
"Yeah, but I'm a little confused. What was the point of sending them? It's not like you were trying to communicate at all." Daniel maybe sounded more suspicious than he had meant to, like some crazy, Machiavellian reason would be revealed to him.
"To let you know that I was thinking of you, of course." Armand replied as though it was the most obvious explanation in the world. And it really was obvious—so obvious that Daniel hadn't considered Armand capable of being that simply thoughtful. It made Daniel's cold, dead heart thaw out just a little bit. "I heard from the others that you had been asking after me, but I was not in a position to open my mind as I believed it would disrupt my healing process. Yet I felt I owed it to you to reach out, even if it was a token gesture."
"Your healing journey?" Daniel's incredulous tone returned. After all the damage he'd caused, both intentional and collateral, Armand felt that he was the one who needed to heal. "Where'd you go anyway?"
Armand explained to him that when he fled Dubai in shame and with feelings of panic and loss, he went to India, where it all began, to make sense of the turn his life took and to figure out his next steps. "First, I returned to Delhi; that was a lost cause. Then to Jaipur, which was much more agreeable, and then I took a train across the country and settled on a riverboat in Kolkata, where I stayed peacefully for eight months."
"Why'd you leave if it was so peaceful?" Daniel didn't mean to ask so many questions, but as it had been proven many times, it was in his nature. Plus, part of him just wanted to hear Armand tell him that he came back because he missed him and wanted to be with him.
Armand suddenly looked sheepish in the way Daniel had wanted him to look earlier. "In Kolkata, I was maybe not as...discreet with my kills as my age and experience would grant me to be."
"You got sloppy." Daniel filled in the blanks, and Armand averted his eyes.
"The locals traced the string of murders back to me and set alight to my boat." He was still keeping his tone casual, playing coy because he was embarrassed. "It was foolish, but I wasn't as fully in control of myself as I usually am."
Daniel felt his anger bubbling up again. So his maker hadn't missed him but rather came back because his little 'Eat, Pray, Love' journey went up in literal fucking flames. He opened his mouth to give Armand the verbal lashing he'd been formulating in his head for the past eighteen months, to make him regret ever coming back and showing his face, but then.
"And I felt ready to face you. I do believe that my actions have been cowardly, and for that, I'm eternally apologetic."
Just like that, the vitriol died on Daniel's tongue. It was pathetic really, just how much his feelings relied on being simply considered by Armand and his plan-making. In that moment, both of their eyes flitted to Armand's wrist, realising that Daniel hadn't actually let go of him.
"You have a lot to be apologetic about." Daniel thought aloud, running his index nail gingerly over the veins in Armand's wrist. "Why'd you leave me after..."
Armand winced as he recalled the night he shared the dark gift with Daniel and forced a painful half-smile. "Because I had broken the one rule I had set for myself, the thing I felt most in control of... and all fledglings grow to hate their masters, don't they?"
"I already hated you." Daniel shrugged, picking up that the last part was just a little sprinkling of bullshit in an otherwise sincere answer.
"Hated?" Armand looked hopeful again, picking up on Daniel's use of the past tense; it made Daniel roll his eyes.
"Yeah. Hated." Daniel nodded before letting out a long sigh. "Look, I still have a ton of shit I wanna pick your brains about." Armand nodded in understanding and waited for Daniel's onslaught of questions that never came.
"But I'm too fucking tired for that, frankly, and we've got all the time in the world to talk about us." He noted the deep breath in Armand took at Daniel's use of the word 'us'. "You got any room for me in that coffin? Think you can scooch over?"
A flicker of a smile graced Armand's face, and he was almost eager to move over to create space for Daniel, who rid himself of his jeans and changed into a comfortable t-shirt before slipping in next to his maker and laying down on his back. Armand slotted himself quite comfortably onto his side in the space that was left and laid his head on Daniel's chest, tucking his head under his chin and slinging his arm across his torso.
Daniel pressed his face to the top of his maker's head just for a moment and let himself breathe in as Armand lowered the lid of the coffin with his powers, consuming them both in darkness. Armand had never let him share a coffin when they were together when he was young, and it was all Daniel could think about lying in the darkness in storage when he was on The Vampire Lestat tour. Now it was happening, and it was bliss like nothing Daniel's imagination could've come up with.
"I am glad you're still around, Daniel." Armand's voice, which had grown sleepy, pierced through the peaceful darkness.
"Yeah, me too." He responded in kind.
Sleep took them both.