Chapter Text
Daniel woke at sunset from a vivid dream that he was sure had really happened, once, gasping Armand's name. Not such an unusual occurence, lately, but a frustrating one.
If you had asked him, six months ago, if he wanted his libido back, without any little blue pills and humiliating zoom calls with doctors, he'd have said hell yes. Now that he was regularly waking up hard, like a teenager, he had to admit there was something dignified about the typical human aging process.
Daniel thought, logically, it must have been Armand's blood that did it. The powerful sense memory, immediately familiar, had triggered the rest to come pouring in, and now he was tormented all the time.
Memory was a monster, indeed.
Probably the maker bond had something to do with it, too. If your maker couldn't read your mind, it stood to reason that any walls they had erected in your head might also crumble.
Anyway, he couldn't ask Armand.
He wondered if Armand had sensed it happening, and that was why he'd fled, or if he'd always meant to turn him and then fuck off into the night.
All the fuzzy years he'd attributed to his drinking, to heroin, to speed and coke and hash and whatever else he'd been able to get his hands on, suddenly fresh in his mind, and there in all of those memories, was Armand.
Armand stalking him, Armand terrifying him, Armand popping up in taxi cabs and on trains and on flights, buying him dinner, shaking him out of strange beds, dancing with him in clubs, dressing him in fancy clothes, feeding from him, feeding him his blood, fucking him, kissing him, telling him he loved him... fighting with him. Refusing to turn him. Telling him it was for his own good.
All in all, he thought he was coping well with both his undeath and his sudden recollection of the most significant romantic relationship of his mortal life.
He told his agent and editors that he was on new meds which had messed up his sleep schedule, requesting late evening meetings only going forward. He made up a similar excuse for his daughters, and made a valiant effort at not reading their minds to get their unfiltered opinions about him. (Katie was worried he was using again--Lenore thought maybe the new drug trial was making a difference. They both thought he was having some kind of late-life-crisis. It wasn't all that surprising or rewarding.)
He was hungry all the time. He didn't know if it was because he was young, as a vampire, or because he was an addict, but he had to eat every night, sometimes twice a night, to stay satiated. Remembering Armand's words about starving, he'd bought two pet rats, just to have around, in case of emergency. Quickly, however, they proved to be too intelligent and funny to ever eat, and Daniel pondered the irony in that as he sucked the life from a beat cop he'd pulled into a dark corner by the subway entrance. (The NYPD seemed to have unlimited funding to flood the subway with cops, Daniel figured he could at least attempt to even the odds). He rehomed the rats with a local elementary school.
Daniel had gotten good at targeting cops, and felt no guilt about it. He'd have to adjust his M.O. eventually, as the papers had already started to write hysterically about the Crazed Cop Killer, but he'd figure something out.
A win for his past self, who had told Armand over and over that yes, he was sure, he wouldn't mind being a killer, he meant it when he said he loved Armand because he was a monster, not in spite of it.
He could think of worse ways to handle breakups than a minor killing spree, even if the breakup he was handling had occurred sometime in the eighties.
The version of Armand he had thought he had known in Dubai lurked at the surface of his memories, too, taunting him with those knowing looks. Daniel had felt ashamed of himself, at first, for being a dirty old man, noticing Rashid's low-cut shirts and soft curls, thinking kinky thoughts about his gloved hands, and then furious upon learning that Armand was a vampire and perfectly capable of reading his wandering mind. And now, knowing he wasn't a complete perv, that some part of him had been incapable of completely forgetting those twelve years, and then processing that he had been left to age into an old man while Armand stayed stunning and youthful... well, yeah.
He found himself reliving their old arguments, more than the sex. Maybe it was simply that he wanted to yell at him so badly. But it just hurt, actually, to remember the things he'd shouted. And those memories weren't clear at all. He had usually been high, or drunk. Begging, crying. Telling Armand that he obviously didn't love him, if he could let him die.
What did it mean, Daniel wondered, that he finally couldn't?
Certainly not that he loved him, given his absence now.
That his maker had a sick sense of humor, maybe.
He had nothing but time to think about it. The book was in final editing stages, now. He occasionally received requests from his editors to tweak small details, and he was arguing with the marketing department over email every day, but the bulk of the work was done and he had long nights to fill until Lestat's tour started.
Louis had warned him that he was making himself a target, to be on alert for other vampires who may wish to harm him, and occasionally he heard their mutterings in his mind in the distance, but they fell silent eventually, and nobody bothered him... well, nobody but Raglan James and the Talamasca, but Daniel took a perverse joy in not cooperating with them. Now that he was a vampire, especially, it seemed clear to him which side he was on.
He murdered cops, visited with the bodega owners on his street, bought his usual snacks and groceries to keep up appearances (after Hamza at the bodega had started looking at him strangely after he only bought bleach and duct tape for his curtains in his first week back), and befriended a group of people sleeping rough outside the library where he liked to do research, bringing them the food he purchased everyday.
His new friends called him Mr. Moneybags, and he laughed uneasily, feeling twinges of guilt about the millions in his bank account. He started buying extras of everything, and also hand-warmers, gloves, and blankets.
He remembered, now, his anguished runaway routine in the eighties, the bad times, the times Armand had found him raving on the street, shaking with withdrawals, craving his blood, and scooped him back into the safety of a private car, or a jet, or a yacht off the Miami coastline, given him the fix he needed, and the affection, too. Looking at his new, unhoused friends, he thought grimly, there but for the grace of Armand goes I.
His maker, indeed. His savior, many times. And now, someone he talked to constantly, with no hope of answer.
He thought of Armand's Rashid routine. "I serve a god, it is my honor to serve." And then he'd prayed, too, to a different god, like it was part of his performance.
He wondered about Armand's relationship with the concept of god, these days. He wondered if Armand thought of Marius as a god. The thought made him unaccountably angry.
It had only been late in their relationship that Armand had spoken of Marius in any detail. Daniel had learned quickly not to voice his opinions, though of course, Armand could read his mind, and they still had many fights about him.
Armand had claimed vampires always grew to hate their makers, but he also claimed to love Marius still. Daniel had wanted to poke at that discrepancy, but he wasn't sure what conclusion he had been hoping for--Armand finally admitting that he resented Marius, at times, or Armand deciding he had been wrong, and finally trusting Daniel's love to last forever.
And, Daniel reflected bitterly, it probably would have. Judging by how the mere absence of Armand--the hole left in his life by his precise surgical removal of their love--had fucked up every relationship he'd had since, he tended to believe his younger self who had been so in love, so devoted.
So submissive.
Daniel had locked that part of himself up tight, so that he had been barely aware of it once Armand had cut his memories away, and it had been an adjustment indeed to remember what he was really into, but then the discomfort and embarrassment was replaced with longing. At one point, he'd been able to really let boundaries dissolve, to lose himself in feeling and sensation and forget the need to be the cleverest in the room, to even form words. He'd had a lover who had read his mind and liked all the filthy, fucked-up things he'd seen there, and then given them to him on a silver platter.
He'd given so much of himself to Armand, and Armand had taken away so much, and he didn't even warrant an explanation.
It was infuriating.
And reminders were everywhere.
Now that he had his memories back, the world was littered with them. Street corners where Armand had accosted strangers with his camcorder, asking inane questions about human nature and philosophy and smoothie preferences. Museums he walked past all the time, and had always meant to check out, which he suddenly remembered breaking into at night. The CUNY buildings where they'd taken night classes. His own apartment--the mural he had vaguely thought must've come with the place--now he recalled Armand floating by the ceiling, adorable in overalls, paintbrush in hand, smears of sky blue and white on his face and in his hair, asking Daniel incessantly if the clouds looked fluffy enough yet. Daniel had seized him by the ankles and pulled him down for a kiss, smearing the paint on his face, until he had agreed to pause for the day and Daniel had blown him right there on the dropcloth-covered floor, under the new blue sky.
There had been so much affection. It colored every recollection, a tight fondness in his gut that, try as he might, he couldn't recall feeling so fiercely for either of his wives. Only his love for his daughters rivaled it.
That loyalty reared up now and chastised him for his performance in Dubai, his little Columbo moment bringing Armand's house of cards crashing down. Armand's stricken face, his figure on the floor, covered in dust. Armand had turned around and hurt him right back, and yet Daniel still felt guilty.
As he thought about it, though, he wondered if Armand hadn't brought him there for that. If turning him at last was his reward for freeing him from a bad marriage. The gift he'd forgotten begging for. After all, Armand had brought Lestat to the Children of Darkness to destroy them, and you could argue that he'd brought Louis to the Theatre to destroy it, as well. But the difference there was that he had then devoted himself to Lestat, to Louis. Daniel, though, his supposed love at one point, merited no such devotion.
He supposed a decade was nothing, to a five hundred year old vampire. Maybe in time, Daniel too would be able to shake off their romance, the memories which hit him like phantom pains from when he'd been mortal.
But for now, he sulked, and he antagonized Louis and Lestat, and he worried his daughters, and he blew up his respectable career... all the while wondering, dimly, what kind of behavior might draw Armand out again.