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In Daniel's opinion, his initial handling of the whole "undead creature of the night and obligate blood drinker" thing had gone pretty well. He'd been mature. Responsible. He'd figured out how to neutralise the hold that the Talamasca had tried to have over him, he'd paid his co-op fees, he'd had the biggest best-seller of his career despite no longer being conscious from dawn to dusk—he had, in other words, handled his shit.
So was it really so bad that, now that he was reunited with his Maker, he found himself indulging in a little vampiric Rumspringa?
In Daniel's opinion, also, no—but in the interest of like, story-telling integrity and shit, he had to admit that his thinking on the issue was maybe a bit skewed, what with how he'd very recently drained a variety of people whose blood had been frothing with some pretty fucking primo cocaine.
"Gotta be some kind of OSHA violation or something, right?" Daniel said as he licked the last of the blood from Armand's mouth. "Everyone here being on coke at the same time. And those shitty exterior locks. I wonder if—"
"Darling," Armand said, reaching up to run the tip of one sharp nail the length of Daniel's throat: a mean little tease. Daniel shuddered. "Is this really your priority right now? An investigation into workplace safety?"
It was, to be fair, a moot point, since all of the radio station's night-shift employees were now dead, their bodies scattered from lobby to break room and through into the recording booth. Daniel figured they had at least two hours to themselves before either the next shift showed up or the automatic playlist ran out. You could do a lot in two hours. And there was fresh blood sparking hot in his veins and the rush that always came from sitting in Armand's lap—from being able to cant his hips forward and feel how Armand was nowhere near as placid as he was pretending—and yeah, yeah, Daniel could think of better things to do with his time than drafting up a piece on a local workplace health-and-safety scandal to pitch to the Miami Herald.
The DJ who was currently cooling in the broadcast booth had been halfway through a Best of the '80s playlist when they'd shown up, and it was still being piped out through the speakers set into the walls overhead. The guy's estimation of what counted as the best music of that particular decade didn't exactly tally with Daniel's own—fucking Tiffany, really?—but there was some good shit in there at least. Mood music.
Or memory music, Daniel thought as he unbuckled Armand's belt and gently tugged down the fine cloth of his pants. Armand was already fully hard, a wet spot showing through the fabric of his underwear. Daniel still had only the haziest recollection of the first half of the Reagan administration—something which he'd always joked was maybe a blessing and almost certainly a by-product of him inhaling or injecting most of his disposable income at the time—but since he'd been turned it seemed like his memories were starting to come back to him.
Little flashes here and there, mostly mundane—walking along 77th Street at midnight, eating cereal with orange juice because the milk had turned, bumming a cigarette from his copyeditor—but sparking stronger with certain smells or songs.
Like this one, Daniel thought, as he slid off Armand's lap and onto his knees. The station's jingle—the best of the golden oldies in south Florida!—faded into the opening strains of a song he hadn't heard in years. Daniel snorted, licked a stripe up Armand's cock.
Armand rested a hand on the back of Daniel's head, tugged gently on his curls. "Not my preferred reaction in this kind of situation."
"Not about you," Daniel said, with a jerk of his head in the vague direction of the speakers. "This song. I just remembered that for ages I thought it was actually called 'Poison Summer' but—"
And there it was—another flicker of memory, borne back to him on a wave of synths and guitar reverb. Standing on a beach as the last blaze of the sun vanished beneath the waves; sand between his toes and someone else's hand holding his, a cool comfort. When had that been? When had— And then, right as Don Henley's voice kicked in, another one: Armand's hair, salt-water wet and combed back from his forehead, sunglasses on—not far from here, on that small secluded beach they'd both become fond of that summer—but this couldn't be a real memory because Armand's brown skin was gilded by the sun and he was laughing at Daniel like he hadn't got a care in the world and—
Daniel choked, shook, turned his face away to press into the soft skin of Armand's inner thigh. Armand stroked his curls, very gently.
From overhead came Henley's voice: A little voice inside my head said don't look back, you can never look back.
"I was thinking," Armand said, "before we leave, we can set the place on fire, if you'd like? We could make it look like a frayed power cord, or I'm sure there are solvents somewhere. Add to the mystery for the forensic technicians. I'm sure it'll make headlines."
"Ha." Daniel lifted his head and looked up at Armand. Seen from this angle, he was like an old-school marble statue, the kind a Victorian would make when they wanted to personify some abstract concept: the plane of his chest, the clean line of his jaw, the way his hair fell forward onto his brow. "Some kind of enrichment thing for a fledgling?"
"The only one," Armand said, sounding very serious and very sad, and moved his hand from the back of Daniel's neck to cup his jawline. "My only ever one," and part of Daniel would have been happy to stay there forever, kneeling at Armand's feet and his.
But, well, part of Daniel was also always going to want to ask the awkward questions, and wasn't that what a Rumspringa was for? He said, "What'll happen if I keep remembering things?"
"I won't leave you," Armand said.
And because Daniel had long since realised that they'd known one another back in the day for longer than just one wild night on Divisadero Street—because Armand had implied some things, and because Daniel was a dumbass sometimes but he wasn't a total idiot—he went on, "What'll happen if I remember everything?"
"I won't leave you this time," Armand said.