Chapter Text
Daniel doesn't like how Rashid makes him feel.
He doesn't like it because it makes no sense. He doesn't want to feel this way for some kid, for some servant – scratch that, it's not that he's a servant, that's so fucking classist, that's not Daniel's problem – except it is, it is, and Daniel doesn't know why…
And it just all makes him so angry. He is too old for these feelings. He thought he was over them, that he stopped searching for… something, or someone… for what? Daniel doesn't know, and that's probably why he never found it. Or them. That person, or that feeling he was so desperately craving.
Like a forgotten memory of something he knew he loved. What he needed.
The closest he ever came to explaining it was: he needed someone powerful. Someone who he could serve because they were more than him, more than anyone. A god, maybe, but Daniel never believed in any gods, not even when he tried, because maybe that was it, religion did sound close to it.
The closest he ever came to having it was: two absolute bitches for wives. Like, not to be sexist or anything, Daniel doesn't understand women much, but he's pretty sure he picked two that very much deserved the label BITCH. Capital letters. With sprinkles. And fireworks in the background.
He can't even be mad at them, because being bitches is what made him so attracted to them.
The point is, that Rashid is none of those things. He might be cold and haughty, turning his nose at Daniel like he's better than him (and yeah, that is doing it for Daniel a little, he can't lie), but he is, at the end of the day, just a servant.
Until he isn't.
Daniel's reaction to the reveal that Rashid is actually a half a millennia old vampire is… unexpected, to say the least. Unexpected to him, that is. Shocking. Horrifying. Throw-oneself-into-the-sea level of embarrassing. Daniel can't understand what moves him when he turns around to look up into Armand's amber eyes.
He has no idea why he, Daniel Molloy, a sixty nine year old bestselling author and Pulitzer prize winner… falls to his knees like a supplicant at Jesus' feet.
Armand's looking down at him in quiet satisfaction. Louis seems… amused, with just a tinge of surprise. Like he expected this, but didn't really believe it would happen.
Daniel is kneeling on the cold floor, his knees reverberating with pain, his head thrown back to stare at the monster floating above him.
This is his god.
The thought flashes through his mind, and Daniel chases it out, because NO.
What the FUCK is he doing?
He frowns and shakes his head, confused and angry – at himself for acting like this, at these two motherfuckers for pulling this shit, at the floor for being so hard, at his bones for being so arthritic.
He looks to Louis, because that's safer. “Why am I on the fucking floor?” he asks through his teeth. This must be some mindfucking trick, something these vampires do to people. They're probably playing with his brain like with a blown up pig stomach, just like when Louis triggered a Parkinson's fit in him.
“If I had to guess,” Louis says lightly, “I think you people call it a Pavlovian reflex.”
He looks up at Armand. “Come down, love. You are scaring… your boy.”
Daniel opens his mouth to protest the name again, but he stops himself, because the same bile doesn't rise in his throat this time, and that is strange, so he latches onto it like a dog with a bone. “His boy?”
Armand floats down, joining Louis in a perfect picture of marital bliss. “Yes,” he says, and his voice sounds different now, like he was keeping a lid on it before and is now letting it ring with its full authority. “My boy.”
A shiver runs through Daniel. He tightens every single muscle to chase it away. He finally realises that he can just stand up, so he does. It feels like pushing through molasses, like it's wrong. Like he should keep his head bowed low, show reverence. He pushes his chin up in spite.
“Is this fun for you?” he spits at the two vampires. “Hundreds of years instead of a few decades, you have to entertain yourselves somehow, right? Playing pretend, fucking with people's heads? I'm not a fucking marionette!”
“We are not fucking with your head, Daniel,” Louis tells him. “You knelt of your own free will.”
“Bullshit.”
“Daniel.”
Armand's voice cuts through to him, and he finally has to look at him again. He can't help it.
“I have enjoyed your hard-headed nature,” Armand tells him magnanimously. “It is amusing in its novelty. But I have had enough of you today. Go to your room, dinner will be served to you there.”
Daniel moves without thinking, then stops himself, blinking away another wave of confusion. He wants to obey, is primed to do exactly as Armand says, but it's wrong – Armand was the one taking his orders just a minute ago… but then, that was just a disguise, just a stupid vampire game to play with an unsuspecting human. Does that make Armand the head of the house? Is Daniel allowed to obey?
This is giving him a headache.
His need to get away and think in peace wins over (not the need to obey the ancient kid, alright?!). He locks himself in his spacious and cold room, sits on his large guest bed… then collapses into the sheets and stares at the ceiling.
He has too many questions. Too many feelings. Pain is throbbing in his temples. He wants to curl up in a ball and cry his eyes out for some reason, even though he hasn't cried in over a decade. For fuck's sake, he didn't even cry when he found out he had a terminal illness.
Something is inside him, a grain of something very strong, and it is exploding. It is the same feeling he was chasing almost all his life – a need so deep and all consuming that it is physically difficult to stay lying down, because all he wants is to go back, to find Armand, and to kneel at his feet.
Because it felt right.
It felt holy.
But Daniel Molloy doesn't kneel at anyone's feet. Especially not at the feet of a monster.
By the next day, he has decided to forget the incident ever happened.
He walks into the dining room to find both Louis and Armand there, and Armand is definitely not playing dress up anymore. Gone are his black nondescript clothes, the gloves that were hiding his nails, the air of servitude. His hair is slicked back, putting the features of his face more into the light. He looks in control.
It makes Daniel's knees weak.
“Right!” he exclaims loudly, almost forgetting himself and throwing the laptop on the dining table like it's a stash of papers instead of a ridiculously overpriced piece of technology. “You and Claudia just killed Lestat and fled to Europe to look for other vampires.” He almost adds something obtrusive like congratulations on finding at least one, but he doesn't want to acknowledge the vampire in the room. The other one. It's enough that he has to sit opposite him, with his stupid beautiful face and stupid marble body and stupid open shirt…
Armand smirks like he can read his thoughts.
Oh, right. Fuck off.
“If you have to put it so crudely,” Louis says as mildly as he can manage.
A waiter appears at Daniel's side as he opens his laptop and starts setting up. Another dinner that looks like a high end restaurant meal.
“Mr. Molloy,” the waiter bows. He looks physically older than the two vampires, but just as fit and proud. Hiding it better, though.
“Is he another one of you? A distant cousin, maybe?” Daniel jerks his head in the man's direction.
“My name is Rashid, sir,” he says, completely ignoring him.
Daniel bursts into laughter. “No way!” he forgets himself and turns to Armand. “You couldn't even come up with a different name?”
He pretends to finish his laughter the way laughter is supposed to be finished despite the chill that runs through him, and quickly focuses on Louis instead. “Very original. I get it, the best lies are based on truth, right?”
“Thank you, Rashid,” Louis dismisses the man before giving Daniel his attention. Once they're alone again, he says: “We didn't know how you'd react when faced with the reality of Armand's presence.”
Daniel wants to scream WHY? but instead asks, his tone sarcastic: “Right, and you needed your emotional support ancient vampire with you at all times, right? Couldn't just do it without him?”
Louis looks down in a manner of a man who is hiding from something – himself, other people/vampires, the truth. “Armand is my companion. We share eternity together.”
“Louis doesn't have to go through such difficult memories alone,” Armand says in his silky smooth tone, extending a hand towards Louis who shortly squeezes it. Daniel doesn't think that their hands should be long enough to do that across the giant table.
“Fine,” he says, picking up a pair of chopsticks. “Why don't you spill all those difficult memories to me, then? What timeline are we working with here, anyway?”
Louis gets on with his tale. Daniel listens and eats and stubbornly doesn't look at Armand. When Armand tries to speak, he shuts him down, even though it makes his skin crawl, which in turn serves to stoke his anger. He needs that anger to get through this session. Without the anger, he has only longing.
He needles Louis, because that's his job, that's how he gets the best stories, and he needles Armand, because he needs to force himself to not feel like doing that will have some horrible repercussions. It feels like when he was a little boy and he tried to swear – he later learned that as children, we all develop a mental block that kicks us every time we say the words we are told are wrong, unclean, dirty, offensive. With time and practice, he learned to swear with the best of them, wiping away all those blocks. He's sure he'll learn to despise Armand as well.
And then… Armand leaves.
It's not the first time he's asked to be excused, Daniel remembers. When Louis offered to turn Daniel into a vampire, Armand, then fake Rashid, bolted the same way he does now – gracefully, slowly, as if this is simply beneath him, as if he just doesn't care anymore, as if he has more important things to do. But Daniel was serious when he talked about disguises. He's seen them all (now including an ancient vampire serving him dinner). He is not so easily fooled.
He is, however, relieved.
He misses him.
He squashes that feeling under another wave of annoyance.
Louis continues. His memories are indeed difficult to go through. Daniel doesn't have a bleeding heart – some people have accused him of having no heart at all over the years – but he can understand how thinking of his daughter (even if she was a psychopathic murderess) might be painful, especially if, as it seems obvious already, the daughter is no longer in the picture.
“You sure you don't want to take that break?” he asks as Louis starts to cry.
“No. I want this. To remember.”
But he does need a minute. He wipes his tears, uses a napkin he finds stashed somewhere out of sight to clean his hands and face. When he comes back to his seat, he is more composed again.
“I don't think you unworthy, Daniel,” he tells Daniel, echoing Armand's words from just a few minutes ago. “And he doesn't either.”
“Right,” Daniel cuts in, not wanting to hear anything about what Armand thinks of him. “Why don't we go back to the story, hm?”
“You surprise me, you know?” Louis continues, ignoring Daniel's efforts to avoid this conversation. “I expected you to ask a million questions.”
“You can take that break, Louis, there's no need for deflection.”
“I am not deflecting, I am merely curious. Why have you not asked yet?”
“Because,” Daniel takes his glasses off like he wants to throw them at Louis. “I'm hoping that whatever new game you two are playing, you will get bored of it and stop fucking with my brain!”
Louis sits back, considering him. “We are not fucking with your brain, Daniel.”
“Then why… it doesn't make sense for me to have these… I was never this…”
“Yes, you were, Daniel,” Louis gives him a fatherly smile. “You walked into this penthouse a new man, Daniel. It is fascinating to see how much a human can change in the span of a few decades. We change, too, and I have to wonder if the reason we change differently is because of how the world sees us. I walk on the periphery of humanity, but each time I interact with your or with my kin, I look the same and am treated the same. You, however, are no longer the young man we knew. Maybe that accounts for your inner struggle. When I knew you as a young man, there was no struggle. You gave yourself to your desires with ease.”
“Yeah, well,” Daniel is unsettled by the insinuation that Louis has known him – known him, not just met him. “Look where that got me – a drug addiction that almost killed me, two ruined marriages, a terminal illness. I bet joint pain also adds to that human change you were talking about.”
“Yes,” Louis says, looking sad again. Daniel doubts it's because of joint pain. “Humans can't keep pace with vampires. It eventually wears them all out.”
Daniel frowns. He should ask. Louis wants him to ask.
“Great. Ready to talk about Claudia?”
Louis gives him another long look, then launches back into his tale.
He needs to get out, but there is no getting out. He's not under lock and key, but he is definitely being watched (and kept). Plus, he has never been to Dubai before and has no idea how one even gets around the city. He has a vague idea about taxis and spending as little time as possible in the hot desert air. At his age, he can barely survive New York June. Dubai June would probably kill him in ten minutes.
“Why don't you go to the pool?” Louis suggests at the end of their session.
“There's a pool?” Daniel asks and immediately realises what a stupid question that is.
Louis smiles like he knows it too, but is indulging him. “There's a spa with saunas and pools, a gym, a restaurant… I think even mini golf. Rashid will be able to tell you more. He can go with you.”
“Of course he can,” Daniel mumbles, packing his equipment. Watched.
The hotel turns out to be set up in a way that one never has to leave it to be entertained and taken care of around the clock and to a luxurious standard. Rashid simply gives his credentials to the clerks, swipes a guest card through chip readers, and doesn't say a word out of order, no matter how hard Daniel tries. He has the air of an ex soldier. Straight back, stone face, zeroed in on his mission.
“So did they mindfuck you too, or do they keep it professional?” Daniel asks at one point in an elevator.
Rashid turns to him, giving him a curious look. “I don't think I would know if they did, Mr. Molloy.”
The eye contact is not loaded or significant, Rashid doesn't seem to be trying to convey anything through it, but Daniel feels the words' weight anyway.
The spa has a shop where Daniel can buy swim trunks, so he does go to the pool. He is alone there – he has no idea if that is the norm, if it's outside of tourist season, if the other guests are busy with work. He is alone, so he enjoys the silence. The water is perfectly heated, cool but not cold, and Daniel's body quickly relaxes, until he almost finds it warm.
He does a few laps to get rid of the nervous energy he's been carrying… ever since he received the tapes, really, but especially in the last twenty four hours. Once he tires himself out (which happens embarrassingly quickly these years), he lets himself float. There is no one here to judge him but Rashid, and he's seen much weirder things than a geriatric man floating like a five year old, he bets.
He has tried to remember what happened in San Fransisco ever since he played that first tape. He's tried and tried and tried, and it never leads anywhere. A few confused dreams that he can't even trust to be reality, a word or a sentence ringing in his ears every now and then. Like trying to catch smoke.
Now, he tries something new. He opens the doors to the feeling he's been pushing away. He lets himself feel everything.
Chief among them is… yearning. Desire, want… he has to force himself not to run from it, not to clamp up like a shell again, but to face it. He wants. He wants many things, but mostly, he wants Armand. He wants things connected to Armand. He wants something from Armand.
The name Armand still sits wrong with him. There is truth here, so he dives in, examines it, breaches the discomfort and lets himself think Armand's true name.
Boss.
Well. That's an anticlimactic truth. Everybody was boss to him in the seventies. That's just what he used to call people – man or boss, depending on how the mood would strike him.
Still. He'd never felt such reverence while even thinking the word before. Such tenderness. Adoration. Desire. Or at least he doesn't remember feeling them. Clearly, he doesn't remember a lot of things.
Armand holds something Daniel wants desperately. Would do anything for. Has done anything for.
When Daniel gets out of the pool, he feels very old and vulnerably young at the same time. He dries himself, changes into his clothes, and rides the elevator up into the penthouse in complete silence.
He goes out onto the balcony. It's a bright day, hot and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. He closes his eyes against the aggressive glare of it. He never cared much for the sun. Never liked its heat, never sought it out. He always preferred the night. He got used to the working hours at the penthouse very quickly. He'll go to sleep in a minute. When the sun dries his hair.
“Did you enjoy your foray into the outer world?” Armand's voice asks politely from behind him.
Daniel turns to study him. As always, Armand is staying inside, away from the rays of the sun. Ancient and powerful he may be, but he is not seeking that “mediocre star” out. He is dressed for bed and his hair is slightly damp.
Daniel's heart is squeezing in his chest. He wants to dry Armand's hair. Run his fingers through the silky curls.
“I wouldn't call the inside of this hotel the outer world,” he says. Armand keeps watching him. He looks so soft now. “The pool is nice.”
“I'm glad.”
They keep looking at each other. Daniel is trying to study himself without drowning in the emotions he allows himself to feel, without forgetting who he is and why he can't let himself do the things he wants to do and say the things he wants to say.
“Well,” Armand finally moves. “I advise you to go to sleep, Mr. Molloy. Louis will be eager to pick up where he left of once he wakes up.”
He turns to go to what Daniel presumes is the direction of their bedroom.
“Sure thing, boss,” he calls after him.
Armand stops in his tracks. Turns back. Daniel meets his eyes defiantly.
After a moment, Armand gives him a tiny nod and leaves.