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Daniel was on a couch backstage, reviewing footage from the show that night, when he pushed the spacebar and pointed to the paused frame on the laptop. “I didn’t ask you to film that.”
Kirk, the cameraman, glanced up from his phone and peered at the screen. It was from that night’s show, a shot of the performance taken from the balcony. “No, you did.”
“Since when?” Daniel asked. “I told you, tonight I wanted close-up shots. We need to glean the same sense of raw intimacy and vulnerability we’re trying to dig into in the interviews with Lestat. I mean, it’s fine that you did, we’ll just have to focus on it at the next show–”
“Look, I didn’t just randomly decide on my own. Your assistant director told me to go up there.”
Daniel shot him a look. “Assistant director?” Then he chuckled. “That’s funny. Anyway–”
“No, really. This guy came up to me backstage when I was cleaning the lenses, and told me that he was the assistant director you’d hired.”
“Really? Some random guy came up to you backstage, said he was the assistant director, and you believed it? You didn’t even ask me! He could have been anyone.”
“Well, it sounded like he knew what he was talking about! When he told me to go up to the balcony, he was saying something about the interplay of distance and the past… he had a whole artistic vision, ready to go. In fact, while you stepped out to get a hit, he made some edits on your notes.” Kirk reached into his pocket and handed him a folded sheet of paper. “See?”
“Who cares about his artistic vision?” Daniel scoffed as he unfolded the paper. “I’m the director, we’ve been discussing this in depth and someone shows up and you just– what the fuck is this?”
Daniel’s notes, listing certain shots he wanted to get during the show and backstage, had been annotated with a heavy-handed red pen. The handwriting flowed, a certain loopy precision in the lines that reminded Daniel of learning cursive in school. Daniel’s notes to get close-up shots had been crossed-out– instead, the red pen had written, BALCONY. Feel the gaping distance between subject and viewer. Lestat is utterly unrelatable, unsympathetic. Must not allow the audience to feel cozy with him.
“Someone’s got it out for Lestat,” Daniel muttered, skimming the notes. Another note said, focus on the faces of his band. The terror, terseness in their expressions. They don’t really believe in him. They’re just scared to leave. “This is a documentary, not a horror show. Did he say what his name was?”
“Uh… no.”
Daniel threw the notes down onto his lap. “You didn’t even ask? You just let him start taking over and you didn’t even know his name?”
“He was extremely competent! And I didn’t know where you were!”
Daniel started to go through the likely candidates in his head. It had to be someone who hadn’t made a previous appearance– Kirk knew everyone, because he’d filmed it all. “What did he look like?”
“Young guy in his twenties, thin, dark curly hair, fashionably dressed… he had the same nails as you.”
“Uh-huh.” Daniel crossed his arms and leaned back against the couch. Then he sighed and stood up, striding through backstage at a determined pace.
He knew he wasn’t going to find him here, but damn it, he was going to try in the waning thirty minutes before bus call. Dodging crew carrying set dressings and equipment cases, he opened every door in search of those hypnotic eyes he hadn’t seen in so long. Because he had to tell him off, of course. This was his fucking documentary.
Instead, he walked in on Christine berating Jarda, who sat in front of an emptied vodka bottle, so drunk he wavered on his feet. “If you read the fucking contract, it doesn’t say you get to incapacitate yourself and blow off posing for selfies at the bar at P.F. Chang’s! We need you out there, signing titties in Sharpie! One more incident like this and I won’t hesitate to deport you, motherfucker, and then you can answer to your Albanian gangster debtors without a cent in hand–” Noticing Daniel, she glared at him and spat, “What do you want, Mr. Molloy?”
Daniel knew it wasn’t a good idea to interrupt one of her tirades– he wasn’t exactly scared of her, but it was bothersome to become the subject of yet another rant. So he backed out of the room and decided to knock on Lestat’s dressing room door instead.
Lestat swung the door open. “What?”
Daniel pointed to his mouth. “You got something there.”
Lestat wiped away a bead of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. “Tell me what you want, Daniel, I’m busy.”
“Have you seen Armand?”
“No, I have not seen your waifish gremlin boyfriend, and thank god I have not. Ridiculous of you to ask. What is this, another episode of your transformational trau-ma?” With a breathy emphasis on the last syllable, Lestat leaned closer.
“No, and I’m starting to wonder why I even asked,” Daniel muttered. “Well, I think I’m going to go out to the bus and–”
“What’s going on, Dan?” Lestat leaned against the doorway. “I see it in your eyes.”
“Nothing. Just… if you see him prancing around, trying to tell the doc crew what to do, give me a little heads up, ‘kay?”
Lestat groaned, looking just about as pleased as Daniel was. “Or if you could tell him to fuck off for me, that would be wonderful.” He started to pull the door shut. “Bye!”
A night had passed. Now in another city, they had set up a makeshift studio in an empty warehouse, and Lestat sat in the hot seat, deflecting Daniel’s questions like a politician on trial.
“So, you don’t believe there was nothing strange about your relationship with your mother?” Daniel grilled. “That kind of stuff doesn’t just appear out of thin air, buddy. When I got turned, I wasn’t exactly hit with an insatiable urge to fuck my relatives. What are you hiding?”
“It’s perfectly normal,” Lestat answered, straight-faced. “This was, of course, two hundred years before Freud would come to the forefront of modern psychology.”
“As influential as Freud was, I wouldn’t say his theories are widely accepted…” Daniel started to flip through papers on his clipboard. “Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist?”
Lestat started to laugh. “Have you?”
“Okay, okay, let’s get back to it– you just turned your mother into a vampire, and I want to know what’s going through your mind when she kisses…” Daniel trailed off, staring down at his clipboard.
“What? When she kisses what? A cabbage?”
Daniel looked up and cleared his throat. “When she kissed you.” His eyes still flickered between Lestat and the clipboard. “You’re telling me nothing remotely like that had ever happened before?”
Instead of answering, Lestat pointedly looked at the clipboard. “Your interrogation has lost all its fire. What’s distracting you?”
Daniel sighed and held up the clipboard. “Seems like our dear assistant director has visited the set. Take a look.”
Lestat stood, grabbed the clipboard, and strutted back to his seat. Wedged between the questions Daniel had planned was a fresh sheet of paper with red pen messily scrawled all over it. And this red pen knew things only a certain former theatre director would know.
WHY DID YOU ABANDON THE THEATRE WITHOUT SO MUCH OF A WORD?
WHY WERE YOU SO REPELLED BY SOMEONE WHO JUST WANTED TO LOVE YOU?
WHY DID YOU LIE THAT I FORCED HIM INTO THE FIRE???
Lestat grimaced as he read the impassioned ravings. “I see.” He ripped out the sheet, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it behind him. A flame emerged, consuming the sheet within seconds. He then handed the clipboard to one of the production assistants, and smiled uneasily. “Let us continue.”
Although he refused to show his face, the incidents continued. A camera lens was switched when no one was looking. One technician found one of Larry’s guitar pedals missing, replaced with an entirely different one, and another technician found a desperate smattering of post-it notes plastered over the control panel, an unauthorized attempt to change the entire show’s effects.
“This is what the ‘Tik-tokers’ call, ‘bisexual lighting,’” Lestat mumbled, looking through the stack of post-it notes. “And that is for one song! ONE SONG! Not the entire performance!” He threw the notes into the air and spat, “Putain de merde!”
Daniel stood in the midst of the fluttering post-it notes. “Look, I hate this as much as you–”
“And look at this set list!” Lestat shoved a sheet of paper in his face. “Absolute blasphemy! Who would be stupid enough to put Your Biggest Fan as the first song? It clearly goes in the middle of the set, where it has been this entire tour!”
“Yeah, I did think that was an odd choice.”
Lestat yanked him by the lapels of his leather jacket. “I want him GONE! I don’t care what it takes, I want you to find that attention-seeking piece of shit and tell him to fuck off! This is my era, not his!”
“I haven’t seen him in two years!”
“Well, it sure sounds like he wants to be found. So find him!”
Daniel was unceremoniously thrown out of Lestat’s dressing room. And as hard as he tried, he didn’t find Armand that night, either.
He did, however, find his cameraman sitting backstage, shoving Timbits into his mouth. “Hey Kirk, sorry to interrupt your break… but have you seen Armand at all?”
“Huh?” Kirk stared up at him blankly. “Who’s Armand?”
Daniel gaped. “You know… the guy I’ve been telling you to keep an eye out for? You’ve been filming everything! You read the fucking book, man! Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is.”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Even peering into his mind, all Daniel saw was an unnatural hazy black hole– the cameraman’s memory had been tampered with. “Fuck, nevermind. Enjoy the donut holes.”
The final straw happened when Daniel was interviewing members of the band about how it all came to be. They had set up shop in a cavernous soundstage in Ottawa, and while Daniel had nearly abandoned hope of catching Lestat’s sordid backstory on tape, he was at least going to do his damndest to stitch together the few pieces he could get into a coherent narrative.
“Are you kidding?” TC said. “Black Licorice is totally about sucking Louis’ dick. Did you see those hand gestures Lestat was making on stage last night with Larry’s guitar? Phallic as fuck.”
“Salamander, what do you think?” Daniel asked, leaning back in his director’s chair.
Salamander was still off in dreamland, a lost look in his eyes. “It was so hot.”
“Uh-huh.” Daniel wondered why he’d even asked. “I’m curious, what has Lestat told you guys about Louis? What’s your impression of his relationship with him?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say he’s been very open about it,” Larry said, “but you know, he lets things slip here and there when he’s high. There was this one time he started going on and on about some trial at a theatre, but I never really paid attention in French class…”
“Mr. Molloy?” One of the production assistants tapped him on the shoulder.
Daniel turned, glowering. “We’re in the middle of something.”
The poor assistant shrunk back. “Sorry. I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t important. Christine wants to talk to you outside.”
He groaned. “Can’t it wait?”
“I don’t know, she’s really insistent. It’s kinda scary…”
“Fine.” Daniel stood. “Sorry to cut it short. Take five, I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll keep going.”
Christine was waiting outside. And once Daniel was outside, he was in for the longest tell-off of his life. She had a whole list of ways in which he had caused emotional distress to her client. “You clearly went against the contract, there was a clear-cut list of topics you are not allowed to broach with Mr. Lioncourt, and yet you did it anyway, and I promise you that if any of that footage airs, a lawsuit for emotional damages and defamation will land on your desk–”
Daniel sighed and held back from rolling his eyes, antsy to return to set. “This could have been a phone call.”
“You haven’t been picking up my phone calls–”
Frankly, he was tired, and found himself not caring about the consequences. So he shoved Christine into a hedge. “I got work to do, the work that I’m contractually-obligated to do, since you care so much about that. Send an email.”
While she picked twigs off her sweater and spat empty legal threats, Daniel yanked open the heavy metal door to return to the soundstage. To his surprise, rather than the chatter of a crew hanging around the craft services table, it was the din of holy silence reserved for when the camera was recording. Larry’s shaking voice was crystal-clear.
“Even though I ran outside and begged him to join our band, I’m not sure if I regret it or not,” he said. “I mean, I haven’t talked to my brother Alex in a week, he hasn’t picked up my calls, even Mom and Dad don’t know where he is… I don’t know if he’s relapsed or if he even has enough money to make it home. And I’ve been hiding how terrified I’ve been this whole time because what would the fallout be if I called out Lestat for his shit?” His eyes were filled with tears, his voice wavering. “It’s not our band anymore, it’s his– he could replace us like that or worse…”
Daniel strode over to a production assistant and hissed, “Why are you still filming? I was out! I told you guys to take five!”
The assistant pointed at the director’s chair. “He told us to keep going.”
Daniel glanced over at the chair, and his blood boiled. Sitting in his own chair, he saw those familiar dark curls he’d grown to despise.
“CUT!” came Daniel’s furious yell, a volume he hadn’t anticipated– the crew and the band clasped their hands over their ears, screaming. The glass of the camera lenses and screens splintered, and the room filled with the crackling static of malfunctioning audio equipment. He smelled the tang of blood as the assistant nearest to him lowered his trembling hands, revealing the red trickle that had spewed from his ears.
The union wouldn’t be happy about that, but Daniel had a more pressing concern on his mind. He reached into his pocket, threw a few hundreds into the assistant’s bloody hands. “Fareed, take care of that.”
Not a moment later, he was racing to the director’s chair. Armand’s head had turned, his bewildered eyes piercing into Daniel’s. Daniel swung his leg out– to his surprise, Armand let him kick the chair over, falling in a heap to the ground. Pushing away the broken chair, Daniel sat and straddled Armand, pinning him to the floor by his wrists.
“Is this some kind of sick joke to you?” Daniel demanded. “Taking over my fucking documentary?”
“I thought you would appreciate it. I’m not exactly a novice. My directing work at the Theatre des Vampires was spectacular, as you know.”
“Why are you here?”
Gazing up at him, Armand said with such innocence that it was almost believable, “I wanted to see you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Is that so unbelievable?”
“You had two years to see me after you fucked off.” Still gripping his wrists, Daniel stood, dragging Armand up with him. “We’re talking about this outside. Now.”
Armand had a slight smirk on his face, and again, he just let Daniel pull him to the door. It only infuriated Daniel more.
The cool evening air kissed their skin. As soon as the door swung shut, Daniel released his grip, standing face to face with his maker. In the quiet night, the waters of the nearby river lapped slowly at the shore. Crickets chirped in the overgrown brush circling the parking lot.
“You need to tell me what all this is about, now. There’s only a few more cities, and once tour is over, that’s it, that’s all I get to shoot. I don’t have time for whatever all this is… a colossal practical joke on one of the biggest opportunities of my life? Why did you decide this would be a fabulous entry after abandoning me for two years?”
“One question at a time, my beloved boy,” Armand said softly.
“Fuck off, I’m not your boy.”
“I simply wanted your attention.” Armand’s brows raised. “Do I have your attention, Daniel?”
“There are a thousand other ways you could have gotten my attention. Or, you could have never left in the first place, that’s also a great idea too.”
“This tour was doomed from the start.” Armand’s fingers slinked into the loops of Daniel’s jeans. Daniel wanted to swat his hands away. He didn’t. “I’m merely attempting to help you salvage a masterpiece from the wreckage.”
“You’re not answering my questions. Why did you leave?”
“Do you find me desperate, Daniel?”
Daniel gaped. “Well, I don’t know… maybe… are you?”
“Lestat seems to think I’m desperate,” Armand’s grip on his belt loops tightened, and Daniel found himself involuntarily leaning forward, ever so slightly. “When I invited you to Dubai, it was an act of desperation. When I turned you, it was an act of desperation. And once I realized the true motive behind my actions, I supposed you may find that… offputting.”
“More offputting than your sudden departure? Come on.”
One of Armand’s hands left the belt loops, He laid his cool palm on Daniel’s face, caressing his cheek. “Do you mind that I’m desperate?”
“I… um…” Daniel stammered, not sure how to respond. He was still pissed. But the distance between them was closing, the inches creeping ever closer, and he’d be lying to himself if he said he hadn’t been dreaming of being this close ever since that fateful night. “For the record, I’m still mad at you.”
“But do you mind, Daniel?” he softly repeated, his hand tugging Daniel’s face gently forward.
“No,” Daniel breathed. Those lips were so close now. “I think I’m a little desperate, too.”
They both surged forward, lips connecting in a mess of tongue, teeth, spit. Daniel slammed him against the wall, and his jeans were already growing tight– he pushed his hips forward, grinding on his maker’s thigh. One of Armand’s hands gripped Daniel’s curls; the other travelled to the small of Daniel’s back, then to his ass, giving it a good squeeze.
“A little desperate?” Armand broke the kiss to whisper. He palmed Daniel through his jeans, eliciting a small moan. “Do you take me for a fool? Look at yourself, attacking me as soon as you are given the chance.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I want to hear how your desperation could possibly compete with this.”
Armand yanked down the zipper of Daniel’s jeans, pushing the waistband of it and his boxers down in one movement, revealing his hard cock. He raised his wrist to his mouth and bit down. Hand slick with blood, he wrapped it around Daniel’s cock.
“Do you know how many times I’ve watched as you’ve bedded other men, in exchange for the high you craved?” Armand began to pump his hand up and down, savoring how it felt for Daniel to shudder underneath him. “Through the window, or from the closet, or listening to the jumbled words running through your mind– I always found a way to watch you, my fascinating boy. And then one day I couldn’t bear it anymore and sought you out myself.”
“San Francisco?” Daniel asked, between ragged breaths. His entire body burned listening to Armand’s words, imagining his glowing eyes in the corner of a bedroom.
“Afterward,” Armand said. “And we spent seven happy years together, in the throes of intimacy, one of the greatest loves either of us has ever known. You don’t remember those years, but I do.”
Not all of it came back, but images flashed through Daniel’s head. Europe, disposable cameras, telephone booths, tourist brochures and foreign currencies. A hand on his, as the train rolled through the dark countryside. Gazing above at the murals of church ceilings and art museums, and fleeting, clandestine touches. Luxurious hotel rooms, silk sheets– Armand above him, Armand below him, the sting of his fangs sinking into his neck or his wrist or his inner thigh, the heady taste of his blood in his mouth and how desperately he chased it.
Holy shit, Daniel thought, as the memories unravelled themselves. But Armand’s hand was still wrapped around his cock, and he was incapable of forming the questions he wanted to ask at that moment.
“And after the inevitable, I still watched from afar,” Armand said. “Watched your life go on without me, but I read all your articles and sat in the audience when you were awarded your Pulitzers, and once in a while, when I couldn’t contain myself, I would watch you bed your wives and burn with envy. Even your medical records, I found a way to access– and when I discovered you were sick, I contrived a plan to conveniently land you in my arms again.” He pressed his lips to Daniel’s neck, fangs scraping his flesh. “Is that enough desperation for you, or do you require more details?”
“Fuck… we’re talking about this later,” Daniel groaned. “Bite me, just bite me, I’m getting there–”
Armand’s fangs sunk through the flesh of his neck, and he indulged himself in Daniel’s blood, gulping down the sweetness he hadn’t tasted in two years. Daniel gasped, and his hips jerked forward, bloody cum spilling over Armand’s fingers. Numb with ecstasy, he leaned into Armand, until he had finished his drink and wiped a smudge of his own blood over the wound.
After a few moments of trying to process the last several minutes, Daniel finally said, “You weren’t kidding about desperate.”
Armand tucked him back into his jeans, and zipped him up. His hands were still stained, drying blood caking his nails. “Does that put you off?”
“I thought I was the cougar this whole time, jerking off to you all the fucking time, but you’re giving me a run for my money. That was the hottest fucking handjob I’ve ever gotten. Let me return the favor–”
Armand stopped Daniel’s hand. “Patience, beloved. I’ve got a nice hotel room downtown. We shall resume there when we’ve finished filming.”
“We?”
“I cannot abandon the production now,” Armand said. There was a glint in his eyes, but of what, Daniel couldn’t tell. “I’ve almost got Larry just where I want him.”
“Well…” Daniel hesitated. “I can’t promise anything about a permanent position, but where you got him going was a little interesting… but no more doing shit without my permission, okay? I mean it. Just this with Larry and that’s it.”
Armand pressed a kiss to his lips. “Of course, my beloved.”
“And we have a lot to talk about after this.”
“Of course.”
“And Lestat’s not going to be happy seeing you around– God, what will we even tell him?”
“Sh, sh.” Armand held a finger to his lips. “After the interview. We’re running behind schedule.” He tugged Daniel’s hand, and back into the studio they went.
Daniel hoped no one looked closely at their hands before they made it to the sink, but he wasn’t so concerned. Worth it.