Chapter Text
I could be so good at love.
-Octet (Dave Molloy)
He couldn't stay in New York City much longer.
He needed to move on.
He thought perhaps wandering would be the best option. Lestat was allowing Armand to exist beyond his silly vampire court built in place of Akasha's reign. Armand had learned to supplicate himself before Lestat enough to survive. It was the same pattern over and over again. Humble yourself for the madam of the brothel, for Marius, for Santino - and, now, Lestat de Lioncourt, the Brat Prince who wore an almost literal crown among the vampires.
Armand was an asset.
Marius had been the one to grudgingly admit that to Lestat as they rebuilt some semblance of the status quo when Akasha fell. From the ashes of her would-be empire, those who remained had to reign in the remaining fledglings, assuage the fears of mortals, prove it all a ruse.
The vampires returned to the shadows. The mortals pretended none of it ever happened.
Armand was a rotten boy, but a useful tool for such things.
So Lestat allowed him his leave so long as he came when called and continued to have no qualms about killing any fledglings Lestat wished handled. The Great Conversion was off, but there were still a few too many upstarts.
And Armand had gone to New York.
To Brooklyn.
To an apartment that no longer had an owner in a rent-controlled building that Armand had visited only three times in the 33 years its previous owner had resided there.
On the third visit, he painted a skyscape on the ceiling.
Daniel Molloy had believed it was painted by contractors paid for by his second wife.
As if she had ever had any taste in art or money of her own to fund such endeavors.
Armand had never gotten the chance to tell Daniel of his role in painting the ceiling. It was a whirlwind weekend where Armand had played the role of dutiful graduate student, Arun. He had talked himself into Daniel's apartment for three full days in the end.
It had been bliss.
He had lied to Louis when he recounted those three days. He claimed Daniel was an old man now. He had claimed he spent his days on jigsaw puzzles and occasional appearances. He was publishing a memoir.
Their boy was fading, he had announced with a solemn frown.
It had been a lie. It had always been a lie.
None of that mattered now.
He had to leave New York.
He had kept Daniel's daughters at bay, his ex-wives, his agent, his publishers who preceded the Talamasca. It was easy when one had the power set that Armand had cultivated over the years, but his powers were not without their gaps. He would not damage those who Daniel had held closely, however imperfectly. Daniel would not really approve of what Armand had done to retain the key to the apartment.
Even Louis had chastised Armand for not simply waiting for it to go up for sale on the open market and purchasing it.
But Armand did not merely want the address.
He wanted Daniel's home. He wanted Daniel's clothes hung in the closets. He wanted the tables littered with too many lamps.
He wanted his yellowing fresco on the ceiling that an estate agent would surely have painted over or chipped away at until nothing was left.
Armand liked the thrum of large cities. He had even as a boy to the best of his recollection. Certainly, he had preferred Venice and Paris to the smaller places he had found himself along the Devil's Road.
The crush of mortals in a city as large as Manhattan could be overwhelming to a fledgling, but Armand was no fledgling. Their thoughts and the rush of blood in their veins was a soft echo that drowned out his own overactive mind. It helped to keep him from a long slumber or from the fire. He hunted more now, attempted to keep himself warmer and fuller. He wasn't sure to what end. Perhaps it just kept him from rotting in the apartment for too long at a given time.
Sometimes he lingered down by the river, watching the boats.
He could pretend he was in other places then.
He could pretend the worst of events hadn't come to pass yet.
"You would be safer in New York," Armand's voice had a tone of reprimand to it. He did that sometimes to Daniel. It usually resulted in Daniel calling him Dad or Pops.
Then Armand had to pretend he did not like it. It was amusing.
"You think there's a place on Earth where a baby vampire is safe from the psychotic queen that wants to kill us all?" Daniel argued in return. "That's cute."
"One needn't go into the lion's den simply because there is danger."
"I've been on borrowed time. If I'm going down, I wanna go down swingin', not hiding in some vampire bunker that's not any safer than being here."
Armand thought maybe - just maybe - there might have been an unsaid with you that Daniel hadn't added to the sentence.
"I did warn you that you were courting danger with Lestat."
"Yeah, well, I'm not the best listener and I rarely learn from my mistakes," Daniel shrugged. "If I did learn from my mistakes, I wouldn't be sitting on a private plane with you again."
Armand couldn't help but smile the tiniest bit. It was hardly enough to be deemed a full expression, but Daniel did not fail to notice it.
"Can I ask something?" Daniel sat down and put his seat belt on.
"I have been forthcoming with you in recent days."
"Sure," Daniel conceded. "But that's been on your terms. So…"
"Ask your question, beloved."
Daniel fought the urge to roll his eyes. He was unconvinced about the whole big romance of him and Armand - at least as it stood right now.
"What did you think was gonna happen when you sliced your wrist open and shoved it in my mouth? We weren't exactly besties at the time. Did you think it would fuck up my brain in a way to feel some shit for you?"
Armand considered it.
"I thought you would open your vampire eyes and look upon me with the love I felt for you."
"Even though for all those years, for your whole goddamn life, you've been repulsed by the idea of turning someone and knew it was inevitable for fledglings to resent their makers?"
"Eventually," Armand supplied. "Fledglings all come to resent their makers eventually. I was prepared for a century, for less. For a moment."
"When did I stop being fascinating and start being…whatever the fuck you call love."
"1987," Armand said softly. "You had canceled a series of readings unexpectedly despite great success. Rumors swirled that you were unwell. I feared AIDS. I knew the circles you ran in. Louis gave me leave to track you down. I found you in one of the worst motels I had seen you in up to that point, a bar that I had thought already set quite low. You were not ill, not AIDS anyhow, and you were attempting to detox off the worst of the drugs. You were bargaining with God: if he would let you make it through the night, you would be better."
"And you just felt so sorry for my fucked up junkie ass that…"
"I saw myself, Daniel," Armand looked at him. "I know you believe that you have a very clear picture of who I am, but I have…bargained with gods many times in many tongues for many reasons. Every time I've meant the words and every time I failed. We were the same. I am sure you much despise such statements, but it is true in my eyes. It was then. It was in Dubai."
Daniel rubbed a hand over his face. It was a lot to take in. Armand had given Daniel little reason to ever believe the things he said. Daniel was silent as the plane taxied and silent as it took off.
"Well, if we survive the vampire apocalypse," Daniel's expression was hard to read. It was a little impassive, but then Daniel often looked that way just before he was about to swipe someone's legs out from other them. "Maybe I'd like to see what a moment would look like."
Armand's heart surely stopped in his chest.
"Do you mean that?"
Daniel turned to look at him, eyes meeting mirrored images of each other. He nodded.
"I don't know if I believe you, boss," Daniel admitted. Armand suspected that nickname had been picked up from Lestat's awful song about him, but he let it lie for now. "But I know even with all the shit you can do, you can't make the world stop and make me feel you. Not now that you can't get in my head. Maybe it's the blood or the bond, but it's there."
"Then I have my mission."
"Huh?"
"We must survive the apocalypse."
Armand's peripheral vision wasn't what it once was. Luckily, a vampire rarely needed its eyes to track mortals. As much as he enjoyed the crush of the city in theory, he did not need mortals getting too close when he had not invited them to do so. As he walked down the street under the cover of the moon, he flicked his wrist, the smallest of gestures, to send the few mortals crowding him to walk down the side streets or across the road into the park.
In the silence of the street, he could pretend this was how it used to feel - that empty vacant moment where the whole world fell away and there was only Armand and Daniel that remained. It was a cheap facsimile of what they had once had, but he was left to take what he could get.
They had not survived the apocalypse.
The world had.
A small contingent of vampires had. They were mostly ancients or semi-ancients or Louis de Pointe du Lac because he was a favorite of Lestat de Lioncourt. The fledglings had not been so lucky in the faith of Akasha's wrath, the male fledglings even less so.
Armand had lost an eye for his trouble. Fareed had offered to find alternatives. Marius had pointed out the eye of a victim could likely provide temporary relief. Armand refused both. It was better to sit with the loss.
Armand needed to feel the loss.
An eye was easier to mourn than Daniel.
Lestat was a prince now. Crowned and coronated by Marius because of course such a nightmare that Armand could never even fathom would come to pass. Armand might well laugh at Lestat being left to bring rules and order to vampire kind after all that had happened, but he could see little chance that Lestat would not fumble the whole matter.
Better to keep an ocean between himself and the others.
He wanted nothing to do with any of them now. All of these years wishing companionship, needing his coven, now all Armand wanted in the world was to be alone.
"Did you really just sit at the foot of my bed in derelict motels?"
"Yes," Armand confirmed. "I wondered often why you chose such places well past the point where you could have afforded something more comfortable."
"I was chasing stories."
"You were chasing heroin."
"Tomato, tomahto in those days, I guess," Daniel conceded. "Both things were easier to find in shittier venues. If I were classier, I woulda stuck to coke and Marriotts."
"You did do that in the early aughts."
"Kinda creepy you know that."
Armand smiled, mostly to himself. He didn't argue. He didn't take offense. He found it very nearly sweet. Daniel liked creepy. They both knew that.
"You just watched me sleep?"
"I just watched."
"That's what I thought," Daniel smirked. "The boy in the rental car. You didn't look away like a demure Victorian lady, I imagine."
"I told you. I found you fascinating."
"Fascinating," Daniel huffed, more a laugh than a scoff for a change. "Weird cuck chair behavior. I shouldn't be surprised."
"And you burrowing more deeply into the closet every time you slipped up," Armand shrugged the tiniest bit. "I was never afforded such self-deception. I suppose I was intrigued."
"Of self-hatred leading to closeting?"
"Yes," Armand was sincere. Daniel was learning little by little to tell the difference between Armand is lying to protect himself, Armand is lying for maximum chaos, and Armand is telling the truth. "By my estimation, I was no older than ten when I was sold to the first brothel I was employed in. That surely means I was eight or nine on the ships. I was not paid to have shame."
Daniel swallowed, "Guess I never thought about it that way."
"Why would you? I was the villain of the story you wanted to tell," Armand didn't hold it against him. "My past has rarely mattered. Not to Marius. Not to Lestat. Not to Louis. It is often a blessing."
"But you never?"
"Approached you?"
"Yeah."
"We exchanged words once or twice, but you had no recollection of who I was," Armand admitted. "I had no plan to make you recall Polynesian Mary's or what followed. But once or twice, I bought you a drink. I ordered you a grasshopper in 1997."
"Yeah?"
"You looked at the drink as if I was crazy, insisted you had never liked such a concoction," Armand smiled fondly at the memory. "We talked well into the night and then parted. You were doing well. Recently married again. I did not wish to interfere with that."
"But you did," Daniel pointed out. "A little bit."
"I could not help myself."
"Huh," Daniel nodded. "Really thought you were going to say I could not prevent it, boss."
"Very funny, beloved."
Armand opened his mouth. He thought to tell Daniel the truth about three days in Daniel's apartment.
He closed his mouth once more.
There would be time for that.
Another two mortals came up on Armand's right. Another flick of his wrist and Armand had removed them from the street. He continued his aimless walk. He thought perhaps he would stop when he reached the river, loop back, and hunt in the park. It felt like something more than aimless wandering, a lie to tell himself when he arrived back at the apartment.
Then, there it was.
That hollow feeling inside of his chest like his heart had disappeared entirely.
Everything seemed to go still.
In theory, Armand knew that the cabs and people were still rushing past to get wherever they were going, but even in his good eye, they seemed to disappear.
It was a phantom ache.
It happened with his missing eye on occasion.
It wasn't real. It was the frayed nerve endings of a missing limb and the faulty signals they were sending to his brain.
Daniel was gone and it was as though Armand had cut off his hand with Nicki's axe.
He was never coming back and this strange facsimile of a bond was meant to torture Armand even when he had tried so hard to protect Daniel from what was coming.
There were footsteps behind him.
At first, Armand didn't think too much about it. It was the random sound of a mortal behind him. He lifted his hand, planning to send them on their way when suddenly those steps and Armand's steps fell into sync. It was strange, not natural. It had a sort of precision that came with the supernatural.
Armand curled his hand into a fist. Talamasca. It was the only possible explanation. They did not fall under Lestat's purview and wished to keep tabs on the vampires still. It made Armand an easy target for those foolish enough to not know who he truly was.
He stopped abruptly, turning on his heel to face whoever followed him.
Whatever angry remark had been waiting on his tongue went silent. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head.
"Alex Slater."
"Um…it's more complicated than that."
"Is it?" Armand smirked. He walked towards Alex, conjuring fire at his fingertips. "I suppose that is true. After all, when last I saw you, you were rather missing your head. I recall that because I removed your head, Alex. I did it myself. Shall I do it again? Or will fire do this time?"
The man held up his hands.
"Could you not set me on fire for like twenty minutes, boss, so I can explain?"
Armand didn't immediately set him on fire, but it didn't bode well for the tree beside them that almost immediately went up. There were some things that Armand could tolerate, some Talamascan games he might play, but not this one.
"Do not utter that word."
"Which one?"
"Boss," Armand sneered. "You may find it very funny to torment me with things Lestat thought funny during his spiral that nearly killed us all, but I will not…"
"What?" Alex cut him off. "You won't tolerate me calling you boss? I remember this fight, Armand. You'll be calling me beloved in a fucking hour if you just listen."
Armand grabbed the younger vampire and shoved him up against the wall.
"What is this nonsense?"
"Told you. Complicated," He held his hands up, a little boy trying to fool a bear into not attacking him. "It's me. It's Daniel."
Armand's whole body went rigid. His arm moved up to Daniel's throat, pressing against it. Luckily, vampires didn't need intact windpipes, right?
"Lies!" Armand hissed.
"I wouldn't be so fucking stupid to walk up to you, the Vampire fucking Armand, with this weak ass lie if it weren't the fucking truth," He insisted.
Armand faltered, "Daniel…"
"Hey, Dad."