Chapter Text
Prytania Street.
Lestat’s fine house was beginning to sag. Beneath it the foundation was slowly crumbling. New Orleans was like Venice, a city built on a sea that would one day rise up, leaving it subsumed and lost to time.
Armand stood on the sidewalk and looked at the wisteria. Lestat had once told him to go pull it down, that he was strong enough to do so. He hadn’t. And now the wisteria branches had snuck their way between the peeling, ragged siding and into the house, like great veins weaving their way in between some slowly corroding musculature. Upstairs a window was broken. A shingle dangled, loose and precarious on the old roof.
Once Armand had imagined himself and Lestat standing atop that roof in their early 20th century finery. Had sent that image straight to Lestat’s brain and begged for his love, a love that would never be returned.
And now Armand was back and to do what? Beg for Lestat’s approval of his new love? Plead for him to dig his way out of the earth and for once in his cursed life help Armand, be there when he needed a gentle and sympathetic ear the most?
Armand was ashamed at having come here. Yet he was drawn to the old, crumbling manor all the same.
He mounted the creaking steps of the wrap around porch, careful not to put his foot through the gaping and jagged maw of a hole near the front door. Followed the porch around the house, out to the overgrown back garden where somewhere beneath the earth Lestat whiled away the decades. Armand had never had the courage to do it himself. The idea of a long sleep terrified him more than anything the centuries could bring, for after all, if he was struggling to adjust to this new era without having missed anything at all, how adrift would he feel waking up fifty years from now? One hundred? He couldn’t imagine it. Would not imagine it.
On the back porch an old swing still hung from the roof. Armand laid down across the rotting slats of the seat and listened to the chains creak. Above him the ceiling of the porch was peeling, haint blue paint curling and flaking off the wood. The tall weeds rustled softly around him.
I’ve come all this way to you and now that I’m here I can hardly think how to begin.
Armand laced his fingers over his own stomach. Lestat was still out there in the garden. He could feel the barely there pulse of his presence beneath the ground.
Could he hear him? Or had he shut his mind entirely? There was no way to know without digging him up and demanding he wake.
Armand would not lower himself to such behavior. Not when his behavior with Daniel had shattered all the rules he had ever made for himself.
Look but don’t touch. Touch but don’t care. Care but don’t ever fall in love.
And then Daniel had to go and take his cold immortal body into his arms, like holding a monster such as him was perfectly natural. He had accepted Armand exactly as he was and in doing so shattered all of the walls around his long dead heart.
Well, I suppose there is no use holding back. I believe I’ve fallen in love with a mortal boy, yes, I, Armand, who once asked you how you could possibly love mortals. Are you laughing now, Lestat? If you were awake I’m certain you’d find this very funny. My anguish is always a great source of entertainment for you, he thought bitterly.
He watched as the wind picked up a bit of paint and knocked it from the ceiling. It floated down and landed on Armand’s hand.
He thought of Daniel, so bright and full of life. How old was he now? 24? Armand had never thought to check. Not so very old. Surely not much older than Lestat had been when he was turned.
He looked out at the weeds. In the garden there was a short patch where the plants had all been torn out when the earth was overturned. They’d only just begun to grow back and had not caught up to their compatriot’s height, leaving Lestat’s grave visible to anyone who knew of it.
Graves. Death. That awful function of mortality.
Armand tried to picture Daniel’s death. Whether he would put him into an unmarked patch of ground, left to rot like so much refuse like his other victims. Or whether he would take him somewhere here in New Orleans where they’d first met and erect a beautiful mausoleum for him, an eternal memorial to the mortal who had led him to fall back in love with life. Armand tried to imagine the funeral, the finality of knowing he would neither see nor speak to Daniel anymore. The blood tears he would weep.
Will you be there, Lestat? Will you rise from your slumber and offer me your shoulder to cry on? You know that I have no other. There is no one else, mortal or immortal, who would come to offer me their handkerchief and dry my eyes.
When he had lost his dear master it had only been the coven that had kept him going, for they’d given him no other choice. Then when Louis walked away Armand had questioned his will to exist. It had been that painful and yet their relationship had not been half as intimate as his and Daniel’s had become these past months. When that day came, when he inevitably lost Daniel to time, would he find it in himself to endure or would that be the thing that sent him into the fire?
He had asked Daniel what sacrifice he would make for love. Would he, Armand, give up his fear of the unknown that lay beyond life and follow Daniel into that dark night?
Armand rubbed at his face. His hands came away rusted red.
I cannot bear this. I cannot stay away from him and yet I know that to be near him is to condemn us both. What would you do, Lestat? Can you not wake long enough to answer me that? Is that not the least you can do?
Truthfully, Armand knew what Lestat would do. Lestat, who did so many things only because he was curious to see what would happen next. Who acted purely on impulse and followed his capricious heart.
If he were to do this thing - and only if- he would need to choose a city. One in which he had no history, where he could establish a home. Where Armand could clear out the young ones and drive away the elders once and for all, so that he would no longer have to abandon Daniel for days at a time and leave him lost and confused; for Daniel did not understand there were vampires who would kill one’s mortal love for sport. He would need to select an apartment, furnishings.
He would need to do that thing which he had resisted for so long. He would need to give Daniel the blood so that some part of him flowed through his veins, a silent signal of protection and claiming that Daniel would be fixated upon the moment it touched his lips.
It had become a terrible source of turmoil for him. So often he wondered if, had his master been a mortal like himself, their relationship would have turned out differently. He had been enraptured with Marius from the start, that much was true. But had it all been love, or, lacking the blood, would Armand’s heart had begun to harden toward him at that first slap, the first cold reprimand? Something had tied them together, but it was impossible to know whether that thing was emotional or just his master’s bloody kiss.
For all of this he had no answers. All Armand had was the knowledge that the blood would irrevocably change their relationship. If he shared it with Daniel there would be no turning back. This boy would be his, until time or circumstance severed him from Armand’s side.
Armand stood up and wiped the dust and splinters from his clothes. He walked down the little path through the garden, brushing the weeds aside with his hand until he stood before that mound of earth beneath the ancient oak tree.
“As ever, you have been no help to me at all,” he muttered. “Would that you had accepted my love when I offered it, and then neither of us would be in this hell.”
There was an oleander bush blooming. Deep inside his chest ached in shades of bloody crimson red. Armand ripped a branch of rosy pink flowers from the bush and laid them upon Lestat’s grave.
—
It took some searching to locate Daniel, but eventually Armand found him in Rome.
He didn’t approach him immediately, for it was late in the night and Daniel was drunk; slumped in bed in a derelict motel. Armand had been gone some six weeks and just that handful of time had taken its toll on this boy. For an immortal, six weeks was nothing. Barely a blip on Armand’s mental radar. For Daniel, judging by his whiskey soaked memories, it had been hell.
Armand sifted through his mind. Saw Daniel, drunk and stumbling down an ancient Roman lane. Sitting on a corner, his face in his hands as he tried not to suddenly cry at the thought that either Armand had abandoned him or died. Food had no flavor for him, the world lacked vibrancy and color. Armand had never even given him the blood. Somehow his presence alone had dulled the shine of mortal life.
Little by little, Daniel’s pain had begun to ease. He was beginning to find his footing in the mortal world again. But in the back of his mind was the ever present thought that he would trade it all for another long night, holded up in a diner with Armand examining his every move, and that was what strengthened Armand’s resolve to do the thing which he was about to do.
He watched. He waited. He saw in Daniel’s mind the half formed plan to visit the Villa of the Mysteries, and moved quickly to make a kill and get there before him.
Armand could never admit to the relief he felt upon seeing Daniel’s soft and surprised smile when they met in Pompeii. Nor could he admit to the unbridled pleasure of drinking from him, and of having Daniel’s eager mouth on his wrist.
Not because it was a source of shame for him. Only because he could not put into words the things which he felt, the blessed golden haze which colored the scene and hovered around Daniel’s face. Kneeling before him in the dark in the Villa of the Mysteries Daniel glowed brighter than any gilded ikon Armand had ever made. He stroked Daniel’s cheek and watched as he turned his face toward the palm of his hand. Daniel had always been a beautiful thing but in receiving the blood he’d become something transcendent.
Daniel’s fingers were clasped around his arm. He brushed his mouth against the already healed wound in his wrist and Armand felt the touch of his lips like a shock.
The temptation to break his own skin and allow Daniel to drink again was unbearable. To feel that little stitch tugging at his heart, a thing which he had not begged for in centuries. But there would be time for that later. Daniel’s mortal life was now his to share, for Armand loved him and was loved in return.
Daniel, overawed by the experience, had not said it out loud. But Armand had found it within his thoughts, the complete and loving acceptance of him for all that he was. The desire to be by his side. And that was all Armand required. It was enough to warm his cold and aching soul.
Armand held out his hand to help Daniel to his feet. “Come.”
There was a drop of Armand’s blood staining the corner of his mouth ruby red. Armand reached up to wipe it away, but then Daniel’s hands were in his hair and he was being kissed with a kind of desperation he’d rarely been on the receiving end of. Armand grasped at Daniel’s jacket, let him lick into his mouth. Traces of the blood were still on his tongue and all Armand could taste was gold and red, flowing through his veins, down to the tips of his fingers. He hardly realized he was chasing Daniel’s mouth when he pulled away, not until he felt himself rising up onto his toes.
“I missed you these last couple months,” Daniel said as he brushed Armand’s hair back from his face. “You’re not going to take off again, are you?”
Armand shook his head. He slipped his hands beneath Daniel’s jacket so that he could wrap his arms around him and rest his head on his chest. Beneath his ear Daniel’s heart beat, soft and slow. Armand closed his eyes and let himself sink into the feeling of being surrounded by sensations that were all part of Daniel. All part of his love.
“No, Daniel,” he said softly, words muffled by Daniel’s chest. “I will never again leave your side.”