Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

SEPTEMBER 28, 1973

Unfinished business, Daniel Molloy moves into his sister’s place and keeps his collared shirts ironed. He usually asks for hickies below the neckline. Louis was plain inconsiderate.

He loathes Sacramento, but Eva doesn’t charge him rent, and he could afford the one-way bus there. It’s similar to Modesto, industrious Californian suburbia, and it’s bland enough to make him want to leave, motivating. Slowly, San Francisco bleeds dry, the semester’s start is forlorn, and he begins showing his portfolio.

His nights are uneasy. Like a draft in his window or an eerie dream.

Dusk encroaches after the day’s job interviews, and Daniel wanders, shoulders sagged by an optimistic briefcase. He happens on a lamplit place called Fido with warm, mellow innards that suck him toward the bar. Other patrons, men, drink and sway to a song Daniel can’t place, but he hears the lyrics: You’re in my blood like holy wine. You taste so bitter and so sweet. A warbling beckon.

The bartender approaches. He’s a young brunette, eyes black like an elk’s. “How’re you, man?” Flamboyant voice. Daniel figured that was the vibe.

“I’m alright.” Daniel pulls a sweaty wad of bills out of his cluttered pocket, then counts and lays it on the bar. “I’m gonna head to the bathroom, but just get me a” — Daniel reads the drink menu for the cheapest thing — “bottle of Bud, thanks. And, hey…” He searches in his other pocket and flicks two bills toward him. “Watch my stuff?”

He sucks his cheek and palms the extra. “Yeah, be quick.”

Daniel simpers, sets his briefcase on the bar, and walks to the men’s room. He’s been buying his own drinks, so he told Eva, If you want me to save more money, I gotta cut some corners. He can go home and make a spiffy BJs for BEER, BROWN, or BLOW! sign. Then again, his cut corners got him here.

He bought a pistol after Louis, even though it wouldn’t save him if they met again, and he wouldn’t shoot him if it could. It’s weighty in his back pocket, drumming mortality. Is he lucky to be alive? He chose Daniel, spoonfed his story, then tossed him back. He feels like the schizophrenics on TV who think they were abducted by aliens, or like Mars’ gravity irreversibly strained him.

Daniel enters a stall, one of two, the other a handicap one where strangers’ hairy legs tangle. This one’s out of order, but he doesn’t have to use it. He slumps on the wall, pistol poking his thigh, and reaches for his Altoid tin. He feels nothing.

He tries his jacket. Not there. Every pocket, inside out, not there, gone. He must’ve dropped it or gotten pickpocketed.

The other stall moans. He could puke if the toilet wasn’t wrapped.

There’s more at his place, but it’s a walk, and he already bought a beer. Desperation cords him, cut corners sing beside bitter and so sweet, and Daniel stalks out for a barfly to catch, but first, a dewy Bud sparkles next to his briefcase. He walks over then bites the cap off, the trash a length away. Daniel squints, aims for it — spit. Ding. The cap clinks in.

“Your collar is undone,” a voice chills.

Daniel blinks, and to his left, a stranger looms. He’s tall. He slouches like a kid on a seesaw, and his gloom-black slacks plunge until their tailored cut. His creeping eyes are brown, intricately kohl-lined, but they reflect the bar’s sepia as a cat’s would. That’s the most vibrance he has. He’s carved from bronze, elongated contrapposto — sloped posture, nose, eyelids. Noiseless, peremptory poise, swan nape enveloped by a dark turtleneck.

His beer freezes halfway to his mouth. “What?”

The man’s lips quirk briefly, not a sneer, not a smile. “Your collar,” he repeats, cigarette shifting. It’s so long it looks like an eleventh finger.

“Yeah, I know.” Not so high it’s priestlike, but it conceals the wound. He sips his beer and, tugging his briefcase off the bar, sits, batting his lashes. “I was in a terrible accident.” He told the nurse, a pretty blonde with dimples, that he got mauled by a dog to protect his sister, and when Eva fixed the stitches, he told her that a cokehead bit him too hard.

“In your line of work?” His accent is European. Daniel thinks on it.

“I was interviewing the most dangerous man in the world.”

“We haven’t met.”

Daniel laughs, because for how young he seems, he’s corny. Archaic. “Should I run?”

The man shrugs, shoulders lithe like a spider’s haunches. “That won’t help you now.”

Daniel’s stomach goes gooey. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His High Renaissance lips are soft, immortalized by the petroleum jelly lingering on his cig.

Stares dancing, the stranger sees him look at his lips, then mimics. The air’s thick, and lively Diana Ross rises on the jukebox, igniting the crowd. Every foot hits the floor.

“Can I have your name” — he lowers his voice, like they aren’t their own dimension — “if we’re gonna eyefuck?”

He computes Daniel and answers, “Armand.”

“That sounds French.”

“Oui. Et toi?”

He recalls enough from freshman French to understand. “Daniel,” he says, mocking his smize.

His stare is unblinking, gutted and hungry, pupils pits while he snuffs his unfinished cigarette. Ashes squish deliciously. The cig pikes them like a flag. “Would you like to get out of here, Daniel?”

“If you’ve got what I need.” He scratches his nose.

Armand is silent. Daniel fidgets so much it’s like his stool wants to eject him, but he knows he won’t leave until someone follows, and if Armand doesn’t, he’ll search for another tender nose. Shakes are coming with nausea, and he prays to something intangible that they’ll be alleviated tonight so he can be good tomorrow.

“Hold out your hand, boy.”

Daniel smiles. “Who’s your boy, boy?” Talking louder, he demands attention to their faces instead of his discreet, eager hand below the bar ledge, behind their legs. He fantasizes about which -ine is about to be given, but when Armand grabs him, nothing is placed there.

At first, he lifts his wrist like a willing cadaver’s, limp, but his hold slides to underline his open palm, and he kisses Daniel’s knuckles. “I have everything you could ask for.”

Daniel’s never had a boyfriend, and girlfriends are metronomic, validating holes. His senior prom date slapped him because he didn’t buy a corsage, and his tie, despite her navy dress, was olive. He annually stole cash from the Valentine’s candygram stand, bought cigarettes with the plunder, and sold those. He’s not Romeo; he wants coke.

“You’re cheesy.” But his mouth is moist, and his eyes linger like Daniel’s worth a long drive. Involuntary muscles pull his gut.

He sedately thumbs his skin. “Come home with me.”

Armand waved all the air from the bar just to drive him out. Time, for only a second, stops. And it's an apprehensive, horrible thrill, common sense leaning forward in its seat until Daniel says, “Alright.”

Leading him, Armand stands and takes his briefcase. “Let me.” He doesn’t pay as they leave, and Daniel thinks, Did he order anything at all?

His nose burns, but his guts knot, and when he sees a black van parked before the congested street, he stops. It practically has FREE DRUGS! written on the side. It’s an ink spill, his evening illegible if he enters its pure, imminent black — so he doesn’t. Yet the void eats him with the vengeance of a crow, slanting like cold rain down his nape. It’s Armand’s palm. Swathing as a storm, smothering as a mother —

“Rest,” he compels, and Daniel buckles. For some reason, he thinks a current through his thighs will keep him upright, but he’s horrifically held to Armand like wax down a candelabrum.

They near the van. Daniel’s mind gushes, memories busting like an overripe peach, a supercut. He’s leaned into him before. Phantom chair, mauled boy blood, the freebaser’s flame almost licking his sweater. The hand on his shoulder, his lifeline.

He’s not Louis’ unfinished business. Terror fists his heart. Armand guides his scruff.

“Apologies,” he mutters to a passerby. “He’s drunk.” Armand dooms him to the van, then follows, sure as the scar on his neck. It’s cloyingly plush, seats circling like a limousine’s, and they’re separated from the driver by a thick, translucent screen, similar to a cop car’s. A sterile scent itches his throat. It reeks like road trips, where his dad would pull over and make him scrub the seats if he got motion sick.

He sputters, “Gonna puke.”

Armand plots his briefcase and pinches the air. Daniel’s lips stitch. “That’s alright.”

He can’t respond. Daniel swallows, salivating so much he drools, and his cheeks puff, jaw fighting, lips puckering to gag. But he chokes inward, gripping Armand’s shoulder like a drunk that needs to be laid sideways. The smell is overtaking him, fuming with his dopesick stomach.

“You’re only hurting yourself.” A murmur so hateful it festers, lowering as he speaks. Resentment so intimate he’s gently sat and accompanied, shoulders touching. The van’s door telekinetically slams, taking the moon and street lamps with it, and only a dull square of light from the separating screen remains. Daniel trains his gaze on it. He tries to lean away, and a force holds his shoulders. There it is — what was in his thighs. “The body keeps score.”

Armand drags a nail along his kneecap, and tears glaze his eyes. Attempting to speak, he makes mm, mms like a sus shipping container.

Armand cocks his head. The bar didn’t light his eyes. All on their own, they’re frenetic, scheming amber. “I am not kidnapping you.”

Daniel stares at him. Then what the fuck do you call it?

“... I am not trafficking you.” Wry jest. “You’re too old to go for much, anyhow.”

I’m going to die. He cries, shoulders shaking. I’m gonna die in Sacramento.

“You’ll know when I want you dead.” Armand reaches into his slacks’ pocket and shakes a bag of coke like pet treats. “You need this, yes?” he assuages.

Yes, he echoes.

Armand’s fully casted his fishing rod into his head, and wormy eyes tug his thoughts, an awful dissonance between jewellike, gorgeous, and a neverending plunge. It’s hypothermia or an overdose or any ensorcelling death, it’s every sleepless night since Divisadero Drive, when he’s sworn a nail dragged along his third floor window — he has to stay awake.

Armand considers him, then slips out of his head like peeling from a wetsuit. Suddenly, Daniel can gasp, and he flounders, elbows hitting the long seat. He doesn’t even move for the coke, because that’s toward Armand, who pockets it.

He grabs one of Daniel’s ankles like a manacle, then mentally pulls his briefcase into his lap. He doesn’t undo the fastens. He opens it with his strength, locks clanging apart, irreparable, then touchlessly sorts the pages into a stack and absorbs. Crude and cryptid and repulsive, Armand reaps words like lives, quick as snapping necks. He combs them with the same ennuied mouth as job interviewers, but his gaze glows, convulses, batters his scleras like a mechanical whirr. Greedy thing, grubby palms, keratinized talons that brand his ankle. Armand thumbs the ball of his bone, where his skin is thinnest.

It’s grounding as a hickey. He shudders. Armand almost smiles.

“The Berkeley Barb wasn’t the wind under your wings?” he asks. After eating each page, he pinprick wedges his nails between the papers and plucks Daniel’s resume. His name is printed at the top, boisterous bold: DANIEL MOLLOY, JOURNALIST. “Tell me, Daniel, would you call Louis a photographer?”

“... What?”

He pauses and swipes through his head. Ah, he didn’t claim them. Memories surge like they’re divinely ordained, Louis developing photographs, taking them. They picture Paris’ twilight skyline and moonlit museums. Daniel flinches. These are Armand’s, recalled and projected.

“If Louis is not a photographer, I don’t think you can claim journalism.” He says Louis like he has bad allergies, nasally contempt. Loo-wee.

Daniel yanks his leg. “I’ve been published — ”

“Up, up, up The Berkeley Barb takes you,” The van rumbles, and Daniel’s heart hammers. He should have noted the turns they took. “So anxious. Is that under your skills, anticipates trends, keeping a pulse on otherwise untouched culture and politics?” Armand doesn’t have to reread to mock.

I was coked out when I wrote that, Daniel thinks. And all resumes are bullshit anyways. “All resumes — ”

“Huh.” Armand squints back at the paper. “You’re right. You never worked at a ‘Denny’s’ — ”

Daniel howls, “Where the fuck are you taking me? What are you doing — ?”

He releases his leg and twirls his finger. Daniel is strung upright, though he’s allowed to shiver into the seats’ corner. His papers levitate into his briefcase, neatly filed, but the locks don’t click. Armand tuts. “I’ll get you another.”

While he cowers, he surveys the interior and lays a hand on his pistol. The only exits are the door, which he’ll never get to, and the tinted windows, which surely won’t shatter.

Armand says, “You’re right, they are shatterproof. For example — ”

Suddenly, his gun budges and begins to move away. Daniel grabs for it, but it whips into Armand’s hand, blurry as a hummingbird.

He tinkers with it. Traces the barrel’s mouth, fondles the trigger, tests the grip. “This is wasted on your aim, anyways.”

Hey, Daniel wants to shout. Because he’s not that bad. As a kid, he always got bottles with BBs.

“That changes everything,” Armand drawls. “Duck.”

“Shit!” He curls, but the BANG doesn’t hit his head. Daniel peeks through his fingers and knees. Armand is slapping the pistol against a window, and he pulverizes it until pieces shrapnel from his palm.

“You won’t need that, as long as you’re with me,” he seethes, flicking the smithereens away. “Louis wants you alive.”

“I want me alive!”

Armand pounces toward his face, between his legs, over his tremblant body. He should be heavy. But he’s flying. Louis mentioned this. Daniel gulps, and before his throat bobs back, Armand strangles him. “Yet you live like you can thrift another life.” He thrusts his grip inward, bunching his esophagus and trachea like a bouquet. “Has any roadkill been saved by petulance, Daniel?”

He’s silenced and rapt. Daniel stares, throat throbbing, and watches his orange eyes. Two hypnotic pendulums. He can’t breathe. He struggles until blackholes suck his periphery, until Armand leans in, eyeing Daniel like gum he stepped on.

He loosens his hold, and because he lets Daniel, he inhales. It’s quiet. Their chests brush.

“I am going to give you a job,” he finally says.

Daniel squints — barely a narrowing, eyes swollen with tears. “Like — what, like, with money?”

“You’ll be compensated with your life.”

“That’s a cop-out, dude,” he huffs.

“A priceless good.” He scans Daniel’s face. “Calm down, yes?”

Like a cat ran up a wall, he flattens to the seat.

Armand’s jaw twitches. “Rest, then.”

Ease pools.

Louis, brooding and tightrope touchy, strings them, the constant that pumps Daniel’s heart and saves his life. He’d claw up a cliff to survive, because Louis wants him that way. So he braves Armand, defiant.

Unimpressed, he repeats, “Rest.” He cups his face, thumbs his eyelids, and closes them, fingertips feathery. Drowsiness rushes, and his head lolls.

With a trap door’s quickness, Armand grips Daniel’s shirt and strikes. Sliding proboscises, his fangs are, devilish glide, that tongue is, teasing his sutures and marring his wound. Bliss eviscerates Daniel, making him arch off the seats, shirt’s seams popping where grasped. This time, Armand drinks like he’s savoring, no neverending drain, and after his fangs retract, he lingers, tastes, humming through a slow, sensuous lick. A predator’s coo. His eyelashes tickle his jaw.

“Rest, feeble boy,” he whispers.

Sleep takes Daniel in its mouth. He whimpers, and Armand’s fistful of collar loudly rips.

His mom used to fall asleep on the couch, probably because of the valium and his dad’s snores. She’d leave crime documentaries playing, where detectives with furrowed brows and courteously solemn frowns always said, Once a perp takes a victim to a secondary location, their odds of survival dramatically decrease.

Daniel wakes as if chased. His heart fevers, sweat soaks his hair — he expects something beside him, but the bedspread is kempt, swaddling him like he’s stowed, precious leftovers. He wrenches his arms out, kicks until the blanket flutters away, and looks around the small, plain room, roving the naked walls and hardwood. A desk of fine mahogany faces the far wall, sunlit, bolstering Daniel’s briefcase, blank paper, and an expensive typewriter, fresh page dauntingly inserted. Like usual, he wears yesterday’s clothes, but his shirt drips off his shoulder, torn, and a bandage patches his neck.

Rest warded withdrawal for the night, but now, it swells until his tongue swims in spit. Daniel fires upright and rushes for a trash can or en suite but finds neither, and when he attempts the door, it’s locked. The knob clacks like an empty gun. “Fuck,” mutters. If Armand wants pristine seats in his murder mobile, his prison floors surely need to sparkle. For his life, Daniel bangs on the door. “Let me out.” Calling his name is too fraternal, like calling a teacher mom.

No one comes. He swallows and leans into the doorframe, eyeing the crevice for a lock he can flip. He sees one short, binding shadow, and though he doubts that’s all he’ll need to open it, he’ll try. Daniel walks to the desk and grabs the paper from the typewriter, then returns to the door and swipes it through.

Daniel doesn’t know why he pulls every lever he sees. It’s probably the same gene that makes him rail every line.

Something snatches it through the frame. “Step back,” Armand says.

His body is seized, and he obeys. The door opens.

Armand wears a fine purple shirt buttoned over his clavicles. He seems tanner, warmer, complexion freed of its brooding ire. Click — his shoes, as he sidesteps the threshold. Quality leather. If he hadn’t been waiting by the door, Daniel would have heard him walk up.

Armand intrudes, Observant. Then: “Restroom.” He nods toward the hall.

He scrambles like a bat from hell, but he’s lost before he’s relieved, stepping into another place entirely. The hall stretches like a yawn, walls drearily dark and ostentatiously ornate. Paintings of Satan’s carnage and clipped wings hang, harbingers less subtle than a backhand, yet they’re the only softness he sees. Inoffensive color, beautiful cherubs. Daniel nearly smacks a steadying hand into one as he lurches toward the nearest door.

This room is also lab coat white, though underexposed and hollow. A drain dots the tiled floor’s center, and in Daniel’s shadow, he notices a hose slithering into a water tank and toggling knobs.

A drain is all he needs to see. Daniel scurries and vomits white, more bodily and illicit fluids than sustenance. Cheap beer’s last tinge is expelled, and with it, any comfort — his temples soberly pang, he retches until his stomach cramps, his nostrils burn, the pressing urgency of a kettle screech or put me in the coffin, Armand!

Eventually, he slowly rises, slobs a sleeve over his mouth, then turns. Armand’s staring at him, mouth miffed.

“Restroom.” He spins a finger, making Daniel look at his mess, then the whole room. “Does this look like a restroom?”

Horrible host. Johns and crackhouses have been more accommodating. “No,” he breathes, then looks back at Armand, somehow shorter. Pathetic compliance. “I don’t know where it is. I’m — I’m in withdrawal, man — you said — ”

“You didn’t ask.” Armand leisurely pops his knuckles. “It’s to the left of the rosary.”

“What?” Daniel drags a hand over his face. Do all vampires have Catholic guilt?

A snobby sniff: “The Feast of the Rosary. Dürer.”

He remembers Dürer’s name from his art history elective, so queasily nodding, Daniel leaves, rampant down the hall. The painting is difficult to pinpoint, considering half portray feasts and more have the Virgin, but he happens upon a familiar one — an oil painting of Mary and bowing believers, heads flourished with rose garlands —, then enters past.

The space makes him fleetingly normal. He locks the door and breathes, sagging exhales, shallow inhales. It’s a quaint, fully facilitated restroom that matches the hall in color, in dim vibe. The sink is gorgeous, its basin an ecclesial mosaic reminiscent of stained glass, and he runs the hot tap as he takes a piss, then washes his face with steaming water. His complexion is furious red when he’s dry.

“Okay,” Daniel mutters, leaning onto the sink, into the mirror. He looks into his eyes. “Okay.” Focus.

No escape schemes fructify. He just pukes again, slung over the toilet until his head knocks the bowl, worn, perspiring. Gags of both nothing and bitter wet, spit, shakes — they worsen. He strips down to his boxers, knees slippery on tile, and the discomfort stifles him until he’s praying, as he always does in withdrawal: I’ll never do drugs again, just make it stop.

Someone hears him this time.

After minutes or an hour of retching, swift heel clacks approach, and the knob is tried. “It’s locked,” Armand says. “Would you like me to come in?”

“No.”

“You wanted help.”

“You said — ”

“Said what?” Armand asks. “You said you’d never do drugs again.”

No snow-capped palm descends to his supplication. If he had to, he’d snort it off Armand’s shoes. Daniel weeps, “Please.”

“I will wait here.” Under the door, his silhouette plants.

He puddles, whining his headache, his chills. His ruined shirt, his weekend plans. A devil’s mangling, sopping in its floor like a tossed doll, though all he needs to be picked up is to invite him in.

San Francisco yelps. He remembers the chair’s undulation and winces, recalls the reassuring cradle around his head — Rest. Memory or aloud?

In his last blink of consciousness, he mutters, “Please.” Dehydration is a killer, and if Daniel gets to choose his end, Armand is softer. A cousin of it, draining. But gentler. Like his mom rarely petting his curls, too medicated to be unavailable.

When Daniel stirs, Armand is daubing his bare body with a wetted cloth, a cat’s sandpaper tongue. He blinks sleep from his eyes and springs on his elbows. “What the hell,” he blurts, gravelly, dazed — he rose too fast. Faintness sends him falling back, but telekinesis stops his head from hitting the floor, then lays it.

His eyes furiously flick, looking for what happened in the inbetween. The room reeks of sick, sweat, and Armand’s numb, blanketing smell, balmy like palm lotion or hair conditioner. Daniel nearly laughs when he sees the frazzled locks tucked behind his ears.

“I’m cooling your fever,” Armand says. He rises from his crouch and fills a cup he must have grabbed prior.

He touchlessly props his head and holds the cup to his lips, and Daniel gazes up as he drinks, lashes a dark vignette around Armand’s leer. The water hits his stomach, and he lunges for the toilet. Nothing stays down for the first day of withdrawal.

As he heaves, Armand decides it’s an optimal time to explain. “I want to conduct an interview.”

He groans something like, Goddddd.

He yanks his hair, nails threatening his skull. “Are employers bidding over you?” He pulls Daniel until his back is a left parenthesis, claws indenting a twinge more, twitching, and he thinks of the priest in Lestat’s wake, head holed.

Daniel sputters, swats at Armand’s relentlessness, he’s gonna vomit on himself, Jesus Christ sorry okay I’ll sign the dotted fucking line just let me go.

Armand releases him, and Daniel reaffixes to the porcelain and pukes. He hears the tap run against something, then the cup’s clink as it’s sat on the sink. “It will last a month if you’re cooperative.” His spindly fingers dip in his hair again, puppet strings, but there’s no pain, just placating scratches. “And I’ll provide your fixes if you’re pleasant.”

“I’ll do anything for it now,” Daniel begs. “Please, just a bump — ”

“I don’t bargain.”

A shiver wrecks his body. “Let me interview, then: Why are you doing this?” To desecrate Louis. To embrace himself and say, You’re enthralling. To make Daniel remember he’s finite, as if mortality doesn’t sing in his night-bitten neck and tense thighs. All these reasons are surely true, but insecurity doesn’t become more interesting after justification; it only stifles authenticity, so Armand will be a trite posture of whatever he wants Daniel to glean.

If he had the choice, he’d interview Armand under a hard light in an air-conditioned room, his hands strapped to the table, calves to his chair. No obfuscation. Only a fluorescent hum.

“I don’t want your enthralling story to go to waste,” he says. “And I have occupied myself with the taping device you left behind, so I’ve grown fond of it.”

He pants and slowly turns his head, wiping the mess off his mouth. “My story?”

Armand’s hand slinks down, cups his chin, and cages his jaw. “I would like to interview you.”

A thing capable of mindreading conducting an “interview” is a joke. Daniel squints at him, undiluted skepticism. “I’m still lost on the why, man.” He swallows nausea, drool. Can’t quell his inquisitiveness. “You can just take another dip — ”

I want to hear it from your lips.

They quiver. Armand’s thumb nail grazes them, and his irises flare, struck matches.

I want to see it from your eyes.

With his opposite hand, he grabs the cup, and Daniel nurses it.

I want to taste it from your skin.

A lifetime’s memories sing in his blood, only kept by a thin veil of skin and foolish resolve.

“So don’t bore me.”

Chapter Text

Through withdrawal, he’s condemned to Armand’s fretting, and in equal, simultaneous measure, torment. To bandage, one needs wounds.

Worse, sobriety is a freshly oiled machine — optimized function and efficiency. It’s coke’s cognizance without its confidence. He’d give anything to dull it, so when Armand tells him to call Eva, he's halfway spun the rotary phone.

They’re in a sleek office, one of four rooms Daniel’s seen — this one, his own, the restroom, and the drain room. He avoids that door, lest he discovers its use, but Armand’s pinned to his side, so he hasn’t found an opportunity to sleuth anyhow. Daniel’s calmer eye, though, has gleaned that the place is smaller than it’d felt, however frivolous. This doesn’t seem like Armand’s favored lair.

“None of this is for you,” he interrupts. The loudness jostles Daniel’s finger, and he has to redial. “You’re here for me.”

“Right,” Daniel mutters. He spins the last digit and holds the phone, letting it ring, ring, ring, his feet grow antsy, ring, he bites his lip, and in his held breath, she picks up.

“Is this the police?” she answers thickly. “He’d better be dead or something, it’s two in the fucking morning.”

All the windows are curtained, and for days, however many, Daniel’s looked for a clock. He even asked if they could watch TV.

(“Can we watch something?” he mutters, meek on Armand’s thigh. Over his lap, he’s perspiration, quivers, and something to idly pet. The bed is small for two, a twin, and they would touch even if they weren’t so tangled.

“No,” Armand answers. “Your heart rate is lowering, you’ll fall asleep soon anyways.”

“I was gonna watch — ”

“I know what you’re doing.”

He shies from Armand’s omniscience, nosing into his calf and thigh’s meeting. They’ve been inside for days, maybe longer, yet Armand still wears sharp slacks. Daniel is in the loungewear given, boxers and a satiny shirt that kisses his collarbones. The matching pants are kicked and sweaty somewhere. “Why don’t you want me to know?”

“Because you will count the days until we’re done, and I want your full attention.” His fingers tighten and tense. “Look up.”

Daniel does. Armand stares back, pupils dilating, lips twitching like shaken jail bars.

“Good.” After starring his test, Armand resumes stroking him.)

Before he can answer, Armand usurps his voice and, from Daniel’s mouth, says, “I’m just hanging out, man.” He gawps, tries to speak, and can’t.

She shrills, “Who do you think you’re talking to right now? Where the fuck are you?”

Again, he compels an utter, “Portland.” Portland? Daniel echoes. Armand isn’t improvising; this is premeditated.

“Ew, fuck, I’m not picking you up from there if you need it.”

The impenetrable force of little brotherhood lets Daniel shoot a garbled, “You suck.”

Warning, Armand stares, unblinking and noiseless.

“You suck! What the fuck even is this? You just disappear, ‘cause you think being a dumbass is, like, inspiring and gives you texture. You’re so inspired, Danny. Everyone thinks you’re so cool, especially the SacPD!”

Armand chews his cheek, brow furrowing, and directs a dumb: “What do you mean?”

Suffocating silence. “Daniel.”

“Yes?”

“Are you a drug dealer?”

“... No.”

“That’s all? Okay, well, are you a prostitute?”

No, he wants to say, as he’s not. He does it for drugs, sometimes rides, and if he’s already scrounged the change from his couch, dinner. He’s only tricked for money a handful of times, then a few more after that. He’s not sashaying down the street in a glittery leotard or knocking on car windows.

Armand’s lips quirk and are as quickly quelled. “Ah,” Daniel says, Armand’s stammer. “Why do you ask?”

“Why do I ask — because you don’t have a job, and the cops found eight hundred dollars in your bedroom, to answer your fucking — riddle. Some of them were stained with — ”

“Alright,” he blurts, and Armand contemplates through him. “I — alright. Yes. I’m sorry.” Panic rolls over his guts like a tank, he pales, and when he tries to retreat from the phone, that’s too much autonomy, and he’s anchored.

“Are you a queer prostitute?” She pauses, then mocks, “I’m moving to San Fran for the cuuulture — ”

“No,” is Armand’s answer, but before he can speak further, Daniel tries to force him out of his mouth. His canines mash his tongue, and spitting blood, he breaks a garbled, pained breath, “But don’t tell dad.”

Eva muffles the phone, and Daniel sucks his tongue.

Bleeding in sharks’ water, isn’t he?

Armand’s hands fist. Suddenly, arrant control fetters Daniel, his brain mists, and when he attempts to think, let alone talk, it’s as if a crushing plate flattens his head, a compacted, anvil-heavy ache. He would scream if he had his body. The pain is so extraordinary that Daniel realizes he still has firsts, and tears renegade into his mouth, salting his wound.

When she returns, there’s mordant laughter. “Would you rather I tell him that you’re a homo or a junkie?”

Armand directs nothing.

A moment and a groan. “Danny, I got the weed out of there, ‘cause, y’know, I knew it was there, but they found all your other shit. I didn’t… I didn’t know about anything else. You didn’t want me to, I mean, it was under your bed.”

“I’m sorry.” And himself, he thinks to Armand, I’m sorry. Anything to stop the pain.

“When will you be back?”

“A month.” But Armand had said that some time ago, so that doesn’t clue him.

“You didn’t even ride out a month of the semester — ”

“I’m interning.”

“God, I know you’re lying, whatever. Are you having fun with who you’re doing? What you’re doing, sorry…”

“Yes,” Armand pushes from his wobbly, whimpery lips, and Daniel’s eyes plead. “Yes, I’m having fun. I’m having fun.”

Someone is. Armand licks his gums.

Before she speaks again, Daniel’s lips spill, “I have to leave, though. I’m alright. I promise.”

“Are you drunk?”

Make it stop, he wants to weep, and a particularly painful flume currents through his head. He flinches as if electrified. “I said I was having fun.”

Armand nods, emphasizing each word with his mad, ricocheting gaze.

“God, whatever. What should I tell the cops?”

“Nothing. They’ll let it go cold.”

“... You sound really drunk.”

“I am really drunk. I’m on a payphone, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Hardass.” A sigh. “Just — call me when you’re sober, alright?”

Armand’s will, he slots the phone, a bade goodbye dying on his lips. Click. Abrupt as lightning: A body his own. The room as it’d been. No pain, apart from his tongue’s. Daniel folds and gasps, his blood smattering the floor with spit and tears.

“On your knees.”

He obeys with terrified obsequence, gaze pinned on the smooth, cold floor. Armand stalks closer, legs in Daniel’s upper periphery, shoes pointing at the mess like a leather scold.

“You spoiled my meal,” he says plainly. “Drooled your whole bleed.” He pithily taps his tiptoe, clack. Does he wear other shoes? “I don’t want you to dirty something nicer.” They look like they’re worth rent. “You don’t pay rent.”

Daniel, a pile of shivers, awaits direction.

“Eight hundred dollars,” Armand murmurs. “How many cocks in your mouth is that?”

His face, neck, and ears flame, and he says nothing, because he’s uncertain.

A pensive hum. “Rise.”

He expects to be lifted, but he’s not; Armand wants conscious compliance. Daniel stands, avoiding his gaze, and the sight of Armand’s neck, however collateral, is a wicked, tantalizing thing, and he longs to feel him as much as children scurry to touch stoves.

“You will regard me with reverence” — he grips Daniel’s chin and twines their eyelines — “and you will begin with acknowledgement.”

Daniel remains quiet.

“Yes?”

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

“Now straighten your posture.” Armand grips his shoulders and corrects their slouch, tilts his jaw, elongates his neck. “Good. If you’d been this pleasant all along, I would have given you a fix.”

He wants to weep. What else can he give Armand, aside from unconditional obedience? Does he have anything else? His eyes glitter as if Daniel’s a toy. “Bare your tongue.”

Hesitantly, he does, and Armand swabs his thumb in his own cheek then tacks Daniel’s wound, which vanishes. He blinks at the pressure in his boxers, erupting so far the cloth’s flap is splayed. He hurriedly covers his crotch.

“We have healing properties,” is his explanation. Armand smears Daniel’s whole tongue, then hooks his cheeks and wriggles over his gums. “Cleansing properties.” As he’s scrubbed, Daniel watches Armand’s mouth pucker then frown, pucker then frown, the impatience of rolling on a condom, until he shoves his thumb onto the back of his tongue, nail diving down his throat. When he gags, Armand smiles like torture’s a pleasure akin to crosswords or crochet. Considering what he just learned, that enjoyment is the only reason he hasn’t mended his neck. Daniel is certain.

“It would be pointless. You’ll be bled a few times.” Forward with his scourge, Armand pinches his tongue and entombs it in his dank, icy mouth. Their lips clinically brush beneath open eyes, and as his fangs plunge, Daniel wails. The blood draw empties the muscle until it’s a numb, copulating slab, which he’s terrified Armand will puncture the bottom of, that he has and it’s unfelt beyond dull titillation. Louis’ fangs certainly would if he did this, but his are longer.

His eyes briefly blaze. If you do not quiet your thoughts, I will chop it off. Armand bites harder, but it’s only a reprimand, and he separates with a fed complexion, blood beading his lip. Daniel tastes iron, yet no more bleeds. He supposes Armand’s residual spit healed him. As he licks his lips, Daniel wonders —

“Coffee and liquor. I’ll fix that.”

Daniel stares, stickied by blood. “With crackers?” He probably looks like a pet who licked a jam jar, tongue senseless.

Yes, he does, because Armand smiles when he hears that thought. “You’ve been too ill for anything else. Do you want to try something more filling?”

“Yeah.”

He looks proud. “I went grocery shopping. Let me show you, come, Daniel.”

Rubbing his back, Armand guides him there, and Daniel’s erection enters before him. The kitchen is sumptuous and clean like a store’s display room, and its black counters are as reflective as a beetle’s shell. No staff occupies it.

“I will serve breakfast, unless you would like more crackers and salami.”

“No.” He almost grimaces. “No, that’s fine, thank you.”

He urges Daniel onto a stool, a plush one of few that circles the island, and in a blink, he’s opening the fridge. Daniel gapes; it’s stuffed! Types of milk, bundles of fruit and vegetables, yogurt, vibrant meat. Armand retrieves milk, eggs, and butter, then a bowl and dry ingredients typical of baking.

Daniel squints. “Pancakes?”

“Yes, pan-cakes.” That’s probably the first time he’s ever said that word. “You’re right.”

“How do you know how to make them?” He’s ready to save a burning skillet.

“You know how to make them,” Armand answers simply. “You make them often.” With spoonfuls, he improvises the measurements of baking powder, salt, sugar, and flour, yet they all seem accurate. “Your mother taught you.”

Easy with the ladle, Danny, she instructed, hand over his, red nails abrasively meddling. You always pour too much. She showed him how to make cereal, too, and eggs and toast, taught with wine breath, only so he could prepare for school and walk to the bus without disturbing her sleep. He thinks he was seven or eight.

“You can be good when you want to.”

Daniel grumbles something, unsure of it himself, and closes his legs.

Armand cracks an egg, then pours milk, shoulders suddenly curling with anticipation — no, he’s excited, beaming as he scrapes butter into a small bowl, and it brightens as he approaches the microwave. He mumbles something in another language, not French.

When Armand crouches to watch the butter melt, glee dampens his eyes, and his affinity makes utter sense: The front row of suffering and dismantling, one he’s not only occupied again and again, but heckled and propped his legs from.

Horrible.

“I am going to ask a question,” Armand says, almost inaudible under the microwave’s hum.

“What is it — ?”

He lifts a finger and shushes Daniel, intent on enjoying the final seconds, a housewife that just wants to watch her soap operas. Four, three, two — before it beeps, he opens the door and takes the bowl, then pours it with the rest.

Silence, for a while, that Daniel doesn’t dare break. Only his concocting stir fills the air before his voice, silky even when sudden: “Why are my proclivities horrible to you?”

“Like — like hobbies?”

Armand, finished mixing, fetches a skillet and heats it. “My inclinations, lifestyle, thought processes...”

Is he serious? “If you don’t know, then I can’t explain it,” Daniel answers.

“I do know. I was wondering if you did.” As he waits for the skillet to warm, he leans on the counter, facing Daniel. He looks long, like his legs and arms yearn to stretch. “You hold me to a human standard.”

“... So you feel judged?”

“I’m interviewing. You don’t possess the same innate disgust for Louis, only desire, fear. Why?”

Daniel wishes he had a philosophical answer, but all he has is an undressed one, plain and obvious: Louis loves. Loves art, architecture, everything that makes humanity bearable, because he’s still forged to it, lagging like the last boxcar.

Armand laughs, usual at first, then — pealing bells. Rancorous guffaws, ones that make him clutch his stomach. His eyes twinkle and his smile lines meanly etch, a wrinkle before the snarl Daniel expects but doesn’t come. He just laughs. “Indiscriminately loving Louis, St. Louis.”

The bowl behind him suddenly floats then pours in the skillet, an afterthought now. Daniel’s gotten his attention, and gooseflesh rises on his arms.

His boner was just starting to fall.

“Louis does disgust me,” Daniel says. Anything to prevent an outburst.

Mirth flickers and fades. “But not in your heart. Not in the back of your mind. You admonish him then salivate with that same lurid mouth.” He points at him. “Don’t tell me what I want to hear, I hear it all regardless!”

“We didn’t even have sex,” Daniel says, and immediately, having learned nothing, he sees that he shouldn’t have.

Armand stares. “Need I remind you that that’s why you’re here?”

“... It is?”

“I told you then.” He pinches his temple like he’s been transparent. “That warrants investigation. Now quiet, no more from you.” As if he didn’t implore Daniel’s answer. Before he can respond, he turns, sniffing, and grabs a spatula to flip the pancake. It’s perfect to Daniel’s taste, fluffy, a bit battery. “If you stop doubting me, you’ll save energy.”

Daniel chews his cheek, and while Armand cooks the remainder, he surveys the kitchen in further detail. A knife set hangs on the wall, shiny but unhelpful, and all the appliances are operative. The oven reads 2:46AM, but it has no date, and Daniel tries not to sigh. He’ll say today is October fourth. Yes, that feels fine. He’ll return to the kitchen —

After flipping the third pancake, Armand crouches at the oven and reaches his skinny arm to unplug it. The stove’s heat stops. There’s likely just enough warmth bundled to cook the last side.

“Do you just listen to me all the time?” Daniel asks, prepared for a shush.

Armand licks his cheek, glances at him, then watches the pan. “It’s just noise,” he finally says. “There’s nothing else to hear.”

“No other thoughts?”

“No, not here.” When the edges bubble, he slides the final pancake atop the others and sets the skillet in the sink. “I’m older than Louis. It is more subconscious to me than an intention.”

“How old are you?” In San Francisco, he asked and was ignored.

“Old.”

Daniel is about to ask for syrup, but Armand drizzles it, and before he requests the strawberries he saw, he’s getting those, too. A pristine plate is slid in front of him, silverware and a napkin bound beside. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yeah, that’d be good.”

Armand pours a glass of milk. He wants water and projects that, but milk is still given.

“It produces thicker blood,” he murmurs. “Before you eat, let me…” On the island, there’s a stack of folded cloths. Armand takes one and settles it on Daniel’s lap like a blanket, fingers alight with the motion of tucking in for bed. It smothers his erection until an accidental brush. Friction, just right. His dick twitches, and he lowers his head. “And…”

He’s doing things for the hell of it, Daniel can tell. Armand begins cutting his pancakes into squares. He could finish instantly, but he whittles each bite. Daniel wants to take the fork, his stomach growling.

“You’re very hungry,” Armand says. “Don’t eat so quickly you become sick, your stomach is weak.” He hands him the silverware and sits at his side.

Like an inmate, Daniel shovels mouthfuls, elbows bracketing the plate. It’s delicious. His eyes close, a gentle moan burgeoning —

“Elbows,” Armand grumbles.

He manages the rest of breakfast (lunch? dinner?) with superb manners, everything downed apart from the milk, which gleams half-drank, his lips’ print clouding the rim. He could fall asleep right there.

“You can nap. I’ll let you rest by yourself, then we’ll have a properly recorded session.”

Though there’s no command, rest makes him flinch. “Okay.”

Armand gathers the dishes. Daniel mutters thanks and walks away, but in his head is projected, Louis wouldn’t have restrained himself.

That’s nice, honey. Whatever that means. His gait quickens.

His room is his own for the only time since his first rouse, and with a clear, satisfied head, he hurries to the typewriter and drafts, wreaking typos in his haste.

DANIEL MALLOY, 20, WHITE MALE, BROWNN CURLY HAIR, HAZEL GRNE EYES. ROUGHLY 6’0 AN SLIM. NO TATTOOS. WAS HERE! CALL EVA MOLLOY IF FOUND — (916) 632-5 I MEAN (916) 632-455

He rushes to the bed, folds the paper, and hides the note in the frame, inserting it between there and the mattress. Next, he paws the pants he’d worn there, now flung into the room’s corner.

Cigarettes! Daniel smiles wistfully. He opens the pack, then puts one in his lips; however, the other pocket is empty. No lighter.

“Fucking bastard,” Daniel murmurs. Just give me this… he thinks, so useless and woeful he’s about to spit it out or crush it under his hand.

But prayer answered, a flame kisses his cig, licking to a dot. He almost throws it, and he inhales, shocked. An eighth of the cig burns, and Daniel coughs until he feels green, but the ambush passes, and he strips his shirt then lays down. It’s a thoughtful cigarette, reminiscent of his interview with Louis. Unfamiliar room, tremulant lungs, no jackets.

How old are you? he tries.

Though there’s no answer, he can tell Armand hears and lingers. The flame flickers. His midday mid-night is spent smoking with omnipresence.

Daniel wakes with a yawn on his lips and an ashen filter between his fingers, one that should have seared him awake, would have if no one snuffed it. A folded outfit waits on his bed, and a handwritten note is on the nightstand. He rubs his eyes, flicks the filter toward the bin, misses, and reads the note.

Daniel Malloy,

When you wake, please shower and dress, then wait for me in the kitchen.

— A