Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A thick fog clung to the street. It was like walking through cotton candy, less the sweet smell. Here, salt water, piss and the putrid smell of car gaz, clothed the city air. Daniel shuffled through the variable light of the lamp street and traffic light, collar up, hands buried deep in the pockets of his army surplus coat. His boots stuck slightly with each step on the damp sidewalk. 

He didn’t hate the fog as much as he probably should have. People usually didn’t feel comfortable getting lost in it. It blurred the world around and softened the edges of everything. Daniel liked that. There was something uncanny about the fog. It was elusive and could make people disappear. One moment you were there, the next you were gone, swallowed whole. Daniel found comfort in it. Walking through the fog felt like stepping between worlds, like slipping into a parallel dimension. Sometimes he imagined that if he just kept walking, he might emerge somewhere entirely new ; a different life, a clean slate.

A fresh start.

The lights of the Polynesian Mary’s neons finally appeared, a red diffused spot through the mist. The edge of the building followed, then the doors and the sound of a pulsing life within. It was the kind of place that didn’t care what you were running from, so long as you paid for your drinks and didn’t do what you came for too obviously in plane sight. Daniel pushed open the door, the hinges groaning like they resented the effort. Warmth hit him first, then the haze of cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. The bar was busy, occupied by the usual ghosts: drifters, night owls, regulars, strangers. A jukebox was playing something catchy, and a couple of patrons were dancing. 

Daniel knew he didn’t belong here, but then, he didn’t belong anywhere these days.

He spotted a seat at the far end of the bar. He slid into it, lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled more than he liked, and ordered whatever was cheap. He had no money to pay for it but that was a problem for later. 

He sensed movement just before a man sat down beside him. Their eyes met. A chill crept down Daniel’s spine. Those eyes, unnatural, saturated green, didn’t belong to any mortal. This was a vampire. And a gorgeous one, damn him. His ebony skin caught the light like burnished autumn. Warm golds and deep coppers flickering over something cold. He was lean, impeccably dressed, his expensive clothes fitting too perfectly on a body that no longer lived. Instinctively, Daniel leaned back, his body tense, measuring the stranger with wariness. 

“Hi,” the later said with a smile, and sure enough, his sharp canines glinted in the low light.

“Hi,” Daniel replied, voice as flat as the counter they sat at.

“What’s in the bag?”

Daniel instinctively pulled his messenger bag onto his lap.

“My work.”

“You bring work to a bar?” The vampire grinned. The sound that followed, half laugh, half exhale, caught Daniel off guard. It wasn’t sinister though.

“We bring whatever we want, don’t we? Who are you?”

“Louis de Pointe du Lac. And you?”

“I’m Daniel.”

Louis took a long drag from his cigarette, the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Smoke curled from his lips like he knew and it made Daniel’s skin hitch. Something about him, like some magnetism, screamed at Daniel to be cautious and to let go of his fear all at once. 

“Just Daniel?”

“Daniel Molloy.”

The name felt strange coming out, like something both familiar and new, like a spell spoken aloud. 

“What’s work, Daniel? Are you an assassin? Have you come to kill me?”

“I’m a writer,” Daniel said, chuckling despite himself. There was a teasing lilt to Louis’ voice, and Daniel knew it for what it was - seduction. Still, he let the charm in. “I interview people.”

He went on, explaining his process to a curious Louis, who listened with surprising attentiveness. Then Daniel offered to interview him. Louis paused, considering.

“Sounds fun,” he said. Then, turning his head slightly, he spoke to someone else. Someone Daniel hadn’t noticed until now. “Want to join?”

From behind a curtain of pearls stepped a man holding a neatly folded brown jacket over one arm. His eyes were astonishing, like molten sunsets, brighter and more vivid than any Daniel had ever seen. He was taller, slender, more precisely tailored than Louis. The jewelry that adorned his fingers and neck wasn’t just expensive, it was the kind of wealth that suggested immortality had treated him very, very well.

If vampires had health insurance, Daniel thought dryly, this one had the premium plan.

He was beautiful, but in a different way than Louis, less modern, more timeless. He looked like he’d stepped out of a Renaissance painting. Younger in appearance than Louis, perhaps, but Daniel could sense the ancient blood in him like static in the air. The stranger glanced at him, then looked away just as quickly.

“No,” he said, bored. “You go ahead and have your fun.”

The dismissal, for some reason, stung. Daniel should have known better. Vampires were beautiful. All of them. It was part of the design. The allure wasn’t just in their faces or the elegance of their movements, it was in their very presence, the unnatural gravity they carried. Daniel knew this. Moira had made sure he learned it. But knowing something and resisting it were entirely different games. He turned back to Louis, who was watching him with those impossibly green eyes, half-lidded, curious. Not unkind.

“You disappointed?” Louis asked softly, lips quirking.

Daniel huffed out a breath, trying to mask the emotion in something lighter. “I mean… the more the merrier, right?” He tried to grin, but it didn’t quite land.

Louis tilted his head. “You don’t need to perform for me. Or hide.”

Daniel’s face stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Louis lifted his hands gently, palms out. “Only that you don’t seem like someone who gets this flustered over just a pretty face.”

Daniel’s jaw tightened. 

“I’m not gay.”

The words came out too fast, too hard. He felt them hit the air like a thrown rock, ugly and clumsy and louder than they needed to be. Louis blinked, and Daniel realized it was the first time since the beginning of their conversation that was happening. 

Fucking freak .

If anything though, Louis seemed more interested now, not less. He leaned back slightly, cigarette dangling between two fingers. Daniel looked away, suddenly fixated on the glass in front of him, tracing the rim with his finger.

“I just don’t like being made into something I’m not,” he muttered.

“Fair enough,” Louis said before he exhaled smoke. “Sometimes, though, the thing you’re not just hasn’t been given the right moment to become.”

Daniel didn’t reply. Louis had no idea how right this was.

He shrugged and downed his glass. To hell with all this, he’d take whatever the night would bring. 

He followed Louis outside into the fog after the vampire kindly paid for his drink. For a couple of streets, he thought of vanishing into the nothingness, taking advantage of the blur the fog was pushing the world into. But Louis’ low, cultured voice murmuring some conversation to him as if they were long time friends catching up, dissuaded him.

Louis’ place was nestled in a crooked Victorian, three floors of bone-white wood and time-warp charm wedged between more modern scars. Inside, the apartment was hushed, papered with contemporary patterns, lit by orange lights. The windows were covered in papers, probably to filter the sun during the day.

Louis shed his coat as he gestured Daniel toward a metal chair. He handed him a beer and then came the other offer. From a drawer, Louis retrieved a small, black case, too pristine for something so illicit. Inside: Daniel’s paradise.

Daniel hesitated only long enough to pretend he had a choice. A couple of lines, and a sharp and fast burn later, he was settling with relief. Louis watched him the whole time, not judging, not smiling. Just observing, like a painter studying a subject he already knew intimately.

“So,” Daniel said, eyes lidded, voice slower now. “You're a vampire.”

“Yes.”

“Like, the real deal. Blood, fangs, burned-by-sunlight type.”

Louis inclined his head. “The myths are imperfect. But the essence? True enough.”

“And you want to tell me your story. Just like that.”

“Not just like that,” Louis said softly. “I want someone to understand it. And you already know the world isn’t what it pretends to be. That’s why you run. Why you numb it.”

Daniel’s jaw tightened slightly, but he didn’t rise to the bait. He just took a slow sip of his drink, then set the glass down a little too carefully.

“I’m not here to talk about me,” he said flatly. “You want a recorder? You’ve got one. Talk.”

It was a little too sharp maybe but something shifted in Louis’ expression, and he nodded, once. He leaned forward, fingers laced, eyes unfocusing as though looking through the years.

“Listen closely, Daniel Molloy. I’ll tell you how it began. Not in the moment I died, but the moment I began to want death. It was the year...”

And so the hours bled on. Louis told his story like a man unburdening himself piece by piece. A plantation’s heritage, an cursed work, a brother’s madness, guilt like a nail in the spine. The dark gift offered not in mercy, but in hunger. The monster who made him. The monster he loved. 

Daniel listened. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t take notes. He slipped into Louis’ story like it was a tide pulling him under. Because it was easier to drown in someone else’s pain than sit with his own.

By the end of the night, Daniel was drunk. And high. And tired. Not just physically, though his limbs ached with the effects of the lines and the liquor. Also mentally, spiritually, sick in a way only too much brooding conversation and ancient melodrama could conjure.

Louis was still talking. Low and poetic and heartbreakingly articulate. Always heartbreakingly articulate. He had the cadence of a man who’d practiced mourning until it became an art form. Daniel slumped against the back of the couch, rolling another cigarette, eyes half-closed, head tilted toward the ceiling fan. The story had long since stopped pulling him under. He wasn’t enchanted anymore.

He was annoyed. No, pissed. Louis spoke of sorrow like it was nobility. Of regret like it was all he had left. Of Lestat’s cruelty, of Claudia’s tragedy, of the long decades painted in ash and blood and remorse. Daniel couldn’t help the fire crawling up the back of his throat.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, cutting across the soft poetic drawl. “You keep saying it’s a curse. That he ruined you. That eternity is grief in disguise.” He snorted, bitter and dry. 

A curse? Daniel knew what a curse felt like. Immortality wasn’t one. It was a way out. A way free. And God, how Daniel wanted it. He leaned forward, the world swimming just slightly, eyes glassy but hard. 

“You are free. That’s what you don’t get. You are free. No death, no rules, no time. You have the whole fucking world and you use it to brood in shadows and mourn your mistakes like a goddamn theater major.”

Louis opened his mouth, but Daniel held up a hand. 

“No. No more tragic vampire monologues. You want pity? Go find a mirror. You want truth? The gift you call a curse, most of us would crawl over broken glass to get. You didn’t lose everything, Louis. You chose sadness.”

“How dare you?" Louis growled more than he spoke, the sound low, guttural, not entirely human.

Daniel leaned forward, swaying slightly, pupils blown wide. His voice cracked with urgency. 

“Give it to me. I think you could use me. We have an energy, you and me. I could be your Lestat, your Claudia!”

The names were a slap, and even in his fogged state, Daniel half-knew it. A sober Daniel would never have dared. Never would’ve spoken so recklessly, so cruelly, so hungrily. But the desperation came flooding in all at once. He was one heartbeat away from freedom. From starting over.

“I-I’ll show you what you can do with it,” Daniel whispered. 

“This?” Louis snarled, his body contorted like a storm unfolding. “After all I told you, boy, is what you ask for?”

Daniel flinched, but didn’t back down. His chin tilted up, flushed with drink and high and pride.

“I mean, you don’t understand the meaning of your own story!”

Louis was on him before he closed his mouth. The table between them flung, the chair cracked beneath the impact as Daniel was shoved back, pinned on the floor. The vampire’s eyes were no longer green but black with rage, his lips peeled away from glinting fangs. A scream caught in Daniel’s throat and never made it out. The world narrowed into heat and pressure and a sudden terrifying clarity. Daniel’s limbs spasmed. His breath hitched, shallow, eyes wide, glazed.

Louis held him tight, his mouth locked at the neck, draining him with a hunger older than sin. Daniel’s limbs were heavy, slipping into uselessness, the warmth of his blood being pulled away like the tide receding from the shore. Cold crept in behind it. His vision pulsed. The room stuttered like a broken film reel.

Somewhere in the fog of his mind, a laugh rippled through the dark. Light, lilting. Familiar. 

Moira? No, too sharp at the end. Juliane, maybe. It held her cruelty, yeah… Did it matter? Daniel was too tired to chase the memory, too far gone to name the ghosts. They came and went now, uninvited. Regrets and fevers. His head lolled to the side. A smear of red on his sleeve caught his fading attention. His own? Probably.

Then came voice. Calling Louis. Panicked. Velvet wrapped in steel.

A hand grabbed Louis by the collar and wrenched him back. In the violence, Daniel was thrown against a wall with the strength of an elephant. Daniel gasped, boneless, sticky with sweat and blood. The world tilted, warped. His head hit the wall and he didn’t see anymore, only felt the reverberation of the choc. The breath went out of him.

Pain bloomed across his back and skull, but it was distant, muffled, like it was happening to someone else. Everything inside him was slow now. A crawl. A dying radio signal. The world dimmed at the edges, narrowing to the silhouette of someone standing between him and Louis. A shape cut from shadow and elegance.

The angel again. Or the devil. Daniel couldn’t be sure.

Sound came back in pieces. Shattered glass, heavy thuds. Voices too sharp, too close. Fighting. Anger rippling through the air like a heatwave. Mockery, half-laughter spat through clenched teeth. A name. 

“Lestat Lestat Lestat Lestat Daniel. Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel.”

He whimpered. Female voices melted into the vampires' ones. Screaming at each other. Moira and Juliane were screaming. He was three years old again, hiding behind the couch, shivering. His blood was boiling.

He could smell it, metallic and hot, smeared down his collar, where Louis had bitten. 

The fear twisted in his gut, writhed through his bones like a worm waking up. Something inside him stopped flinching. It stood and spoke for him. Without warning, without thought, Daniel screamed. Not with his voice. With his will. The sound was internal. A rupture, a psychic thunderclap exploding outward. Louis’ living room convulsed around him. The lights above burst in a rain of sparks and fury. Windows cracked, then shattered, glass howling through the room like a cyclone, papers flying, sun rushing in. The furniture splintered, flung aside as if by unseen hands. Books caught fire where they lay. A mirror split down the center like it had been judged. The tap exploded, drenching the room in water.

Daniel stumbled up, hit a wall on his way out, and ran.

Chapter Text

He had not seen it coming. One moment words were stabbing both of them. Next, the world was cracking open. Walls imploded, wind screamed and sunlight tore through the room like the wrath of God. The air went white-hot.

Armand had no time to think, only move. The sound of Louis screaming shattered something in him deeper than bone. Armand snapped his eyes open, realizing he had closed them under the shock of the explosion. 

Louis was on fire. The sunlight clung to him like liquid flame, and he was screaming. His skin was blistered, shoulder half-melted, the right side of his face peeling. His legs gave out, and he collapsed to the floor, smoke rising from his shirt and his hair. The sunlight flooded through the ruined ceiling. He tried to crawl toward the shadows, dragging himself in vain. Every instinct in Armand warred with self-preservation. His strengths were compromised from too many weeks without proper feeding but that sound, Louis, searing, ripped through his better judgment. 

He lunged through the wreckage, debris still raining like hell’s own confetti around them. His hands caught Louis, fragile now, skin flaking and blackening under the kiss of the sun. He clutched him to his chest, shielding him with his own body, ignoring the wet, meat-thick smell of the ambushed flesh. Louis twitched and groped for Armand’s grip. With a snarl, Armand ran to the adjoining room. He slammed open the reinforced coffin with his mind and cradled Louis in with not much gentleness for someone in agony. 

“Armand-” His lover’s voice was uncertain. He was half blind and his hand was tentatively trying to find him. 

Armand didn’t consider listening to him, his only thoughts being to put him to safety. To shield him from the hungry sun. He slammed the lid shut to another plea of his name.

"Armand, please-"

Armand staggered backward, breath ragged. His body braced against the coffin, muscles drawn tight, just like that night at the Théâtre. Around him, distant voices rippled through the air: shouts, gasps, the frantic murmur of humans trying to make sense of the blast. They would come soon with curiosity and questions. He didn’t have much time. He had to disappear before they arrived. He had to protect Louis.

A weak sound slipped from beneath the coffin lid. Louis’ voice, hoarse and broken.

“Armand…”

It was a sob more than a word.

“Armand, the boy-”

The boy.

In the rush, in the screaming light and wind and glass, Armand had forgotten. No, not forgotten. Overlooked. He had thought the boy had hidden or died but Louis’ voice brought it all back in a flash of impossible detail.

The white eyes. Blank. Glossed like marble and lightning. Beneath the skin those veins. Burning, pulsing silver, like mercury laced with fire. His chest had been rising and falling too fast. Armand had mistaken it with terror, but it has been as if as if something inside him was trying to claw its way out. Breathing for him. Or through him.

Armand’s fist clutch. It was not a vampire trick. Not Lestat’s meddling. Not even Akasha’s remnants. This had been… new.

Louis had gone still inside the coffin, probably falling unconscious to his pain. Armand rose, pain gnawing at his bones like rats. He turned, cloak smoking slightly at the edges as he crossed to the far wall.The apartment was a graveyard now, sunlight streaming through the gaping wound in the ceiling, evidence of a power that defied everything he knew. And the apartment was empty. No trace of the boy. He had run. 

Armand clicked his tongue against his palate in annoyance. He couldn’t go after him with Louis in this state. He had to hide his lover first. Bring him enough blood to help start his healing.

The chase of the fascinating boy would have to wait. 

*** 

A dying red OPEN sign was the only indicator of the bar’s existence. Its windows were filmed with grime, as if the glass itself was too ashamed to be transparent. The interior smelled of rot, beer, piss, sweat, despair. Armand found the boy in a cabinet booth, slumped like a marionette with half its strings cut. Aggressive light crawled across his skin, casting strange shapes in his gaunt features. His eyes were half-lidded, slack. Too many drugs, layered over one another like bad wallpaper. 

For a moment, Armand simply stared and considered what it’d mean for Daniel if he left him here. Let him slide into the silence he so clearly sought. He was barely alive already. Wouldn’t even notice the reaper passing by. He wasn’t even aware of Armand’s presence. One more boy lost to the myth of peace at the bottom of a powder-streaked glass. How many had Armand seen like this? Touched them, fed on them, ended them without hesitation? 

This one, unfortunately for him, had burned Louis. This one had brought the sun with him. His veins had lit with silver like molten ore. No gift he knew could do that. No vampiric lineage. Something was in this boy. Something wearing his skin. He has had doubt before, now, seing him in the flesh, he could bet and win. He stepped forward. The boy didn’t flinch as he slid into the booth. His head lolled lazily toward the presence, a ghost of confusion flickering across his expression. Armand leaned forward and closed his fingers around the boy’s slack wrist. The pulse was thready, barely tethered to the world. He tightened his grip, just slightly. Enough to let the boy feel it. To remind him this wasn’t a dream.

The boy blinked in pain. Exhaled a broken thing. 

“I should kill you,” Armand murmured to the boy. “It would be merciful.”

The boy’s lips moved. He leaned to hear. 

“Please… do…”

Armand tilted his head. 

“No.”

He watched as the boy slumped again, sweat shining along his jaw. He sniffled. Armand pulled him up and Daniel's body followed more because of the supernatural strength than consciousness. On his way out, Daniel sagged against Armand’s side like a wet cloth doll, limp with drugs and exhaustion. Armand ignored the looks of the patrons, either curious or worried. He adjusted his hold and stepped into the night. He hadn’t even turned the block that a mud-slicked, dull gray, nondescript, minivan had rolled to a stop at the curb. Its headlights sliced the dark, revealing dust particles in their rays. The driver’s door opened first, then the sides. Five figures spilled out. Each anxious. Two more emerged from the bar behind Armand and rushed towards them. 

They must have been inside all along. Waiting. Watching. An ambush.

The man who stepped forward, positioning himself as the leader, was tall, square-jawed, dressed in worn black. His eyes flicked to Daniel’s slack form. 

“Put the boy down,” he said, voice rough, authority trying to be convincing. “We’ll take care of him.”

Armand arched a brow. 

“This isn’t a game,” the man warned stepping closer. “You don’t know what you’re carrying.”

Armand tilted his head, studying him with bright, unblinking eyes. “Don’t I?”

The man froze, seeming to realize the danger he was in. Armand used this opportunity to dip inside his head a fraction. 

“Ha,” he said, as the man tensed and shielded his thoughts as best as he could. “I know what you are. One warned me of your existence.”

The man straightened. The tremor beneath his mask betrayed him. He was uncomfortable, deeply so, and forcing himself to stay engaged. This wasn’t their usual modus operandi. They usually watched, observed, analyzed from a safe distance. They were here to cage something they did not understand. Armand was not going to let them touch him.

“You mistake this boy for my prey,” he said. 

“He’s as much of a predator as you are, Armand.”

His name in that mortal mouth froze him. It sounded wrong, distorted, tainted. For a moment, Armand wanted nothing more than to silence the man, to rip the name from his throat and erase it from the air. By removing the tongue itself if he had to. Daniel murmured weakly against his chest. The man shifted, signaled to the others. One reached for something inside their coat, a dart gun, perhaps, laced with tranquilizer, or worse, with blood-tainted. Armand’s eyes glinted.

He took a single step forward, and the shadows seemed to lean with him. The humans all reacted as they should, by stepping back in fear. 

“Let this be your only warning ; I know all your faces. You will not follow us.”

He smiled this time showing just the hint of fang. A ripple of fear passed through the humans, though they tried to armor themselves with their composure.

“Run back to your superiors. Whisper what you saw. Pretend you came close. Lie to them if it saves you the embarrassment of failure. Tell them what you must but tell them this as well : If any of you come near this boy again, I will rip your hearts from your chest and feed your last breath to the dark.”

And, slowly, inch by inch, holding Daniel as though he weighed nothing at all, he rose into the air and vanished into the yawning mouth of the night. 

***

This was a problem.

Armand stood in the hallway outside the locked room in which he had abandoned an unconscious Daniel. The old house creaked softly, wood groaning in the chilled fog that rolled in from the bay. It smelled of age and damp earth and salt. Below, in the cellar, Louis was laying unconscious in his coffin, his body still reeking of burnt flesh. Armand had given him as much of his own blood as he could spare before leaving to find the boy. It had helped enough to calm him but soon, Louis would wake. And he would need more.

Armand had to feed, to replenish the strength drained from offering his blood. He also had to find one, maybe two victims for Louis to drain afterwards. How long this cycle would need to repeat, he couldn’t say.

It wasn’t their only problem though. His hand brushed the door frame. He had locked the boy inside the attic guest room. He has had a reinforced door installed when they picked this place. This room was supposed to be theirs. It has no windows, no direct line to the outside. Yet, it didn’t feel like enough. It felt like locking a fire inside a paper box. Daniel hadn’t stirred since Armand dragged him in, only murmured a name once more in fevered sleep. 

Moira.

Armand had tried to look into his mind, only to find a thick fog and sunk images. In his state, the boy was harmless but provided no explanation for what happened in Divisadero. Although, about this last point, Armand knew one thing. The Talamasca had been watching them. They had the apartment under surveillance. His thoughts turned to Marius, to the warning he'd given not so long ago. 

"There are humans who watch."

The world had been on unsteady ground ever since Lestat’s stupid rockstar career. Ever since vampire myths began bleeding into tabloids, subreddits, and grainy phone footage. Akasha’s rise and fall had dimmed the chaos to a manageable flame. The elders, children of the millenia, had done their best to shield their fledglings from both the wrath of Akasha’s followers and the growing curiosity of humankind. For now, they had things under control. Louis and Armand had chosen to stay out of their politics but that decision came at a price: they were out of reach, and outside the protection of the court.

The world hadn’t returned to what it was before Akasha, but it hadn’t plunged into its worst-case scenario either. The Talamasca, though… Armand considered them an irritating pest. Persistent, watchful, and just clever enough to be dangerous. Their presence in San Francisco meant this sanctuary was compromised. Armand exhaled slowly, not needing breath but needing the ritual of it.

The sun would be down in a less than six hours. Just enough time to make arrangements.

But to go where? The court? Under Marius’ protection?

No. He couldn’t risk that. His master would warn Lestat of Louis’ condition out of obligation, or to perpetuate his habit of hurting his fledgling. The Prince would seize the opportunity. He’d come for Louis, and this time, Armand feared he might not let go. And then there was the matter of the boy. Armand couldn’t wander through the world with him in tow, not when he had no idea when he might erupt again.

What he needed was isolation. A place remote and unreachable, but not lifeless. Louis would need to feed. Hadn’t he purchased an island years ago? Louis had always refused to set foot there. Said it felt like a cage. Things were different now. Louis was weak. Vulnerable. And Armand had to decide for them both.

Yes, the island would do. He would take them there and Louis would heal. And there, he’d watch the boy until he could peel back the layers and discover what he truly was.

Chapter Text

Armand’s blood was doing what no ordinary blood could for Louis. It coaxed his body back from the edge. Slowly, Louis was healing. He was still resting in his coffin, rarely sitting up to feed. Armand slit his wrists just above his lips and Louis fed from it like a babybird. He’d be shameful if he wasn’t so weak he barely endured the pain. 

Armand brought him humans as well, warm, rarely terrified. Louis drank without asking nor showing hesitation. There had been a time where he would have pushed away this way of feeding. A long time ago... Since Paris, he didn’t give a fuck about who lived and who died.

He knew Daniel was close too. Somewhere in the house. He had asked Armand about him but his companion, even though he hadn’t denied he kept the boy locked in a room, had refused to let him see him. If Louis expanded his mind, maybe he would be able to hear him. He had tried the first nights. But of course, Armand had carefully wrapped Daniel’s presence in a vault of void, with his more powerful mind gift. He forbade Louis to access him mentally…  

Louis knew Armand wouldn’t harm Daniel. He had asked him not to. Whatever else could be said about Armand, and much could, but he honored Louis’s wishes. Most of the time. Especially when they came wrapped in orders rather than demands. Armand had always had a peculiar respect for that kind of communication. Louis didn’t love it, but it came easily. He was from a long lineage of oppression, and like many who’d lived under the pressure of someone else’s power, he’d learned how to wield it himself when the roles were reversed. He didn’t like it, didn’t like what it said about him, but he could do it without thinking. He wished he knew how to love cleanly, without all the scars bleeding through. But what did normal mean to a Black vampire in America, turned during the height of segregation, whose every experience of affection had been steeped in pain, toxicity or grief?

Armand wasn’t a perfect partner. Louis wasn’t either. And neither of them pretended otherwise. Since Akasha’s fall, things had been better. Enough to believe, sometimes, that peace between them was still possible.

This time, something was different though. When Louis had tried to force the issue, to see the boy met in Polynesian Mary, to press past Armand’s vague reassurances, the old vampire had refused him. Firmly. Louis knew better than to insist in front of such a reaction. Armand responded to pressure like a cat backed into a corner: with claws. Louis had learned, painfully so, that confrontation armed him faster than patience. So he waited. Armand would come around and cave. In the meantime, he was getting better. The ache in his bones had dulled to a low hum. His skin, once cracked and scorched, was beginning to knit itself whole. The pain was manageable now. What wasn’t, was memory.

He remembered everything he had said in Divisadero. The fury. The contempt. The cold, cruel precision of his replies. How wounding with every word, as though trying to confirm the worst Armand had ever believed about himself, had been a show, a delight. Louis wished to apologize but each time, Armand only closed the lid of the coffin over him.

He lay there now, alone in the dark again the sting of distance sharper than any wound. He had awoken sometime after Armand's departure. His lover was out, feeding, no doubt, and probably hunting to bring him back victims later on. Louis had no sense of how long Armand had been gone. Time was slippery inside the coffin. He shifted, and groaned in pain. His mind drifted into memories and half-formed regrets, trying not to think too loud about how hungry he was. 

Finally, the front door creaked, and footsteps brushed the hall’s carpet. A persian one, Louis had acquire to piss off Armand last year. An ugly imitation they both knew would end up burned one night or another. The thought curved the corner of his lips into a smile. The footsteps stopped. Louis frowned. Armand didn’t walk like that. His movements were calculated. Those steps were cautious. Another brush on the carpet, by different feet. One presence became three, became five. And then a click. A metallic sound Louis was too familiar with. Guns being readied. The sharp breath of nervous men preparing for violence. Their hearts pounded like snare drums and Louis could hear the adrenaline scream in their veins. His entire body tensed, instinct overriding fatigue.

Were they here for him? A trap? Had they waited for Armand to leave the house?

He tracked the way the steps moved, their weight shifting against the old wood floor. He called for Armand in the night, hoping his lover was not too far away. But then, he realized the intruders weren’t heading for the cellar. They where heading upstairs. Where Daniel was. Immediately, he bolted upright, ignoring the pain searing through his muscles.

He pushed the lid open with shaking hands, dragged himself to his feet. Pain flared through his limbs like hot needles. His carbonized skin crackled. His eye, once burned to blindness and now only partially healed, was marred by dark spots that further impaired his vision. He made it to the first floor, panting as little as he could to not betray his presence. He could hear their boots creak, searching the rooms. The scent of gun oil and sweat, acrid, made his anger flare. He let the shadows take him, clinging to the walls, moving through its bones. This was no longer a home. It was a hunting ground. These men didn’t know what they were walking into. They crept through the house like ghosts themselves, unaware of the predator stalking their every breath.

Despite his burns and injuries, despite the pain that clawed at his muscles, Louis was stronger than they could imagine. He stopped in the corner of the staircase and listened. A few seconds passed before one of the men stepped into the hallway, moving to the next room alone. Louis waited for him to be inside, and silently slipped after him. The man was tall and sturdy but no match for a vampire, even a crippled one. He fell on him, a shadow with teeth. Claws sank into flesh, a gurgle and an attempt to free himself. Louis let the body collapse without ceremony, intending for it to be heard. Immediately, a whisper echoed in another room.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s Simon?”

Louis moved back to the hallway, slipping in the dark just when the flash of a light slicing the floor from one side to the other. He avoided it just in time. 

“Martin? Simon?”

“I’m here.” Martin hissed, exiting another room. 

Louis's eyes flashed in the darkness. He jumped forward, at vampire speed, before Martin could process what he was seing, only leaving the other two men the impression of a blurred creature snapping Martin from view. The man screamed when fangs broke his throat. Louis drank until he was empty, ignoring the kicking. The warm blood rushed through him like fire catching dry wood. He smiled at the sensation of strength returning to his muscles. Behind him, the two other men ran towards their location, calling for Martin, guns lifted. Louis slipped away as they came in. He rounded a corner and slipped through the shadows behind them, silent as death itself. He caught the smaller one by the shoulder and ripped him from his foothold. 

“Harry!”

The last man shot. Louis wasn’t even in sight but fear made the idiot careless, and he ignored the possibility of his friend's survival. Not that Harry could survive Louis. He dragged him down the stairs, feeding with relish, intending for the last survivor to follow. But, the fifth man stumbled and did something Louis hadn’t expected. Instead of running to help his friend, he rushed to the closest handle. His mind screamed his intention. Trying to locate Daniel’s room. That made Louis’ newly acquired blood boil. He lunged up with a raging roar. He caught him by the neck and lifted him, slammed him against the wall, crushing his head.

“Please,” the man whispered in his agony.

Louis tilted his head. “Wrong house.”

This man, he tore apart slowly for trying to reach the boy. For thinking he could take him. When it was done, he stood in the hall, blood dripping from his hands, chest heaving, staring down at his last victim. He felt no shame nor guilt for killing him in such violence. It had even been cathartic. A sound at the end of the hallway made him snapped his head, his entire body ready to jump at another intruder. The shift had come from Daniel’s room though. The rapid thudding of the boy’s heartbeat finally reached Louis. 

He moved toward it, entranced. His burns webbing his skin pulled with every step and felt more sensitive than before. The fresh blood from his five victims was healing him though.

Armand had locked Daniel’s room but it was no effort to force it. Louis opened the door slowly. Was he purposely managing his entrance or just the hinges that lacked oiling. Daniel flinched, curling further into himself on the thin mat. His shirt clung to his back, soaked through with sweat. The smell in the room was stifling—fear, exhaustion, and shame mixing with the acrid sting of old bile and piss. The porcelain basin sat by the wall like a silent accusation. Armand had left it there knowing well that Daniel would need to use it. Louis’s brow twitched. He looked down at the basin, then back to the boy.

“Stay away,” he cried from a corner, voice cracking as he tried for firm. “I swear, if you come in here-”

Louis stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The latch clicked softly.

“If you’re here to finish what you started, just do it, man. No need for the theatric.”

“I’m not here to harm you, Danny.”

“Not what you were saying when you chewed on my neck.”

“You were being disrespectful.”

“I was high.”

Louis moved closer, into the radius of the lamp. Daniel’s breath caught, as he discovered his frame. His lip trembled. His body spasmed, a fresh wave of nausea tearing through him.

“Jesus- you’re burned.”

“That’s what the sun does to creatures like me.”

“You look like a fucking barbecue fiasco, man!” Daniel shot back, tone tilting toward snark in that way he did when terrified.

Louis smiled faintly. “I suppose I do.”

Daniel’s eyes followed the blood dripping from Louis’ arms into a pool on the floor.

“Are they all dead?”

Louis nodded. Daniel hesitated.

“You’re here to finish the night with dessert?”

“I won’t hurt you.”

“You bit me the last time I saw you.”

“You were arrogant, and selfish. You provoked me,” Louis said, his tone dry. “What I did was wrong. I let my anger answer for me. That won’t happen again.”

They stared at each other. Daniel looked at the blood smeared across his chest and mouth again.

“Whose blood is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“I didn’t ask. I didn’t care who they were. They were coming for you. ” 

Daniel tensed. He locked his arms around his knees, packing himself more against the wall. The pulse beneath his skin revealed the quiet panic rising in his veins. Louis crouched beside him, ignoring the raw stretch of burned skin along his shoulders. 

“You’re safe, Daniel. I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

One hand rose, slow and careful, to touch Daniel’s cheek. 

“You deserve that much, after what I did.”

Daniel stared at Louis as if he was trying to piece together a dream he wasn’t sure had ended. His breath came in uneven pulls, chest rising too fast. Sweat clung to his hairline and his fingers twitched against the fabric of his pants, like he was resisting the urge to do something. 

Flee. Fight. Reach out.

His eyes bore too many colors for only one iris. Blue, grey, green, violet. It was a morning sky. And in this sky, clouds of fear. Louis couldn’t blame it. Daniel’s mind was rotating on fear and questioning. But also logic, twisting itself in knots trying to explain what couldn’t be reasoned through. The boy’s mind was moving like a spinning coin. Shimmering doubt. The taste of satisfaction because Louis had returned, not dead, not ash. And tucked inside all that, subtle and persistent, a quiet thread of want.

Louis resisted the urge to caress his fangs with his tongue. Daniel was a lovely mess. A ticking bomb. An alluring prey. When he blinked and shifted, as if he had heard Louis, the vampire hoped he hadn’t spoken his thoughts aloud. Instead of moving away, Daniel's hand reached for Louis’s and curled his fingers around it. His throat bobbed. He leaned in and kissed him.

The contact was awkward. Daniel’s plump lips pressed against broken flesh. It was intoxicating. Just like the first bite of the apple, Louis welcomed the kiss. His hold on the boy's head tightened. He pulled him closer, angling his head to claim full dominion over him, pressing him against the wall, trapping his frail and weak body under him. Daniel whined yet didn’t fight. He let himself be manhandled, at Louis’ mercy. He parted his lips for him, like a gift. 

Louis curled their tongues together, brushing, tasting, licking with elegance and refinement although he exuded more and more hungry desire. When his claws scratched Daniel’s face, a low guttural moan rose from his throat, hardening Louis in his pants. The unbearable dryness suddenly returned. Hunger swelled inside him, sharp and demanding. The taste of Daniel was so close and tempting. His fangs brushed his lips called by blood pumping underneath the thin membrane.  

Louis broke the kiss, breath ragged. Daniel whined and tried to restore the connection, lips searching him, but Louis firmly pushed him back.

“No, boy. Enough.”

“Don’t call me boy,” Daniel snapped.

“You’re but a boy to me,” Louis replied, his restraint fraying. 

He held Daniel beneath him, the heat of their bodies too close, too loud. Only then did he realize that Daniel was grinding against his thigh, desperate and unashamed. A puppy hungry for attention, for ownership, for anything.

Louis’ throat burned. The blood on his tongue had faded and remained only the taste of Daniel. And it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. He swallowed and looked away as he stood abruptly, denying himself the weight of Daniel’s body, the temptation of his skin, the scent of his blood beating just beneath the surface. 

“I need to clean,” he said, not looking back. “Before Armand returns.”

Even when he stepped outside the room, Daniel’s heat still clung to him. Desperate to control himself, he moved room to room. The floor was sticky beneath his soles. Bodies lay where he had left them, drained and crumpled in unnatural shapes, like discarded marionettes. He gathered them, slowly, painfully. His wounds still ached; his strength came in waves, more often abandoning him at the most imperious timing. He pressed on, dragging limbs, folding torsos, laying the corpses side by side in a single back room.

As he worked, he checked their pockets. Guns. Papers. Names.

Whitlock.

Louis froze. He looked down at the dead faces, blank, slack, some twisted in confusion or fear in their final moments. Why was this name familiar? Where had he heard it before? In which lifetime? As all those questions piled up at an alarming speed in his brain, he listened to the hum of the quiet house, the creaking walls and the dormant shadows. He was about to stand to go fetch the next body when he captured a sound. A low squeaking. A shift of weight over an old wood, trying to be discreet. Immediately, he realized his mistake. He hadn’t locked Daniel’s room. 

The rhythmic sound downstairs was the boy’s heartbeat, desperate to be discreet. He was heading to the kitchen. Suddenly, his frantic breathing was all Louis could hear. His heart thundered like a trapped thing. Louis moved in haste, descending the stairs without a sound, light as a feather, unmoving the air. He reached the bottom step just in time to hear the back door creak open. In a blur, Louis was there, slamming it shut with one hand and caging Daniel between the wood and his body. His palm flattened against the doorframe, barring escape. His other hand gripped Daniel’s shoulder. He hadn’t intended to hurt him but he must have, because Daniel hissed in pain. 

“Let me go!”

“You’re not safe out there,” Louis said, though he couldn’t be so sure Daniel wasn’t the danger himself.

“I don’t care,” Daniel groaned, shoving at him. Louis didn’t move a muscle. His body held firm like marble and Daniel scoffed, pitiful in his helplessness. 

They stood close, bodies slotted as if they were molded for each other. Daniel’s heat was back against Louis, tickling his senses. He pressed harder, not realizing he was stifling Daniel doing so. The boy gasped and slammed his palms against his chest. His eyes flared silver and it could have been a trick of light, if there had been light. The room was dark, and only the outside pale moonlight dared fall from the nearest window. 

And then, it was Louis who gasped. The agony was sudden and overwhelming, like fire crawling under his skin, like sunlight breaking through him from the inside. His knees buckled, muscles spasming as though he were being boiled alive. He staggered back, choking on a scream.

Daniel stood there, still pressed to the door, his chest heaving. His face twisted in terror, his eyes shining. Louis fell to one knee, hand to his chest, the pain ripping through his nerves like claws. 

“Rest.”

The commanding voice rolled over Louis to reach Daniel and the boy collapsed instantly, like a puppet with its strings cut. His eyes rolled back as he crumpled to the floor, limbs loose, silver fading. The burning inside Louis stopped. He gasped and turned toward the entrance of the kitchen, vision swimming. 

“I leave you alone for one hour, one hour. What could possibly go wrong in an hour ?” Armand muttered, probably not expecting any reply.

Louis tried to answer, but the pain in his bones was hollowing him out. The room tilted when Armand lifted him. He fell forward, into his arms and darkness swept him under.

Chapter Text

Daniel woke like a man drowning. Gasping.

His eyes opened to darkness. The room was pressed against his skin like a wet cloth. A light without its lampshade sat directly beside his head, its sour yellow bulb aggressively staring back at him. He was spread on a mattress with no sheets. The windows were caulked. No furniture. Just the door that his fogged mind presumed closed. He grunted and tried to sit up. His limbs didn’t move right, like they weren’t his. His fingers twitched, then clenched, then unclenched again. Even that motion sent nausea spiraling up his throat. His head lolled against the pillow and he groaned at the weight of his own body.

Everything hurt in a sense of wrongness. And his blood, his damn blood, was too loud. He reached up, tried to touch his face, but his arm collapsed halfway. His mouth tasted like metal, dirt and ash. He closed his eyes again. Tried to think and remember. 

He had ran.

A burst.

No, the burst was before.

A scream.

Yes, Louis had screamed. Fire had kissed him. Sun had kissed him, life-saving of Daniel only. Then, he had run. He had run into alcohol, drugs, and numbness. He had tried to end it. But he had been found.

By whom?

Gunshots had woken him up. Louis had killed for him. To protect him, he had said. 

He turned his head, cheek dragging on the mat. The room spinned, as if orbiting around him. He gagged, dry-heaved, and refrained from moving.

In the silence, he could hear it: a low throb, like a second pulse under his own. It was begging him. He swallowed bile and tried to breathe.

The hunger came so suddenly he had nothing to hold onto when it crashed over him. Then came the shaking. Then the need. It hit him all at once. Like wave cresting and crashing over his ribs. The ache for drugs consumed him from the inside. His body screamed, each nerve ending flaring with absence. The tremors came in strong painful waves, shaking his fingers, twitching under his eyelids. His mouth was dry as a desert, his skin too tight, his thoughts a mess of static and heat.

He curled in on himself on the edge of the mattress, arms wrapped tight around his torso, like he could hold himself together if he just squeezed hard enough. Without the numbing buffer offered by the chemicals, the world was so loud. It wasn’t just the drugs. It was what they covered and kept away. Now the cage he usually made sure to keep around himself was gone, and the things he’d buried came crawling back.

He whined at the taste of acid at the back of his throat. Now, even the shadows moved wrong. The air was a brick to breathe, too solide for his nostrils and mouth. He thrashed on the mat, kicking off an imaginary restraint, sweat soaking through his shirt. His voice escaped his mouth, suddenly enraged . He screamed at the door, into the floor, face pressed to the mattress, curled up, hands clawing at his own hair. He screamed until his voice gave out.

He was barely resisting his pain when something shifted in the shadows. He stilled, trembling like a small animal about to be captured. The shadow moved, taking shame, morphing into a woman. Her face bore no consideration.

“Moira?” Daniel breathed, a boy again. 

The woman stood where the walls met, her body impossibly skinny, draped in her funeral shawl, her eyes like polished stones.

“You dead,” Daniel muttered, blinking. “You dead, you not here.”

Daniel screamed. He plunged himself against the wall, hit it head first and fell. The cold floor underneath his body welcomed him, a past lover gluing itself to him. Time kept rolling for a while. When he came to and opened his eyes, Moira was sitting beside him. No, not Moira. 

Julianne. 

She was younger than the last time he saw her, at the door of his room, a key in her hand. This Julianne eyes were rimmed in black, her mouth curled in disgust.

“You were supposed to be normal,” she spat. “And look at you. Addict. Weak. Disgusting. You’re nothing worth saving.”

Daniel crawled to the wall, pushed his back against it, and tried to shrink into the plaster. “You’re not here,” he whispered. “You’re not here.”

More shadows moved, other faces, half-seen. Coven members with silver-threaded veils.  A little girl with no mouth pointing at him to men with burned-out eyes and twisted hands extending towards him.  

Daniel gasped.

“No. No. No. Stop!”

The floor under his feet grew warm. A low hum filled the air, rising like distant static on a radio dial just out of tune. One of the ghosts smiled.

Daniel threw himself backward, shivering. His spine hit the wall. The world swam, blurred, then pulsed again in the dark. He felt the pitch of his own heartbeat pushing blood too hard through his skull.

A damp cloth materialized against his face. Daniel carefully opened his eyes at the contact, to meet sunset eyes considering him.

The stranger’s presence cut through the hallucinations like a blade through smoke.  All the ghosts vanished, leaving Daniel alone. The gentle hand pressed the cloth across Daniel’s burning forehead, then down to his cheek, soothing, rhythmic.

“Shhh,” his voice murmured. “It’s all right. You’re only purging the poisons. Your body is remembering how to be alive. This will pass.”

Daniel wanted to believe him. He wanted to cling to that voice, to that cold hand and the quiet it carried. Tentatively, clumsily, his fingers tangled in the stranger's shirt, trembling. He let him. Daniel leaned in without pride and whined as he found comfort in his arms. Without a word, the stranger slid them beneath Daniel’s knees and back and lifted him, effortlessly. He laid him back down on the mattress, smoothed the hair from his damp forehead, and sat beside him in silence.

Already, the hallucinations were growing back. Daniel was convulsing in frantic jerky moves. The cloth was draped over his forehead before a palm sat against his cheek. A thumb strocked his feverish skin. 

"Rest", a voice breathed.  

The ghosts slowly retreated, brushed away by a merciful hand. An unknown presence entered Daniel's minde, wrapping him, lulling him to sleep. He leaned into it, happy to oblige. 

***

Daniel woke up disoriented and burning. He was shaking, head throbbing with pain and with only one desire: take a shower. As if his return to consciousness had summoned his hosts - or captors - the sound of the lock giving way preceded the opening of the door merely minutes later.  Daniel wished he could move. His head pounded too much though. His muscles twitched with exhaustion and withdrawal.

A pair of elegant boots, shiny, came into view. They were attached to incredibly long legs, dressed in expensive trousers, brown corduroy fabric. Their owner was an Indian man, a gorgeous piece of shit, barely older than Daniel. 

He had seen him before, hadn’t he ?

“Armand. From Polynesian Mary. I was with Louis.”

Ha, the other vampire, Daniel figured, realizing the creature had directly picked the question from his mind. 

“Wh-where am- I?” 

His question came out with some difficulty. His throat was dry and his mouth pasty. Armand shifted and his hand, absurdly, appeared to be holding a glass of water. It might as well have been the holy grail for Daniel. He licked his lips, cracked and dry.

“You burned Louis,” Armand said, without much emotion. 

“I didn’t-”

“You tore the ceiling off a building.”

He walked to the edge of the mat and stood over Daniel like a priest over an altar. He crouched and set the glass just out of reach. Daniel blinked. His throat made a sound, almost a plea. Armand tilted his head.

“What are you?”

Daniel tried to sit up, a hand stretching weakly toward the glass, but Armand's eyes narrowed, just a flicker, and he froze. Some primitive part of Daniel listened, too afraid to disobey. Something told him this vampire was less amiable than Louis. 

“I’m not-” Daniel started, but the words crumbled. “I didn’t do anything, I swear-”

“You’re lying,” Armand said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

Daniel looked away, jaw tight, breath catching in the middle of his chest. Very slowly, Armand slid the glass toward him. 

“An answer for a drink.”

Daniel hesitated, eyes flicking from the glass to Armand. Then, he clutched the glass like it might vanish. The water splashed over his lips, down his chin, his throat working hungrily as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful without pause. When it was gone, he collapsed back on the mat, panting, eyes glassy.

Armand watched in silence.  

“I…” he croaked finally.

Armand raised an eyebrow.

“I want to stay alive,” Daniel said. “I want... I want to be safe. I’ll tell you what you want but you don’t get to kill me.”

Armand smiled, not in a kind way, more… amused or intrigued.

“Bold of you to try to make a pact with the devil as if you held a chance to bargain. I could still take your blood. I’d see it. This thing inside you.”

“Try,” Daniel hissed, dragging himself upright with effort, “and maybe the house goes with me. Again.”

A silence stretched, both considering the other, gauging his next actions. The hinges of the door creaked and footsteps announced Louis. He was holding himself better than last time, his face burned but no longer swelled. He stopped beside Armand, his palm caressing his arm, in a tender gesture. He offered a smile that his lover didn’t return. His hand lingered just a second longer on Armand’s arm before he let it drop, his gaze shifting to Daniel with that gentle warmth that made the vampire look almost human.

Almost.

“Hello, Danny.”

Daniel’s eyes flicked between Louis and Armand. The difference between them couldn’t have been more stark, even though Louis’ clothes were as neat as his lover’s. Louis took a step forward and set the glass down gently at Daniel’s side. No coercion this time. No bargain. Just... water.

The kindness unsettled him more than the threats. He remembered Louis’s lips on his, his cold hands against his cheeks, that long night of confessions and intimacy blurred by blood and cocaine. Armand’s eyes had narrowed, faintly feline.

“You shouldn’t coddle him,” he said without looking at Louis. “It confuses him.”

“He’s had enough fear for one day.”

“And whose fault is that?” 

Louis didn’t rise to Armand’s irony. Daniel felt like some kind of pet, and wondered to which extent it was the case. He was trapped, slept on the floor, and was close to having a collar and a chain around his neck. 

“No, we’re not chaining you, Danny,” Louis smiled, placing the glass in his hand. 

“Don’t go into my head. That’s rude.” 

“We’re even then.” 

“You’re petty.” 

Louis chuckled, his head lolling gently. A playful spark simmered in his green eyes, sending goosebumps over Daniel’s skin. Armand clicked his tongue, piercing the bubble neither had realized was forming around them. Daniel tensed, retreating behind the glass as if it could protect him from the vampire’s ire if he decided to snap at him. 

“Start talking, and you’ll keep breathing,” Armand said flatly. 

“You’re such a prick,” Daniel muttered between two gulps.

“And you’re hiding something that almost killed my companion.”

Daniel let out a sharp, bitter laugh. 

“Companion?” he scoffed. “Please. Your name was not on his lips for the twelve hours I spent with Louis in that apartment."

Daniel choked as cold fingers slammed around his throat and drove him into the thin mattress. His limbs thrashed on instinct, but Armand’s weight was inescapable, inhuman. A clawed hand pressed just hard enough to crush breath. Armand's face hovered inches from his, eyes glowing orange with restrained violence, fangs visible behind lips curled back in disdain.

“You dare speak of what you cannot begin to understand,” he hissed, venomous.

“Armand!” Louis tried to interfere, voice commanding as if he had power over the other vampire.

Not like Armand would listened to him apparently. His claws were digging into Daniel’s meat, as easily as if it was butter. 

“Arun.” 

The word, foreign, maybe a name but Daniel wasn’t too sure with how little air he had to make his brain function, the word froze Armand. For a second, his grip tightened, and Daniel's vision began to blur. His blood flickered again in the veins beneath his skin. That faint silver sheen. That pulse. Armand must have felt it because he suddenly pulled back, snarling under his breath. Daniel gasped, rolling to his side, hacking coughs wracking his body.

“Touched a nerve,” Daniel grinned.

“Danny.” 

This time, the intimidation was for him, and Louis gave him a long warning stare. Daniel breathed out slowly, eyes on the cracked ceiling. A few months back, he probably would have been able to pull out a trick, get away without endangering himself. Moira had looked for him to learn so. But, since she was gone, he wasn’t the same. He had turned his back to his true nature and doing so, put himself in a vulnerable position. Drugs and alcohol being his first doom. He capitulated.  

“My mother is a witch.”

“Whitlock,” Louis whispered. “A Mayfair girl had married a Whitlock back when I was living in New Orlean.”

Daniel made a face. Of course Louis had to bring them up. The Mayfair. It was surprising Louis had heard about the Whitlock line, considering how the Mayfair had forced them to leave New Orleans. Oh but all that was decades before he was born.

He shifted on the mat, staring at the cracked ceiling instead of their faces.

"Yeah, that's us." 

“You’re a witch,” Louis stated. 

“I'm the end of the line. My family’s coven is gone,” he lied. 

It was Louis’ turn to make a face but Daniel didn’t have the heart to question it. He cleared his throat instead and continued with his story. 

“I left when I was seventeen.” That wasn’t a lie. “Nobody left now. Nobody who knows what the hell is in me.”

“You don’t control your magic,” Louis said.

Daniel snorted, a dry, bitter sound. “I’m usually better. Being bitten down and thrown into a wall probably didn’t help.” 

Louis’ face turn into grimace. Armand didn’t flinch, for his part responding dryly. 

“I saved your life.”

“That’s how you wanna pull it?” Daniel snorted. “Can I get this bottle now?”

Armand handed Daniel the water, wordless, emotionless. Daniel drank most of it in one go. When he stopped, breath heaving, he dragged a trembling hand through his hair, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. Then, quietly, as if the words hurt:

“Usually it’s the daughters. The gift... it doesn’t cling to men. That’s what they told me. I was supposed to be a normal kid.”

“And you’re not,” Louis said.

Daniel looked up sharply. “Is that your expert analysis?”

“You deny it, try to bury it under substances and alcohol, but it is inside you like another organ.” Armand pointed. “Your body remembers what your mind tries to forget.”

Daniel gave a tired laugh. “OK Detective. And now what? You're going to keep me under surveillance until I crack open like an egg?”

The faintest twitch at the corner of Armand’s mouth. A smirk. Daniel braced himself. Somehow, it was more frightening than anything the vampire had done so far.

“Probably. It would indeed, be my way of analysing. But I’m not the only voice in this,” Armand went on, folding his hands behind in front of him. “Louis wants you alive.”

That caught Daniel off guard.

“He sees something in you,” Armand said. “Pity. Kinship. Toy. I don’t know. I don’t care. Because of him, for now, you’ll live.”

“Armand…” Louis breathed, in a plea for peace.

“… So I’m really a pet now? Is that what this is?”

Armand didn’t answer. Without a word, he moved toward the door again. He silently instructed Louis to follow and the other vampire caved, exiting first. 

“You won’t keep me locked down!” Daniel shouted after them. 

Pausing, Armand’s eyes flared, amusement or disdain filling their orange shades. 

“We’ll see.” 

Then they were gone, and the door shut with a final click. Daniel suppressed the shiver that seized him at the sudden emptiness surrounding him. The memory of a similar place flickered through his mind. He recoiled from it. 

He looked at the empty glass and the almost empty water bottle.

“Fuck me…”

He let himself fall back and stared at the ceiling.

Moira would be so disappointed in him. He had given up his secret for a glass of water. What a pathetic boy. His entire lineage was probably rolling in their tombs.

He had been born into a witch’s coven, not quite as known as the Mayfairs, but quite reputed themselves. Though men rarely inherited power, he was the exception. Unlike the witches who had instinctive control and precision of their powers, Daniel’s magic came in volatile bursts, raw and untamed. It wasn’t something he wielded; it was something that broke through him, like lightning through cracked stone. 

He hadn’t lied to Armand about not controlling it. Yet, he hadn’t revealed it all either. If he wished to keep the advantage, he'd have to be careful. His power made him vulnerable to vampire’s pull, to their bite and their will. But it also gave him an edge, an unpredictable, flaring edge that could, in the right moment, turn the predator into prey. 

He needed to recover to do anything first. And purge his system from anything that made him a rag. 

He didn’t know how long he could keep it hidden being caged like that. Sooner or later, the vampires would see what lay beneath his skin and when they did, Daniel didn’t know if he’d still be seen as a curiosity… or a threat to be eliminated.

Chapter Text

Louis watched Armand pack their clothes in silence. His lover was carefully folding shirts, better than Louis ever did, and the vampire stood behind, awkwardly standing on tired legs. He’d improved, undeniably. The Whitlock men had been more than sufficient to restore a portion of his strength. 

The scent of death clung to the walls upstairs, though no bodies remained. Only Armand’s quiet movements broke the stillness of the house.

“You always fold like that,” Louis said finally. 

Armand didn’t look up. “Don’t it satisfy you, Maître ?”

Louis frowned. Did Armand need this now? Another shirt folded.

“I never liked this house. It's cold in the wrong ways.”

“It served a purpose. It’s done now.”

Louis moved to the chair and crumbled into it like something finally giving out under too much weight. His arms hung loose at his sides, head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed but not resting. The ache returned almost instantly.

Not the burn in his body, though that, too, still hummed faintly beneath the surface, but the other ache. The one that had no physical cause, no visible wound. The phantom of Daniel’s kiss pressed against his lips. That terrifying moment where he’d wanted the boy not as a curiosity, not as a survivor, but for himself. 

For the beautiful contradiction wrapped in a warm, reckless body. For one sliver of time, Daniel had been entirely his. For a moment, nothing else existed but the thrum of memory and the strange, quiet thread that had bound them since that first night at The Mary. 

Armand’s voice cut into the silence like a knife.

“You’re romanticizing him. He’s dangerous, Louis.”

“So are we,” Louis said calmly. “I want to take him with us. I know what you’ll say. That he’s dangerous, that we can’t trust him, that it would be safer to leave him or deliver him to someone else, to deal with him. But I’ve thought about it.”

Still no answer.

Louis pressed on. “He’s not stable. But we could be his walls, his anchor. We could thread his armor, and in exchange…” He hesitated, but the words came, honest and aching. “He’ll give us what we miss now. A reason to reconstruct our home.”

“I agree,” Armand said.

Louis blinked. “What?”

“I said I agree. We’re taking him with us.”

Louis stared at him, momentarily disarmed. “You… you do?”

“Yes.”

Silence fell between them like dust settling on old furniture. He found it hard to believe Armand, who had been so quick to argue these past years, just mentioned taking Daniel with them. Their quarrels had grown more frequent, sharper, often flaring without warning. This sudden easy agreement was unnatural. Like the hush before a storm. Louis sat back slightly, thrown. 

“You’re not going to argue?”

Armand gave the faintest shrug. Louis frowned. 

“You always argue.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is, you’re ready to do it right now!”

Armand's lips twitched, containing Louis’ proof. 

“Maybe I’ve grown tired of trying to stop you from running toward your tragedies.”

Louis searched his face, looking for the edge, the threat curled behind the civility. He knew Armand too well to believe this shift was unmotivated. Armand tilted his head.

“Do not misinterpret my  decision, Louis. I still don’t trust him. He lied to us about his coven.”

“I know. And before you warn me like I’m a newborn, I know witches are not to be messed with.”

Armand resumed to his folding, then, after a moment of silent, he added : 

“He won’t follow us willingly.” 

It was true as well. Pensively, Louis brushed his lips with his index. It brought Armand’s cold eyes on him. Jealous eyes. Somehow, it lit some amusement in Louis. A desire to provoke. To press where it hurt enough to stir the still water between them.

“We will convince him,” he assured. The corners of his mouth curl upward. 

Armand’s iris burned at this, suddenly more intense. 

Louis rose from the chair, crossing the room in unhurried steps. “Have you ever used temptation to secure what you wanted?”

Something flickered across Armand’s face. He moved past Louis, close enough their sleeves brushed.

“If that is truly your intent,” he murmured, “then we both know you won’t consider my opinion.” 

***

“Do you need me to say it in Spanish? No.” 

Daniel’s response angered Louis more than he wished to admit. Armand, seated in the corner with his book, didn’t even glance up. His disinterest in the situation was like a needle pressed to the skin. It was a deliberate punishment, in Louis’ opinion. He’d made Armand agree to his intention to get intimate with Daniel, and now his lover was watching him flounder without helping. He’d better not be hiding a smile on those treacherous lips. 

“We’re going to an island,” Louis repeated, as if it wasn’t the second time he announced it to Daniel. “Far from here. A safe place. You’d be protected.”

Daniel barked a laugh. “An island. How romantic. Are you planning on keeping me in some dungeon, feeding me coconuts until I learn to fetch?”

Louis’ jaw tightened. “Why do you think you’ll be our prisoner?”

“Why would you embarrass yourself with little old me if not ?” Daniel replied, his voice flattening, “Don’t you have bigger things to do than dragging around a human disaster who, by the way, doesn’t want to be dragged!”

Louis huffed a laugh. He couldn’t help it. Underneath the irritation he provoked, the boy’s fire amused him. That stubborn glare, the sharp little barbs meant to draw agitation. So instead of arguing, Louis smiled.

“Then let’s do something you do want.”

“Let me go?”

“No.”

“Matching tattoos? Martinis? Drugs?” 

“The interview,” Louis cut. “Let’s redo it.”

Across the room, he felt Armand froze. The change was subtle. His shoulders didn’t move but the page of his book stilled, unturned. Louis ignored it, keeping his gaze locked on Daniel. Who’s face betrayed how confused he was right now. 

“You write,” Louis continued. “You dig into stories no one else touches. Why not make this one yours? Not just an article, but a book.”

Daniel’s frown wavered. “A book,” he echoed, suspicion cutting through the sudden glint in his eye.

“Yes,” Louis said, letting the word settle between them like an invitation. “You’d have access no human has ever had. You could tell the truth about me. About all of this.”

For the first time since their conversation began, Daniel didn’t immediately fire back with a quip. Louis saw it, the click of interest sliding into place. The boy was a mess. A junkie, witch, walking disaster, but his passion for the hunt, for digging into the marrow of a story, was something else entirely.

“That’s… a hell of a pitch,” Daniel said after a moment, though his tone tried to play it off.

Louis leaned back, satisfaction ghosting across his face. “Think of it as your ticket. You come with us, you get your story. Don’t you like a good story, Danny?”

From his chair, Armand turned a page at last, the crisp sound like a quiet warning. Louis didn’t look at him, to focus watching the boy wrestle with the idea, knowing he’d already taken the hook.

At last, Daniel exhaled, dramatically.

“Fine. But don’t think I don’t see what you just did. Yeah, congratulations, I took the bait. But if you think this is a win for you…” He smirked without humor. “It’s not.”

Louis’ lips curved, too happy with himself. “If you say so.”

The sharp snap of a book closing cut through the air. Both of them turned to watch Armand rise from his chair.

“Now that this is settled, we’re leaving,” he announced. “Join me into the car.”

He walked toward the door, the faintest flick of his coat marking his impatience. He kept it open for Louis, who, still burned, rose more slowly. On his way out, Louis paused beside Daniel.

“Thank you. For coming willingly.”

Daniel cringed at that. It probably sounded like a joke. 

***

“Hurry up, witch boy.”

Daniel stumbled on the tarmac, his boots scuffing against the painted lines. Getting out of the car had requested a monstrous effort. The night air carried the stink of kerosene, and every gust from the taxiing planes tugged spread more.

Ahead of him, Louis and Armand were already striding toward a sleek, narrow private jet, the kind he’d only ever seen in movies. Its white fuselage gleamed under the lights, as if it had been polished just for their arrival. A row of uniformed crew stood in a neat line at the base of the stairs, heads slightly bowed in welcome. An attendant invited Armand to follow him. 

Daniel winced. Compared to him, he was a wreck.

His shirt was stiff with dried blood, the crusted stains cracking at each move. A tapestry of vomit splatter, dirt, and who-knew-what-else painted his pants, which were ripped on the knees. His hair clung in greasy strands to his forehead, and he was so overheated he swore it had to be forty degrees out when the night air was cool enough to raise goosebumps on his bare hands.

Louis didn’t look much better, limped and burned under his hoodie. He hopped on the plane without considering the crew though walking as he owned the night. Daniel swallowed, tasting the bitter aftertaste of whatever mess was still in his system, and shuffled forward. He hadn’t eaten in god knows how long, and his body was starting to remind him just that. 

He slowed down at the polished stairs, lit by the low jet’s lights. One of the crew, a woman with dark hair twisted into a perfect knot, offered him a smile. He looked away, ashamed. The roar of a departing plane rattled the tarmac.

The interior of the jet glowed warm and golden, silent as well. It felt like crossing a line he wouldn’t be able to uncross.

Armand and Louis were already settled, facing each other across a glossy table. Louis lounged with one arm draped over the leather armrest, eyes closed, seemingly resting. Armand sat straighter, legs folded over each other, checking a notepad handed by the stewart. Carefully, Daniel moved past them and dropped into a seat a few rows back, putting as much distance between himself and them as possible. The leather was buttery-soft beneath him, swallowing him into its cushions. He sighed, pleased. 

For a long moment, he just sat there. The quiet hum of the engines reverberated under his bones. His eyes roamed despite himself over the polished wood trim, the crystal decanters secured in gleaming holders, the thick carpet that looked like it could eat the soles off his boots. All the roller blind were down. 

Daniel stared at the one closest to him, then decided that fuck it, and leaned to push it up. 

The tarmac appeared behind, and with the contrast of the night outside and the light in the cabin, he caught his reflection. He almost laughed. He looked like a vagrant who’d wandered into the wrong movie set.

He slouched deeper into his seat, running a hand over the armrest just to feel the smoothness again, like he could steal a piece of this place before it disappeared. If this was a kidnapping, it was the most absurdly well-funded one he’d ever heard of.

Up ahead, Louis’ voice broke the low murmur of the engines preparing for the departure.

“We’re not abducting you, Danny.”

“Stay out of my head,” Daniel snapped.

“Don’t think so loud,” Louis replied. 

Daniel snorted, stretching his legs into the aisle. “Sorry, forgot to turn down the volume on my brain radio. I’ll work on that.”

Louis’ lips twitched enough for Daniel to mark it as a win. Before he could follow up, Armand’s voice cut through the banter. 

“Proceed.” 

He wasn’t looking at them, but at one of the crew members who nodded briskly and moved toward the cockpit. The crew immediately started moving to do as commanded.

“Close the blind, mister Molloy,” Armand ordered without turning toward Daniel. 

Deciding to be difficult, Daniel shrugged. “Yeah, I’m good.”

The vampire’s gaze shifted on him. Daniel held it, these impenetrable sunset eyes. Daniel wondered what Armand would do next. Come and close the blind himself ? Without warning, the blind zipped down in a snap, sealing the window.

Daniel jumped despite himself. He winced. So Armand could do tricks like that? He better be careful. Grumpy as he grew to be, he folded himself in his seat, and decided to catch some rest. 

It was his first time on a plane though. He was less worried about the bloodsuckers a few feet from him than about the giant metal tube he was supposed to entrust with his life. The idea of being caged in the sky with no escape sat like a stone in his gut. The press of acceleration came first, pinning him back into the seat, and then the shift of leaving the ground. He felt it in his stomach and in the dull pop of his ears. The earth was already dropping away beneath him.

Eventually, his tired members won over him. For an hour, maybe less, he drifted in a strange limbo. Not fully asleep, not fully awake. The steady thrum of the engines became a kind of lullaby, blending with the muted clink of glassware up ahead, the occasional murmur of voices. He was dimly aware of Louis moving once, of Armand speaking low in French, of the cabin’s warmth wrapping around him.

When his eyes finally opened, nothing had changed except him. The pounding in his skull made the world sway for a second. His mouth was dry again, throat raw. Exhaustion clung to him like sweat. 

He shifted and rolled his neck. That’s when he noticed the seat across from him wasn’t empty anymore.

Arms crossed, Moira, the tilt of her head sharp enough to cut. Her blue green eyes, much like his, raked over him with the kind of disappointment that never needed words. Daniel’s stomach lurched. A soft, irritated tut left her lips. He blinked hard. 

She was still there. No, no, no, no, no.

He tried to move, realizing in sheer stupor he couldn’t. He was a statue, rooted in his seat. Moira shook her head. He wished he could justify himself, make amend, prove her she hadn’t been wrong about him. The crevasses of her wrinkles marked her skin as she made a face. A very disappointed face. 

No! Daniel wanted to scream.

The plane suddenly went black. Daniel’s breathing accelerated. He deployed all his senses to hear, see, feel, smell, anything. As abruptly as the light had gone, the cabin was filled with a deep, pulsing red light. 

Moira was gone. Armand and Louis were gone. The cabin was filled with members of the coven. Faces he knew too well, pale and merciless, ringed around his seat like a cage. Juliane amongst them. 

With a jolt, The vision was gone. Daniel was left torn, chest tight, heart clawing at his ribs. The light was normal again. The seat across from him was empty. Louis was reading. Armand too. Neither had noticed his panic.

With a grunt, Daniel pushed himself out of the seat. The motion sent sharp pains throughout his body, like blades cutting the flesh deep. His movement caught Louis’ attention.

“You OK?” 

Louis’ voice sounded warm. It was a polite question, but Daniel wished it held some real worry. He ignored this dumb idea and nodded.  

“Gotta piss,” he said without looking back.

He moved down the aisle, past the curtained galley, until he found a narrow door at the rear. He slipped inside and turned the lock, shutting out the cabin noise. It was a small cabinet space, with a real desk and all necessities to make a meeting comfortable. The kind world leaders would use in Daniel’s imagination. But instead of politicians or business men, it was two massive coffins that rested side by side in the middle of the room. 

Daniel swallowed hard, an irrational shiver crawling his spine. His chest was tight, his hands tingling. The panic was already there, gnawing at him. He needed something to slow his racing heart, to scrape the terror out of his head. Without remorse, he tore through the drawers, yanked open the  cupboards, shuffled through the papers and containers only to find.. nothing. 

Of course there’d be no medicine. No pills. No powder. Vampires didn’t need that kind of support.

“Shit,” he muttered, breath quickening.

His fingers drummed rapidly on the desk. There was one last option. He hated it, hated the way it made him feel afterward. But at his worst, it always helped.

He glanced once at the door. What was the chance for the vampires not to notice?

Improbable, he thought. They would sense it. 

An imaginary breath muttering a curse on his neck. Juliane, wishing him dead. His decision was fast. He fumbled to pick the paper knife he had spotted in one of the drawers, then he pushed up his sleeve.

Chapter Text

Armand turned another page. There was nothing in this book worth his attention. A human novel, some polar thriller he had found around one night during a walk. The neighborhood he was in had those interesting boxes, small library, where people could put and pick books for free. Armand appreciated the initiative. He had, unfortunately, chose the wrong one. It was a fiction, the story of a serial killer and the detective chasing him. A cat and mouse game. It was supposed to be a tense game of wits. 

He found it dull.

There was no real tension in it, no taste of risk, no final moment when the cop understood he was the main prey. Humans wrote about the hunt as though it were a polite conversation stretched over chapters. Emotionless. Pointless. A beige pillow Louis would say. The sting of the memory annoyed Armand. He played with his jaw, to keep his fangs in his gums. He was far too much on the edge lately. A shift behind him caught his attention. Daniel stumbled to the back of the cabin. He disappeared behind the door and a lock turned. His unsteady breathing echoed, clear to Armand’s vampiric earring. 

He chose to ignore him and focused back on the book. The cop was on a life and death mission to save a poor victim, unaware he was being chased. 

“I had the girl tucked under my arm, both of us clutching at each other like we’d collapse without the other’s weight to balance us. We were almost out. Freedom was a thin line ahead, swaying in the heat haze. The cornfield loomed, tall and golden, ready to swallow us whole if we could just make it that far.

A sharp crack of a twig interrupted the stillness. Then the whisper of feet on dry earth. He was behind us, I could bet on it. I hissed. He was not even sprinting. No, he was too sure of himself for that. He wanted us to fear him.

The girl’s breath hitched against my side. I told her not to look back, but my own eyes kept dragging to the shadow stretching longer behind us.

The cornfield was close now, waving in the wind like it knew we wouldn’t all make it in...”

Armand was halfway through a sentence when a sharp metallic tang that curled into his nostrils. Across from him, Louis jolted as though struck, the haze of his reverie shattered. His pupils widened until they were almost black. For a heartbeat, he stared at Armand.

“Is that-?”

“I’m smelling it too.”

Louis didn’t waste another second. He lunged for the door at the end of the cabin, his movements fluid despite the burns. The handle rattled uselessly beneath his hand. It was locked. Armand’s jaw tightened, standing right behind him. He should never have allowed the boy that much freedom, not even for a moment. Dangerous creatures did not earn trust with silence. They were storms, waiting for a seam to split. Whatever Daniel had done in those stolen minutes, it would not be harmless.

Louis threw another wrenching tug at the handle, his frustration tangible. This time, it broke, following his hand when he wrenched it. He froze on the threshold. The scent of blood was saturating the air, crawling into their throats like a singing muse. Temptation’s whisper curled in Armand’s mind, quickly drowned by the sight before him. Daniel sat slumped on the floor, back against his coffin, drenched in crimson. His legs unfolded loosely beneath him as though he’d simply decided to rest there. He held a paper knife in one of his hands. He had used it to slice his wrists open. Two large scars were cascading in blood hot flesh pulsing. 

No wave of magic radiated from him, yet his eyes shone entirely silver.

Armand’s hand pressed briefly to Louis’ arm, pushing him aside. His lover was petrified by the sight of blood. His fangs had dropped and it was only miraculous that he did not cave to his imperious and primal need. To feed.

Armand stepped forward, careful, until he was crouched before Daniel. The boy didn’t flinch.

“Daniel,” Armand murmured.

No reaction. 

After a hesitation, he cupped the boy’s face. Still no reaction. Daniel was too out. Settling in between his legs, Armand reached inward, spreading his mind gift like wings. He brushed against the boy’s consciousness. There was strange static there. It was odd and unpleasant. Reluctantly, Armand began to push deeper into whatever world Daniel’s silver eyes were seeing. Inside his mind, he found no orderly landscape, no coherent stream of thought. The usual stream of nagging vomited by the boy’s mind was shut. Jagged fragments remained in the dark corners, filled with misery and blurred ghosts.

Armand pushed deeper. 

Fear lived here, raw and untempered. Fear of being too much and nothing at all. Fear of disappointing anyone who dared to believe in him. Fear of being a failure and the unbearable certainty that failure was inevitable. His dreams lay scattered like glass on a cold floor, splintered and dulled. Armand weaved through them, curiosity bubbling in his chest at the sight of all this misery.  Then, something caught his attention at the corner of his eye. Almost invisible, floating without a beginning or an end, a thin, gleaming silver thread against all the black was waving in an absent wind. It was vibrating softly as though alive. 

Without thinking, Armand reached for it. His fingers closed around it and it felt like nothing. Armand pulled. Daniel stirred.

In the physical room, his real hand was stroking Daniel’s cheek, coaxing him gently back toward the surface of the world. He had him now, he could reach him. 

“Listen boy,” he said, his tone low. “Listen, as though I’m the voice of God, or an angel speaking to you, telling you: this room doesn’t matter, this night doesn’t matter. You’re not inconsequential, or a junkie. You’re a bright young reporter with a point of view. There are stories that need to be told.”

The silver thread thrummed in his grasp.

“If things ever get bad again, these are the words you’ll hear in your mind like a tape playing over and over, like a song stuck in your brain. These words will hold you up, and carry you. They are your lifeline.”

Daniel’s breathing shifted, less frantic now, though his eyes still shone like mirrors. Armand’s thumb lingered against his jaw, the thread still firm in his grasp, guiding the boy’s fractured mind toward wakefulness.

“Come, Daniel. Come to me.” 

Daniel’s gaze was glassy, but his body listened. As if on a gentle current, pulled toward Armand’s voice, he let himself be held in the vampire’s arms. He blinked, without coming to himself. Whatever high he had forced on himself, it was hell.

A sharp, ragged inhale snapped Armand’s attention sideways. Louis was pinned against the far wall, both hands clamped over his mouth, shoulders trembling. His eyes black at the edges with hunger, were locked on Daniel. Armand didn’t need to read him to know. Every muscle in Louis’ body screamed with the effort of restraint. 

The door creaked open. One of the crew, a young woman with a low bun stepped inside, worry etched across her brow. Her gaze darted from Armand to Daniel, and then froze.

“Sir?” Her voice hitched, panic blooming as she took in Daniel sitting in his own blood, eyes silver and wrong.

“If you’re that thirsty, Louis, feed from her,” Armand said without looking away from the boy in his arms.

The woman flinched at his words, confusion giving way to fear. Louis didn’t move. Armand’s patience thinned. With nothing but a flicker of thought, the door slammed shut behind the woman, like a gunshot. She jumped, her cry of panic drowned by the sound of the engines.

Louis’ eyes flicked to Armand, hesitation keeping him rooted where he was. 

“If you don’t want to hurt Daniel, do it.”

Armand’s command sat this time. With a growl, Louis lunged at the woman.

Armand looked back at Daniel, ignoring the screams. The silver in the boy’s eyes was receding, in shimmering ripples, like moonlight draining from water. Colors began to emerge beneath ; blue first, then green, then the faint violet ring that hid in the depths. They were still hazy, unfocused. Still, he was staring at Armand.

A muddled stream of thought reached the vampire, disordered like fragments of a dream spilling into waking.

He’s so pretty… 

Demonic.

But he’s fucking beautiful.

How a dead can be so… 

Fascinating… 

Wait, he’s a monster. Well... so am I. 

I wish he’d keep me. Or kill me…

All these contradictions made Armand’s lips twitch imperceptibly. He slipped a hand behind Daniel’s neck, tilting his head just enough to look at him properly. Daniel groaned, protesting against the treatment.

“Shh,” Armand murmured, voice soft as the brush of silk. “Rest, boy.”

Daniel leaned into him as though gravity itself had shifted, melting into his hold with boneless trust. His body was trembling, but his surrender was complete. Armand cradled him against his chest, feeling the heartbeat slow, steady, settle into the rhythm of his own. He didn’t entirely understand why the gesture pleased him, yet it did. With Daniel gone limp in his arms, his chest rising in shallow pulls, Armand was left with the burden of deciding what to do next. The boy’s wrists were still cut in half, the blood running warm and defiant. A dangerous tide calling Armand’s instinct. 

His gaze flicked once toward Louis. His lover was bent over the trembling hostess, his mouth at her throat, drinking deep sips, not trying to keep his hunger from becoming carnage. That was good. Louis needed this. And more importantly, he was distracted. Which served Armand’s present problem. 

He turned back to the boy. He adjusted him in his hold and bit his own tongue. He leaned as he brought Daniel’s arm to his face. When he pressed his lips against the wound, the insidious smell of this living source had him tensing in every nerve of his body. He ran his tongue over the torn flesh, using his blood to coax it to mend. He hadn’t been prepared for the reply. The moment his lips pressed against the skin, Daniel’s blood slipped onto his tongue and turned everything upside down. 

It was unlike anything Armand had ever known. It was the iron flow of human life, but also not. It tasted the sweet haze of innocence with the strong bitterness of sinners clinging to guilt. It was a sun-soaked vineyard, a field of ripened grapes bursting underfoot in the Italian summer. It was ocean air kissing his face, salt and sweetness mingling on his skin. It was youth and ruin, brilliance and despair, all at once. 

It filled him. Nourished him. Unraveled him.

Armand’s throat worked against the flood of want. Every part of him screamed to pierce the boy’s throat, to drink deep at the source, to drain every shimmering note of this marvelous taste. 

Instead, he closed his eyes, tightening his hold on Daniel, fighting himself with the same stubborn resolve that had carried him through centuries. When at last the wound closed, and the boy’s blood was no longer spilling, Armand pulled back, his lips wet, his eyes burning, his chest rising as though he had run. He had never tasted such danger and such promise. 

Fascinating.

***

The island smelled of salt and heavy green growth. 

The jet touched down on Night Island with a whisper of wheels against tarmac. Heat carried the tang of kerosene into the dry air. At the edge of the runway, cars waited, and beyond a shimmering city of vice, pleasure and night life. An eastern Las Vegas, carved by a vampire for vampires, untold to the human population enjoying the resort. The ocean sat at every edge, a briny undertone beneath the sweetness of flowering trees. 

As the engines spooled down, late seabirds wheeled overhead, heading to their nest. 

Three silhouettes descended the plane, one borne gently in the arms of the taller figure. No words were exchanged; their pace was unhurried. They slipped into the waiting limousine, and with a muted purr, the car pulled away from the private airstrip. The ride carried them first through the city, a gleaming spine of towers and neon pulsing along the coast, windows catching fire with the last light of dusk. Then the lights thinned, the rhythm of traffic faded, and the limousine climbed into the high roads. The world outside grew darker, more silent, as civilization dissolved into a sweep of hills and shadowed cliffs.

It reached a gate after thirty minutes of deafening silence. Behind it, a ring of trees protected a park. Then at last, the car turned down a hidden drive. The villa revealed itself only at the final breath, sudden and commanding, rising from the darkness as though carved from the rock itself. Armand exited the limo first, bending back inside to gather the unconscious boy into his arms. Daniel’s body fevered rolled limp against him. His hair was damp, stuck to his temple, his mouth parted as if even sleep cost him effort. To vampiric ears, his breathing came as a pitch whistle. 

Louis followed, eyes sharp on him, careful with his gestures, checking endlessly on Daniel. Armand didn’t need to reach into his thoughts to know what brewed there. Jealousy.

Misplaced, ridiculous jealousy for Louis couldn’t prove it, but he knew Armand had tasted Daniel. 

Armand hadn’t wanted to, but necessity had demanded it. The boy had been crumbling apart, fire licking through his veins with his strange, witch-born malady. Armand had tasted him to calm him, to take the edge, to keep him from burning the world down. Or destroying their plane in the middle of its course through the sky. 

Yet, Louis looked at him as though he had stolen something from him. Deep down, it brought a tang of satisfaction in Armand. Ignoring the petty expression of his lover, he resumed his walking. He carried Daniel through the villa’s wide entrance. The air was cooler here, scented faintly of orchids. He headed straight to the farthest wing, where the vault sat under the cliff. Armand didn’t head there nor the underground chambers. Instead, he moved upstairs. Daniel’s slack body rocked gently in his arms. Behind him, Louis trailed close like a wary cat, green eyes narrowed.

The suite they entered was vast, its walls opening onto the sea with broad panes of reinforced glass. It was carved to Armand’s taste. Dark silks draping the bed and veils falling from the painted ceiling, sculpted furniture adjoining modern couch, cabinet and decorations. It breathed luxury and sensuality. What Armand’s childish eternal appearance denied him to mortal eyes.

He set Daniel carefully on the massive bed, arranging him against the pillows like he'd moved a doll. The boy stirred faintly, lost in his fever, before settling again. Louis approached in turn, surveying the suite. 

“It looks like a pimp room.”

Armand straightened. Yeah. That too was true.

“It’s safer to keep him here,” he said, ignoring the comment. “There’s a lock on the door. He won’t get out unless we allow it.”

Louis turned on his heels, leaving the room without a word, but his mind was loud. Jealousy, again, brewing, at the idea that Armand knew things about Daniel he didn’t.

Chapter Text

Daniel woke up with a groan. The world was a sluggish blur that took its sweet time to sharpen around him. His head throbbed, like the aftermath of a night too heavy with liquor and bad choices, but it wasn’t liquor this time. He had done that to himself. 

Blinking one eyelid after the other, he pushed himself upright. His wrists itched faintly. Though, when he raised them to his face, he stopped cold. The gashes he had drawn were gone. The skin was smooth as if nothing had happened. 

His pulse leapt, confusion taking root in his chest. He hadn’t done this, he couldn’t have.  Someone had fixed him. Someone had touched him at his most vulnerable. Well of course, it had been a risk, he couldn’t play the damsell in dismay considering where he chose to do his ritual. 

He pressed his fingers on his eyes, pissed with whoever had interfered. He remembered a voice made of velvet. A voice that had ordered him back into his body and into this world.

“Asshole…” he grumbled, standing on wobbly legs. 

Once up and secured, he turned in a small circle, taking in his surroundings.  His new realm was a grand bedroom, with a couch area and the bathroom in a corner, separated by only a wooden lacquered screen made of four independent parts. Through a wide, square window the ocean was rolling in shades of blue and green. They must have arrived at the island.

Time was unclear though, but if he had to guess, the sun was setting down. Pink clouds coloured the pastel blue already fading to darkness in a corner. 

Daniel moved away from this view worthy of romantic paintings and walked to the door. The handle didn’t budge. He insisted, hard enough to rattle it until he had to accept that it was locked. His throat tightened.

“Fucking vampires.”

He stepped back, gathering what strength his body still had, and threw himself against the door once, twice, three times. It did not budge. He pressed his forehead to the wood. He’d been here before, in a way. Not this room, not this exact prison, but in the end, he was once more trapped. At least, this cage was clean and luxurious. Winded and defeated, he dropped back, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, chest rising and falling in quick bursts. His eyes strayed back to the window and the mocking freedom beyond it.

And they had to dare pretend he wouldn’t be their prisoner. 

He remained there, sat on the cold floor, as the world outside surrendered to shadows. He didn’t realize plainly at some point that the night was born, lost in his thoughts. The faintest shift of metal in the lock brought him back. The sound of a latch turning. Daniel snapped his head toward it, eyes wide. Carefully, he rose. He pushed the handle once more. The door followed his gesture opening on a long dark corridor.

Daniel hesitated only a heartbeat before stepping through, his bare feet brushing against the cool floor. The air smelled faintly of essential oil, and salt water. The hallway stretched ahead like the spine of a sleeping beast, long and narrow. White sheets ghosted the shapes of chairs and tables, but also the paintings hanging on the walls. It was like walking through a haunted mansion. 

Daniel moved aimlessly through those halls, not in search of anything specific, until his eyes caught the ray of a light spilling from an arched doorway at a turn. The rest of the villa was cloaked in shadow, but the glow ahead betrayed a presence. Daniel’s pulse quickened.

Careful, he emerged into a grand salon. The room unfolded in two levels, a sweeping mezzanine lined with carved railings overlooking a sunken space below. A chandelier of antique glass loomed above. In the low level was displayed a quite recent salon, with designer furniture. And sprawled across an immense couch, large for two grown men to lie down side by side, was Louis.

His figure lay utterly still. His skin, though no longer charred, bore the faint undertone of fresh healing.

“You can come closer. I don’t bite,” Louis spoke without opening his eyes.

“Not tonight?” Daniel snorted.

Louis chuckled. Daniel descended the two steps and crossed the open floor, perching at the far end of the couch like an intruder testing the limits of hospitality. Louis opened his eyes at last. Green and sharp even in the muted light. He asserted Daniel with amusement.

“Come,” he murmured, shifting slightly to give him space. 

Despite his best judgement, Daniel lowered himself and crawled until he could lay down on his back. He let out a groan, his body heavy like a rock diving at the bottom of the river. A minute passed, in plain silence, before Louis spoke. 

“Why did you try to kill yourself?”

Daniel blinked, startled by the bluntness, then scoffed. 

“That’s not what I did.”

“Then what would you call it?” Louis said, rather coldly. 

“It’s a way of taming the pain. That’s all. You wouldn’t get it.”

Louis winced. He turned his head towards Daniel and his green eyes bore into his soul. Daniel hated it. 

“It’s more like a ritual,” he confessed, despite himself. 

“Don’t ever do it again,” Louis said.

Daniel gave a sharp snort, half amused, half bitter. “You say that like I owe you anything.”

“You do,” Louis replied with no hesitation. “I won’t accept your… lack of self-caring. Not when you’re under my watch.”

Daniel turned to look at him, ready with another biting retort, but stopped when he saw Louis’s expression. It was the look of someone who had lost far too much to allow one more soul to slip through his fingers. And although the interview had been a haze of drugs and a turmoil of emotions, he recalled crystal clear what the vampire had lost. 

He remained silent. His gaze drifted to the ceiling and its moulding. A blue sky was painted there, speckled with white clouds.  

“Hey, Louis?” Daniel breathed after a long moment of calm. 

“Hum?”

Louis had closed his eyes. Maybe he was drifting away again, or maybe he was already gone. Daniel still asked his question. 

“Are we really going to redo the interview?”

Louis smiled in his rest, his canines coming on display. Daniel suppressed a shiver.

“If you’re up to it.”

“Will you kill me when it’s over?”

The question hung in the air for a second before Louis re opened his eyes.

“No.”

Daniel arched his brow. “Just so you know, that is not making me feel better.”

Louis gave a faint, reel smile. “You don’t trust me, Danny?”

“You didn’t give me any reason to.”

Louis shifted, rolling on his side. He propped his head up his palm and look down at Daniel.

“I want to talk. To think. To feel. You can make all this happen again.”

“What about Armand ?”

“What about him?”

“Is he OK about the interview? He didn’t seem very amenable about it last time.”

“Armand doesn’t want me to do the interview.” Louis admitted. 

Daniel let out a short, humorless laugh. “Then why risk pissing him off?”

Louis’ gaze softened. He tilted his head and Daniel’s heart skipped. How dare he be that gorgeous. Piece of shit. 

The vampire chuckled and Daniel realized he must have picked that in his mind. He scoffed and rolled his eyes to hide his embarrassment. 

“I’m not the one who pisses him off most,” Louis said. 

“I’ve been here, what, four days?”

“It was five.”

“My point made,” Daniel huffed. “How could I be the problem?”

Louis’ leg brushed his, and Daniel’s heart started running. It was impossible for the vampire to ignore it. And the smile spreading on his lips said it all, to Daniel’s utter shame. He frowned, not sure what to feel.

“You’re doing this” whatever this included when Daniel put it like that. “to get on Armand’s nerves.”

“Probably,” Louis murmured, leaning in just enough that his words brushed Daniel’s lips.

The latter found himself captivated by those lips, moving so close to his face. He slouched deeper into the couch, staring at the ceiling, as if the patterns there might distract him from how close Louis was.

“Aren’t you guys together or something?” he asked, voice casual, though his fingers drummed nervously against his chest.

“We’re lovers.”

Daniel couldn’t suppress a snort. “Yeah? What a terrible choice of word for two immortals ready to go at each other's throats every now and then.”

“Have you ever loved, Danny?” 

Louis’ question made him wince. He had his crushes, his flings, his nights spent tangled in someone else’s heat just to forget. But love? A real love that mattered? Nah. That had been stolen from him the day he was born.

“I’m more of a firefly type of creature.”

The analogy lifted the corner of Louis’ mouth. He leaned back, releasing Daniel from his overwhelming presence.

“I don’t know how to love without hating the person I love,” he confessed. “It’s always been that way. A terrible paradox. I want closeness and distance all at once. I want to be the person I love and I hate them for who they are.”

Daniel tilted his head, studying him. “Maybe you should start with the basics. Like… I don’t know. Loving yourself.”

“That’s rich, coming from you. Shouldn’t you take your own advice before distributing it?”

Daniel blinked, then burst out laughing, the sound raw but genuine. His feet knocked Louis’ leg playfully, which made the vampire chuckle.

“Guess we’re both desperately hopeless, huh?”

Louis’ lips curved, just slightly. Daniel’s stomach answered for him with a long growl. He tensed and heat covered his cheeks. He pressed a hand to his abdomen. 

“Apparently trauma burns calories.”

“Come, then. We’ll see what we can manage for a mortal appetite.”

Louis stood and gestured for him to follow. Daniel fell in steps with him, oddly obedient. Something in this Louis, just in between the seducer from Polynesian Mary and the mysterious figure from Divisadero Street, was appealing. 

The kitchen looked nothing like Daniel expected. It didn’t have the gothic decoration of the rest of the halls. It was surprisingly filled for a room useless for vampires. Polished counters, glass jars filled with herbs, brown paper bags thoroughly folded on a cabinet, the fridge buzzing in a corner.

A man was there, slicing pumpkins alongside red tomatoes and peppers, and garlic. The fragrances combined in a sweet promise that agitated Daniel’s stomach.

“Evening Rashid,” Louis saluted.

“Good Evening, Sir.”

“Daniel, this is Rashid. Feel free to ask him anything, he’s here to make our life easier.”

Rashid returned to his work without another word, movements seamless. The sound of chopping filled the air.

“So… do you keep him on retainer, or is he, like, the world’s best-paid housekeeper?”

“Rashid is more than competent.”

Daniel huffed. “To serve?”

“Rashid doesn’t serve us,” said a voice behind them. 

Daniel flinched so violently he almost knocked over a chair. He spun, pulse surging, to find Armand standing in the doorway. Daniel’s breath hitched. He hadn’t heard him come in. Not a sound.

The vampire looked entirely out of place. His lean frame was draped in a pink silk shirt, tucked neatly into crimson velvet trousers. Gold winked at his wrists, his throat and fingers.

His sunset-colored eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Daniel. It wasn’t hypnotic, not in the overt, supernatural way, but Daniel still felt caught, as though Armand were peeling him open just by looking. 

“Rashid works for us,” Armand continued. “And no, before you ask, he’s not sustaining us with his blood. We draw a line between our employees and our food.”

Daniel shifted on his feet, crossing his arms. 

“No one ever told you it’s rude to stare, bud?”

Armand tilted his head slightly. “You mistake my attention for intrusion.”

“Feels like the same thing,” Daniel muttered, avoiding his gaze.

Louis leaned in, brushing a kiss against Armand’s temple. Daniel recalled some shouts and jabs in a dim apartment of Divisadero and the sight felt staged. Armand’s eyes, who didn’t look away from Daniel, sliced slightly. Daniel mirrored his reaction, realizing he must have caught his thoughts.

“We seriously should talk about boundaries,” he groaned. 

“I agree. Let’s start simple. You’re not allowed to leave the villa alone.”

“That’s not boundaries, that’s rules.”

“Call is whatever you prefer. This is for your safety.”

“’Cause I’m safer in with vampires, than out? Hey, Rashid, what do you think about that?”

The housekeeper–cook–butler–whatever he was, didn’t so much as flinch. He went on with his task, slicing herbs. The soft chhhk-chhhk of his knife made Daniel uneasy.

“You do know your bosses are vampires, right?” he pressed.

“I’m aware, sir.”

Rashid didn’t look up.

“Right,” Daniel said, circling the counter a bit like a cat testing boundaries. “And that doesn’t freak you out? The whole undead, bloodsucking, nightly-soirees-of-doom routine?”

Still no reaction. Rashid began arranging vegetables on a board. Louis’ low chuckle filled the air like velvet. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed. 

“You can’t provoke him, Danny. Rashid has survived decades of my moods and Armand’s temper. You could set the room on fire, and he would pretend not to notice.”

“Exactly what I need… an audience that won’t scream when you’ll kill me,” Daniel muttered, turning away. His stomach gave a loud, traitorous growl.

Louis’ smile widened. “Ah. There it is.”