Chapter Text
Armand watches the boy stagger from the drug den.
A considerable amount of time has passed since dumping him there—a day or two, or more? Armand cannot be sure. What he is sure about is that Daniel Molloy has been rotting in that den far longer than expected. Armand might’ve thought him dead if not for the faint but audible thrumming of his heart, but no, here he is at last. The spectacular boy emerges.
Legs buckling like a fawn, he stumbles from the door and collapses onto the steps. There is a harsh thud. A low, pathetic groan. The boy is a revolting sight, his face dirt-stricken, grease-flattened curls, clothes drenched in dry blood and sweat. His jeans and messenger bag are soaked red-brown and stink of sour cruor, urine, faeces. It is lucky that his jeans are already so discoloured.
He has kept his leather jacket but wears a dark zip-up instead of the previous sullied shirt, undoubtedly swiped from someone in the drug den. A resourceful and selfish decision. Is that what makes him so special—being a quick-thinker, a utilitarian? Being able to cheat and steal his way out of a sickening, degrading, demoralising situation?
How pitiful. Armand is seized with familiar disdain.
Daniel tries to stand again.
He is too weak to rise on the spot. Instead he shifts onto all fours, balancing on his arms to push his legs up. It is a shaky, infantile process resembling the first steps of a lamb, but it works. Daniel rises, clenching his fists to steady himself. Quiet panting. Mouth agape with the strain.
His legs—and his body generally—must be in awful shape. Has he eaten since Divisadero Street? Armand had offered water and in later days, a can of cold soup. No solid food—it seemed a wasted effort for something the boy could survive without. In the den, Daniel likely fed on rotting scraps hid in cupboards or moulding in the pockets of the drug-addled. Perhaps he feasted on the local rats like Louis used to, like Louis still does when he’s feeling noble and moralistic.
Louis, Louis, Louis. This boy would be dead if it wasn’t for Louis’ demands. He should be dead. After everything that’s happened, after everything Armand has done to help Louis, care for Louis, clean up after Louis, he deserves to drain Daniel Molloy until he shrivels.
But he hasn’t. Armand has been endlessly self-sacrificing, eternally devoted, unconditionally kind. He is willing to endure this cruelty for Louis—he always has been. Even if it hurts him. Even if it kills him every waking moment. He will tolerate this injustice for the sake of love.
Daniel appears high for all his trembling and staggering but Armand knows he isn’t. He is starved and parched and has been soaked in his excrement for days. He has lost a significant portion of blood and is most likely still coming down from Louis’ Sasanian buffet and Armand’s nebulous drug concoction. With mild curiosity, Armand steps into his mind.
Instantly, a barrage of flashing colour and staggering emotion. Daniel is a kaleidoscope of instability, disorientation, fear that explodes across his subconscious like detonating land mines. As of right now, the boy is not thinking in language. He is thinking in fractured feelings and sensations, the fetid dominion of fear.
Fear of what, of who?
Armand delves deeper into the muddy expanse of his mind. There are simple, primal fears: dangerous animals, human predators, anything that may hurt him in the slummy streets and dens of San Francisco. Even deeper: flashes of drunk and dangerous men—one familiar drunk man with a temper and his doped-up housewife. A fractured nuclear family. Nothing Armand hasn’t seen before. Nothing particularly enthralling.
Deeper still, a familiar face. Sharp fangs that glitter in the dark. Eyes of pale turquoise, cloudy green. Sharp nails, the splitting of skin, suction at his throat. The inevitable, dizzying darkness that haunts all memories that follow. Still, within this chasm remains a distinct sense of beauty.
The boy found beauty in an object of terror. Is this what struck Louis so deeply?
Even deeper, Armand finds himself in the crevices of Daniel’s fear.
He is murky and intangible, stripped of image and voice, but his silhouette looms over the boy’s subconscious. A bone-deep terror—something innate that Daniel cannot place or confront or resolve. Armand lurks in every corner of the boy’s mind. He casts shadow on his emotions, thoughts, clearer fears. He casts shadow on Louis.
Armand leaves his mind with a fleeting flash of satisfaction. Back to watching.
Daniel stumbles further down the dim street, patting down his pockets and bag for anything useful. He finds spare change, a lighter and a half-empty pack of cigarettes in his jeans, items Armand was tempted to discard but kept, even though the boy deserved no such thing.
Daniel fumbles for a cigarette that isn’t blood-soaked and lights it up with quivering hands. Then he folds over and begins a terrible mixture of coughing and retching, choking out what can’t be more than gastrointestinal acid or the ghastly lining of his stomach. It spills on his jeans and shoes, soaks the ground and causes him to drop his cigarette. It must be due to the grotesque combination of starvation and drug withdrawal. Whilst Armand is familiar with such miserable retching, he doesn’t pity the boy. This is Daniel’s penance; a consequence of many poorly-made decisions. He is in this state by his own hand.
Time slinks past with frightening speed and the moon has shifted significantly by the time Daniel stops purging his innards. He takes off with sudden, shaky fervour and Armand follows him into the night, a night that is quickly bleeding into dawn.
Daniel limps onwards, dragging his left leg. Armand cannot be sure how long he walks like this, dragging himself across street after street, stinking up every lone alleyway. Nobody pays attention to him; the sight isn’t so unusual in San Francisco. Armand is his only follower, trailing him until the cold, dead end; a cramped duplex. He doesn’t follow him inside but he takes note of the street, the door Daniel enters, the lights that flicker on. Left side. An old, easily picked lock. Not too far from Polynesian Mary’s. Far enough from Divisadero Street.
He lingers for a while. The blinds are shut but Armand tunes into Daniel’s mind, feels how he stumbles into the bathroom, throws off his shit-stained blood-crusted clothes and stumbles into his bed, hardly breathing, hardly there.
Sleep takes him quickly. Armand, filled only with calculated curiosity and cold contempt, returns home.
Surprisingly, Armand finds himself idle during Louis’ convalescence. Sometimes he feeds him in the night when he is too weak to stand. Sometimes he watches him limp around the apartment, testing his charred limbs. Sometimes Armand lays him in the coffin and he stays there until dawn, wholly awake, entirely still.
But during the day, Armand can do nothing but fight for sleep between Louis’ whining.
Armand, it hurts! I’m sorry! Please, the coffin. Armand! Are you there? I’m sorry!
His apologies are incessant but hollow. Armand doubts that Louis even remembers what he is apologising for—which is why he keeps Louis on the bed during the day, softly burning in the sunlit room. There are slits in the newspapers where sunlight slices through and cuts into Louis’ skin, powerful enough to hurt but not to damage. It is unintentional; Armand didn’t purposefully carve such slits. To Louis, he would never do something so intentionally cruel. It is coincidental, complete happenstance, thus Armand chooses not to acknowledge it.
After everything Louis has done to him, this is deserved. It is karmic punishment, a natural and orderly penance. Louis may not remember this pain but his body will. It will remain with him as a subconscious impression, a somatic memory. He will remember not to do such things in the future. He will remember the consequences of abandoning Armand. Of leaving him for death.
Armand cares for Louis more than anything in the world, so he plays the role of the dutiful nurse and holds his tongue for love. Armand is excellent at subservience. He is masterful at devotion even when it ruins him, even when it has him shaking with glacial anger.
That’s it—the chilling rage he cannot dispel lately no matter how he tries. Armand rarely experiences anger as fiery and hot as it is for Louis. Or as it was for others. Anger turns Armand frigid. He turns cold and biting and strikes with calculation, cuts where he knows it will hurt. It is very rare that Armand gets angry—he gives people much grace. He gave Louis boundless grace. But now, every time Louis apologises or whines or shouts Armand’s name, this freezing resentment seizes Armand again, turns him colder and colder and colder.
This is what he endures for love.
Armand needs to channel this hatred into something, anything before it freezes like sludge in his veins. It grows sharper with every apology-ridden day and every idle night, and at this rate Armand cannot fathom their life being any less miserable than it currently is when Louis recovers. Something needs to change. He needs to change something.
Perhaps he is what needs to change. Louis says he is the boring one, after all. The suffocating and beige pillow.
So he focuses on Daniel Molloy.
Briefly, Armand indulges in a fantasy where Louis returns to himself and meets the new, fascinating Armand. An Armand who has learned the boy’s secrets, who replicates his supposed brilliance to perfection. A special, sacred Armand that Louis will never grow tired of.
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel—he needs to study him, to understand what it is that makes this black hole of a boy so interesting. Armand is an expert at carving himself into the desires of others. He will cut himself into flesh and meat and stitch himself together in the correct way, the way that will make Louis love him again.
It’s something to focus on. It’s something to do.
Armand occupies himself with Daniel from dusk to dawn. At first, he spends time lingering outside the duplex doing nothing at all. Daniel stays inside for several days, hardly eating or moving or breathing. Hardly doing anything at all but vomiting his guts up, which Armand can both smell and hear with repulsing clarity.
Time is passing and he is growing tired of lurking outside and waiting for the boy to do something. So he decides to pay a house visit.
Armand pries a nail in the lock, twisting and curling until it clicks loose. Then he creeps up the stairs and enters the cramped hovel.
He is greeted by an open-plan living room and kitchen. It isn’t dissimilar to Louis’ apartment. There is a cheap, peeling leather sofa and a coffee-stained table filled with half-empty notepads and newspaper excerpts. A dusty landline on a corner shelf. Stained bag on the floor. Ferric tapes peeking out. The living room lacks any decoration or personality and is rife with half-opened cardboard boxes, like he’s recently moved in.
Still, the grime of the place suggests several months of inhabitation. Dust coats the surfaces of furniture and mold sprawls from ceiling corners. Everything smells thick, dark, musty.
Armand seizes the opportunity to explore his kitchen. The boy’s fridge consists of several rotting and half-eaten leftovers, a sour pint of milk, a few condiments, several cans of beer. There is a frozen pizza in the freezer. The cupboards aren’t much better: a few tins of soup, spaghetti, instant macaroni and cheese. Nothing particularly nutritious, but the boy won’t starve.
He has several exciting appliances: a blender, a microwave, a toaster. One day Armand must learn how to use them.
Armand continues to the bathroom. It is small and cramped with no windows, a miserable-looking shower and grout in the tiles. He peers in the cupboards and finds prescribed eczema cream, tabs and tabs of painkillers, band-aids and one unused needle. Fairly predictable.
Finally, Armand heads to Daniel’s bedroom.
The door is slightly ajar. Armand considers this an invitation.
Daniel sleeps curled up on a sweat-stained mattress. He is shirtless beneath a thin sheet, shivering slightly, clutching his pillow like a child. Matted curls, flushed cheeks, vomit clinging to his chin. Skin shining like nacre in the moonlight.
His bedroom has a fraction more life than the rest of the apartment, littered as it is with alcoholic beverages and food wrappers. The walls are decorated with article clippings about a range of contemporary and historical social issues. A bulky collection of books are stacked in the corner. A horrid smell permeates the space, mainly stemming from the large metal bowl besides his mattress filled with vomit.
He is squirming and whining in his sleep—caught in a nightmare. Armand breaks into his mind to explore it.
A pitch-black room that slants to the north. A glowing, mummified corpse. Rope at his wrists. Heat at his neck. Not quite as the situation was, but how his mind has reshaped it.
Empty molten eyes. Armand finds his reflection staring back at him and is vaguely off-put. Still, it is pleasing to know he is haunting the boy’s mind in such a manner. To know he is the reason he is whining and writhing in his sleep.
There is a sharp and sudden cry—his subconscious likely recognises the threat invading his mind. Daniel wakes up in a flash and before he lays eyes on him, Armand commands:
“Rest.”
And so he does. The boy falls back into a heavy, undisturbed sleep.
Armand studies him. He appears innocent in sleep, the type that Armand strained to achieve in his youth but worked to pull off masterfully. Cherub sweet. Botticelli angel. It angers him that the boy has achieved it without effort, without pain.
This unintentional, cloying innocence. Is that what makes him fascinating?
For tonight, Armand’s curiosity is sated. He is entertained for the night, even if he hasn’t learned what’s so special about Daniel. Maybe he’ll find out tomorrow.
Armand spends several tedious nights watching Daniel sporadically eat, piss and sleep. He wanders around his home with glossy eyes, hardly seeing, hardly breathing. His expression remains passive and blank. It seems the boy has become the vapid black hole he appears to be. A fleshy shell of a person.
But in time this period of nothingness passes, and Daniel finally leaves his home.
His skin glows clean and his curls appear fresh, but his mouth is peppered with stubble and he still limps weakly. He makes his way to a Chinese takeaway a few blocks away and stumbles out with what smells like chicken chow mein. He wanders further to a small convenience store where he buys milk, cigarettes and a pack of beer.
Then he returns home and doesn’t resurface for another few days.
What is Armand doing? It is pointless to watch the boy doing nothing all day and night—he learns nothing from this. Louis must miss him at home. What does he want from this? How long will it take for Daniel to do something? Must Armand prod him into action like a bug?
But then, such an action is no longer necessary because something changes.
Daniel seems galvanised with new life.
Armand wanders behind as he hops between bars and clubs, renewed with a mad sort of fervour. He flirts and fucks for drugs, he flirts and fucks on drugs. He flirts and fucks for drugs whilst on drugs.
He spends nights on rigid barstools, watching Daniel either slump further and further over his drink or chase the heels of young and old men, any man who promises substances no matter the trade-off.
He lurks at the entrance of drug dens, peering in whilst Daniel barters for a fix and emerges louder, braver, happier than ever, or crawling in when Daniel passes out where he can. Delicate, unconscious.
He lingers between bushes as Daniel collapses on park benches, too drunk or high or fucked out to stumble his way to a motel, to a den, to home. Daniel ends up at parks more often than one might expect. He appears quite drawn to greenery.
Still, the boy is rarely solitary. Daniel connects with anyone who will give him the time of day. He barters for sex, drugs, information, stories; his quasi-interviews. Before he is fucked by men at the bar (never at their homes, he denies all offers), he listens to monologues about their uniquely tragic lives. He documents the words of both drug addicts and drug dealers in those dens, even when the words fail to make sense, even when he can hardly make sense of his own.
Does the boy offer anything more than a microphone? Is this Louis wants—a chasmic, gaping, pit-of-a-person microphone?
Several weeks later, Armand finds himself in a lonely San Francisco alleyway, inhaling humid air beneath a foggy crescent moon. He is lurking again.
Tonight Daniel is drunk or high, likely both, and he lurches across the pavement like a broken pendulum. Even from this distance, Armand can smell sour sweat, unwashed skin, the lingering grease in his curls. Alcohol on his breath and smoke coating his tongue. It isn’t dissimilar to how he smelled that first night, before he was slick with blood and urine. Tonight, the boy is unharmed. He bears no physical wounds, no sluggishly bleeding marks.
Contempt thrums in Armand’s veins like the drumming wings of wasps, as it always does when he thinks of Daniel Molloy. He’s been hoping that time and observation can ease the frigid rage in his blood that rises when the boy crosses his mind but it isn’t working. Nothing is working. Armand cannot get him out of his head.
Daniel is breathing loudly, almost panting, murmuring something unintelligible. He grips a loose brick in the wall to steady himself and Armand is shaken by the acrid stench of bile rising in Daniel’s throat, dribbling back down as he swallows.
Beneath the crescent moon, his skin glows soft, sweaty, unmarred. Milky gauze covers the scar on his neck, partially concealed by a thin hoodie. He coughs and splutters, stomach trying to purge food that isn’t there, and it is such a distasteful sight that Armand cannot help but wrinkle his nose.
He is struck by the urge to be momentarily noticed, only to see if he is recognised. It isn’t a reasonable urge—it bears the risk of unspooling the carefully spun threads of Daniel’s mind, unravelling memories that were purposefully hidden. Memory is malleable but unpredictable—there is no such thing as perfect interference. But if the job is done properly then he will currently be a stranger to Daniel. A stranger that invokes an unplaceable terror.
Daniel is approaching the alleyway exit. Quick as light, Armand slips past the boy and stands at the exit, beneath the unsteady glow of a streetlamp. He is not obscured and he does not wish to be. This isn’t something he should be doing, but cloaked in the obfuscation of night, Armand wants to be seen.
The boy emerges and his eyes find Armand’s immediately.
Armand breathes in the weight of his gaze. Dark circles ring his eyes but his skin gleams like marble. He has a ghostly, drugged-up pallor, and the clarity of his suffering is almost endearing. An honest abundance of weakness—is this what makes him so special?
He is still, he is quiet. Armand steps closer and the boy stumbles back. His jaw is slack with an emotion Armand pins between confusion and shock, underlined by a vague glimmer of recognition.
“Hey, man,” Daniel says. His voice is unsteady. His fingers quiver.
The ability to respond coolly, casually when confronted by danger. Is this what captivated Louis?
It is tempting to respond in mockery, to parrot the stammered ‘hey’ back to him. But Armand resists the pointless cruelty.
“Good evening,” he says instead. “You look unwell.”
Daniel studies him keenly, with the eye of a journalist. He catalogues Armand’s appearance, his stature, his clothes. His tone and his intentions.
“Uh, I’m well. Very well, thanks.” He huffs a nervous laugh. “Woah. Your eyes are freaky as hell, man. What sorta contacts are those?”
“They aren’t contacts,” Armand says lightly.
“Oh okay, alright.” His fear grows with his excitement. “Well, uh, now I’m interested. What makes you say that?”
A stupid question.
“...The fact that I know they are my eyes. That I have lived with them for many years.”
Daniel looks at him strangely. His expression holds both terror and intrigue, heightened by the fact that they are alone on this street and that Armand is blatantly terrifying in Daniel’s clouded mind, the ghost of a memory he cannot place.
“Many years, huh? How many years are we talking?”
“Hundreds.”
“Woah,” Daniel says, clearly not buying a word he’s saying but shining with interest regardless. Foolishly, the fear recedes. “That’s cool man, that’s cool. So what, are you immortal? What’s your deal?”
Armand stares and stares. He doesn’t know what to make of this encounter. Daniel is simple-minded and higher than heaven. What more is there to him? What did Louis see so instantly?
Daniel notices his change in attitude.
“Uhm. You know, I’m a writer—a reporter, really. Why don’t you tell me a little more about yourself, and I write you up an article? I can listen to you talk if you wanna talk. Spin a story on you, get your name out there. It’s real journalism.” He nervously gestures to his bag, “Whaddya say?”
Constantly, desperately, pathetically bargaining his way out of danger. Is that what makes him so riveting? Armand is seized by a cold flood of resentment.
“Real journalism? What constitutes real journalism, Daniel? A quarter-page feature in the Berkley Barbs?”
He freezes like a deer caught in headlights.
“How does he know my name?” Armand spits out Daniel’s thoughts. “Who is he—what does he want from me? ”
“What the fuck,” Daniel whispers. “What the fuck?”
“How is he doing that? Where does he know me from? ” Armand smiles thinly. “We met once, Daniel. In a foggy, distant memory, akin to a bad dream.”
“No, no. I don’t know about that.”
A flash of panic. Who is this man? What is he?
A more prominent thought. Is this real? Am I hallucinating?
A paralysing image. The man from my nightmares.
Speech, quietly eroding. Words that crumble in his mouth.
Daniel tries to move past, head tucked and stumbling, again like a fawn. It is a pathetic, revolting, almost endearing display. Did he perform such a display for Louis? Was Louis infatuated by his mortal, infantile weakness?
Armand blocks his way and studies himself in the mirror Daniel holds in his eyes. Two blood moon irises stare back.
Something dawns in Daniel’s expression—not quite recognition, but the beat of a memory. The knowledge that something is familiar, even if he cannot place why. Fear that seeps through his veins like black tar. Armand listens to his rapidly racing heartbeat, blood pounding louder, firmer, with greater urgency.
“You—you’re one of—”
Daniel cannot form a sentence. He doesn’t remember Armand the vampire but he remembers the wound on his neck, teeth in his flesh, terror in a room that slants to the north.
“Vampire,” Daniel whispers, and Armand cannot help but smile.
“Yes.”
The boy is struck by danger but stares this danger in the eye. Is that what makes him so unique? Is that what Louis longs for?
“You can run,” Armand says, because it is true and it baffles him that Daniel is still standing, still staring into his eyes like a puppy. “You should run.”
On cue, Daniel runs. He sprints and stumbles through the alleyway he came, breath heavy, heart thundering, the adrenaline in his blood more potent than the other chemicals.
Armand considers killing him as he flees but settles against it. It would be pointless. He hasn’t learnt what makes him fascinating yet. He hasn’t learnt anything about the boy at all.
Checking on Daniel becomes a habit.
Louis doesn’t question where Armand goes at night—Louis doesn’t question him at all lately. He is healthier now, able to walk and talk and lay in his coffin freely, but they hardly speak. Louis has shrunken into bitter, reclusive melancholy and Armand knows it is pointless to try stir him from it. He doesn’t care to. Louis can take years to lick his wounds, even those he cannot remember acquiring, and he prefers to lick such wounds in the privacy of the dark.
Armand would be there for him, like he has been for decades, but it seems his support isn’t appreciated by Louis. His devotion has been nothing more than an irritant, with every thoughtful action being another grain of salt in the injury. How was Armand supposed to know that Louis grew bored of his care? How cruel do you have to be to reject such selfless passion, such persistent and pure and unfettered love?
Regardless, the point is that Armand remains idle. There are no messes to clean up, no schemes to orchestrate. There is only the yawning chasm between him and Louis, a chasm highlighted by one endlessly exciting, unbelievably fascinating boy.
What within Daniel can fill this void? For all Armand can tell, he is empty. He is a vessel for others to dump their shit into. He is a public toilet, a bellowing cesspit. Hollow, vacant, chasmic. Surely there must be more.
Armand needs to find it. So he follows him night after night into quiet alleyways, loud streets, bars, dance clubs, strip clubs, parks, drug dens.
Sometimes Armand chooses to be seen, and Daniel’s consequent rush of fear is mildly rewarding. Daniel’s heartbeat accelerates madly; his blood roars louder than the hum of San Francisco streets. He fills every space with the stench of sweat, his breath turns sharper and shallower. He knows he is being watched. He knows he is being hunted.
Armand has to be careful. He wants to be a spectre, something dreamlike, in case he does something he wishes to erase. He is careful to appear only when Daniel is inebriated and dizzy and half out of his mind.
Daniel wears more clothes than he used to. Long-sleeved shirts, baggier jeans, longer socks. Thicker jackets. Scarves, many scarves to cover the scar. It is late fall, approaching the incoming winter, and he leaves little skin bare.
“I know you’re there!” Daniel shouts one night on a bustling street, visibly high out of his mind. “Hey, I know you’re following me! What the hell do you want from me! When are you gonna leave me alone! I know you’re out there!”
He shouts and shouts until local laughter dies down and the onlooking crowd dissipate. Then, receiving no response, he grows silent and hunches into himself, rather defeated, stumbling until he finds a telephone booth.
He shoves in change and dials a number, desperately clinging onto the telephone. Armand is fascinated by telephones—he is filled with a fleeting feeling of glee.
Whoever Daniel calls picks up.
“Alice?” he whines, voice distorted through the glass of the booth. “Alice, are you there?”
The speaker responds.
“Alice, hey. Hey… I’m in a real dark place right now. I don’t know. I’m—I don’t know what to do.”
Something dark and filthy curdles in Armand’s gut.
“No, no. I’m good, I’m good. It’s just… Yeah. Sorry. No, I promise I’m not. I told you that. I told you I wouldn’t and I haven’t, don’t worry, okay? I just— Okay. Okay, yeah.”
There is a bloated, corpse-like pause.
“Yeah. Yeah, I will. I’ll try. Hah, okay. Thanks Alice. No, no, it’s on me. I’m sorry. I get it. Thanks.”
A brief pause.
“Okay. See you around. Yeah. Me too. See you.”
Daniel is still for a moment, then he puts back the phone. He seems simultaneously lighter and heavier than he previously was.
Armand is shaken by an unexpected curdle in the pit of his stomach.
So Daniel has a companion—a lover? A woman named Alice who he calls when he is ‘in a dark place’? The notion disgusts Armand. He’d assumed Daniel was a lonely, isolated thing, completely detached from meaningful human relations. His assumption was wrong, it seems. Why does this sicken him so greatly?
Armand doesn’t follow the boy any further. In his repulsion, the task seems completely pointless and somewhat impossible.