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desertfangs · 2 years

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Vamptember, Day 2

Prompt: "Tell me a story." | Armand/Daniel | 1598 words

Daniel is sick so he asks Armand to tell him a story with predictably weird results.

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Daniel felt like death. His body ached everywhere and he burned with fever. His throat felt swollen and raw, like someone had taken a weed-whacker to it.

He lay on the sofa in front of the television with a blanket he’d pulled from the bed, occasionally kicking it to the floor when it got too hot.

He was struggling to sleep when the apartment door banged open. He hadn’t even realized it had gotten dark.

Armand walked in, ready to drag him off to whatever party or art show or play he had planned for the night, but stopped short when he saw him. From the vampire’s expression, Daniel looked as bad as he felt.

“Sorry, boss, you’ll have to go alone tonight.” He coughed with the effort of speaking.

Armand bent down and touched his forehead. “You have a fever.”

“Ding, ding, ding, you win the prize,” Daniel said.

Armand frowned deeply. He grabbed Daniel’s arm. “You need medicine. Come, let’s get you to a doctor.”

Daniel tugged his arm out of Armand’s grasp which wasn’t easy, especially given how weak he felt. “It’s just a flu or something,” Daniel said. “I already got medicine.” He gestured behind him to the kitchen table, where bottles of Robitussin and Nyquil sat. He’d made a trip to the corner store earlier and bought a couple different kinds, unsure which to pick. He’d taken the Robitussin, but it hadn’t done much besides taste like poison.

Armand looked from the table and back to Daniel several times, as if weighing his options.

“I’ll be fine,” Daniel said. “I just need to sleep. Go do whatever the hell you were going to do without me.”

“No,” Armand said. He sat on the easy chair next to the sofa. “I’ll stay with you.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. He wanted to make some comment about how Armand only wanted to see how sickness worked its way through a mortal body but he was too tired. It hurt every time he swallowed and he couldn’t get comfortable to save his life.

“Do you want soup? Mortals eat soup when they're sick, don't they?” Armand asked.

Daniel smiled. Armand was actually worried about him. Go figure.

“I had soup earlier,” he said. Well, he’d tried to. He’d heated up a can of chicken noodle from the same corner store but it tasted oddly metallic and he’d dumped most of it down the sink.

Daniel coughed again and shifted onto his side. Armand watched him warily. “What can I do?”

“Make me a vampire.”

Armand glared at him.

Daniel sighed. “You asked.” He found the remote between the cushions and turned off the television and buried his head in a throw pillow. “Why don’t you tell me a story?”

“A story?” He sounded a little taken aback. “What kind of story?”

“The story of your life?” He smiled weakly, glancing up at Armand, who did not smile back. “Pick one. You’ve lived for hundreds of years. You must have stories.”

Armand’s expression remained blank. Either he couldn’t think of anything or more likely, he just didn’t want to share anything that came to mind. “What do you want to hear about?” he finally asked.

Daniel adjusted his pillow. “I don’t know. Have you ever regretted a kill?”

Armand sat back in the chair. He was quiet for so long Daniel assumed he wasn’t going to answer. But then he spoke, “There have been several, of course.”

“Yeah? So tell me about one of them.”

“You want to know the strangest things,” Armand said.

“Says the guy who once made me spend six hours in the magazine aisle of a bookstore explaining tabloids and girlie mags,” Daniel countered.

Armand considered for several minutes, then said, “Louis told you about the Theatre Des Vampires.”

It wasn’t a question but Daniel eagerly said, “Yes.”

“Sometime in the 1830s, a young man came to the theatre. As you know, most of our patrons believed it to be some dark satire. But one or two saw through the act. This particular man believed that the devil was communicating with him through bird song. He’d spent months meticulously making a record of the bird calls outside his window and he brought them to us backstage after the show, demanding we translate the message.”

“What did you tell him?”

“He was told that of course we could not. But he was insistant that the devil sent him to us and I could hear his thoughts. They were a whirlwind of delusions. And despite that, he was charming. He was nearly bursting with the need to be understood. And he was utterly fascinated by the macabre.”

“You liked him,” Daniel said.

Armand nodded. “He fascinated me. He reminded me of—” Armand stopped. Daniel looked up at him. “Someone else. Someone Lestat and I both knew long ago. So I spoke with him. He told me how he believed he’d sold his soul by mistake and now the devil wanted him to do his bidding but he couldn’t understand the instructions. He was desperate to do whatever was required of him.

“Santiago overheard, and told him that the devil wanted him to serve us at the theatre. So he did. And of course, he saw what we really were. That knowledge drove him further into the depths of madness. He soon decided he could decipher the devil’s messages himself and would come to me with lists of ramblings he’d decoded. Then he began insisting the devil wanted us to turn him, and of course, we would not.”

“Why not? He sounds like a perfect addition to your troupe.” Daniel was joking but Armand shook his head.

“To give one in such a fraught mental state the blood is to condemn them as surely as killing them,” Armand said. “He steadily got worse and did nothing but wander around the theater mumbling but a few of the others found him and his stories of the devil’s messages amusing. Until one night, he pulled out a sword and attacked one of our actors as they left the stage. He said the devil had revealed that we were all pretenders and must be dispatched. The vampire he’d stabbed was fine, of course, but it had gone too far. I knew whoever killed him would make him suffer so I did it myself before the others could get to him.”

“And you regret it?”

Armand shrugged. “Regret is perhaps the wrong word. It had to be done. He’d lost all sense of reality and was a danger to us while we slept. But I took no pleasure in his demise.”

“Do you think he really had a connection to something otherworldly? A demon of some kind? The devil himself?”

Armand raised an eyebrow. “No. I think he’d simply assigned meaning where there was one none. There is no devil, Daniel, and hell is empty.”

Daniel laid back against the pillow. “That’s one hell of a bedtime story.”

“You chose the subject matter,” Armand countered.

“So I did.” The truth was, Daniel loved it whenever he could get Armand to tell him anything about his life before. He was so damned cagey about his past. “Who is this person you and Lestat both knew?”

“We knew many of the same people, of course,” Armand said, completely dodging the question. Daniel made a mental note to circle back to that sometime, when he wasn’t feeling like ass.

Daniel wondered, not for the first time, what it must have been like to go to the Theatre des Vampires, what he would have made of it.

“Probably nothing,” Armand said, reading his thoughts. “But then again, you’re more curious than most. It may have ended badly for you.”

“I don’t know, I’d have met you,” Daniel said.

“I was a different then.” Armand stood and stepped closer, looking down at him. “Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?”

Daniel sat up. “No. But your blood might help.”

Armand hesitated, and then sat beside him on the sofa. He didn’t argue this time. He bit open his wrist with ease and pressed against it Daniel’s mouth.

The blood was hot and salty, electric as it burned through him hotter than the fever. Much better than the useless cold medicine. He could feel it racing through his veins as his heart pounded. He dug his fingers into Armand’s arm, holding it fast against his mouth, but he couldn’t hold tight enough and soon Armand had pulled away.

Daniel wanted to drink more, enough that he’d never be sick again. He reached for Armand but Armand got up off the sofa, moving out of his grasp. He may have been worried, not worried enough to make him immortal.

“You said yourself it’s just a flu,” Armand said.

“But you could make me like you and I’d never get the flu again.”

Armand did not dignify that with a response.

At least the blood made him feel better. His throat no longer felt like it had been through a shredder and the fever broke, leaving him sweaty but less miserable.

Armand brought him a pillow from the bed and positioned it under his head. Leaned down and kissed his forehead, lips cool against his skin. Then Armand sat back in the chair.

“You don’t have to stay,” Daniel said.

Armand didn’t move. “Sleep, beloved.”

Daniel closed his eyes and, after a day of being miserable, was finally able to drift off. He didn’t know how long Armand remained there because when he awoke, it was daytime and the apartment was empty.

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Cross-posted on AO3 here in my Vamptember document.

I had this idea and was determined to stick with it but it's really hard to come up with a story Armand would tell Daniel so I figured he'd pick something set in a place Daniel already knew about and something that isn't super personal. IDEK.

Anyhow this was fun, I will try to do a few of these prompts each week and we'll see what I come up with! Really loving everyone else's contributions, too.

#vamptember #vampire chronicles #daniel/armand #daniel molloy #armand #vc #the vampire chronicles #mortal dan is so fun though even when he's too sick to be that combative #fun fact i had to look up when weed whackers were invented for this #it was 1971 #you're welcome

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