#this is so long and i'm sure i missed like 5 typos but anyhow i hope people like it

[desertfangs]

Daniel/Lestat '"I'm not going to do it again, this isn't a peep show."

This one is long and a little melancholy. I think I'm in a mood, ha! But I hope you enjoy it even though it didn't get smutty (I was trying to go there but I keep getting derailed.)

“I’m not going to do it again, this isn’t a peep show,” Daniel said, tugging his sweatshirt down over the waistband of his jeans. 

“No?” Lestat leaned against the shelf below. Daniel glared from the ladder. He was trying to find the box they’d come for here in the archives of the Night Island cellar, and Lestat kept making lewd comments when his sweatshirt rode up and revealed his midsection. 

“We didn’t come all the way to Florida so you could stare at my stomach.” 

“Perhaps not, but there’s no sense in not enjoying the view.” Lestat smirked.

Daniel rolled his eyes, ignoring the flush that ran up his neck. “Do you want to see it or not?” 

“And if I say no? That I’ve changed my mind? Then what?”

“Then you can get off of my island,” Daniel said, moving the ladder to the next shelf over. 

Lestat dramatically clutched his heart, as if shocked by his harshness, and Daniel smiled.

He climbed up the ladder and found most of these boxes were labeled 83 and 84. That was the right time period, at least. He pulled one down and opened it. It was full of papers. Bills, mostly, long paid, with no reason to keep them. He dug through it vaguely out of curiosity but there wasn’t anything worth holding onto that he could see. He took the sharpie out of his pocket and wrote “Old Mail” on the side of the box. 

Armand was a pack-rat of the highest order, and he’d been worse in the early 80s, keeping everything no matter how unnecessary. One of these days, Daniel was going to drag Armand down here and get him to go through this place and throw out the junk.

“You’d be better off doing it alone,” Lestat said. He was studying his fingernails, his rings glinting on his pale fingers. “He won’t miss what you toss.”   

“That’s probably true.” Still, Daniel worried about throwing the wrong thing out and it coming back to bite him in a hundred years. Though what use Armand might possibly have for thirty-year-old utility bills was beyond him.

The next box was clothes. Old, ratty socks and underwear of Daniel’s, ones Armand had thrown out because they’d become too full of holes to be worth wearing. Or rather, Daniel had thought he’d thrown them out. Apparently he’d boxed them up and shoved them on a shelf down here in the storage rooms of the cellar. 

Daniel saw Lestat watching him in his periphery. He closed the box and slid it back into place. The next one was more junk: matchbooks pilfered from bars, random keys to god only knew what, spare buttons, a few coins, a pair of sunglasses with one of the lenses missing, and a pack of Big Red gum that would probably crumble to dust if opened. Junk drawer stuff, as if Armand had dumped the contents of the junk drawer of their last house into a box when they’ve moved into the Villa. Which, now that Daniel looked at it, he clearly had.

“You know, I find it’s easier to remove the garbage from Louis’ collections bit by bit,” Lestat mused.

Daniel glanced down at him. “How often does he notice something’s missing?” 

Lestat folded his arms over his chest. “More often than I’d like. He’s meticulous about his trash.” 

Daniel laughed. “Or maybe you guys have different definitions of what should be held onto.” Daniel looked into the box one more time, detritus from a lifetime ago, and closed it up. So it went, Daniel trying to notate the contents of each box to make a future clean out easier as he opened them and put them back. Lestat watched, not bothering to help—“You know your maker’s organizational system best”—and occasionally making a comment about Daniel’s ass as he climbed the ladder.

Finally, two shelves down, Daniel found the box. He was suddenly glad for Armand’s almost obsessive need to keep things. “Got it.” He climbed back down the ladder, box under his arm, and left the ladder where he’d set it up. “Come on.” 

Lestat followed him up out of the cellar and into the parlor. Daniel opened the French doors that lead to a veranda with a view of the ocean to let in some air and then took the box over to the coffee table.

Lestat bounded over with the enthusiasm of a puppy, eager and impatient. Daniel opened the box. He pulled out a stack of t-shirts and tossed one at Lestat’s head. Lestat laughed in surprise. It was tie-die, blue, purple and green. The stack had various experiments with colors, all mixed together in funky patterns. 

Lestat unfolded the shirt and held it up his chest, over the plain blue shirt he wore beneath his leather jacket. “What do you think?”

“It suits you,” Daniel said. He lifted stack of Polaroid photos from the box. Armand, his auburn hair short, wearing the very shirt Lestat was holding. He looked so blank as he stared at the camera. He did that sometimes when Daniel took photos of him, froze into this neutral statue of a thing. Lestat came and sat beside Daniel, the shirt in his lap. 

Danie flipped through the photos. Armand in a shirt that had not come out as well and was mostly blotches of color. Daniel in one of the shirts smiling awkwardly. Daniel with his back to the camera, standing on the veranda, a cigarette in his hand, wearing the orange-and-red tie-die shirt. 

Lestat took the one photo where Armand was laughing, Daniel having managed to catch him at the right moment, still in the blue-purple-green shirt, dye standing his pale white fingers as he held them up and laughed.

Daniel’s heart squeezed. Those were the photos Daniel loved, the ones where Armand was natural and himself, how he’d been so much of the time. 

“I suppose I owe you ten dollars,” Lestat said. 

They’d been watching some TV special about the 70s and the tie-dye trend, and Daniel had bet that there were photos of Armand in a tie-dye shirt. Lestat hadn’t believed it. 

“This was 83,” Daniel said. “Armand found the tie-dye kit somewhere, I don’t even remember. I only remember we spent like half the week making shirts.” 

He dug into the box, pulling out even more shirts, some better than others, all arrays of colors and designs. They’d had to knot up the t-shirts in different ways to get different patterns on them. It had been a meticulous process. 

At the bottom of the box was a VHS tape. Daniel frowned. On the side it was labeled “Tie-dye, 83.” Daniel vaguely remembered Armand filming with his camcorder but he did that all the time back then, filming random bits and pieces of their lives.

Lestat snatched the tape and examined it “Is this some display of your passions inflamed by tie-dye?” 

Daniel snorted. “Yeah, totally, a tie-dye sex tape.” Although Daniel couldn’t remember what was on it. Sometimes there were little snippets of intimacy in their home videos. Most of them were unedited, just snippets of things Armand decided to film. 

“Well if there’s video evidence of him wearing these hideous clothes, that’s worth quite a bit more than ten dollars.” Lestat grinned at him. 

Daniel rolled his eyes. “He’s going to murder me,” he muttered. “Come on, I think there’s still a VCR in the den.” 

The den was on the second floor, a smaller room as far as rooms in the Villa went, but sure enough, it still had a VCR and an old television. Everything in the room was covered in plastic and Daniel removed it before sliding the tape into the player. He and Lestat settled on the couch. Daniel hit play. 

On the tape, they were on the veranda downstairs, the doors open. They had big plastic tubs arranged outside for making the shirts in and Daniel was squirting dye into one of them. Daniel watched as on the video, he dropped a t-shirt into the tub and swirled it around in the dyed water. His hand came up stained orange and pink. The tape cut and it was Armand fishing wet, freshly dyed shirts from the tubs. Then another shot of Armand wearing the shirts, telling Daniel to hold the camera steady. Daniel laughing from behind the lens. 

Another cut. Daniel was frowning at the camera, smoking a cigarette. He wore the orange and yellow tie dye shirt, his blond hair messy, circles beneath his eyes visible even under his glasses. “Put on the the purple one,” Armand said from behind the camera. “It matches your eyes.” 

Danie glared at the camera. “Let me finish my cigarette.” 

“I’ll hold your cigarette,” Armand offered. The camera moved closer.

 “Jesus Christ, Armand, we’ve been doing this for three days, can you just give it a rest?” His tone was harsh, his words slightly slurred. The tape was grainy but Daniel could see how his hand was shaking and the exhaustion on his own face. 

“Of course,” came Armand’s reply, his voiceless toneless in a way that indicated he was hurt. 

On the couch, Daniel winced. But on the tape, it only irritated past Daniel further.

“You know, it’s easy enough for you to waste a week with this crap, but how many weeks do I have left? You fill our nights with this nonsense like I’m going to forget that my life is slipping out from under me and every day I get older and closer to death.” 

Heavy sigh. “Don’t be dramatic, Daniel. You’re still young.” 

“For now.” Daniel flicked his cigarette into one of the dye tubs and stormed past the camera, which lingered for a second on the empty space where Daniel had been before turning off.

Daniel’s stomach roiled. Lestat reached over and squeezed his hand, warm and reassuring. Daniel’s throat felt tight. “Sorry you had to see that.” 

Lestat scooted closer, putting his arm around Daniel’s shoulders. “C’est rien. I’m grateful none of my fights with Louis are on film. I don’t think I’d enjoy that either.” 

Daniel sucked in a shuddering breath. “We fought a lot back then. I was at my wit’s end, haunted by the specter of aging and death, and he was so damned determined that things could just keep going how they were.” Daniel shook his head. He didn’t even remember this particular fight but there had been so many like it that all blurred together, Daniel desperate to make Armand see that he should turn him or at the very least, that he was in pain, while Armand tried to pretend there wasn’t a problem. “God, I was such an asshole.” 

Lestat laughed. Daniel looked at him, surprised.

“Danny, my boy, you were in a hard situation and faced with the little imp’s stubbornness. You handled it better than most.” 

Daniel sighed. “Yeah, maybe. I just wish…” He shook his head. He wished he’d done a lot of things differently.

“We all have regrets,” Lestat said, his voice low and soft, as if thinking of a few of his own. “The key is not to dwell them on. And look, here you are! And now we have photographic evidence of Armand in the most hideous t-shirts known to man.” 

Daniel laughed at that. Lestat smoothed his hair and kissed his temple before standing. “Come, let’s get back to New York. I want to lord those photographs over Armand’s head.” 

Daniel smiled and stood. “Oh yeah, he’s definitely going to kill me.”