did you believe in the glass city

Suburbia. Lawns, tacky decorations, backyard pools. If there were any possible way that Daniel could have a worse impression of the individual he's currently white-knucking the steering wheel on his way to, this neighborhood is precisely calculated to make it happen. Daniel would happily walk into any house in a ten-mile radius of this one and chow down with no moral qualms at all. Which is funny, given that the idea of picking meals based on moral qualms is something of a family tradition.

He finds the house. Well, actually, his phone finds the house, because in the modern world vampires keep lairs with addresses that google knows about. This lair has room for at least six cars in the driveway, and currently contains zero. So either there's nobody home, or he prefers flying as an everyday mode of transportation. That would, admittedly, be the environmentally sound choice, but Daniel can't get much more than a stumbling hover yet, so he parks the rental car and slams the door when he gets out of it. He's not aiming to surprise.

The door is unlocked. Which makes sense; if a human wanders in, that's what they call free-range nowadays. And if a vampire wanders in--

Daniel is aware of the presence in the room with him before he sees him. He has been waiting, obviously, since long before Daniel parked in his stupid excessive driveway; he had probably felt him turn off the interstate.

"It's a good thing you can read my mind," Daniel says, "Because I'm not in a mood to say much to you, and I really don't think you'd like what I'd say if I did." So he lets him in, and shows him.

Daniel finds Armand in the first, last, and only place he looks for him.

Louis helps. Grudgingly, though belatedly Daniel realizes that his reluctance isn't anger; it's a strange sense of chivalry that Daniel can feel lurking underneath his thoughts, an unwillingness to give up secrets that aren't his to share. Even of Armand's, or perhaps especially of Armand's.

Even without Louis' help, Daniel probably could have guessed. After all, this is what vampires do. Faced with the whole earth to choose from, infinite time and infinite space, they create meaning out of history and build that meaning so high it forms a shelter. The quality of the initial memory fades, but the edifice on top remains. Daniel had already known, for instance, where Louis had found Lestat in Paris: Magnus' lair, the site of his rebirth, a foundation of horror and fear calcified into a place of comfort.

And he could have guessed, because he knows now what he and Armand have in common. The patterns of the addict are easy to predict. The memories lap at his mind like water against the side of the boat; Armand saying I am setting you free. Except he hadn't, or rather, he had done it as many times as Daniel had sworn this was his last ever line of coke, so many times it started to feel routine every time Armand found him again and he remembered. So many times that the very last one, Daniel hadn't believed him. Had missed that the intervals between relapses was getting longer. Had cupped Armand's face through his tears and said sure, boss, see you next time.

But Armand had gotten clean of him, and as if they were bound by something deeper than knowledge, deeper than memory, somehow that meant Daniel getting clean too. And so, somehow, Daniel had proven him right. He'd had a life. A pretty decent one, as human lives go. For all that Daniel had sobbed every time in the last few moments of awareness, Armand was right. He had set him free.

And when that freedom began to fade, when even Armand could no longer interpret his vulnerable human body as a gift worth having, he had set him free again, with a different gift.

And then he'd left. History. Patterns. How else is a vampire supposed to know how to act, who to be? Armand's absence had been a gift once. That it isn't this time is unwieldy knowledge for Daniel to carry, and Daniel had made a career out of carrying around uncomfortable truths.

Late fall, and sunset is getting earlier. It's just before seven in the evening when Daniel climbs out onto the museum's pier. The gondolier takes his money, and then says, "Almost closed." Daniel laughs.

The crowd is mostly moving out of the building, so Daniel flows against the tide. People swirl around in the lobby, taking pictures and grabbing brochures. He heads to the ticket counter.

"Mi dispiace, signore, chiudiamo tra quindici minuti. We are closing in fifteen minutes," says the boy at the desk, his face ducked into his computer screen.

"That's fine. I'm more of a night person these days anyway," Daniel says, and a pair of enormous orange eyes snap up to meet his.

Armand is silent for a long time, but his lips move and Daniel watches them; thin, smooth, parting, his tongue wetting the inside of one, then closing again. Finally he says, "I need to close down the point of sale. And alert security when they can start their closing rounds."

"Yeah," says Daniel. "Only I was hoping for a tour, is the thing."

Armand's eyes flick towards a bench. He can't talk directly into Daniel's mind, but somehow Daniel manages to extrapolate what he would say if he could: then sit down and look inconspicuous, boy.

Daniel sits. Armand clicks around on the computer for ten more minutes, then picks up a phone on his desk and makes an announcement over the P.A. system in English and then Italian that the museum is closing. A few tourists give Daniel a sidelong glance when he doesn't filter out with them, but nobody comments. Armand's colleague grabs a purse from underneath the desk, and then looks at Daniel as well. "Me ne occupo io," says Armand, slinging a small satchel around his shoulder and pulling a smartphone out of it like he's been waiting his whole shift to get to check his notifications. Hell, maybe he has. Maybe Daniel's presence here is completely irrelevant to him, an annoyance.

Then the colleague leaves, her interest in him forgotten, and Armand drops the phone down on the desk. He stands, staring at Daniel.

Daniel had had so much to say, when he'd gotten on a plane to Italy. Like fuck you and I will never forgive you and I love you and it's going to be okay. None of it comes out now. "Busy day?" he tries.

"No," says Armand. "It's not a busy season, right now."

Armand hasn't been here a full year, even if he had headed here straight from Dubai. But then, the busy seasons now are probably similar to the busy seasons five hundred years ago.

Two security guards enter and say something to Armand; Daniel doesn't catch any of it except that they address him as Amadeo. Then they go pliant and unquestioning and wander off.

Daniel stands. Amadeo, Amadeo. It wouldn't be his first choice of question, if he had others lined up to speak out loud. He might even be able to stop it from simmering on the top of his mind-- he has been trying to learn discretion, with that, and Louis has been helping to the best of his ability. But all his maker has to go on is Daniel's face, and a lifetime of chaotic scrums and standoffish interviews has given him some sort of journalistic version of what his daughters would call resting bitch face. Resting skepticism face. Resting explain yourself face.

"And do you think I chose the name Armand myself?" he says, clipped. Irritated. "Do you imagine a fit of liberatory inspiration led to my re-christening?"

Jesus, he's prickly. It had been understandable enough in Dubai, when Daniel was chasing after truths Armand didn't want to share for reasons Daniel didn't remember. But then-- the kiss, and the blood, and the entire missing goddamn decade, and Armand disappearing in a way that Daniel is pissed about, yeah, but Armand of all people should know that Daniel would recognize the sentiment. The panic. Fuck, Armand had found him in a pub twenty four hours after getting home from the hospital with his firstborn.

He raises his palms. "I don't know. I'm just-- wondering what I should call you. Is all."

The corner of his maker's mouth twists and for a moment Daniel is hoping against hope that it'll break into a laugh, that all the ice will crack at once and he'll get to see that strange half-remembered manic smile again, that he'll say 'boss' seemed to suit you. But it disappears too soon, and he just says, "Armand is fine." His eyes skitter around the room, and then he adds, "You said you wanted a tour."

It sounds mechanical. Like Daniel is just another tourist who needs to be shunted through the galleries and back out onto the street to pump more American dollars into the local economy. It makes Daniel want to throttle him, but then the image of Armand lying on the ground under a crater in the wall in Dubai reminds him that he might simply lie there and take it, and then he wants to throttle something else.

"I don't give a shit about Renaissance paintings," Daniel says. "Look. Armand. I want to know you. I came here to find you, do you get that? We don't have to do the gallery if you don't want. We can leave right now. We can do whatever you want. And if you don't want, you can tell me to leave, and I will. But just so you know, if you send me away--"

He'd been planning on saying I'm not coming back, but in the moment before he does it seems ludicrous. In his measly seventy years as a human being, Daniel had stood on two altars and promised 'til death do us part to two different people. Both times he'd thought this was it, he could promise forever, really for real this time, and he'd had no idea what he was saying. How the hell is he supposed to promise now that he can stay away for eternity? When Armand's blood sings in him? When he lives inside him like an organ? When Armand had given Daniel to himself?

"--it's really going to hurt me," he says instead. "And I'll get over it, eventually, probably, with forever to work with. So if that's what you need to do, then do it. But I'd really rather you didn't."

The moment stretches, and the longer and thinner it gets, the more Daniel is convinced that it's going to be just like before. For your own good. The horrible rotting feeling of being desired and rejected in the same breath, the same thought. Armand turns away.

"What would you like to see?" he asks, and relief washes over Daniel, the combined ecstasy and calm of the sun slipping down past the horizon.

"Armand," he says. "Show me Armand, after Amadeo."

Armand pauses, his glossy curls bouncing minutely. Then he sets off, and Daniel follows.

There are still lights on in the galleries, security guards conveniently elsewhere. Armand leads him into a first small gallery, straight through without stopping to look at anything, and waves his hand vaguely as they go. "This building," he says, "was originally the Santa Maria della Carità, a complex that religious orders shared with the flagellant confraternities. Battuti."

"Sounds fun," Daniel says, jogging a little to catch up with him.

Armand smothers another little twisted smile. "Probably sometimes, yes. That aspect was most prominent, however, during the Black Death. Mortification of the flesh as a way of demonstrating repentance, that God might spare His wrath. By the time I arrived here, the confraternities were large social organizations sponsoring cultural events and distributing charity. This space became an art gallery only after the fall of the Republic, on the orders of Napoleon." They pass through another small gallery, an even smaller room full of darkened video screens, and then emerge into the light of a much larger room. Armand slows.

"Did you light the Dubai penthouse on fire on your way out, Daniel?" he asks.

"I-- what?"

A wider smile, now. "No, I suppose modern skyscrapers are rather difficult to burn. It would have been fitting, is all, for all my homes to have been destroyed by the fire of an interloper."

It's a setup for a question if Daniel ever heard one. Daniel is good at asking the questions that his conversational partners don't want asked; it is strange, to see the direction he is being tugged in and follow it willingly. But if Armand needs him to ask, he will. "Louis destroyed the theatre," he says. "And before that?"

Armand pauses in front of a canvas; not one that would have caught Daniel's eye, as it's strangely monochrome in comparison to the riot of voluptuous flesh surrounding them.

"My master, and eventually all of his boys but me and one other, were killed by the vampire Santino and his coven in Rome," Armand says. Instead of looking at him, Daniel leans in to inspect the painting It is a massacre, clearly, but seen with remove. Bodies tumbling over each other take on the form of mere bundles of cloth, faces grey and indistinct. "Those who did not burn in Marius' house were transported to Rome, and burned there. All but me, and Riccardo."

Daniel steps back, and Armand starts drifting away from the strange grey massacre, figures who are ghosts even in the moment of killing and dying. "Do I want to know what happened to Riccardo?" Daniel asks as they pass into the next room.

"Likely not," says Armand. "Santino brought him to me, after several weeks of keeping me locked away without blood. I was so grateful, I didn't even realize who the victim was until after he was dead."

"Charming."

"It was a effective lesson," Armand replies, and stops with an air of finality in front of the largest canvas in the room.

The image is wide, panoramic, covering the entirety of a wall lengthwise. There is so much going on in it that Daniel can't really tell what it's even about: golden staircases, marble flowers, babies, bodies, snakes everywhere.

"The Scourge of the Serpents," says Armand, and, as if reciting: "The people spoke against God and against Moses, saying, 'why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?' Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses, who prayed for them.Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.'"

"Seems a little bit roundabout, when the Lord could presumably have just quit it with the venomous snakes in the first place."

"Perhaps." Armand leans in, staring at a dark woman with a head of tight curls holding a screaming child, a snake tail seemingly emerging from between the latter's legs. "And yet, this solution seems more like the world we know, does it not? For whatever reason, evil cannot be escaped. There are venomous snakes. It is possible to be saved from them, but not to avoid them entirely. Should we insist instead that the snakes play no part in the divine plan? Or accept what the story says, that they, too, serve God in their own way?"

"So said Santino," Daniel guesses.

Unexpectedly, Armand grins at him, the tiny points of his fangs showing in between his lips. "Clever boy," he says.

It wasn't exactly a stunning leap of deduction, given what Armand had said about the philosophy of the coven structure Lestat had destroyed. Still, the praise makes him feel warm and alive. The word boy. The teeth, god, he missed those fangs.

"When I came to Santino, I was a defiled thing," Armand says. "Yes, you would deny it. For what it's worth, Marius would have agreed with you. You could have asserted, together, that if there was a God watching my path, the indignities I suffered were besmirchments on my master's soul, not mine. But he could not eat my defilement for himself, even if it was he who held the morsels of it to my lips. Not just the sex, Daniel. All of it, everything to do with the gift I had begged for."

Rape, not sex, Daniel thinks, and has a terrifying moment of wondering whether Armand can still read his mind after all when he says, "Yes," placating, as if he had. But maybe Daniel really is just that transparent.

"I was defiled, as all of our kind are," Armand continues, "and what Santino offered was not an escape from defilement-- there is none-- but a purpose to it, a holy purpose. We were the snakes, the scourge of humanity, doomed to ourselves be scourged, but part of the Divine nonetheless. A place for vampires among the People of the Book. For all his many kindnesses to me, this was one that Marius would never have offered. He could not have conceived of it, nor of my wanting it."

Daniel wants to have something constructive to say, some theology or philosophy that can banish both Marius and Santino from the room. but he is the one who had come to Italy to find Armand, who had asked. And all he can think of to say, like a dumb kid, is "Can I see your fangs again?"

Somehow, it's the right thing. It doesn't banish the ghosts from the room but it makes them a little smaller, less imposing, when Armand laughs at him and then steps in, narrowing both of their fields of vision to each other. He tilts his chin up, opens his mouth, tongue down, like he's at the dentist.

Has he ever been to a dentist? Yes, he must have; there's absolutely no way his teeth would look like this if they had been frozen in the sixteenth century. That doctor they'd had attend to Daniel in Dubai, surely, or a colleague. Daniel's mind is getting away from him. Daniel's hand is moving towards Armand's mouth. These things pare probably related. He pokes the pad of his index finger against one of the little fangs, deceptively polite-looking. It's needle-sharp, pierces his skin with no force at all. Armand doesn't move, just lets Daniel wipe off the trickle of blood on his waiting tongue.

His tongue is soft. Somehow Daniel had expected it to be rough, like a cat's. He's only ever felt it in combination with his fangs, or on his dick, or his hole, or-- he can't remember. He cannot remember that right now, because they are in a museum, and they were discussing something important--

"Will you take mine?" says Armand, and doesn't wait for an answer before he grips Daniel's jaw like a dog being force-fed a pill and shoves his own wrist in.

Daniel hardly needs the encouragement. He bites down instinctively, too hard, catching his flesh with blunt teeth as well as fangs, and Armand makes a noise that is closer to a squeak than a gasp, and presses closer like he's melting.

Neurologically, memories are recursive. You don't remember, you remember remembering, and every event exists with more and more layers of memory overlaid on top of it, no matter how immediate and real it feels. Daniel remembers, when Armand's blood flows over his tongue, the last time he got this. The last time they'd done this Daniel had remembered, but he'd remembered through Armand's eyes, Armand's blood, not his own: Daniel shivering on the floor, Daniel across the bar, Daniel up against the wall, on his knees, squirming underneath Armand, falling apart on top of him, holding his face, his fingers in his mouth, crying, laughing, insisting on his love, begging for it, always begging. Daniel's mind tries to fill in those memories from the other side, but he can never be sure if they're real or invented.

Now, he gets other memories. The crackle of an enormous bonfire, the stink of paints mixing, the awe of enduring pain from a loving hand, the relief of a half-remembered prayer spoken with blood on the tongue. And this feeling, so much of it, spilling over, uncontainable--

Daniel pulls Armand's wrist out of his mouth like he's tearing it away from his own unwilling self, gashing it with his teeth, messy and bloody. "You loved him," he says. "Santino."

Armand brings his own arm towards his mouth as if he would heal the wound, then stops, and simply lets it hang at his side instead. Blood drips down his wrist, off of his fingers and onto the floor. Then he steps back, a little stumble, and Daniel can see the hurt in his face. He just can't do anything about it.

He looks around the room, wildly, like he is desperately trying to find some other painting, some allegory to filter his own words through. "In the Mahabharata," he says finally, "the warrior Ashwatthama was born with a gem on his forehead that gave him great power. But he is cursed by Shiva to lose the gem, and spends three thousand years wandering the forest with blood and pus flowing from the wound where it once was. Do you not think he must have worshiped the god who cursed him, during those years? Some wounds do not heal, but one can learn to love them." He waves his hand vaguely at a crucified Jesus across the room. "Like stigmata, but if something of infinite value were present before the hole. Santino took everything from me, and gave me a different everything. Yes. I loved him. I--"

Daniel can't stand the hurt on his face, that he thinks Daniel of all people is judging him for it. He doesn't have the words to say what he means, doesn't know any art or mythology that could describe it, so he just tears his own fingers back open, messily, and stops the flow of Armand's words with them.

Armand sucks, this time, like a child being given a soother. Desperately. And Daniel doesn't know what memories he gets, but he hopes it's what he can feel singing through his own blood: Everything you've done to me. Everything, and I love you, and I'm doing it on purpose. How could I say you aren't entitled to love your monsters?

"Yes," Armand breathes. "Yes. Is anything they did to me worse than what I have done to you?"

Daniel wants to say yes, but shit, he's not even sure what Armand had done to him. And whatever it was, he is sure that he would have let him do worse. He pulls his hand out of Armand's mouth, and strokes his cheek with a bloody palm. Slowly, they seem to inch down together from whatever ledge they had been hanging over the edge of.

"Would you want to see him again?" Daniel asks. "Santino?"

Armand barks out a bitter little laugh. "Santino did one thing to me that I could not forgive," he says, "And it wasn't the death of Marius, or Riccardo, or any of the rest of it. He destroyed me, saved me, made me, gave me a reason to exist, prepared me and sent me to lead the coven in Paris as he had led the one in Rome. And then he lost interest. By the time Lestat showed up, we hadn't had any communication from Santino in decades. I kept the faith of the Children of Darkness, because it was the only thing I had. And Santino just let it drift away. Like it had never meant anything to him at all. All for nothing."

Daniel wants to get out of this room very badly. The open mouths of the Israelites being eternally bitten by snakes remind him too much of the last gasps of the tourists he'd eaten on his way here; not a very nice couple, to be sure, but not exactly evil, either. They drift away into the next gallery. Bodies, bodies everywhere.

"I know of no living thing older than myself on this earth," Armand says. "Trees, I suppose, yes. But things that walk, that speak, that love-- there may well be others. Marius spoke as if there were. But all I know for certain is myself. Can you imagine it, Daniel?"

Daniel can't, not really. There are still plenty of regular humans left who are older than him, at this stage. And even once he's outlived every mortal lifespan, well, he'll still have the others. No matter how old he gets, he will never stop being a boy to the terrifying, ancient thing that made him.

"Oh," says Daniel softly.

They have made a complete lap of the first floor of the gallery, and are back in the ticket hall. Armand's phone is still lying on his work desk. It's odd to think of Armand with a job, but that's just the bias of his position; the years that Daniel has known him, for whatever value of "known" applies, were some of the few in Armand's life where he didn't have one, of some sort.

"I'm hungry," Daniel says.

"You just ate," says Armand. He sounds amused. Daniel does sound a little bit like a spoiled kid.

"Yeah," Daniel agrees. "And I'm homesick. I want to go back to New York."

Armand says nothing to that.

"And I want you," Daniel finishes. "because you're my maker, yeah, but also because of you, Armand. I want you the same way I wanted you every damn time you tore yourself away from me for my own good. I want you selfishly."

When their hands twine together, Armand still hasn't healed the gash in his wrist. His blood runs down to pool in between their palms as they walk out of the gallery together into the night.

When Craigslist and the other buy-shit-from-random-strangers sites had first started talking off, all the so-called experts said that you should only ever meet people from the internet in a public place. In case they're creeps. So they can't murder you. That was before Grindr, obviously, and the so-called experts clearly did not have much awareness that it is perfectly possible to be murdered by people you meet in public. Daniel is also very aware that it is possible to meet creeps in a bar. The public eye is no guarantee of safety, especially not when someone in the vicinity can make time slow to a honey-slowness and mindwipe passers-by.

And especially not when, Daniel has to assume, two someones can. Still. Public. Safe. Safer than his damn apartment, that's for sure.

The thing about Armand, that Daniel had known once and remembers in pleasant surprises as they settle into Daniel's shitty old apartment like it was made for two: he's a romantic. He likes to be wooed. Louis wasn't making up that story about Armand showing up underneath his balcony with flowers. He likes to surprise, and to be surprised. He likes gifts.

Daniel is now the one person in the word who can truly surprise him. And he has a gift to give him, which he tells him when Armand is dressing for the night. Armand has started dressing down, sometimes, in ways that make Daniel's heart ache. Daniel's sweatpants. Fuzzy socks that Daniel bought at the dollar store, long enough to pull almost up to his knees. A knit beanie that he'd swiped from a meal. But Daniel says he has a gift, tonight, and Armand emerges in tailored suit pants and a silk shirt and leather loafers that leave just a little bit of ankle exposed as he walks. He's gorgeous. Daniel feels like he might puke. He tucks Armand's phone into his pocket, and Armand frowns at it ruining the line of the pants, but doesn't argue.

He walks them to the bar, Armand looking softly and curiously at him the entire time. He can't read Daniel's mind, but his agitation would be obvious to anyone, vampire or not. Armand is clearly enjoying it, though; the anticipation is part of any gift, after all, and if it's a difficult gift to give, it must be that much more valuable.

Daniel stops them just before they step in front of the window to the place he's chosen. He can feel him inside. He's there, will be visible in a few more steps.

"If you like," he says, "the gift can be just this. We walk past. You look. You know. And then we go to the movie theatre, or home, or on a cruise, hide out on a private island, hell, I don't care. Anything."

Armand frowns. He is very still. Listening carefully. "Or?" he says.

"Or," says Daniel, "You go in, and I come pick you back up at close. Or when you panic-text me from the bathroom, whichever comes first."

There was never any chance of the first option. Daniel knew it when he said it, and he knows it in the moment they pass by the window, and look in, and Armand sees the vampire waiting for him at a booth with two seats.

He walks in like he'd known all along this was the destination, with no hesitation at all. Daniel stands outside and watches as he crosses the room and sinks to his knees to bury his face in Marius de Romanus' lap.

Daniel isn't stupid. He hadn't chosen a bar where that sort of thing would be unacceptable. They get a few smirks from the guys around them, but Armand doesn't notice. He is busy having his hair patted, his tears wiped away by a monster. And Daniel thinks that he might even be happy for him.

The other good thing about this bar: there's another one right next door. Alcohol doesn't work as well these days, not like it does to drink it from the blood of someone who's imbibed, but it's still psychologically appropriate, somehow, to spend the entire time downing beers and complaining to a long-suffering bartender about his boyfriend's ex. By 4 AM, he's had nearly enough to have relaxed a bit.

When Daniel picks him up, Armand throws his arms around Daniel's neck, wraps his legs around Daniel's waist, and hangs from him like the protagonist in a teen movie. He says thankyouthankyouthankyou over and over into his ear while Daniel looks around for Marius, who seems to have wisely cleared out a little early. They walk home hand in hand while Armand talks a mile a minute about stupid vampire gossip about people Daniel doesn't know and couldn't give two shits about, then pulls him down onto the sofa at home and kisses him benignly breathless. Then he collapses into heaving sobs, and Daniel rubs circles into his back while his own shirt is slowly ruined by bloody tears. Then he demands to be slapped in the face, and again, harder, and starts giggling hysterically, at which point Daniel carries him to the coffin shoved under the bed for special occasions, where he falls asleep before the sun is even up and is dead to the world for a full twelve hours.

So Daniel has a lot of time to consider the tone of voice in which he is going to ask his question. By the time Armand blinks his way awake, Daniel has rehearsed this one more than any other single query in his entire career. "So," he says, "how was it?"

Armand is still lying on soft pillows in the coffin, one hand tracing his own lips, one on Daniel's knee where he's perched on the edge of the box.

He doesn't meet Daniel's eyes, is looking somewhere beyond the room, when he says, "How strange."

Daniel waits. It almost always works, the waiting, and it's certainly always worked with Armand.

"If he were a human," Armand says, "I would have liked him well enough. For a night, or maybe two. A lover of little beautiful things. He would be easy and sweet. I would let him have me, and then have him, and forget all about it."

Daniel touches him, because he can tell Armand wants him to. His ear, his cheek, he curve of his jaw. "He's just some guy," he says. "Well, I guess that's not a surprise. Most guys are."

"After Dubai, I couldn't think of anything but getting rid of it. Trying to rewind, like a tape that had recorded something too convoluted to be worth keeping. I went to Venice because things were easy and simple there. I was easy and simple there. But I wasn't, this time. I carried it all with me, no matter how much I tried to get rid of it. Even if he had been there, if I could have strolled right back into his house and taken up my duties, if the entire city were frozen in time, it wouldn't have mattered. I am not the same boy who loved him."

His eyes turn up to meet Daniel's. "And yet I do love him. Still. In some way. I'm sorry."

Daniel laughs. He didn't mean to, and it startles Armand a little, but he can't help it. "Sweetheart," he says, a new pet name, or an old one, but he doesn't care because Armand likes it, "did you think I found him for you because I thought you didn't love him?"

"I thought perhaps you wanted me to see him the way you see him. And I do, and other ways besides. It just doesn't change anything."

Daniel's hands still shake, sometimes. Some things will be with him forever. They're shaking now, as he kneels beside the coffin and grabs Armand's face between both palms. "Armand," he says. "Listen to me. I hate some of the people you love, yeah, it's fucked up and makes me feel sick, but that's on me. It's not about you. You are not wrong to love. It doesn't reflect badly on you. It reflects the best part of you, do you understand? There is no tender feeling you could ever have that you should cut out of yourself. There is no forgiveness that spills out of you that you should stop up just because they don't deserve to receive it. You deserve to give it. You are a prodigy of love. Do you understand me, Armand?"

Armand's hands pull at him. He understands, he does. He understands with his whole body, with his nails and teeth and blood.

Daniel cannot hear Marius in his head; he is not interested. Perhaps the night had been the same for him: some guy, worth a night's attention and no more. Just a boy that he is glad enough to know is still out there, loving someone, somewhere.