the fog eating the night

The thing about being a smart addict is that everyone is. Everyone’s self-aware. Everyone sees the pattern. Everyone knows exactly what’s happening, and it goes right on happening, and the real descent is that the little bit of ironic distance you can muster in between you and the happening washes away like an erosion.

It’s been years since Daniel’s last relapsed. Okay, not that many years. But enough that he can shop around a book contract and be pretty sure he’ll be able to actually finish writing the thing, if he lives to. But when he hears the door to the penthouse close, and Louis is gone, just like that, and Daniel really, really should follow. And when he stands up and fails to do just that, it is with the same sense of sick, anticipatory resignation.

He’s fucking doing this– again. Again?

Armand is lying on the floor in broken pieces of plaster. His face is lacerated, but prettily. The arrangement of his splayed limbs is almost artful. And because Daniel is an addict, he lets his legs give out on the other side of the room, slumps down against the wall, and says, “I just have a few last follow-up questions.”

Armand says nothing, just stares. His top lip twitches up in the barest suggestion of a hiss.

“That crypto-bro,” Daniel forges ahead blithely. “You said he made it almost to Burj Khalifa. And I’ve been thinking– then what? Burj Khalifa– It’s the cleanest place on earth. The epitome of spotless civilisation. How do you drain and haul away a body in a place–”

“Shut up,” says Armand, in a voice that sounds more tired than angry. Distracted. Like turning off an annoying radio station. Which is exactly what he’s doing: Daniel is turned off. His lips press together lightly, but the pressure grows more intense the harder he tries to open them. He can make vague mmmgf sounds, but that’s it, and he stops pretty quickly because he sounds like a fucking idiot doing it.

Which he is. Because he should have left by now. But that was never really an option, was it? If Louis had wanted him alive, he’d have escorted him out himself. But he hadn’t. He’d left Daniel standing there stunned, and walked out like none of this had mattered to him at all.

Whether he meant to or not, Louis had given Daniel to Armand.

His mouth is fucked, but the rest of Daniel still works fine. Or at least, as fine as the early stages of Parkinson’s allow. He can push himself shakily to his feet, look around the room as if there were any possibility of him getting out of it now. The apartment is eerily silent, when he stands still. No other humans here. Real Rashid– who, come to think of it, probably also isn’t really named Rashid, that must be a codename– is definitely gone, probably to report Daniel dead.

Armand continues lying on the floor. Daniel thinks about something he’d read about prey once, that among the most delicate and edible of animals, lying down around each other can be an expression of dominance. A display of you matter so little, I’ll lie down right beside you. Prey animals have precious few ways of expressing aggression. Armand looks like a tiny, defeated thing, shivering on the floor, which is how Daniel knows that he should be scared.

He wanders around the room. He hadn’t gotten to do much snooping– Louis and Armand were always around, or Rashid, keeping an eye on him, keeping him safe from something or for something. The minimalism of the decor turns out to be a decoy; there are small drawers set into odd places, underneath paintings, underneath the lights that draw the eye to the art, that open with unlocked handles. He pulls one open, Armand doesn’t react, so he keeps doing it. A stack of papers that turns out to be receipts for various pieces of furniture. A collection of pens and ink. An incense burner that looks very old, oddly coupled with a plastic bag full of frankincense, a paper-wrapped tube of charcoal, and a Bic lighter. One of the long ones meant for lighting barbecues, which keeps the flame well away from the hand of the user.

He snicks the lighter on and off a few times. Armand’s eyes flicker to him when the flame first jumps out, but he doesn’t seem concerned. Nothing in this room is particularly flammable, anyway. “Use it properly or put it away,” he snaps after a few seconds, like Daniel is an irritating child, which is of course exactly what he is. Armand pushes himself up slowly on an elbow while Daniel lights the charcoal and layers resin on top of it. It feels a bit like a drug ritual, which is why he generally doesn’t go in for this kind of thing. He puts the gently pine-smoking burner on the ground and pushes it towards Armand with his toe.

Improves the ambience a little, doesn’t quite make up for the giant hole in the wall, he would say if his mouth worked. Armand is upright now. He rubs his hands down the sides of his face. They come away bloody, and the lacerations on his face are clear and healed. He probably feels fine, at least physically. Daniel’s hands are shaking, his thumb and forefinger worrying at each other. His knees, elbows and wrists ache. He’s been sweating more at night, lying awake from a restless leg, getting up to pee more than he used to; it will only be a few years, he knows from the pamphlets, before he needs to wear a diaper to bed.

You’d have a perfect life if you could just get your shit together. Another observation Armand had wisely chosen to protect himself from.

Armand isn’t subtle about staring, when he wants to stare. He’s staring. “You need a drink,” he says. “Go find where Rashid left the drink cart and bring us a bottle of wine.”

You need a drink, bring us a bottle of wine. Daniel goes. Is it supposed to be an opportunity to get away? A test? Does Armand just want to run him down? if so, he’s out of luck; Daniel’s left hip clicks with every step, and he sure as shit isn’t running anywhere. A bottle of wine sounds great.

When he returns– with two bottles– Armand beckons him over and pats the ground beside him. It feels oddly natural to slide down beside him, their sides touching. It feels even more natural, given the circumstances, to start drinking right from the bottle.

“If I release you,” Armand says, “Are you going to ask any more stupid questions?”

Daniel doesn’t react, but he feels the force on his lips loosening anyway. The first thing he wants to do is quibble about the definition of stupid, but he really doesn’t want to be muzzled again.

The second thing it occurs to him to say, which he also holds back, is just, why? It’s been nagging at him ever since the truth dawned, knocking on the side of his mind every time he looked at Armand over the top of the laptop. Why spend nearly eight decades grovelling for a man you would have happily watched burn?

“I would have bought oud to burn,” Armand says softly, “for my last night in Dubai, had I known.” He picks up a chip of plaster and fiddles with it aimlessly, slender fingers turning it over like a jewel. His shoulder presses into Daniel’s more firmly. For an insane moment, his head is at the right height to lean on Daniel’s shoulder, and he thinks–

“I will buy a mobile phone,” Armand continues, as if that follows naturally. “Show me how to use a mobile phone, Daniel.”

Daniel pulls out his phone. The messages from the laptop are there too, waiting on his lock screen: Daniel Molloy. GET OUT OF THERE. GET OUT OF THERE NOW. “So,” Daniel says, “When someone tries to contact you, it’ll show up there, until you–” he shows Armand how to dismiss the notification. A small smile tugs at the corner of Armand’s mouth as the warning evaporates.

It is a little funny.

“And so… this is my email,” he continues, “which is when someone wants to send you something long, or use PGP, which is nobody except for is for wizened old reporters like me so I don’t know why you would… and these are, uh, more ways for people to send you messages, Signal and Telegram and then just regular old–”

“Why are some green and some blue?”

“That’s, uh. Advanced-level course. "

Armand scowls, and Daniel feels– what? Scared? Must be.

“It’s– I don’t know,” he says, “it’s stupid, it’s something to do with what kind of invisible waves the message flew in on, which has to do with how expensive the other person’s phone is, it doesn’t matter, I’m not trying to Scheherazade you with my arcane knowledge of the iPhone, okay, Armand.”

Armand is somehow closer still. He must be leaning on him, there’s no other way his hip and his shoulder could be like that. “Hmm,” he says, a tiny amusement. “Scheherazade me. Yes, perhaps.”

Daniel is about to try to get Armand’s verdict on Grindr when it happens, the thing that makes him a journalist and not just a writer. The reason he keeps getting interviews, keeps insisting on actually talking to people– and un-people– face-to-face, asking them questions even if the questions are stupid, because if he does it for long enough, pushes through the awkwardness and the anger, he always finds something else. The unspoken answer to the question that would never have been answered if spoken aloud.

Why? Why? Because Armand had thought he would be okay on his own, and he was wrong. Because over and over again, he had stared into the abyss of loneliness, and then blinked. Because Armand is a coward, and he knows it. That’s why the coven, why Lestat, why Louis, and that’s why–

Daniel knows his next question. He takes another gulp of the most expensive wine he’s ever had right from the bottle. “How many times have we done this before?”

Armand drops the little piece of plaster. It skitters away like an insect, glad to be freed. “I don’t know,” he says, and then he turns and cups Daniel’s cheek. “I didn’t count,” he says. “Would you like to?”

He’s actually asking. “Yes,” says Daniel, though he’s not at all sure he does.

The memories slam into him like a kick to the ribs. They knock the air out of him, grey out his vision. The last time, remembering had been hard-won. It had taken both him and Louis, and the miracle of modern audio processing, to piece together the past. Now it arrives whole, and reality warps around it.

He grabs at Armand, unsure of whether he’s trying to slap him or kiss him or just hold on for balance around the gaping chasm of reality that’s just opened inside him, and ends up with Armand on top of him. Everything smells like wine. He doesn’t give a shit. Armand is grasping his face. Armand loves holding his face, loves holding him still making him obey, which Daniel knows, because this is what they do. Armand shows up whenever the fuck he feels like it, in Daniel’s hotel room, across from him at the bar, on the seat next to him on the bus, gives him just enough memory to have Daniel disoriented and scared and more aroused than he’s ever been in his life (well, that he can fucking remember), they fuck with Armand lapping at his neck like a fussy baby with a bottle, and it’s gone by the next day.

He’d said he would count, but he can’t count. Even with the memories new and raw, shoved back into his mind into wounds that had already closed around them, they still run together, too numerous to keep track of.

Also, Armand is on top of him now, which always makes it hard to think. Daniel is on his back, Armand’s knees splayed on either side, their chests almost touching. The dropped bottle of wine is soaking through his shirt and into his hair. Armand is nosing at him, anticipatory but not urgent.

“You have been,” Armand murmurs in his ear, “A very great comfort to me, in the years since Louis preserved you.”

“I’ve been your plaything,” Daniel says. He means it only as a statement of fact, but it comes out too breathily for that.

“Yes. Are objects of play not kept for comfort?”

“I was supposed to be– what was it? A testament to your companionship? But you took me for yourself instead.”

Armand’s eyes are incredibly beautiful. His face hovers in the centre of Daniel’s vision, just like in his memory, in all his memories. “Can you blame me?” he asks. “Louis was right. You were fascinating. You are fascinating.” He runs cool fingers through Daniel’s hair. Hair that has thickened and greyed knowing the touch of those fingers. It’s wet with wine.

And this time is different. This time there’s no return phase; no return to Louis and the lie he won him with for Armand, no going back to oblivion for Daniel. He is either going to remember this, or die. Armand flicks the wine from his fingers.

“Should I open the other one?” Daniel says. “How much wine are you after, when you drain me?”

Armand’s finger traces across his cheek, under his eye. It’s cold. It soothes the low-grade headache he’s had ever since the plane landed in Dubai. “I’m not going to drain you,” he says, soothing. “Of course not. Just a sip. Just the way you like it.”

“That’s not the way I like it. Damn you, I’ve been saying it for fifty years. That’s the way you like it.”

Because the memories have returned that to him, too: he has asked for it, begged for it, pathetically, every single time. And Armand had kissed him and said live, and then rest, and he’d forgotten, and done it all again the next time. Done exactly what he’d known he wouldn’t do this time; he wouldn’t have come, wouldn’t agreed to redoing the interview at all, if he hadn’t thought himself capable of it. And maybe he even is, now, but what does it matter? Armand knows who he is. He can beg as much as he wants, Armand is determined that Daniel Molloy live and die a human.

“Dammit, Armand, I’m too old to fuck on the floor,” Daniel says, and while he’d ignored the previous jab, Armand straightens up at that, the warmth of his mouth disappearing from Daniel’s throat.

“Come to the bed, then,” he says easily, and as if this wasn’t surreal enough he wraps his arms and legs around Daniel and carries him there, flying them both, to what Daniel is about to point out is–

“Louis isn’t using it at the moment,” Armand says, somewhat peevishly, and Daniel decides that’s good enough for him. His cock aches like it shouldn’t be able to, and that’s just for the sex. His body is crying out for something it hadn’t known to want, and he could weep for how good it feels to remember.

Whether he lives or dies at the end of this night is out of his hands, and Armand seems to have decided to let him keep the use of his mouth for now, so he just lets himself talk as they both get naked. Every touch recalls some moment of a past he hasn’t had time to catalogue yet, and the conclusions spill out of him: “You were Louis’ boy, " he says, “So you needed one of your own. He always fucked you, you always fucked me. A little archaic, isn’t it?”

“Classic,” Armand corrects.

“Classical, at the very least.”

“If you insist. You never resisted, if that’s what you’re trying to call to mind.”

Which it wasn’t, but now that Armand said it, the idea that he might have resisted is the hottest fantasy he’s ever had. He tries it now, pushing Armand away with shaky hands made shakier by wine, and Armand forces him back down, pins his wrists and makes that little shh-hh sound that lives deep inside of Daniel, a seed planted long ago and left to grow in darkness.

Armand slits his own wrist with one sharp nail and collects the blood from it in his palm. For a moment Daniel’s heart is in his throat but of course, Armand brings it not to Daniel’s mouth but in between his legs. He opens to it. “No lube in your marital bedroom?” he manages to ask.

“There is. I prefer it. You don’t.”

Armand would know. Armand would fucking well know and Daniel can’t exactly argue with his fingers and then his tongue fucking Christ and not a moment too soon his cock pressing into him, but still, that’s not what he needs, not the crux and beating heart of whatever preference it is he might have. Armand can fuck him with lube or blood or spit or nothing at all and none of it matters a bit the moment his teeth slip into him.

Daniel closes his eyes, and lets himself rest.

He is at Jumeirah Mosque. He is the only one who has ever made it, his mind fleet and his feet skimming painlessly over the streets as he fled. He is safe. He is loved. He is free to go, but he stays, because he has an answer to his first question, the stupid one: how do you drain a body in the spotless peace of a scented dusk, humanity all around you? His methodology, it’s never violent. But that was before Daniel had remembered, had felt for himself. You do it peacefully.

Armand cradles him underneath an ancient weeping fig, the tree’s veins climbing its trunk and drooping down around them, flowing with milk and honey and dark, fragrant blood. He would never cry out; that would break the peace, the pleasure. No passers-by look at them; if they think to, they forget the thought quickly and don’t return to it. Daniel knows he must really be flat on his back on Louis’ mattress, because the sun is up at Jumeirah, and it it dapples Armand’s skin and hair as he laps at Daniel’s throat.

His hands are no longer shaking. He opens and closes the joints of the fingers, grabbing at Armand’s hair and twisting it in a blessedly painless grip. He will stay like this forever. God, please.

Then: sudden cold. Sounds he doesn’t understand. Surely it’s all right, it’s only Isha– but the sun drops like a stone, not a celestial body, the garden plunged into darkness. People scurry inside for warmth or prayer. They are alone, very alone.

Daniel. Merde. Daniel, wake. Daniel, come back.

Armand is swearing at him. That’s funny. He is too cold to laugh. The weeping fig, now a monster, has wound around him, trapping his limbs with its tendrils. All of his newfound dexterity has fled. No, he screams silently. Give it back. Please, let me have it back.

It is so cold. He is going to die. he was always going to die, but he wanted at least the easeful death. Hadn’t he been promised it? Or perhaps it had been in his hands, and yanked away. He doesn’t want to die, and he is going to die not wanting it.

Then: the fig, tendrils opening to him. Sap drips into his mouth. The sap tastes like blood, and the blood tastes like wine. He swallows it. He is dying– he must be– but it’s not easeful. It’s ecstatic.

He grabs Armand by the throat and gulps until the tree is gentle and beautiful again, and the air fragrant with blood, and the night has passed, and in the garden it is time for the dawn prayer; but for Daniel, the sun will never come up again.

It’s a while before he manages to pick out Louis from the din. But when he does, he opens with, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t kill him. But in his defense, it was an accident.”

There is a long silence. A silence of shock, not absence.

“I guess you could say the condom broke,” Daniel continues, never one to cease digging a grave that still has some dirt in it.

“The condom broke,” says Louis faintly.

“I had some wine, he had some wine, things got a little out of hand. He was pretty fucked-up over it, too. Awkwardest morning-after of my life, and I’ve had some doozies. He left me with a Formula Three driver who tasted like paint thinner and then ran out on me. Fucking coward.”

He can hear Louis’ apologies and recriminations starting already, and cuts them off. “Look. Louis. You were right, all those years ago. When I asked for it. I didn’t know. I didn’t even know human life, had no idea of what I was begging to give up. But now I do, okay? I’ve had my life, the good parts and the shitty parts, and believe me, I know enough about the shitty parts now to know they were coming for me. Yeah, maybe I’ll get bored and throw myself into a fire in a few hundred years, but for now, I can write without worrying about when my hands are going to stop completely. I can drink without wondering how long until my throat forgets how to swallow. I have to be a grouchy old fuck for eternity, but hey, at least I get to be a grouchy old fuck for eternity. So whatever you’re going to do to him, do it for yourself. Not me.”

There is a long pause. Finally, Louis says, “All right.”

“And if you leave him alive, get his phone number for me, will you?”

“And what are you going to do?” says Louis.

Daniel laughs. “Do? Louis, I’m going to get this book written. After that, we’ll see.”