Work Text:
Way off the coast of Florida, sat an island. On the island stood a series of structures, all in garish pastels or glass. Movie theaters, shopping, and apartments all lay dormant in the day light. All the residents stayed asleep until the sun fell. Well, except for two.
There’s a funny thing with apocalypses. Tomorrow still comes. After everything, pain, destruction, the understanding of life as it was irreparably decimated, everything, there is tomorrow. Especially as a vampire. When all the tired aches and pains catch up leading to the unavoidable conclusion of rest, while no one looks, tomorrow still comes. Seeing that first sunrise left Daniel in a laughing fit and Armand utterly bewildered. Seventy years to learn the lesson and it still came as a surprise that no matter the working of mortals or immortals, the planets spin, the sun rises, and the universe goes on.
Many more sunrises later put Daniel and Armand in the place Daniel always feared. Retired in Florida. Armand could explain technicalities all he wanted. The island lay in international waters. Daniell still made nominal income from his books and documentary. It was fucking Florida. His sugar vamp daddy had his name on the condo and paid for the mix in the blood margarita machine. Daniel hadn’t released a book in ten years.
Despite that decade away from the public eye or the publishing world, Daniel felt a familiar itch that drove him to leave his bed. Armand groaned and tried to wrap an arm around him. With a sigh Daniel stayed. He tried and failed to convince himself that getting out of bed, just to see a blank word document before he even thought of a word to write did not make sense. The true reason he stayed, purred in his sleep as he wrapped around Daniel.
For thirty minutes more, he stayed. The words came, floating through the air. Slowly the structure and story came together. His mind gripped tight to the poetic language and rhythm. When he feared losing his progress, Daniel attempted to leave Armand’s grip. Slowly as a snail he inched away in the king-size mattress. He knew if he sat up, Armand would wake. So, when Daniel reached the edge of the bed, he decided to practice a newer ability. Lying flat as a plank, he floated out from under the covers.
A devious grin covered his face. For a moment, utterly unsupported, he stayed there. Then he tried to get up right. On instinct from 80 years of existence with gravity, he tried to push to go up. The repeated lesson of pull, don’t push, still needed repeating. In an instant the air gave way. He landed with a thunk as the air left his lungs from a two-foot drop.
Daniel scrunched his face from the impact and let out a low disappointed moan. When he opened his eyes, two giant orange ones stared back from above him. Armand kneeled in front of Daniel and leaned his face in, only a couple of feet away from Daniel’s.
“Are you alright?” asked Armand.
Ten years on and the super speed, even from sleep, still wigged Daniel out. He batted Armand away in a weak attempt to regain his pride.
“Yeah yeah. I pushed when I should have pulled. So much for trying to not wake you up.”
Armand let go of a held breath. He let Danielle get up but his eyes still gave away his remaining concern. The way his mouth gapped just a little made Danielle’s blood boil. Both hands-on Armand’s shoulders, Danielle pinned him to the bed with a speed to match Armand’s.
Daniel teased, “Do I have to remind you I’m a vampire? Don’t tell me you expected me to cry ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’.”
“In fairness, you did fall and it took you a long moment to get up,” Armand replied with a cocky grin.
Oh, he was asking for trouble.
Daniel kissed him on the forehead and replied simply, “Shut up.”
With a swagger, Daniel flung himself out of bed. Ass free as a blue jay. Two orange embers stared and burned into him. He never got tired of that. That warm glowing feeling of his maker’s desire for him always made for a good start to the morning. Technically five in the afternoon, but their morning.
Age and time are complicated as a vamp. Seventy and only a toddler. A lover over half a millennium old and only in his twenties. No one could square math like that. So, Daniel didn’t try. Instead, he embraced it as the first of the many many contradictions of their relationship. Each made up a different flowing thread and weaved them together.
In five hundred years, Daniel was the first human Armand couldn’t bear to see die or lose. In seventy years, Armand was the first-person Daniel could be honest with and not receive judgement from. They both knew everything. It was messy but it was honest.
When Daniel reached for his pants hanging in the closet, the hanger moved away. Another reach, another dance away. Daniel grabbed a shirt from Armand’s side of the closet and threw it at him. The next time he reached for his pants, he was actually able to put them on.
Daniel ran to his computer and in the nick of time wrote everything down. Despite horny distractions and blows to his ego, his mind clung to the words. Every word made it to his laptop. A couple lifetime’s worth of addictions and none compared to his longest one. He could barely call the high of a flow state a high, but the fucking withdrawals. That made it an addiction. A day or two without a pencil or a laptop left him twitchy and desperate to write on anything he could grab. One time he even wrote a whole paragraph with a sharpie on his arm that didn’t come off for a month.
A coffee cup filled with tea and blood got set just to Daniel’s side.
“Thank -” Daniel looked up, stopped short by the sight of Armand standing there with only his shirt on. “-you.”
A simple sip and a smirk served as Armand’s reply. Daniel tapped at the table. The two locked eyes in a stale mate. Hundreds of years later and Armand still played director, setting up his little games. Daniel knew he had already lost this one.
Daniel could ask of course, why his smoke show of a husband was walking around with his dick out. That, however, led to him inevitably leaving his laptop. To not ask however, it felt like its own kind of hell. One he suspected Armand made just for him. Then there was option two.
Looking down at his laptop, he considered just sticking to writing. He could just ignore Armand. That could lead to two moves from him. Armand would go on the offensive or retreat. The offensive lead to the same conclusion as Daniel’s first option. If Armand retreated…Wait, why was he playing? Fuck he just wanted attention.
Daniel made his move. “Too lazy to grab a pair of pants?”
A genuine smile grew on Armand’s face. “Didn’t seem necessary to watch Con Amor.”
“Fuck, it’s Thursday. What time is it?” Daniel looked down at his laptop and realized it was five till eight.
Shitty thing about being too old and retired. Time runs away when you don’t keep an eye out. If it weren’t for their show Daniel wasn’t sure he would even bother to remember days of the week. Writing made things worse by making the hours disappear.
Daniel jogged a human speed to the couch and tossed himself over the back of it. He landed with a thud and reached for the remote. Lounging back into the corner of their L shaped couch with his legs wide open allowed Armand to sit in his assigned seat. Armand settled into Daniel’s lap with a blanket wrapped around him. As soon as the channel was set, Armand handed him back his tea and took a sip from his own cup.
The ritual began by accident. In the middle writer’s block, Daniel put on a shitty soap opera. He used tearing it a new one for the shitty writing as a creative exercise, and to make himself feel better about his own. Armand took up the game but pointed more criticism at the directing. They both had fun, so they decided to do it again the next week. Then tragedy struck and the unthinkable happened. They got invested.
Three years later, Armand gripped a pillow tight as he watched Maria walk down the aisle. That pillow then reached Mach three as Armand flung it toward the wall beneath the TV when Ricardo entered the church. Daniel screamed at the television “Haven’t you hurt Maria enough? Go back to your whore asshole.”
Both of their tempers simmered down when the fiancé Julio stepped in between Maria and Ricardo. Julio poured his heart out to Maria, even after Ricardo revealed her tragic past as an urchin of the street and all she did to survive. Ricardo declared Maria unfit for marriage because she was a broken thing. Julio’s love remained unwavering. He accepted her for what she chose to be not what others once tried to make her or what she did to survive. Ricardo pulled out his last card, that Maria poisoned Julio and caused his bout of amnesia to break into his home. After three more twists, Maria and Julio wed.
Armand became a crying mess. He elbowed Daniel in the ribs.
“Ow. What was that for?” Daniel said only slightly over dramatic.
“I’m blaming you for my pain. I returned some to you in kind. I never would have started watching. I had good taste before you.”
Daniel burst out laughing. “Your ‘taste’ was vague bullshit with a high appraisal value or required a masters in art to understand. My apologies for showing you art that could make you feel something.”
“Your apology is accepted.” Armand looked away with a false smugness.
Shaking his head, Daniel didn’t bother to argue a fight he’d already won. The apartment surrounding them and their many rituals stood as testament to that fact. An old man’s touch littered the place. A large TV as the living rooms center. A dining table covered with papers and books scattered in every cranny that could keep them. A couch that was actually fucking comfortable. Knick knacks Armand detested for how they cluttered the space. If Armand kept the apartment as he and Louis built it, much like Dubai, it would have been a soulless concrete box with art that could only be valued at auction.
The place held color, mostly of lush maroons, deep oranges, and dark brown tones. Though it took time and encouragement Armand found his own ways to add to the space, not for value or Daniel’s sake, but his own. Persian rugs. Tropical plants. Fascinating geometric patterns and vivid textures which breathed a soul into their home.
A sharing of two immortal existences blended together in a mix of expensive taste, comforting practicalities, and quirks of their individual experiences. Armand’s artistic eye brought everything together. Daniel’s eye for bullshit kept the place livable. A very comfortable shared coffin.