Chapter Text
It starts with Daniel losing his mind.
He’s scared, right down to his bones. What happened to him in that apartment at Divisadero haunts him relentlessly. Even now, three days later, he still feels those teeth in his neck.
Sleep doesn't come to him like it used to; He passes out on park benches for a while until that feeling creeps up on him again through the exhaustion and he has to get on his feet, get moving.
Daniel doesn’t know what happened after Louis attacked him. There’s a tear in the film where it all went black, then he woke up anemic and disoriented in a hallway he didn’t recognize, around faces he didn't know.
Ironically, it was probably because he couldn't stand being in one place for that long anymore that he got out of that trap house as fast as he did. The others there, they were not so lucky.
He hasn’t really been anywhere since then, too scared to go back to his own apartment for fear that someone’s waiting for him there. So he’s been floating around on the streets aimlessly. He’s alright though, he feels at home here in the margins, and as long as he keeps on the move, he can suppress that gnawing feeling of unease.
If only he didn't have it stuck in his head, that damn song that was on TV during the interview. The way it repeats over and over, a constant reminder, makes him go crazy.
It’s from some stupid roadshow movie from the forties, the likes his mom used to watch on Sunday evenings. A repetitive little ditty about a seamstress turned Hollywood star.
It went like so: The sewing machine, the sewing machine, a friend in need!
He hears her corny singing as he hops onto the cables, pulling the collar of his leather jacket tight around his neck to ward off the wind. The nasty puncture wounds still haven’t healed completely and they’re starting to itch under the gauze. Do vampires transmit rabies? God, that would be a way to go, wouldn’t it?
When he went to the shop yesterday to grab cigarettes, Betty, the old lady from the counter, insisted on taking a look at his neck. He really should have tried to hide it better.
Despite his refusal, she ended up taking him back into the staff room to put some alcohol and a gauze pad on his neck. It stung like hell. But it was nice to have someone fussing over him.
She’s a kind woman. When she asked what had happened, Daniel told her he’d been bitten by a dog.
I f I didn't have my sewing machine, a wicked life I'd lead!
He lights a smoke, letting his gaze drift over the other passengers on the cable car. He didn’t use to do that before, but for the last three days, he’s been eyeing his surroundings carefully wherever he goes, looking for… What, he doesn’t really know. It’s not like the guy in the flat cap is gonna grow fangs all of a sudden, right?
He shifts nervously.
I bobbin a bobbin and peddle a peddle, he keeps his eyes on me!
Fuck, he feels like he’s being watched again, even though nobody's looking. Since the interview, his skin starts to crawl with the same paranoid sensation whenever the sun goes down.
He gets off at Pacific and picks a road at random to wander down. At least the walking makes him less jittery. Still, he’ll need a fix pretty soon.
The street lamps throw their dim lights over the pavement and the closed shop facades. He thinks he catches someone in the mirrored image of a window, but when Daniel turns around, there’s nobody there. Despite the wind, he’s starting to sweat now.
Oh, I've never had a nightmare where I didn't meet Mister G –
Then he’s suddenly there around the next corner, the sight stopping Daniel dead in his tracks.
Just about fifty yards away, the tall man is turned towards Daniel, a dark silhouette in the middle of the street. He’s standing motionless, inhumanly still, like a statue in a museum.
Daniel has seen those eyes before, following him through the crowds of bars and tracking his movements on the sidewalk: Those red-orange discs that break the light like bike reflectors.
He runs and doesn’t catch his breath until the first rays of daylight.
-
It takes him another two days until he goes back to his apartment. He somehow expects a mess of ripped-out drawers and broken furniture, but everything is there the way he left it, down to the unfinished paragraph on his typewriter.
Daniel still turns on the light in every room and pulls back the shower curtain. When he’s finally sure that nobody has been to his apartment in his absence, he sits on the sofa and stares at the box of blank cassettes on the coffee table.
Before he went out to Polynesian Mary’s that night he remembers grabbing some cassettes from the box. There’s only two left now. He has no idea what happened to the ones he recorded the interview on, or his recorder for that matter.
And, shit, that thing was expensive… He knows he'll have to get a new one, eventually.
Because the weird thing is, even though it should have deterred him from his career, he can’t fathom being anything other than a reporter since he recorded Louis's story. How many people can say they interviewed a vampire? Maybe he does have a point of view, after all.
Soon that paranoia of being watched makes Daniel get up and even though the sun has barely started to set, he draws all the curtains before he opens the fridge and starts drowning his anxiety in alcohol.
-
Needless to say, Daniel doesn’t go back to Polynesian Mary’s. But he can’t lie, he’s missing it. That place always had the most interesting folks mingling about, with no inhibitions to speak of. He’s not a homophile, of course, but he’s always found beauty in all sorts of people, including men. And the men he met in that bar were especially beautiful, with their crooked smiles and calloused hands.
It was all for a quick line, naturally, but these men, they fascinated him. Even on the occasions that Daniel found himself on his knees looking up at one of them in the flickering lights of the restroom, even then, he felt like he was halfway in love already.
He’s getting pent-up thinking about it now, so he leaves his apartment to look for a distraction. In a small club a few streets down he finds a good crowd, does a quick line with them on a dark corner of the bar counter and before he knows it, he’s on his way to this girl’s apartment who he’s never met before. Her name is Lisa, and she’s hanging off his arm in a way that makes him feel like everything's alright again.
Her place is close, which is good because she starts untucking his T-shirt when they’re still outside the complex. Daniel’s getting hot and bothered too, with the way she’s pressing her breasts against him in the elevator and then again in the hallway to her bedroom.
When she takes off her skirt he sings, “Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?” and she laughs, though he’s pretty sure she doesn’t know Nat Cole.
They don’t even get her bra all the way off before they’re on the bed with Daniel between her legs, moving his hips. Fuck, he really needed that. Sex always gets his head on straight.
Her blinds are not drawn, he notices, when he looks up to the balcony window. It’s almost pitch black outside. He’s trying to focus on her flower pots for a bit so he doesn’t come too fast when suddenly that man peels himself from the shadows.
Daniel jerks, but the girl underneath him doesn’t notice and just keeps moaning.
In sheer panic, his eyes are glued to those of the vampire on the balcony. This is it, he thinks feverishly, This is how I die.
He’s stuck like a deer in the headlights, cannot even breathe – until she digs her heels into his back to make him move again.
The man looks at him unblinkingly. Those eyes, God, those eyes…
He’s screwed in the head, he really is, because instead of bolting, Daniel starts to thrust again – without breaking eye contact with the man outside.
This is messed up, this is so messed up, he keeps thinking as he continues fucking her. He’s terrified and he’s so incredibly turned on. All he can think about are those eyes and those sharp teeth – the teeth of a predator, sinking into him like he’s helpless prey, over and over.
It’s probably the adrenaline, but he still finishes too fast. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to mind, is probably used to this kind of performance, which Daniel would definitely feel like a dick about, if he could think straight at all.
As he’s trying to regain his senses she gets up and puts her panties back on, and then she goes and slides open the balcony door. Daniel almost has a heart attack at that moment – but there’s nobody outside.
“I don’t like smoking in the bedroom,” she says, stepping outside in her underwear. She holds up a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”
Daniel runs his shaking hands over his face.
“Gee, are you okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Daniel doesn't stay for a smoke.
-
He tries to forget about that, he really does, but he’s already suppressing so much at this point that something’s got to give.
He’s at the electronics store the next day, shuffling through the narrow aisles and trying to act like someone who has their shit together. Reminds him of the first time he got to class high like a kite. Everybody knew, of course. He’d like to think that over the years he’s gotten better at it, but he can't be sure. At least no one's called the cops on him yet.
His TV has been broken now for over a month and he finally scraped together his meagre savings to get a new one. He thought it would be a good distraction, a new TV, but seeing the bright screens in the store just makes him think about the sewing machine song again, and then about his vampire stalker and how he looked at him...
Christ, what had possessed him last night? Fucking while making eye contact with an immortal predator? That's a surefire way to get yourself killed, isn’t it? But then why is he here and not bloody and mangled on someone else’s bed?
Stop! Stop thinking about it, for fuck's sake, Daniel chides himself.
He clutches the seventy dollars in his pocket. Shit, all these TVs are color. He was hoping to get a cheap black and white one.
“I’m closing up in twenty minutes,” the store owner barks from two rows over. He’s got a big mustache that makes him look like a Schnauzer.
Daniel rubs his nose. He could spend the money on coke. No, he really shouldn’t. But if he’s about to get maimed by a vindictive vampire, what good is a TV gonna do him? Better have some fun, right? If he sells the old one for parts, he might have enough to get a used recorder…
“Hello, Daniel.”
He jumps so hard that he almost breaks one of the TV antennas.
The man has his hands in the pockets of his expensive coat and is standing right next to Daniel. How he moved so close without making even the faintest sound, Daniel doesn’t know. All he does know is that his heart is about to beat out of his chest.
He finds himself unable to speak, only hearing the blood rushing in his ears.
The TV lights are flickering across the smooth planes of the man’s face when he says, “It’s good to see you again. I trust you have been well?”
That’s when he remembers where he knows the man from – he was at the bar, that night, with Louis. But his eyes were different then; They were brown and docile, a stark contrast to the piercing orange that he can see even behind the glossy sunglasses.
Fuck, he did give them the go-ahead, right? No, he’s sure, his memory of that night is still sharp enough. 'Have your fun' is what he said. But what if he changed his mind and this is the part where the angry husband comes to get rid of the side piece? They didn’t even end up fucking, for crying out loud, he doesn’t deserve this…
When Daniel doesn’t say anything, the vampire takes off the glasses with one slender hand. And Daniel should really be thinking something like Please no or Have mercy, but instead, all that crosses his fucked-up mind when he sees those heavy-lidded, vicious-orange eyes is God, how can someone be this beautiful?
The way the man clicks his tongue chidingly immediately after Daniel has that thought makes him suddenly realize that he’s not alone in his own head. It’s the strangest feeling, and once the awareness is there, he can’t stop focusing on that intrusive presence. It’s freaking him out.
“You… You don’t need to kill me, alright?” Daniel finally manages to choke out, ”I won’t tell a soul about… about anything, I promise, okay? Just – please don’t kill me, man…”
The vampire regards him with mild interest and says, “I am not here to kill you. After all, Louis is quite partial to you.”
Daniel huffs out a breath, confused. The guy who tried to take out his throat with his teeth is partial to him? He’ll take it if it means he won’t kick the bucket today, but that’s one hell of a way to show affection. He really hopes he is not about to make friends with this vampire too.
“What– What do you want from me, then?”
“Well, it is like this: Due to the circumstances we find ourselves in, you will continue to be alive. I will have to monitor you, naturally. You know too much, way too much for a mortal to be simply left to your own devices.”
Still sounds to me like you’re gonna kill me eventually, Daniel thinks.
“So,” the vampire continues, unphased by Daniel’s thoughts, “Since we are involuntarily tethered to one another, I figured we could come to an arrangement. The two of us.”
“Okay... What kind of arrangement?”
“You see, this age is moving very fast, much faster than previous centuries. It seems almost every week there is new, modish technology flooding people’s homes across the globe. For a vampire of my lifetime, it is hard to keep up.”
So, what, he’s senile and wants me to show him how to use a remote? The thought is there before he can do anything about it and he cringes and readies himself for the worst, but Armand just laughs softly.
Fuck, that’s the most lovely sound he’s ever heard. Daniel wonders if vampires have some sort of pheromone that makes them more enticing to humans – or if he’s just a giant weirdo for being hopelessly attracted to a man who could rip his torso open and slurp his innards like soup.
Maybe it’s both? He’s definitely screwed if it’s both.
“What I am saying is this: You pick out one of these fine machines here.” Sharp nails slide over the top of one of the TVs. “And I will cover the costs. You take it home, you enjoy your new television. And then you explain it to me. You explain to me what you find interesting about it. What programs people are talking about.” He looks at Daniel again. “That is all.”
“That's all?”
“Yes, Daniel. Are those terms acceptable to you?”
Daniel swallows. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“Splendid.” He puts his sunglasses back on. “Once you have thought it over, let me know the model of your preference.” How Daniel is supposed to do that, he doesn’t say. He has a suspicion that it’s just a turn of phrase – the vampire will simply know when Daniel has made up his mind.
With a swish of his coat, the man turns elegantly and walks towards the door in quick strides. Daniel is left standing in the same spot, feeling like he just made a deal with the devil. And he probably did.
But before he steps outside, he turns to Daniel one more time.
Over the row of TVs, he’s smiling at him with his sharp teeth showing.
“And it is both. Since you were wondering.”