Chapter Text
Daniel wakes to the sound of Armand tapping and scrolling on his iPad. Every few seconds, he hears Armand exhale in exasperation. Either an art negotiation is going poorly, or some aspect of gameplay isn’t to his liking. Finally opening his eyes, Daniel peers up at Armand until Armand’s eyes deviate from the screen and peer down at him instead. Armand sets one hand on Daniel’s chest, fingers splayed in a caress.
“Hey, babe. ’Evening,” Daniel yawns, trapping Armand’s hand in place. “Been up long?”
“No,” Armand sighs, setting the iPad aside. “I can’t tell what they’re doing down there.”
Daniel takes a moment to listen intently. He knows that Armand could easily get the full picture, but the fact that he’s intentionally listening with half-assed human parent ears is endearing. There are voices—Jesse’s, Ricky’s, Louis’s, and Lestat’s—the latter of which are surprising, because Daniel had assumed they’d departed toward the end of the previous night. He sits up, frowning as he picks up too many heartbeats.
Armand meets Daniel’s eyes with concern, springing out of bed at the same time as Daniel does. They’re getting better at dressing and racing down the stairs in a coordinated rush, and the scene that meets them in the living room makes Daniel’s heart stutter in his chest and Armand go very, very still with one hand braced on either side of the doorframe. He blocks Daniel’s way out of caution, exhaling slowly through his nose.
Daniel can’t tell what’s going on at a glance, but with years’ practice maybe he’d be able to. Every free space on the living room furniture is occupied by a dazed-looking tourist. Their ages run the gamut from late twenties through early sixties; there are ten of them in all. Daniel’s first thought, after Jesse and Ricky—who stand in the midst of this odd assemblage, looking pleased—are the Gardner pieces in the dining room.
Armand looks relieved as his eyes scan the bare dining room walls. He circles back to Jesse and Ricky with a stern expression, folding his arms across his chest. “Did Louis and Lestat help you with this before they fucked off?” he asks, looking weirdly close to bursting out laughing.
“Yeah,” Ricky says, pleased with herself. “It’s a whole-ass ghost tour. I don’t think Jesse and I could’ve hypnotized them on our own, but Louis said it was the least they could do before they hit the road.” She slides an arm around the tour guide, raising her eyebrows. “Breakfast?”
Daniel keeps a straight face, because fuck almighty, one of them has got to. “Where’d you put the artwork?” he asks Jesse while Armand accepts the tour guide from Ricky. The math looks reasonable, three apiece for him, Jesse, and Ricky, and just the one for Armand. In theory, not a single one of the humans will need to die, and Armand will easily be able to herd them outside, unfuck their minds, and send them packing.
“Propped in the kitchen with pillowcases over them,” Jesse says, selecting one of the young couples for themself. “Don’t worry, Louis and Lestat helped. They’re sorry they couldn’t stick around,” they add, sinking their fangs in the woman’s pale neck with admirable restraint.
“Guess you’ve thought of everything,” Daniel sighs. He helps himself to three of the tourists, realizing he won’t feel safe busting up over this until they’re all finished and the dishes are cleared. If this is what it means to have fledglings, then he’s not sure what he expected.
“Whose idea was this?” Armand asks about thirty minutes later, swiftly returning once all of the humans have been released back into the dubious wilds of Beacon Hill. He still looks like he wants to laugh, desperately raising his eyebrows at Daniel in expectation of reinforcement.
“We’re grateful,” Daniel prompts, already carrying artwork back into the dining room, “but that could’ve been risky if attempted without help.”
Ricky is the first of them to break down laughing, which cuts the tension. “Oh, man, your faces,” she gasps, wiping blood tears from beneath her eyes. “Wish I could say we thought of it, but no. Lestat said it would double as both a useful lesson for us and a prank on y’all.”
Jesse is having trouble meeting Armand’s eyes, but then, so would Daniel if he was on the receiving end of both Armand’s blank stare and Armand’s failure to keep his own laughter contained behind his hand. It’s too many mixed signals for any one of them to stand.
“Do you have anything to add?” Armand asks, finally managing a straight face.
“I could tell you I tried to stop them,” Jesse admits, finally glancing up at him with a smirk that’s part sheepishness, part pride, “but I’d be lying.”
“Please don’t do it again,” Daniel says over his shoulder, straightening the last of the pieces on the wall. “There’s no guarantee you’ll always catch him in this good of a mood,” he continues, and then returns to the table where he’s left the Vermeer sitting flat. “Ricky?”
“What? That’s all there is to tell. We’re sorry.”
“Go upstairs. Get the St. Elizabeth for me.”
Armand rolls his eyes at Jesse, pats their shoulder, and then joins Daniel standing at the table. “You’re thinking how best to pack them?”
“I know you’ve got materials around,” Daniel says, “but I’m thinking more about how I don’t like our chances taking these on the train.”
“We won’t be taking them on the train,” Armand replies cryptically, turning toward Ricky as she re-enters the room with the St. Elizabeth. “You,” he says to Ricky, “will be driving us to New York tonight. Daniel will only take a shift in the event of an emergency, are we clear?”
“Aw, fuck,” Ricky mutters, carrying the painting to the table. “Fine.” She glances at Jesse, and then back at Armand. “So we’re all going?”
“Come back to Boston later this week for all I care,” Armand tells the fledglings. “However, we’ve drawn more attention than necessary to ourselves these past few nights. You’ll be safest if you stay with us at Daniel’s for a little while, and you’ll learn to hunt a new location.”
“Road trip,” Jesse says under their breath, sounding pleased, and then dashes upstairs. “I’ll pack our shit!” they yell back down to Ricky.
“I don’t think so!” Ricky shouts back, escaping up the stairs as quickly as possible. “No offense, hon, but you forget shit all the time!”
Armand rejoins Daniel at the table, staring down at the two pieces of artwork before hanging hard on Daniel’s shoulder with his forehead pressed against his hands. “Please tell me you have some fatherly piece of wisdom for this, beloved,” he whispers thinly. “I am…struggling.”
“Nope,” Daniel says, patting Armand on the back. “This is par for the course with dumbass twentysomethings everywhere.”
“I suppose that telling them I was running my first coven at their age, barely out of fledglinghood, wouldn’t be helpful?”
“Uh, no. It would not. They’ve read the book and know you didn’t even have the handle you thought you had two centuries later.”
“Fuck,” Armand mutters. He lifts his head, taking hold of Daniel’s arm, tugging him toward the front door. “Come on, we need to raid one of the galleries on Charles Street for supplies. Your faith in me on the preparedness front, while heartening, is not in the least warranted.”
“It’s okay,” Daniel sighs, following Armand into the deepening dusk. “I figure we’re even since I was more worried about the art than the kids.”
Armand laughs at that, loosening his hold on Daniel’s arm so that he can clasp Daniel’s hand instead as they walk down the hill. “We can’t be worse at this than Louis and Lestat,” he says. “We haven’t permitted them to be turned as teenagers. We didn’t turn them.”
“Pot, kettle, black,” Daniel replies with mock regret, tilting his head at Armand as they walk. “Louis may have turned one of them, but we arranged for the other one to be turned. And we picked just about the most insufferable asshole in all of vampiredom to do it.”
“Daniel, enough. That call was mine to make.”
“Yeah, but…I didn’t put up enough of a fuss.”
“Being self-deprecating gets us nowhere.”
“Guess all I’m wondering is, how’d we get stuck as the weird uncles while Louis and Lestat get to be the fun ones? A fucking ghost tour.”
“I hate to rain on your parade, but this is exactly where being the responsible one always gets you. Or where it always gets me, at any rate.”
Daniel brings Armand’s hand to his lips on the next upswing, kissing the back of it. “Eh, I’m here to help you bear it. Most of my life, I got off the hook being the fun parent, at least until the girls were old enough to realize what a fuckup I was. This is a sentence I accept gladly.”
Armand shoots him a glance, steering them left on the sidewalk as they reach the bottom of the hill. “Did I give you enough say, my love?”
“How about we agree that this is one predicament in which we hold equal shares,” Daniel replies, grinning at him. “As with most, actually.”
Armand giggles again out of the blue. This is the most Daniel has ever heard him laugh in a single night, and it’s contagious.
“A ghost tour. That was a stroke of genius. I can’t think of any other human incursions into this part of town that come past our door.”
“Armand, we are not telling Louis and Lestat that we thought as much, do you understand me? We’ll never get control of our house ever again.”
Where the fuck are you guys? Jesse asks plaintively, cutting through Daniel’s thoughts.
“Fetching packing materials,” Daniel tells them. “Need anything while we’re out?”
Armand makes a smug face, shaking his head, and tries not to crack up all over again.
How about that bachelorette party I hear over on Cambridge Street? Ricky retorts.
“No fucking way,” Daniel says irritably. “How about you pack our shit since you’re clearly done with your own? Load the car while you’re at it.”
“Here we are,” Armand announces, pointing at the sign above their heads. “Sloane Merrill. Or the frame shop over the way. Take your pick.”
“The frame shop is safer,” Daniel says, peering through the glass into the gallery store. “We might be too tempted to steal from this one.”
“True,” Armand agrees, looking both ways before dragging Daniel across the street. “I’d rather stay on cordial terms with Ms. Ringenburg.”
Think we’ll be like that when we’re old? Daniel hears Ricky ask as Armand picks the lock.
Are you kidding me? They’re life goals, Jesse says as their voice fades out. Unlife goals?
“Hey, sweetheart, did you hear that?” Daniel whispers, following Armand inside the shop.
Armand pulls Daniel into the shadows just inside the door. “Yes. Apparently we’re old.”
“How dare you be funnier than I am,” Daniel huffs, pinning him to the wall with a kiss.