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English
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Published:
2025-06-24
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404
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1/1
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Special

Summary:

Armand hugged his fledgling a little tighter, his face pressed into the crook of Daniel neck. “Youth is fleeting, Daniel. None of us truly manage to hold on to it.”

“That’s funny coming from you. You’ve been young and gorgeous for half a millennium.”

In which Daniel is a wee bit insecure about his looks, and Armand offers some perspective.

Notes:

Because I only started two new WIPs yesterday, I thought I'd bang out a little microfic today. 🥲

CW: mention of Marius and his ‘tastes’.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Daniel stood in front of the mirror in his underpants and poked his stomach with a sigh.

He'd thought he was the only one in the room, but then Armand snaked his arms around his chest from behind and hooked his chin over his shoulder. “What’s troubling you, beloved?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

Daniel made a dismissive arm motion towards the mirror, but he didn’t stop looking at his stomach.

“It’s not ‘nothing’. ‘Nothing’ doesn’t affect your mood like this.”

Daniel put his own arms over Armand’s and leaned back against him a little, returning the older vampire’s embrace. They were both considering Daniel’s body in the mirror now.

“Just some good old-fashioned vanity, is all. Sometimes I just wish you’d made me a couple of decades earlier, you know.”

“This is in reference to your physical appearance?” Armand asked.

They both agreed that Armand waiting until Daniel had grown up a little was a good thing. Daniel would have been an absolute nightmare of a vampire at twenty. Moreso than he was now. He probably wouldn’t have made it.

“Yeah. I mean, the salt-to-pepper ratio I had going on in the ‘90s?” Daniel waved his hand above his head to indicate his hair. “You know, with the skunk stripes on the side? That was hot.”

“This…” Armand copied Daniel’s handwaving above his current hairstyle. “Is hot.”

Daniel hummed, not entirely convinced. “I mean, it isn’t not hot. But I’ve looked better.”

Armand hugged his fledgling a little tighter, his face pressed into the crook of Daniel neck. “Youth is fleeting, Daniel. None of us truly manage to hold on to it.”

“That’s funny coming from you. You’ve been young and gorgeous for half a millennium.”

“I was too old for my maker’s tastes,” Armand said simply. “By the time he made me. I learned to make myself useful in other ways, but I stopped being truly special to him…” Armand hummed while he thought. “…a decade before that fateful day?”

“Jesus, babe.”

“You already knew this about me, Daniel. I might never have expressed it this explicitly before, but you knew.”

“Yeah,” Daniel admitted. He continued frowning at the mirror. Armand’s story hadn’t exactly cheered him up.

“The point I was trying to make,” Armand said, pulling Daniel even more tightly against himself, “is that you, Daniel Molloy, are beautiful as you are now. And you will never, ever stop being special to me.”

Notes:

Thanks for reading! Comments give me life and prevent me from having to suck the youth out of bright young reporters to sustain myself, so please drop one here or come yell at me on Bluesky or Tumblr (@GrayGiantess everywhere).

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