Armand/Daniel - Post-Canon - 3,031 words
Daniel is off by himself dealing with a personal matter when Armand finds him to make sure he's okay (and doesn't do anything stupid).
Written for @valenfangs for the prompt "Hot Pink," this went in a very different direction than I originally planned. But that's the fun of writing to prompts for me - sometimes things go places you don't expect. I do have more traditional V-Day content coming up in the next couple of weeks.
Daniel sat in the bar, trying to do the crossword on his iPad, except the application kept changing the boxes when he typed and he ended up putting the answers in the wrong place. The whole process was frustrating and not helping to take his mind off things. He missed newsprint and pencils.
He looked up from his iPad. A waitress was standing over his table holding a tray with a hot pink drink on top of it.
The waitress beamed. “Then this is for you.” She set down a cocktail napkin and then put the drink on top of it.
Daniel instinctively looked around the bar but he didn’t see any familiar faces. Certainly not a shock of auburn hair that belonged to the most likely culprit. He didn’t dare get his hopes up. Armand was busy at Court. And a scan of the room told him there were no immortals in the bar.
“Who is this from?” Daniel asked, annoyed. He wasn’t in the mood for these kinds of games. If someone was trying to cheer him up, they were going about it all wrong.
The waitress shrugged, clearly miffed at his attitude. “No idea. Someone called in the order. Enjoy.”
Daniel stared at the drink. It was the week’s drink special, advertised on the chalkboard at the front. Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day, so the cocktail was hot pink in color, with a pink curly straw, and a row of bright red cherries stuck on the stick of a small pink cocktail umbrella, served in a hurricane glass. It smelled of grenadine, vodka, and sugar. Daniel could practically taste its nauseating sugary sweetness. He would have hardly touched that kind of drink when he’d been mortal— hello, hangover —but even now, the smell made him feel mildly ill.
He did another mental sweep of the bar, but there was no sign of an immortal presence. So who’d sent over this abomination of a drink? Someone had to know where he was to call in the order.
He tapped his fingers on the table, waiting to see if the person might reveal themselves but no one did. Daniel made sure there wasn’t some kind of note on the glass or anything special about the contents of the drink.
And then, irritation building, Daniel stood. He left the bar and scanned the street out front. He was in a suburb of San Francisco, a town that was little more than housing developments. Its small downtown area had a few restaurants and bars but everything closed by midnight. At 11 pm, the streets were quiet.
He lit a cigarette and pulled out his phone. No messages. He did the time zone math. It was afternoon in France, so no one there was going to answer him now.
He took a drag on his cigarette and something in his awareness prickled. The presence of another immortal.
