Death is freedom. From illness, from pain, from society, from morality, from endings. And from grocery bills, and having to piss, and vegetables stuck in teeth. Daniel thinks of stars, spiral galaxies, flowers blooming, and little freedoms, like how every body part being engaged with now only exists for feeling good. A shit joke, in the midst of drug and sex addled euphoria. No one has to know but Daniel.

It doesn't do anything to lessen the experience for him. Stray spiderweb thoughts all seize together, like Armand's body around the intrusion of fingers. So easy, to pull him into ecstasy this way? Or has it been hours, and has he been edging him? His own fangs have manifested, pearl daggers, nicking his own mouth, or Armand's, he can't tell, the smell of blood in his come is nearly as intense as tasting it. And he wants to, as the last warmth their free, dead bodies can produce pulses over his hand and the ground finds his back again. Like the force of his maker's orgasm has restuck them to the earth.

Good thing. They might spin away otherwise, join other planets and roaming asteroids in orbit.

Daniel feels suspended on an edge. It's good. Tense and satisfied at once. Armand is beautiful, Armand is horrible. He likes both of those things, and his teeth against his mouth, and the shivering grinding into his hand, and the mess of blood and frayed carpet.