It is a question that cascades into many more. Not only the ethical and philosophical aspect of making a vampire, but the personal. Would Daniel seek other companionship? Would he want it in that fashion? What, to him, would make a good vampire? And so on.
Daniel, drawing shapes along his back, into his hair. Armand has the sense of them both being charcoal sketches, shaped by each others smudged fingertips.
"As do I."
He wonders if he would kill this hypothetical, unlikely fledgling, or if he would stand frozen at the sidelines of the thing as yet another tectonic plate shifted, formed a new ocean. Or if he would decide on the latter and one day snap and do it anyway. If Daniel would mind very much.
So far off, Daniel says. Armand thinks he is quite good at seeing to that distance, even if his past feels like smudged charcoal.
"I thought I knew you well," he says, as he thinks these things. "I thought I'd seen the depths of you before that moment. I suppose I had. But it's different. It's like a last flood of information before you become a black box. It's like I had you inside of me before I fed you yourself. And I did it very slowly."
Daniel could not make a marriage work, or second another marriage; he could not make a paternal relationship work. Time will still have to tell if this is working, but he suspects it's going to work far better than his mortal connections. Like the trick of it is to be a fucking disaster— get all the worst out ahead of everything else.
He doesn't know if he'd want to commit to that with anyone. Armand didn't give him a choice, and as fucked as that was, he thinks he prefers it. Which does not bode well for his prospects on making one.
No. Content with just them. He likes being Armand's only tether (ignoring the lurking maybe-maker back down the line behind Amadeo). He likes not having any flowing out of him. He hadn't really wanted to be a parent, he hadn't really wanted to be a husband. This is better.
"Do you think about it?" he asks. "Turning me?"
His memories of it have become clearer, over time, but it's still a bloody, disorienting mess.
"I do. For a second, I think I heard you in my head. Did I?"
A strange period of time. Armand was not subject to the same utter disorientation that he dragged Daniel through, but still disoriented. Out of body, a little. In this moment, he thinks of Peanut, lamp eyed beneath the shadow of a chair, claws dug into the wooly interior of a slipper. Curious about what is happening in his little cat brain.
Hard to decipher what was going on in his own, on reflection. A series of actions, words, impulses, curiousities. And he was so—
Angry? He supposes so. A tree alight in a gallery.
"And yes," to answer the other question. "I didn't know if we would see each other again soon. I knew I couldn't be around you then. I tried to understand why I'd done what I'd done by explaining it." Amusement in his tone, lifting his head again. "You turned it back to me. As you are wont to do."
Daniel, somehow seeing through half a millennia, straight to the soul of who Amadeo was when he become immortal.
"It was selfish of me," he adds, but there is something warm in his tone. Pleased with himself, for doing the selfish thing.
(Yes, certain other vampires might scoff at this idea, that this is a change in behaviour for Armand. Perhaps they are right to.)
Daniel's just a black hole. Dragging in light, experiences, information. Answers to his questions. He was interested in Armand in Dubai, even when he was telling him to shut up. He was interested in Armand while he was being tortured, because every psychopath has a motive. He was interested in Armand even in the bar the evening before. A beautiful, strange man, a thousand miles out of Daniel's league, and his boyfriend was stepping out on him.
Why? How fucking nuts must that guy be, for Louis to be looking elsewhere?
Pretty fucking nuts, it turns out. Daniel combs his fingers through his hair. Selfish. Yeah, he can see that. He can see the way Armand rationalizes and makes excuses. But there isn't one for Daniel, is there.
"Something for yourself," he observes. Him, that's the something. "You said one hundred years, but then you missed my annoying ass, huh."
Amused. Warming to banter, to the tone in Daniel's voice. It is a reductive description of the stressors that led to him finding Daniel again, but not completely inadequate for it.
"You were out of your mind during your turning," Armand adds, tipping his head as he loos at him. Shifting to settle comfortably like this on top, arms folded. "You were in a different country. You thought I was someone you'd picked up. That you'd done rather well for yourself."
There'd been little moments in the interview that, if Daniel wasn't busy internally retching at the happily married routine, were potentially a little funny. Both of them with a habit for fondly recounting horrifying things. Hunting guys for sport, both of them with separate kinds of reminiscing smiles.
Some of that energy, speaking fondly of Daniel dying and delirious.
What can he say, it was an internally retch-inducting routine.
Daniel continues to slowly move his hand up and down Armand's back, his elegant spine, the column of his neck, the base of his skull. He rests there sometimes, rubbing near his hairline. Thinking about stars, and vines, and how beautiful Armand is. How much like an interesting, dangerous insect, or like an alien, an HR Giger drawing. Beautiful, but horrible.
Funny, sometimes. Stupid sunglasses. Mean comments. Veering between nerdy and cutting. Daniel is leagues past shouldn't find it charming.
"Sounds like me." He'd have been baffled, indeed. Punching way above his weight. "A little spike to my dumbass ego before putting me into the craziest tailspin, that's nice of you."
A languid shift of configuration, just a little, vampiric grace and strength and even a manipulable sense of gravity take away some of the charming human fumbling around weight distribution, pointy elbows and knees. Moves so they are eye to eye again, Armand's hands coming to rest gently on the rug on either side of Daniel's head.
Floating, a little, but still pressed close. In a funny way, it feels like they're standing against each other.
"And how's your ego faring now?"
Little peeking hints of fang, a lazy hooded look to his expression, but still, eyes of sunset orange as slivers of their own light.
When Daniel realizes how Armand is moving, the wonder in his expression becomes more pronounced. It's just cool when he uses his powers. When he acts like they're as natural as any other part of him. Daniel remembers the first time he saw him, that ridiculous display. He'd been angry at him for lying and for the charade, but he'd been so impressed, too. Fascinated. (Haha.) It makes him feel good at Armand is comfortable enough to just be, around him.
A soft laugh, at the question. He sees flowers growing around Armand.
"Oh, inflated to the fucking moon." Armand called him handsome. Said he likes his body, likes drawing him, is happy he made him. Daniel is flustered and smug and happy and curious and all of it, all of it. He smiles and it distorts his face, aged as it is, but it's clear the mood is genuine. "You're so... you're the prettiest plant. And cool. The floating, it's cool..."
Hearing himself. Daniel scrunches his nose and closes his eyes, sigh. Still laughing. He knows he sounds like an idiot with a crush, not an old man talking to his own maker.
There, a breath of a rare laugh that shows his teeth when he's called the prettiest plant. Because Daniel is funny and very high and fumbly when he is being sweet, and they can almost pretend there is anything like youth between them in these little moments.
Or maybe there is. This thing they share now is young. Daniel is still getting his bearings, learning. Armand, too, a new maker. Maybe that's all what it is.
"I'm cool," Armand echoes, as if pondering this assignment. Teasing. Even more unlikely than being a pretty plant. Even more likely than being called a seed with all of its potential. Endearing for it. Daniel's eyes are closed, so Armand uses his hands to touch at his face, guide him into a kiss.
A proper one. He isn't sure what sex will be like on the drugs they are on, how quick they are to fade, but he is in the mood to pursue the things he wants.
Doubling down, despite being embarrassed at himself. Daniel murmurs it, smiles at the way Armand's fingers are on his face, and then smiles more at the kiss. Tangible beneath Armand's mouth before he reciprocates.
Mostly mushrooms, but there'd been some ecstasy too in the cocktail of the dead woman— mostly to fortify against paranoia and bad trips, build a buffer around Armand staring too long into the void. This is the other benefit: everything feels extra good, extra easy, ready and waiting to slip over into the warm water of sensuality, pleasantly wrapped in the heightened sensory experience of it all.
Terrifying, cool, a monster, his murderer, the prettiest plant. A person he likes to make out with.
Hands smoothing downwards, until his fingertips find the circling, overlapped scars at Daniel's throat. Louis' tearing teeth, and his own daintier contribution somewhere in the knot of coarse tissue. Strokes along it, around it, as they kiss.
And it does all feel good and easy, settling with his thighs on either side of Daniel's, a pleasant alignment of their hips, letting a more human sense of gravity pull them together. His body feels extra alive and receptive, as if all these little grasping hallucinated fronds and leaves and petals are reaching out, tangling, rooting together in the barely-any-space between them.
A fair chance he could be content with just this, where sex is barely the transaction interlocking of parts but some extra-planar sharing, strange and romantic. But he can feel all the mechanical things beginning to shift, blood flow and flesh, and he indulges in a shifting movement, hips pressing, rubbing just a little as they kiss.
Touch to the scars on his neck is a dice roll between shivery and nothing; he still experiences sensation there, but like all scar tissue, it comes and goes. Tonight, now, be it the drugs or the mood or Armand or all of it, feeling is cranked up. Like the wound is connected to his nervous system in a unique way. Something once touched by the supernatural, made a permanent part of him.
Swaddled in vines and stars. Daniel kisses him, and kisses him, and one of his roaming hands moves down lower on its path, and incorporates squeezing Armand's rear into the equation. He feels comfortable, he trusts that this kind of touch is alright for him to do, and he hopes that's still the case. He likes fooling around with Armand. It's fun, and profound. Hints of something kinkier lurking, while being some of the most emotionally significant encounters he's ever had.
The most? Maybe. Probably.
The thread that binds them seems to wind closer. Like it, too, is wrapping around them with everything else. They can't read each other, but they can feel each other. One heartbeat.
He feels a little detached, in a good way. As if the little hit of ecstasy has done its work in severing him from the potential for darker rumination to the point that he feels a little ahistorical, very present, quite alive. Like he is a person for whom all ways Daniel wants to touch him is okay.
Which is always true, but complicated, snarled up enough that it takes work to untangle, work he doesn't always wish to do. Now it is simple.
So: an encouraging, satisfied sound for the feeling of Daniel palming over him, a shift of his body back into this touch, and then back down into where he is settled. He wishes they didn't have any clothes in the way, and as he wishes it, there is an odd sense that Daniel might pick up, of fabric being tugged in a few different directions. Pulled taut, then loose again.
Not simply clumsy telekinetic grasping, but also, a seam weaving itself apart, threads furling out into the air like ink in water. Buttons skittering aside, a closed zipper unmoored from the stitching. As if nothing is very real, or everything is temporary, and can be disassembled once it is made aware of itself.
Fooling around is exactly what party drugs are for. Daniel is pretty fucking happy with how this is turning out, so far— both for selfish reasons, though there's nothing selfish about enjoying oneself now and again, surely, and because he feels good knowing that he's given Armand a positive experience. The tiniest sliver of time, just some stupid chemicals to mess about with.
You know. Night swimming. Funny movies. Flowers.
Life sucks, but sometimes: worth it.
"Is that..?"
He thinks he's imagining it at first. Or rather, he thinks it's a part of a hallucination that's perfectly merged with the reality of their current circumstances. But something really is unstitching his clothes, and only one person present is capable. Daniel lifts one hand to observe this process, the way his sleeve detaches itself at the shoulder, thread spooling away, fabric lifting.
Armand lifts his head, turns to look at that sleeve. His experience of it extrasensory, but fun to watch too through lazily half-hooded eyes. This, he thinks, would probably take more concentration normally, but something about the chemicals he is on makes it all simple. He wonders if he could unravel a person.
"I like that you like it," he says, as they are undressed in this way. Shifting a little to let fabric slither and split apart between them. "That you don't fear it as you should."
(A little unfair to Louis, maybe, who came into things with a whole mess of perfectly valid hang ups and worries about the balancing of power, overtuned to it, watchful of it. Armand did what he could. He limited his reminders.)
"Fear is like a direction on a compass," he says. "I've always gone towards it. Maybe I do fear the things you can do, but I can ... just, see them, too."
And it's neat. Armand is very powerful, and he's very skilled. Anyone who can move things with their mind could drag a sofa across a room. His maker is unspooling all of their clothes, leaving skin on skin, and Daniel's back on the luxury rug in this room.
Neat, and impressive. It's very Armand. Detailed and precise and unusual. It's an expression of how sees the world, and it always surprises Daniel. He likes it. He does sometimes think of being crunched repeatedly into the floor, or his tapes being turned into shiny black noodles of their own accord, but those terrifying memories are things to be dissected now. Interesting that he's had them for fewer years than they've existed. Interesting that they met in such a deranged fashion.
"It makes me happy that you feel comfortable doing it. Letting me see."
This sounds correct, more true. Maybe Daniel would have tried to run if he were wired differently, during his last moments alive. Maybe Daniel knew better than to even try, but that isn't really how it works. A human kneels off the side of a bridge and, while plummeting, squirms in the air, grasps at it in a panic.
And maybe vampiric death is different, the kinds of promises Armand makes, the kinds of mental states he can coax a mind into, but none of that occurred in the Dubai penthouse. Just fire, fangs, a sense of wishing to see the thing that happens next.
A compass that points to danger. Points to Armand.
He moves to press now naked bodies together, the subtle misalignment of proportions just encouraging movement. He is not actually desperately hard or anything, but not disinterested, blood flow coaxing him along slowly, the way petals turn or leaves rise. Around them, the remnants of their clothing settle and collapse, strange unmade shreds, stray buttons, the last shivers of motion writhing snake-like until they go still.
"Spook, then," is his belated amendment to his statement. Writers.
He kisses Daniel, not a sudden clash but a swift rise in pressure, intimacy, intention. He feels a little like they could just wriggle together in this strangely sensitive state of sharing and find some kind of conclusion that way, but he also wants this. Wants the friction of coarse hair, the neutral tang of saliva and the glossy bite of fangs against tongue. Wants all those base physical things. Wants to be greedy.
Daniel should get spooked. Armand is spooky. Flavors of haunting, of witches, of demons. But all those things are alluring, too. A past that still wants to keep you company, and the seductive nature of the dark, and magic. Even if it's scary, who doesn't want to reach out and touch all of that?
Particularly when all of that is naked and pressed against him, kissing him, rubbing and shifting and finding nice ways to braid their limbs together. He hums something into Armand's mouth, not really an answer; easy agreement. Yeah, he doesn't spook. No more nerves around Armand, except for when it's adrenaline, like being on a rollercoaster just before the drop. Terror, excitement, fucked up glee. Louis would be disappointed to see all the souvenir pictures of Daniel stuck in Armand's Wild Ride, smiling over and over with each rotation.
Sensual and cozy, erotic, strange. Daniel lets his hands roam, petting wherever their enmeshing movements take him. His initial concerns with bringing sex into their complicated disaster of a connection, his stubborn insistence that there be no foundation of the curse of maitre, seems insignificant. None of that matters, because none of that's here. It's just skin, warm from blood, mouths and the prickle of hair, of teeth. Daniel's fangs are there for a few moments, then not, indecisive, but he's barely conscious of it.
Almost dreamlike, feeling a fang against his tongue, his lip, feeling it melt blunt again. Daniel is rewarded with a panted sound, a more fervent kiss.
Armand wonders: does he miss it? For a moment, he doesn't know. It had been satisfying to bare his neck to Louis, to feed him his blood, to be the supplementary course in his dining that had done as much to keep his lover functional as the Farm had, and wasn't that pleasing? It had felt like service, yes, an act of submission to sit obediently and tip his head aside, but something else. The feeling of his own essence snaking into Louis' body, strengthening it, slipping through his arteries, pumped by his heart, into his brain, into his cock.
And now there is Daniel. Much the same. No, more so. If Armand is a plant, then Daniel is sodden earth and he feels it like a tangled root system inside of his fledgling. His fledgling, his, a strange extension of himself, an additional nervous system intrinsically connected to his own, no matter how far it wanders. He rubs against him, presses up into roaming hands, thinks about Daniel's long fangs sinking into his throat, his blood saturated him, claiming him, claiming each other.
Some sober part of him says: no. Not yet.
"Make me come," he says, a murmur against Daniel's shoulder. An instruction, for all that it's so softly delivered. He can feel himself becoming calculated. He doesn't wish to be. Armand might have to make a note to feel embarrassed later, plastered and wriggling against Daniel and making this plea, but for now, it is what he wants too much for that to matter.
The temptation to prick a hole in Armand and taste his blood is there, but it would only be about intimacy; Daniel's textbook is sated, which is a nice feeling. He doesn't want to starve himself, or lose the desire to drink blood with age, or pick up dogs and cats. (Who could ever eat Peanut?) He's glad that they did this. That they do this, that they can share kills, drink together. Armand should take more in general, he thinks. People who are a little happier. It's alright. There are plenty of happy people in the world to prune a few leaves aside for the good of the whole plant.
"Mmn?"
Has he ever received a sweeter order? Daniel smiles to himself, and continues his appreciative petting. Stops only to press his index finger down on a spot at the base of Armand's spine. Playful. Hm? Oh? Does this work? Is there a button he can push?
Hands stroke up, down, the breadth of his palms, then careful, light trails of pointed claws. Thinks about how he might do that, even as they continue to shift and rub against each other. Daniel is hard, or at least halfway, a comfortable thing that's crept up on him. It feels more real, now that Armand has bid him do this, but still dreamy, high. He rubs Armand's hipbones, the curved muscle of his behind, and slides his touch into the cleft of his rear. Everything is easy and exploratory with clear appreciation to the way his body feels under his hands, and it's unhurried. When he begins to slide fingers (and the tease of nails) over hidden-away parts of him, it's mostly the tops of his inner thighs. Leisurely searching for places Armand likes to be touched.
Blunt teeth close at Daniel's earlobe. No, that doesn't work. Keep going.
A favourable comparison: the way he can feel shy with Daniel, the way he had felt it on occasion with Louis, the way Lestat had to coax such feelings out of him, speaks to a certain amount of presence that he could choose to opt out from. He has had half a millennia with his own body, has run the gamut of thinking himself as grotesque, of believing he is beautiful, of caring about either thing, of feeling nothing at all. Has known how something like feeling embarrassment would be a luxury for what it means.
And Armand feels claws tease at such an intimate place and feels his body flush hot, has to urge himself to follow the impulse to skid his knees a little wider as Daniel's fingers make their unhurried exploration. Daniel touches him as if the experience of that alone is arousing, the feeling of his skin beneath his palms and fingertips, and he warms for that too.
His own hands make less work for themselves. One grips a shoulder, the other lingers over his ribs, an anchoring kind of hold for the time being.
Feels good to touch him, to shift against his body, to trade kisses with him. Daniel's mind supplies an extra layer of sensation, like the colors from all the stars and flower petals are draping down over them, making shivers rise on their skin and slide around curiously, sensually, toes to noses. Armand fits well against him, and Daniel encourages that shift of his thighs with more attention in the gap created. Yes. He wants that— this, Armand leaning into it, Armand asking for more, silent or otherwise, Armand enjoying it, wanting it. Wanting Daniel to do it.
Everything is heightened, awareness zeroing in on physical contact. Armand's weight against him has turned his whole body into pleasant, easy nerves. He steals a kiss as he squeezes one globe of his ass, kneads it, and experiments with sliding fingers inward. Not seeking penetration, instead, seeking the soft skin tucked away there, where the right pressure will stimulate the prostate externally.
Daniel's enjoying this configuration too much to want to move, not even to wriggle a hand between them. Not yet. He wants to stay just the way they are, and he wants to touch Armand in a way that doesn't ask anything of his maker besides accepting the touch. He feels almost selfish, wanting Armand to just let him do whatever. But how often does he get to feel up his terrifying, beautiful maker, while he's a warm, high puddle draped over him?
They can both feel selfish, then, which is perhaps as good an outcome for sex as one could hope for, and Armand feels particularly indulgent in the way he stays draped over Daniel, pliant only for receiving the attention he asked for. Still an instinct to anticipate, to control, to give—
Scatters apart with each new thing, like here, the press of fingertips urging a soft, approving sound out of him. Flushes away that brief clawing feeling of embarrassment at himself, suffuses it into something simpler, and his hips shift back against this hand in needy response at that deeply rooted pulse of pleasure.
Kisses Daniel's neck. Shoulder. The bone and muscle leading back to the base of his throat, wild curls of hair tickling along against his face. A panting hot breath across warm skin as Armand catches himself with a rub of hardening length against Daniel's hip, low on his abdomen.
And overall, a tug of need pulls at Daniel's body, something like telekinesis or a shift of gravity that presses them closer together. Like Armand has command over local physics, impulses eking out into the air around them.
Daniel keeps on touching him, emboldened by the welcoming response. Not wondering about what Armand usually prefers, sexually; not worried about it. If he wants something, then he hopes Armand asks him, but he most of all he hopes they're able to do their own thing. Taking the past into consideration where they need to, but... just going on ahead, exploring, learning, sharing.
When did he get so fucking sappy?
Probably the mushrooms. The universe expanding his mind, brushing away all the cobwebs of self-deprecation and hesitation. Daniel feels good, and Armand likes him, and he has no reason to be shy or insecure. He can slide his touch further in, find where he's questing for, rub at him. He can shift just enough let Armand feel that he's getting hard for him, too, and he can turn his head to kiss his maker's forehead and temple, breathe in deep the smell of his silky hair, and—
Feel that. Like a current pulling him. Reality bending to envelop just the two of them. Daniel lets it coat him, and he reaches for it with his mind, even as he continues to look for just the right angle to make Armand sigh.
Is it new, or just rare? This sense of comfort, being comfortable, this sense of letting his influence leak out beyond the primitive trappings of his physical self, letting it be merely the nexus through which he can connect to his fledgling and be given pleasure. New, he thinks, decides. The drugs. The person. The circumstance.
Armand sighs. Moves only as impulse directs, the lift of his hips back against Daniel's hand, and then back down to rub himself against soft skin, the sympathetic burgeoning hardness nestled against his own. Gravity is replaced by something more magnetic, trapping them together. Pulling Daniel's body against his own, off the ground by fractional degrees.
He has ruined the rug a little. More than a little. Patches have become thin and shabby through threads unravelling, twisting, making shapes and patterns of their shared, imagined garden, if not so artful, just wild, tangled. Daniel can reach out and maybe it feels like a series of invisible hands linking fingers, testing strength.
Armand is stronger, of course, but isn't interested in overpowering, showing off in that way. Just showing, demonstrating the texture of reality that creatures like them can appreciate.
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Daniel, drawing shapes along his back, into his hair. Armand has the sense of them both being charcoal sketches, shaped by each others smudged fingertips.
"As do I."
He wonders if he would kill this hypothetical, unlikely fledgling, or if he would stand frozen at the sidelines of the thing as yet another tectonic plate shifted, formed a new ocean. Or if he would decide on the latter and one day snap and do it anyway. If Daniel would mind very much.
So far off, Daniel says. Armand thinks he is quite good at seeing to that distance, even if his past feels like smudged charcoal.
"I thought I knew you well," he says, as he thinks these things. "I thought I'd seen the depths of you before that moment. I suppose I had. But it's different. It's like a last flood of information before you become a black box. It's like I had you inside of me before I fed you yourself. And I did it very slowly."
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He doesn't know if he'd want to commit to that with anyone. Armand didn't give him a choice, and as fucked as that was, he thinks he prefers it. Which does not bode well for his prospects on making one.
No. Content with just them. He likes being Armand's only tether (ignoring the lurking maybe-maker back down the line behind Amadeo). He likes not having any flowing out of him. He hadn't really wanted to be a parent, he hadn't really wanted to be a husband. This is better.
"Do you think about it?" he asks. "Turning me?"
His memories of it have become clearer, over time, but it's still a bloody, disorienting mess.
"I do. For a second, I think I heard you in my head. Did I?"
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A strange period of time. Armand was not subject to the same utter disorientation that he dragged Daniel through, but still disoriented. Out of body, a little. In this moment, he thinks of Peanut, lamp eyed beneath the shadow of a chair, claws dug into the wooly interior of a slipper. Curious about what is happening in his little cat brain.
Hard to decipher what was going on in his own, on reflection. A series of actions, words, impulses, curiousities. And he was so—
Angry? He supposes so. A tree alight in a gallery.
"And yes," to answer the other question. "I didn't know if we would see each other again soon. I knew I couldn't be around you then. I tried to understand why I'd done what I'd done by explaining it." Amusement in his tone, lifting his head again. "You turned it back to me. As you are wont to do."
Daniel, somehow seeing through half a millennia, straight to the soul of who Amadeo was when he become immortal.
"It was selfish of me," he adds, but there is something warm in his tone. Pleased with himself, for doing the selfish thing.
(Yes, certain other vampires might scoff at this idea, that this is a change in behaviour for Armand. Perhaps they are right to.)
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Daniel's just a black hole. Dragging in light, experiences, information. Answers to his questions. He was interested in Armand in Dubai, even when he was telling him to shut up. He was interested in Armand while he was being tortured, because every psychopath has a motive. He was interested in Armand even in the bar the evening before. A beautiful, strange man, a thousand miles out of Daniel's league, and his boyfriend was stepping out on him.
Why? How fucking nuts must that guy be, for Louis to be looking elsewhere?
Pretty fucking nuts, it turns out. Daniel combs his fingers through his hair. Selfish. Yeah, he can see that. He can see the way Armand rationalizes and makes excuses. But there isn't one for Daniel, is there.
"Something for yourself," he observes. Him, that's the something. "You said one hundred years, but then you missed my annoying ass, huh."
Also pleased with himself.
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Amused. Warming to banter, to the tone in Daniel's voice. It is a reductive description of the stressors that led to him finding Daniel again, but not completely inadequate for it.
"You were out of your mind during your turning," Armand adds, tipping his head as he loos at him. Shifting to settle comfortably like this on top, arms folded. "You were in a different country. You thought I was someone you'd picked up. That you'd done rather well for yourself."
There'd been little moments in the interview that, if Daniel wasn't busy internally retching at the happily married routine, were potentially a little funny. Both of them with a habit for fondly recounting horrifying things. Hunting guys for sport, both of them with separate kinds of reminiscing smiles.
Some of that energy, speaking fondly of Daniel dying and delirious.
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Daniel continues to slowly move his hand up and down Armand's back, his elegant spine, the column of his neck, the base of his skull. He rests there sometimes, rubbing near his hairline. Thinking about stars, and vines, and how beautiful Armand is. How much like an interesting, dangerous insect, or like an alien, an HR Giger drawing. Beautiful, but horrible.
Funny, sometimes. Stupid sunglasses. Mean comments. Veering between nerdy and cutting. Daniel is leagues past shouldn't find it charming.
"Sounds like me." He'd have been baffled, indeed. Punching way above his weight. "A little spike to my dumbass ego before putting me into the craziest tailspin, that's nice of you."
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Floating, a little, but still pressed close. In a funny way, it feels like they're standing against each other.
"And how's your ego faring now?"
Little peeking hints of fang, a lazy hooded look to his expression, but still, eyes of sunset orange as slivers of their own light.
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A soft laugh, at the question. He sees flowers growing around Armand.
"Oh, inflated to the fucking moon." Armand called him handsome. Said he likes his body, likes drawing him, is happy he made him. Daniel is flustered and smug and happy and curious and all of it, all of it. He smiles and it distorts his face, aged as it is, but it's clear the mood is genuine. "You're so... you're the prettiest plant. And cool. The floating, it's cool..."
Hearing himself. Daniel scrunches his nose and closes his eyes, sigh. Still laughing. He knows he sounds like an idiot with a crush, not an old man talking to his own maker.
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Or maybe there is. This thing they share now is young. Daniel is still getting his bearings, learning. Armand, too, a new maker. Maybe that's all what it is.
"I'm cool," Armand echoes, as if pondering this assignment. Teasing. Even more unlikely than being a pretty plant. Even more likely than being called a seed with all of its potential. Endearing for it. Daniel's eyes are closed, so Armand uses his hands to touch at his face, guide him into a kiss.
A proper one. He isn't sure what sex will be like on the drugs they are on, how quick they are to fade, but he is in the mood to pursue the things he wants.
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Doubling down, despite being embarrassed at himself. Daniel murmurs it, smiles at the way Armand's fingers are on his face, and then smiles more at the kiss. Tangible beneath Armand's mouth before he reciprocates.
Mostly mushrooms, but there'd been some ecstasy too in the cocktail of the dead woman— mostly to fortify against paranoia and bad trips, build a buffer around Armand staring too long into the void. This is the other benefit: everything feels extra good, extra easy, ready and waiting to slip over into the warm water of sensuality, pleasantly wrapped in the heightened sensory experience of it all.
Terrifying, cool, a monster, his murderer, the prettiest plant. A person he likes to make out with.
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And it does all feel good and easy, settling with his thighs on either side of Daniel's, a pleasant alignment of their hips, letting a more human sense of gravity pull them together. His body feels extra alive and receptive, as if all these little grasping hallucinated fronds and leaves and petals are reaching out, tangling, rooting together in the barely-any-space between them.
A fair chance he could be content with just this, where sex is barely the transaction interlocking of parts but some extra-planar sharing, strange and romantic. But he can feel all the mechanical things beginning to shift, blood flow and flesh, and he indulges in a shifting movement, hips pressing, rubbing just a little as they kiss.
Or make out.
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with both.
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Swaddled in vines and stars. Daniel kisses him, and kisses him, and one of his roaming hands moves down lower on its path, and incorporates squeezing Armand's rear into the equation. He feels comfortable, he trusts that this kind of touch is alright for him to do, and he hopes that's still the case. He likes fooling around with Armand. It's fun, and profound. Hints of something kinkier lurking, while being some of the most emotionally significant encounters he's ever had.
The most? Maybe. Probably.
The thread that binds them seems to wind closer. Like it, too, is wrapping around them with everything else. They can't read each other, but they can feel each other. One heartbeat.
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Which is always true, but complicated, snarled up enough that it takes work to untangle, work he doesn't always wish to do. Now it is simple.
So: an encouraging, satisfied sound for the feeling of Daniel palming over him, a shift of his body back into this touch, and then back down into where he is settled. He wishes they didn't have any clothes in the way, and as he wishes it, there is an odd sense that Daniel might pick up, of fabric being tugged in a few different directions. Pulled taut, then loose again.
Not simply clumsy telekinetic grasping, but also, a seam weaving itself apart, threads furling out into the air like ink in water. Buttons skittering aside, a closed zipper unmoored from the stitching. As if nothing is very real, or everything is temporary, and can be disassembled once it is made aware of itself.
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You know. Night swimming. Funny movies. Flowers.
Life sucks, but sometimes: worth it.
"Is that..?"
He thinks he's imagining it at first. Or rather, he thinks it's a part of a hallucination that's perfectly merged with the reality of their current circumstances. But something really is unstitching his clothes, and only one person present is capable. Daniel lifts one hand to observe this process, the way his sleeve detaches itself at the shoulder, thread spooling away, fabric lifting.
"Yeah. Told you so."
Cool.
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"I like that you like it," he says, as they are undressed in this way. Shifting a little to let fabric slither and split apart between them. "That you don't fear it as you should."
(A little unfair to Louis, maybe, who came into things with a whole mess of perfectly valid hang ups and worries about the balancing of power, overtuned to it, watchful of it. Armand did what he could. He limited his reminders.)
He lays a harmless bite to Daniel's chin.
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And it's neat. Armand is very powerful, and he's very skilled. Anyone who can move things with their mind could drag a sofa across a room. His maker is unspooling all of their clothes, leaving skin on skin, and Daniel's back on the luxury rug in this room.
Neat, and impressive. It's very Armand. Detailed and precise and unusual. It's an expression of how sees the world, and it always surprises Daniel. He likes it. He does sometimes think of being crunched repeatedly into the floor, or his tapes being turned into shiny black noodles of their own accord, but those terrifying memories are things to be dissected now. Interesting that he's had them for fewer years than they've existed. Interesting that they met in such a deranged fashion.
"It makes me happy that you feel comfortable doing it. Letting me see."
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And maybe vampiric death is different, the kinds of promises Armand makes, the kinds of mental states he can coax a mind into, but none of that occurred in the Dubai penthouse. Just fire, fangs, a sense of wishing to see the thing that happens next.
A compass that points to danger. Points to Armand.
He moves to press now naked bodies together, the subtle misalignment of proportions just encouraging movement. He is not actually desperately hard or anything, but not disinterested, blood flow coaxing him along slowly, the way petals turn or leaves rise. Around them, the remnants of their clothing settle and collapse, strange unmade shreds, stray buttons, the last shivers of motion writhing snake-like until they go still.
"Spook, then," is his belated amendment to his statement. Writers.
He kisses Daniel, not a sudden clash but a swift rise in pressure, intimacy, intention. He feels a little like they could just wriggle together in this strangely sensitive state of sharing and find some kind of conclusion that way, but he also wants this. Wants the friction of coarse hair, the neutral tang of saliva and the glossy bite of fangs against tongue. Wants all those base physical things. Wants to be greedy.
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Particularly when all of that is naked and pressed against him, kissing him, rubbing and shifting and finding nice ways to braid their limbs together. He hums something into Armand's mouth, not really an answer; easy agreement. Yeah, he doesn't spook. No more nerves around Armand, except for when it's adrenaline, like being on a rollercoaster just before the drop. Terror, excitement, fucked up glee. Louis would be disappointed to see all the souvenir pictures of Daniel stuck in Armand's Wild Ride, smiling over and over with each rotation.
Sensual and cozy, erotic, strange. Daniel lets his hands roam, petting wherever their enmeshing movements take him. His initial concerns with bringing sex into their complicated disaster of a connection, his stubborn insistence that there be no foundation of the curse of maitre, seems insignificant. None of that matters, because none of that's here. It's just skin, warm from blood, mouths and the prickle of hair, of teeth. Daniel's fangs are there for a few moments, then not, indecisive, but he's barely conscious of it.
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Armand wonders: does he miss it? For a moment, he doesn't know. It had been satisfying to bare his neck to Louis, to feed him his blood, to be the supplementary course in his dining that had done as much to keep his lover functional as the Farm had, and wasn't that pleasing? It had felt like service, yes, an act of submission to sit obediently and tip his head aside, but something else. The feeling of his own essence snaking into Louis' body, strengthening it, slipping through his arteries, pumped by his heart, into his brain, into his cock.
And now there is Daniel. Much the same. No, more so. If Armand is a plant, then Daniel is sodden earth and he feels it like a tangled root system inside of his fledgling. His fledgling, his, a strange extension of himself, an additional nervous system intrinsically connected to his own, no matter how far it wanders. He rubs against him, presses up into roaming hands, thinks about Daniel's long fangs sinking into his throat, his blood saturated him, claiming him, claiming each other.
Some sober part of him says: no. Not yet.
"Make me come," he says, a murmur against Daniel's shoulder. An instruction, for all that it's so softly delivered. He can feel himself becoming calculated. He doesn't wish to be. Armand might have to make a note to feel embarrassed later, plastered and wriggling against Daniel and making this plea, but for now, it is what he wants too much for that to matter.
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"Mmn?"
Has he ever received a sweeter order? Daniel smiles to himself, and continues his appreciative petting. Stops only to press his index finger down on a spot at the base of Armand's spine. Playful. Hm? Oh? Does this work? Is there a button he can push?
Hands stroke up, down, the breadth of his palms, then careful, light trails of pointed claws. Thinks about how he might do that, even as they continue to shift and rub against each other. Daniel is hard, or at least halfway, a comfortable thing that's crept up on him. It feels more real, now that Armand has bid him do this, but still dreamy, high. He rubs Armand's hipbones, the curved muscle of his behind, and slides his touch into the cleft of his rear. Everything is easy and exploratory with clear appreciation to the way his body feels under his hands, and it's unhurried. When he begins to slide fingers (and the tease of nails) over hidden-away parts of him, it's mostly the tops of his inner thighs. Leisurely searching for places Armand likes to be touched.
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A favourable comparison: the way he can feel shy with Daniel, the way he had felt it on occasion with Louis, the way Lestat had to coax such feelings out of him, speaks to a certain amount of presence that he could choose to opt out from. He has had half a millennia with his own body, has run the gamut of thinking himself as grotesque, of believing he is beautiful, of caring about either thing, of feeling nothing at all. Has known how something like feeling embarrassment would be a luxury for what it means.
And Armand feels claws tease at such an intimate place and feels his body flush hot, has to urge himself to follow the impulse to skid his knees a little wider as Daniel's fingers make their unhurried exploration. Daniel touches him as if the experience of that alone is arousing, the feeling of his skin beneath his palms and fingertips, and he warms for that too.
His own hands make less work for themselves. One grips a shoulder, the other lingers over his ribs, an anchoring kind of hold for the time being.
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Everything is heightened, awareness zeroing in on physical contact. Armand's weight against him has turned his whole body into pleasant, easy nerves. He steals a kiss as he squeezes one globe of his ass, kneads it, and experiments with sliding fingers inward. Not seeking penetration, instead, seeking the soft skin tucked away there, where the right pressure will stimulate the prostate externally.
Daniel's enjoying this configuration too much to want to move, not even to wriggle a hand between them. Not yet. He wants to stay just the way they are, and he wants to touch Armand in a way that doesn't ask anything of his maker besides accepting the touch. He feels almost selfish, wanting Armand to just let him do whatever. But how often does he get to feel up his terrifying, beautiful maker, while he's a warm, high puddle draped over him?
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Scatters apart with each new thing, like here, the press of fingertips urging a soft, approving sound out of him. Flushes away that brief clawing feeling of embarrassment at himself, suffuses it into something simpler, and his hips shift back against this hand in needy response at that deeply rooted pulse of pleasure.
Kisses Daniel's neck. Shoulder. The bone and muscle leading back to the base of his throat, wild curls of hair tickling along against his face. A panting hot breath across warm skin as Armand catches himself with a rub of hardening length against Daniel's hip, low on his abdomen.
And overall, a tug of need pulls at Daniel's body, something like telekinesis or a shift of gravity that presses them closer together. Like Armand has command over local physics, impulses eking out into the air around them.
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When did he get so fucking sappy?
Probably the mushrooms. The universe expanding his mind, brushing away all the cobwebs of self-deprecation and hesitation. Daniel feels good, and Armand likes him, and he has no reason to be shy or insecure. He can slide his touch further in, find where he's questing for, rub at him. He can shift just enough let Armand feel that he's getting hard for him, too, and he can turn his head to kiss his maker's forehead and temple, breathe in deep the smell of his silky hair, and—
Feel that. Like a current pulling him. Reality bending to envelop just the two of them. Daniel lets it coat him, and he reaches for it with his mind, even as he continues to look for just the right angle to make Armand sigh.
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Armand sighs. Moves only as impulse directs, the lift of his hips back against Daniel's hand, and then back down to rub himself against soft skin, the sympathetic burgeoning hardness nestled against his own. Gravity is replaced by something more magnetic, trapping them together. Pulling Daniel's body against his own, off the ground by fractional degrees.
He has ruined the rug a little. More than a little. Patches have become thin and shabby through threads unravelling, twisting, making shapes and patterns of their shared, imagined garden, if not so artful, just wild, tangled. Daniel can reach out and maybe it feels like a series of invisible hands linking fingers, testing strength.
Armand is stronger, of course, but isn't interested in overpowering, showing off in that way. Just showing, demonstrating the texture of reality that creatures like them can appreciate.
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