followups | way down we go.

They cannot read each other's minds. Privacy, forever. But there's no way to miss Daniel's pulse ticking up in an instant— a startle expressed only internally, the rest of him remaining under the spell of surreal domesticity they cast on themselves during days like this. His traitor heart does not slow down once he's processed that tiny, seismic movement, further condemning him to exposure.

Why?

The movie no longer exists. He thinks of ruining Armand's life, barking every slave name at him just to be cruel and to draw blood over vengeance for a week of torture and a following lifetime of strange dreams. He thinks of looking at each other in Dubai; in silence, during the day, in sound, at night when Louis was there, talking about things Daniel should have been listening to. Dark, deep pools staring out at him from Armand's face, inviting him to drown.

How fast it happened. Out of spite, Louis said. But sometimes Daniel thinks of those eyes, and drowning, and he wonders if Armand decided far earlier. If he realized he'd decided. If sitting there and continuing the interview was as good as wading into the dark water.

Alright. Maybe he knows why.

Daniel flexes his fingers, splays them, allows Armand to hold him captive. A permissive and curious pause, with all of his attention wrapped up in it while an irrelevant cartoon plays and splashes changing colors over them.

Armand is aware he has visited a significant amount of pain onto Daniel. Much of the worst of it, without using his hands or his fangs, but also: his hands insistently stroking the man's face, his hair, violent for what they meant, violent for being unwanted and cruel. It wouldn't be exculpating in the least if he remembered it as a kind of dream, disassociated from his present self.

But worse, he remembers it all with perfect clarity, what he was thinking, how he was feeling. Far different from memories of half a millennia ago. Remembers sweat-greasy curls, the scent of tears and blood, the warm weight of him when he was finally pushed enough to stop fighting.

New memories, now. Associations. Tangled hands. Sleeping on the same mattress, waking to watch the long breaths in and out. A clinging embrace that Daniel had not been cognizant to as his blood was stolen.

Thinks of that now as Armand focuses on the infinitely fine feeling of a pulse beneath his mouth. No bloodlust behind the way it intrigues him, pressing a more deliberate kiss there, hand sliding to push Daniel's sleeve out of the way, thumb following the line of muscle from wrist to midway up towards the elbow.

A rare temptation, to bite. To taste what he can't excavate for himself. Maybe in time. Instead, a following kiss to the meat of Daniel's palm. Eventually, he will have to look up and observe his fledgling's face.

Once upon a time, Daniel offered himself. Not an offer of earnest lust, but an attempt to buy his way out of a nightmare situation that he was still struggling to make sense of. He'd traded sex plenty, mostly for drugs, but sometimes for safety. It wouldn't have been anything, just another strange dot on the line of his addictions.

Maybe. Maybe blowing a vampire would have permanently rewired something in him. Fucked him up in a different way. Less mortal peril, more psychosexual torment. Though he thinks there's already plenty of the latter between them. He wonders if it's as confusing for Armand as it is for him.

Daniel continues to allow the searching touch, and he continues to enjoy it. Armand kisses his palm, and Daniel slides fingertips over Armand's cheek.

Is this real?

Armand's hand overlaps, following along. Daniel would say something. He would have said something by now if he wasn't welcome. He presses Daniel's hand further against him as he considers himself.

Grainy voices from the movie in the air, no thoughts at all that Armand can access. It has been an inconceivably long time since he has been with any paramour or momentary fling that he could not simply read exactly what it is they wanted and expected from him. And before that doesn't bear thinking about it. Certainly not now.

So call it a uniquely new experience instead. Because it is.

Armand shifts to align himself closer against Daniel so that he doesn't have to twist when he lifts his head and looks at him. The lighting is dim and strange, but they are vampires, and his eyes are a specific kind of dark amber, a tone of the earth rather than leaping flames. Wood and clay. He places a hand on Daniel's chest, bracing, zigzags a look over his face.

Daniel is a better read of people, in contrast. All signs point to the desire to bridge that gap between them.

All signs, if Armand weren't Armand. Daniel has consistently read so much in him— seems to always know when he's lying, except for when Armand doesn't know Armand is lying. Which happens, sometimes. The mind is not a palace of many rooms. It's a battlefield suspended over twisting layers. Daniel imagines them on opposite sides, Daniel imagines them meeting in quiet tents, where everything is peaceful.

Armand wants to kiss him. Daniel wants it, too. He's an infuriating monster, unrecognizable as human, sometimes he's too fucking stupid to find his way out of a paper bag, and he is ruinous in his attempts to right himself. And yet he's interesting, and creative, and good in an argument, and he likes dismal poets and screwed up cartoons. They're the only two people that exist. More and more, that thought does not feel isolating.

The arm he's had around Armand stays though the adjustment in posture, and Daniel curls his fingers against Armand's back, then splays them again. A tender hold that nearly surprises him, despite what he's been doing this whole time.

"Please answer me out loud," is quiet, but steady. "May I kiss you?"

They don't have to guess. They can learn to read each other, and they can ask. He wants Armand's permission. He wants to hear it.

Daniel has been holding him the whole time, but Armand feels it as a comforting weight now as he turns to press along side and against him, as Daniel gives him that request, asks that question. He knows immediately that he would cut loose the notion of sexual or even sensual intimacy if it meant losing that kind of tenderness.

But it stays. Under Daniel's arm, ribs and shoulders lift along with a deeper breath in and out.

"Yes," he says, fingers curling in the fabric of Daniel's shirt. Armand shifts, enough to meet him a little more than half way, but inviting Daniel to close the last few necessarily fractions.

He said yes.

Okay.

Armand is so close to him now. Daniel tells himself that this isn't going to be the thing that wrecks it between them, it's fucking laughable to think anything could wreck it between them when torture hasn't. If it falls flat, they've overcome worse things. They've destroyed each other already and seen where the pieces fit back together. They can make it no matter what and that is...

Just phenomenal. How are you possible? he wonders, and then nudges forward that last little bit, and presses his mouth to his maker's.

This is a comfort too.

And more. Armand, closing his eyes, pushing that little bit forwards to insist himself on that kiss. Gentle fingers setting at the edge of Daniel's jaw. (There'd been next to no thought on his part about the subjects of sexuality and gender, those trivial human anxieties that Daniel nevertheless has been caught in before. The young man who had offered to suck his cock fifty years ago did not do so out of desire, he knows.

But all the same.) It's a shallow kiss, sweet that way, but there, a press of intimacy, where they might open for each other. When Armand withdraws, its by a scant distance alone. Lifts his head a little more so they can look at each other without crossing their eyes.

"Would you want me this way?" has notes of Am I boring?, purely in the way it leaves him open for the potential to be hurt. Less clawing desperation, at least.

It's easier than it should be. No clap of ominous thunder, no psychic floor falling out from under them. Just a kiss that feels like a warm extension of the ways they already tangle together while the rest of the world fades away.

Daniel looks at him. Little flecks of awe like the first time he saw him floating in the reading room, spirals of warm affection, warm blood-gold-blue reflecting in each other. Armand has grown so familiar, as a person and a monster. There's no room between them for insecurities, no place for You're beautiful enough to have anyone, no excuse for Daniel to shudder back under the shame of his physical age. These things have been peeled away. Armand is fucking crazy. Daniel isn't squeamish.

Still. A bit of surprise. Half at the vulnerability, half at it being kind of a stupid question. Mixed. A soup of surprise.

"I've thought about it," he says. "Often enough that I've had to make myself stop thinking about it. Because I didn't want to derail anything by being an asshole."

He touches Armand's face, which is perfect, and still occasionally nightmare inducing. They've made peace and they've made friends, and every so often, Daniel still falls asleep and sees radiating orange eyes staring at him in the midst of his worst nightmares, then wakes up and those eyes are besides him, closed, dozing contentedly against his chest. He's gotten used to it.

"I want you in any way that you'll have me, too."

Do you think I'm boring? — No. One word. Not his best. Could have used workshopping. This also may need some, its careful, awkward honesty. Armand can't read his mind, and Daniel is terrible at connecting sincerely, and, and, and. They are still so close.

A flicker of a look in Armand's eyes, his expression—a sympathy with some humour to it, for not wishing to derail things. There is a lot they might stand to lose. For Armand, an anchor in the sea of him. For Daniel—

Well. He has expressed before that Armand is frightening.

Focus sharpens at that next thing. He does not mind it if honesty is awkward. It could be a problem, if he is trying to be careful, and fails at it. Honesty has a way of rattling out of him when it comes, as if he'd been holding on to too much of it and has no way of gracefully setting it down. Slipping between his fingers, overflowing. Rare, that. Rarer and rarer as the time moved along with Louis.

"I want you completely," he says. Daniel is his. Has he ever possessed something, truly? Presiding over the coven like a boy given the leash to a wild tiger. A dim memory of a painting being displayed, and although it was known that it was Amadeo who painted it, the praise was awarded to the one who had tutored him. Lestat, never his, never even pretended at it. Louis, who did not wish to feel like he was owned.

But Daniel is his. His fledgling. There is nothing under heaven that could change this fact. And it gives him no right to anything beyond the knowledge of its truth.

He would like more, if given it. It takes barely any movement to press their mouths together again, and then follows slipping a knee on the other side of Daniel as he does so.

Completely. Has anyone ever wanted him like that? Has there ever been anyone who he would believe wanted him like that? Armand has seen everything. The very worst, most pathetic, most offensive parts of him. And he's still here, like he feels that strange, comfortable isolation too.

(He knows it's the bond. He doesn't care that it's the bond. He cares about the bond. Crucial distinctions.)

"It's yours."

All of it, whatever he wants. Daniel, apparently, which despite all his brashness still makes some small part of him inside tremble with anxiety and anticipation. He is open, accepting, fucking eager for more contact, frankly, but the look in his eyes as Armand closes the small gap to kiss him again has traces of Me? You're picking me?

Him, to slide up against. Him to turn. Him to torture for a week. Armand, his maker, his everything else anymore. Daniel tips his head into the kiss and lets him move where he wants, arms around him welcoming and supportive— only slightly awkward with where to put things (things like hands). It's been decades since he's messed around with another man in earnest. Buried behind him as too complicated to bother with. He could, there's been opportunity, he just hasn't.

It's overwhelming, this thing Daniel says. Armand is in the mood to feel overwhelmed.

To settle like this on top of Daniel has he has imagined doing so before, straddling and pressed in tightly to kiss him. To feel Daniel's arms around him and for his hands to find places to settle. Me? says that flicker in Daniel's eyes and Armand can dedicate all parts of himself to answering Yes, you.

A hand, travelling up the side of Daniel's neck, over that old circle of bite marks from half a century ago. Slipping into his hair, feeling its texture between gentle fingers, running a line with his thumb down the curve of skull to neck. A different, roving touch to the last time the way he touched Daniel resembled this. No too-hard petting.

And kissing him, a way of doing so that tests what Daniel says, inviting him to yield.

A shriek of some kind from the television, and barely a flicker of Armand's eyelashes follow the television going black. No scent of anything fried, so he probably just hit an off switch. Probably. They're doused in silence, in dimness, Armand's knees gently squeezing in on either side of Daniel's thighs.

Daniel doesn't give a fuck about the TV.

Armand, warm and pressing down on him. It sends something profound up his spine, more than a jolt, different from the kind of arousal he feels with the humans he still hooks up with sometimes; he's never held another vampire this way. The feeling is different. He hadn't noticed— how could he? Why would he?

Kissing him is unexpected richness. Light with care and reverence, dark with eons-old promises of The only two on Earth, and that silver, shivery, bond. Daniel has never truly yielded to Armand— never fought him for dominance, but made him work. At patience, at communication, at being honest, at showing up. He has never been a dutiful, studious fledgling, even in times of learning from him. A pain in the ass to teach. Impossible to steal the last word from. Armand, paying the price of saving him, fifty years and counting.

He yields here. Leaning back to let Armand sink against him. Tipping his chin and letting him kiss him the way he wants, the way that feels good for him. Holding him and sliding his hands around his back, over the ribcage that houses that too-intense heart, up his spine, touching silken black hair, cradling him with a touch that's welcoming and capturing at once.

It doesn't matter anymore, why Armand made him. They've made the rest on purpose.

Absurd that he is extremely contented by the idea of spending a long time making out like teenagers. Old men both, for all the ways he does not consider Daniel to truly be that. A fascinating mix of human maturity and vampiric youth, and a mind as sharp as any mortal, no sign of dulling.

Armand relaxes bodily beneath these long strokes of Daniel's hands, as if he has craved that as much as the kiss burning between them. Feels, too, Daniel yield, and the kiss deepens, still slow, still testing things between them. Feels his own blood warming by the time fingers are in his hair, and the hand he has braced at Daniel's side curls into a fist, gathering fabric there.

As soon as he feels content with what he has, comes the desire for more.

This manifests as a wandered kiss, landing at the corner of Daniel's mouth, cheek, ear, then tucking down to the scarred side of his neck. To the way the hem of Daniel's shirt is pulled upwards by an inch, a few inches.

Who knows how long they spend in that first pool of it; Daniel loses his ability to accurately guess the passage of time, and the sun loses its ability to pull him into sleep. This bedroom has become its own universe out of time.

Which is a lot, for a couple of weird guys kissing. They've earned it, he thinks. An indulgence in feeling.

It shocks him that he believes Armand wants him. Quite a bit to unpack about it, most of it laughably mundane in the face of winding their vampiric bond closer and closer, and he'll do it ... later. The instinct to flinch and offer to leave his shirt on creeps up, perhaps tangible for a moment when he pauses a little to feel Armand pull at it, but he makes himself relax.

Completely, Armand said, It's yours, he answered. And he meant it. He'll trust Armand with himself, even though it's objectively stupid to do so. It's the kiss against his ear that did it, maybe. He brings a hand around to touch Armand's chest, stroke over the contours of him through his shirt, feel his heart and his breathing the old-fashioned way. Up, to cradle his face, press a thumb against his mouth just to feel the shape of his lips, and then replace it with his own, silently asking for more, deeper, all of it.

It's nice to exist in a space where nothing else exists. No one else. Armand is not entirely certain he has felt that before, if the elusive bond itself is to blame, or something else, something changed in him, nothing left to lose but the person who is ushering him into a kiss.

He hasn't put much thought into what he does or does not deserve. The answer is nothing, obviously, which makes the question useless. Earned is more compelling, more fair, but the matter of being deserving feels like an inaccessible alternate dimension, a question for people who aren't him, subject to higher judgment. There has, however, been a kind of jealous rebellion in his occupation of Daniel's focus.

And here, it eases, as Daniel touches him, as Armand's skin tingles in the wake of stroking fingers. Daniel, feeling his heart beat, his lungs inflate and deflate. Touches his mouth, and they kiss each other again.

Isolating. It feels good not to be tethered to a bunch of fucking people, and no one he has to manage. His fledgling is a terrible student in the best way.

Considers that little hesitation he had sensed, sharply attuned. There is a pleasing strip of bare skin above Daniel's waistband, and now he gets his fingers up under the hem, lets the fabric catch against his knuckles and wrist and draw up a little more as he smooths a flat hand over Daniel's belly, to his sternum. The faint scratch of nails, followed by gentler palm.

Fate versus chaos. Maybe they were destined, and the wealthy reclusive vampire he was always meant to meet in San Fransisco was Armand the whole time. Or maybe this is just finding the sweet within bitter, making something worthwhile out of spite. In a hundred years, Daniel might have enough insight to be able to sketch out the skeleton of a story about it.

A hitch of breath at those touches, the contrast between nails and softer. He slides one hand from Armand's face to his shoulder, lower, over his criminally expensive bland t-shirt to the cuff where it breaks into skin. Loops his arm around so it's not squished, and touches him. Exploring like everything, even boring parts like the inches tucked under a shirt sleeve, is hypnotic and worthy of investigation and anointing. Light touch of nails, echoing the sensation he's enjoying, smoothed over with immortal skin.

Also fun: aimless making out. Fucking great, actually.

They could spend all day doing simply this, and Armand would be content. Maybe they will. It isn't until several minutes pass that it occurs to him that he does want more, and that he could have it if he wanted, and the idea is slow to release him once it takes hold.

Doesn't rush, still. Basking in this attention, for all that basking in attention is an experience not without its baggage. Daniel's attention. Different from anyone else's. Interested, and curious, and borderline permissive and deferential, and that is its own thrill. That diverts blood in his body, and it's pleasing to feel something as mundane as lust stirring in him. Not the first time, no, but the most dedicated, the most obvious.

Aimless making out, long minutes, time slipping past without definition, until Armand shifts. Reorients until he is sitting up, straddling Daniel, a hand planted on his chest, rucked up shirt. In the dimness, his eyes show off bright rings of orange—thin, around black pupils.

"I desire you," he says. Easy and barely conscious to settling on him, an intimate press of weight and warmth. "I have for a while."

Hands at Armand's sides, one sliding low on his hip, the arch of the joint, following it, thumb sliding along the vee between his hips. Stopping low, but stopping. It's dark in here, but there are enough pinpoints of it from this small source or that, and Armand is still illuminated. Draped in deep velvet colors and outlines of amber light, centered around the hypnotic glow of brilliantly inhuman eyes.

Okay—

Don't say 'okay', that's weird, though the plainness of what Armand tells him makes arousal spark through him. He squeezes his hips, presses in against the meat of his muscles with slow pressure of fingertips.

"What have you been thinking about, specifically?"

As tempting as the idea of just going with instinct is, Don't kill the mood, Daniel needs to know. If Armand tries calling him 'maitre', he's kicking him out and they get to work on rebuilding from this, to.

He had sat up and started talking because he wanted to talk, but specifically gives him pause. A pause in which Armand can luxuriate in being so settled, in the slow pressure of Daniel's fingertips at his hips, at what this configuration could do for them with few obstacles in the way.

"That I wish to know you better," he says. Honesty, then. He lets it tumble out. "I want to know what you like and then give you that."

No mind reading, no cheating his way past verbal description. Louis might say, now, that he didn't enjoy the roles they had shared, but Armand would not have encouraged it if he didn't think it was what Louis needed of him, if he didn't in part need it in return.

He doubts, at least, that Daniel wants to be his master. He thinks he would be disappointed to find out if he did.

It's so fucking surreal to compare San Fransisco to now. The significance has him in a chokehold, and at the same time, the tenderness of how they're just pressed together, touching, kissing, feels easy. A pleasant sinking, opposed to falling into a dark pit.

Daniel sits up just enough to kiss Armand, a light press, a silent thank-you for answering. He's slow to lean back down, just looking up at him.

"I like a lot." He strokes over Armand's thigh, following the strong line of it to his knee, back up. "It's been a long time since I've been with another man, so you'll have to put up with some fumbling. I.. don't want to hurt you, or hold you down, or anything like that."

He's been into plenty of harder shit. And following, plenty of that has been voluntary and unrelated to purchasing drugs. But is feels wrong for Armand— nothing to do with wanting to be subservient to his maker (right? right), instead, a more mundane instinct. One that finds the idea of contributing to certain patterns to be a turn-off.

Armand responds to the kiss with a gentle answer. Almost surprised by it, despite the way they've been sharing in this contact for a little while now. His torso lists in as if he might pursue more. Stops himself, contents himself with a hand settling higher up at Daniel's shoulder, fingertip tracing the collar of his shirt.

A little smile for the topic of fumbling, and it fades but doesn't freeze at the rest. A flicker of a look down, acknowledgment, and back up.

"It's been a long time since I've been with anyone different," he says. "So we may find ourselves fumbling together."

And that might be nice, says his tone. Different kinds of potential clumsiness, granted.

"I won't ask that of you," to address the rest. Humour present when he adds, "And I suppose my reminding you that it's not possible for you to truly do those things is beside the point."

Nearly eighty years is a long time to spend with one person; no matter how fucked up, it was a relationship longer than Daniel's been alive. Though there's mild, buried surprise that Armand hasn't messed around in between then and now. He wonders if it's bothered Armand that Daniel has, but then decides: probably not. None of them have turned up dead, and he's backwards engineered all of Armand's acts of torment to the various sources of his ire.

So far.

Daniel lifts a knee up to jostle him slightly, a little teasing motion.

"I know you can kick my ass no problem," he says. "It's the dynamic I don't want to get near. So, thank you." For saying he's not going to ask it of him. It's a relief. I want to know you better, too. Learn what you like."

Nice to be on the same page.

Will they lose this, eventually? The cosy affection, the humour in this little jostling gesture? It seems not only possible but inevitable. It would be easy to begin despairing, to pivot to concern that Armand will have to take great care to preserve what he is enjoying, what is new and familiar, that to change might be to erode, to fret for his skills in preservation, given his history—

Maybe later. Another time to consider the horrors of centuries of unlife ahead of them.

"The dynamic," he echoes. Not an affirmation that it's what he likes, just a thought, circled. "One without punishment." Fine. His hands ease up to find a place amongst the pillows on either side of Daniel's shoulders, a different orientation of his hips. Answers that jostle with a less playful, or differently playful, rub of contact.

Watching him. The odd mercurial mix of eye colour, where it's currently settled. "You don't wish to be in charge of us," he adds, a question in a statement. More than just refusing to be a source of pain.

"We've got plenty of other ways to punish each other."

Bitter arguing. Armand looking at Daniel's horrible doodles and possibly regretting his agreement to join in with life drawing classes— he tries earnestly for Armand's sake, but he's just awful. The times when Armand tries to get Daniel to do things without asking, the times when Daniel treats Armand like a subject to get an angle on. The complication of friendships. Remembering.

Plenty, without bringing it into this.

Daniel slides fingers around one wrist, slowly traces up and down Armand's forearm, allowing himself to be caged in. Watches him, shifts up just so into the way he flexes down.

"If it's something you're set on I'd be willing to negotiate, but overall, no, I don't want to." He nudges his knee up again, quirks an eyebrow at Armand. "Not here, anyway." More teasing, though this time it's a dare. Daniel isn't going to start being subservient in night to night life, but what's Armand interested in here?

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