followups | way down we go.

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?

It's true. There has been no one.

Less out of duty or celibacy or restraint so much as Armand staying completely out of the way of other vampires and having absolutely no desire to fuck a human. This is something that is slow for young ones to grasp, the way the difference between vampire and mortal can feel as profound as the difference between a man and a dog, or a man and a child. Different species, different conceptions of reality, empathy, reasoning. Something distasteful about the idea, to him, possibly part of the tangle of having never wished to work the Dark Trick.

Or maybe that isn't Armand's age. Maybe that's just Armand. He had been transformed and then found himself on a higher plane of existence to humanity, and was no longer subject to the things he'd been shaped to endure. Then, a fire, and he found himself on a lower plane of existence to humanity, beneath their feet, existing in their shadows, never to mingle.

This feels human, though. Pleasantly ordinary. "I don't want to hurt you either," after a moment, as if taking a second to decide that this is true. He doesn't want things to feel like San Francisco. Whatever joy he'd derived from making Daniel shake and cry isn't the kind of joy he seeks now. That had, anyway, been about Louis.

"But if you would want to indulge me, I'd enjoy using you. Sometimes."

'It's like fucking a dog' could be another thing outside of here to be wielded as punishment, probably. Daniel would make a very funny sound. Though whether or not Daniel is going to be fucking anyone else ever again is very much up in the air, at this time.

Daniel turns his head and presses a kiss to the inside of Armand's forearm, even as he continues to touch him there, sliding the tips of diamond-hard nails over his skin. Good, that Armand doesn't want to hurt him. That's a good boundary, even though Daniel might not deny him that outright. Again: he has indulged in harder, kinkier things than making out in the dark, and not all because they were transactional. It interests him that this negotiation has continued to feel as erotic as a physical act, too.

Eyebrows. Oh?

"Use me how?"

Daniel's not a virgin, he can make several educated guesses. He wants to hear Armand describe it.

A fair question, and Armand wishes to be honest in these dealings, and also wishes to protect the odd little permutations around his feelings of possessiveness. The erotic ones and the less so. Protect them from Daniel's scrutiny, he who had doubted the vampire bond in place of maybe Louis had been kind of fucked up, ill with the abuse he had one through, among other latent, decidedly non-supernatural glitches.

No. Not thinking of them. Just this, Daniel solid beneath him, that little spot on his forearm tingling after a kiss, the sparks induced by sharp nails drawing paths over his skin.

"Maybe I would hold you down," he says. "Focus on only what I need from your body. There will be," hm, a pause, considering his wording, before continuing after a fractional pause, "times I wish to do it the other way. To serve you. It would please me."

Another slow shift of his body, a heavier way of his breath leaving him. "But I've never had someone to myself this way. I've never felt ownership over anything. Anyone. I want to."

Is that bad? Maybe. Complicated. But here we are.

Louis' insistence that the bond seduced him and his maker into being the only two people on Earth was met with skepticism because they had a third (and a forth, in Antoinette). But he understands now it was plain and simple favoritism making it true, and he finds himself unable to even consider the hypothetical of Armand making another. His mind skitters away from it. Probably a fucked up sign. A fucked up sign, of more things that are fucked up, and he welcomes all of it, because despite all of his shit talking, he really, really likes feeling like he and Armand are all there is.

Daniel takes stock of these ideas, imagining them, letting the potential wash over him. Impossible to miss the way his breathing ticks up a little, and the way he's only growing warmer. The idea of being served by someone with Armand's past threatens to string a stitch of unease through him, but he's a little foregone in the arousal department, and besides, Armand has had quite a while to unpack his own issues. If he has. But telling a survivor what they can and can't be turned on by is bullshit.

Ownership. His pulse speeds up, telltale. A horrible thing to know that in 1973, Armand described him accurately, and that a part of him in the midst of the most intense fear and shame he'd ever felt, thought it was kind of hot. That part of him seizes onto something now and says Yes, more of that, and has to take a slow breath.

Complicated. Yep. Here we fucking are.

"You're the only one," he says, and he's shocked at how affected he sounds. Uncharacteristically, he falls short on explaining what he means by that. Maybe it's clear. Armand is singular. In the world, and to him.

It catches him off guard, having not intended to press for this kind of assurance. Unless some part of him had, had wanted to hear it, but it doesn't stop him from going still. His own growing warmth, quicker bloodflow, speaking his own arousal into being and helped along by hearing it echoed in Daniel's body. And now this, a more private reaction unless Daniel were to drink the truth from his blood, or,

catch it, there, in Armand's expression. Seeing through the dark, the subtle widening of his eyes, some near-nervous set to his jaw. A drawn breath in, slowly let out.

"Yes," he says, on a delay. "As you are for me."

No other fledglings, no other immortal lovers. He had turned Daniel because he wanted Daniel to live forever, because he wanted a companion, and here it is. Almost embarrassing, how simple it has all turned out to be.

Is it reassurance? Is it offering himself? All of it? Daniel meant to say more, the only person he'd trust like this, the only one he's going to let this happen with, ever. Ever, and forever is so fucking long, so fucking long that Armand is living on an alien planet, and someday, Daniel will be, too. And it lands just the way it is, correct even without his say-so, and he sees it in Armand.

His own breath is nervous. This is a lot.

"Please kiss me."

A sharper breath in, before he sinks down. Obeying without feelings of obedience, gladly fitting them back together as Armand kisses Daniel. The contact feels certain and sure of his own welcome, and like it is going to be one of many such instances, and like it is the first time again. His hand, smooth and warm against Daniel's cheek.

New ones are so fragile. Armand knows this better than most. The amount of times he has flicked a glance at one, focused in on the core of them, and set them ablaze like they were made of tinder and dry straw—scarcely effort on his part.

And now there is this one, immortal but fragile. He has never cared for one. He can't begin to fathom the idea of the true ancients waking, so he can at least take some comfort that by the standards of the active vampire populace, his presence is armor enough.

Daniel pulls his arms around him, feeling so strangely needy in a way he hasn't been since he was much younger. Or maybe never before— he finds it too difficult to think of a time that was exactly like this. There's no comparison. This is another life, and Armand is unlike anything, anyone else, for good and ill.

He kisses him with intent, learning the taste of him, what makes him press back the most intently, and he forgets everything about kissing in his life before, even his unlife before. They don't strictly need to breathe, he doesn't have to hope nothing turns sharp in his mouth and give him away; it's different, an endless heated loop of sensation. Armand feels so good on top of him. Dangerous and safe and erotic and sweet. Someone who might hold his hand for hours, someone who might try and keep him in a fucking cage. Either way, forever.

Daniel shifts up to rub against him, then touches his face, his chest, and slips a hand between them to press a hand where he's growing hard. As easy as decades ago, though really, the only thing that had finally made a major dent in his libido had been disease. Still, this too is a little different; blood pressure feels just that little bit more euphoric when you are all blood inside. He hitches them together so it's hard on hard, layers of fabric teasing separation.

Thin, soft fabric, fabric for sleeping in, and concealing very little from one another save for the precise texture of their skin, a fuzzying of detail. Daniel tucks his hand between them, evoking a soft noise from Armand muffled into their kiss, and he finds himself quite hungry for those missing aspects.

But willing to tease himself with it, satisfy instead in the warm weight of himself bearing down, at the way Daniel shifts them even closer together. Armand has no shame at all about another and much more precise roll of his hips, the specific slide of blood-filled flesh, mutual interest.

This, for a moment. Wiling away seconds and minutes like this, where the occasional, languid shifts of his body against Daniel's feels less like he is attempting to evoke, provoke, but more what he said already: seeking his own satisfaction while Daniel is caged beneath him, between his knees, his hands, beneath his weight.

The kiss breaks, and Armand kisses up under his chin. Down to his throat, a scraped open mouthed feeling across his adam's apple, the flick of a tongue, and then finally tilting up so he can insist Daniel's shirt off of him. Gets as far as helping it up around his shoulders before abandoning Daniel to that task, occupying himself with a blunt-toothed, gentle bite lower down on bare chest.

:E

The way Armand grinds down on him feels good, and definitely evokes what he said he wanted, just using Daniel as something to get himself off. It sparks through him, and feeds something—

He almost laughs, almost pulls up something dark and terrible (Armand might shrug it off, tell him You were fine, which would also be funny, be infuriating), because if he isn't anything more than an eager hole, then maybe that's what Armand wanted in the first place. Projecting more than just insecurity onto the half-dead boy in that apartment. Would you have fucked me then, while Louis was in the other room? Would you have wanted it for more reasons than making him feel worse?

Pleasing, that the fucked up thing in Daniel interlocks with the fucked up thing in Armand.

He lifts enough - easy, like he's weightless, like Armand is, too, just hovering his spine over the bed, moving this way is still a marvel after mortality, after aging, after disease - to finish sliding his shirt off, peeling the sleeves away, letting it drop mindlessly beside him. He's going to reach back down and tangle fingers in Armand's hair, but then there's that bite, which makes him flinch. Good flinch, the rest of him twitches, he lets out a faint, unbidden 'Oh', and it's not anything with fangs, no blood, but it opens up a desire that sends a searing rush through him. Motherfucker. Daniel pets over dark curls but doesn't stay there, reaches down his back instead and starts tugging at his maker's shirt in turn.

Nearly a laugh, the shape of his breath, warm against Daniel's skin. That was a good sound to encourage, and he can almost taste the bodily reaction it evoked. Armand is considering doing it again, but—yes, that first, greedy for the intimacy of skin on skin contact. He moves just enough to help encourage the T-shirt off of himself.

Something a little unearthly about the golden tones stubborn in his skin, even under the distant blue light of idle electronics. Something charming and ordinary in the peppering dark hair across his chest. Not much time to appreciate, when the T-shirt is tugged clear of him and Armand lowers his head to bite again.

This time, little pinpricks of pressure, barely enough to draw a smear of blood, but a taste is all he is after for the moment, giving a throaty sound for the sting of copper on his tongue.

Armand is absurdly beautiful, which surely he knows, which surely he's sick of (or not, vanity is delicious in its way), and Daniel isn't immune to it no matter that he's ever been quicker to see him as a monster than a person. He looks at him now, nearly glowing despite the darkness, textured in a way that makes Daniel want to get his mouth on him everywhere, and thinks that he's still a monster, and still absurdly beautiful.

Another bite, just sharp enough, and that fucking noise Armand makes. Everything is so small and it nearly makes him gag with how much it turns him on.

"Armand," nothing else, just his gasped name, hands clasped at his shoulders and scrambling at his back. Encouragement, frustration, desire. Daniel hitches up into him, rubbing together restlessly.

His name in Daniel's mouth, spoken like that. (An echo of a memory, Amadeo, Arun, drawing blood, and worse still, later, later when he thought of it again, with the memory of Daniel's blood in his mouth, the way it had made him want.) Textured, a friction to it, like it interfaces directly with his nerve endings without needing to bother itself with physical contact.

But Daniel hitches up against him. Makes a good case for exactly that.

Armand gets his fingers in Daniel's waistband and drags the fabric down, just dexterous enough to make it a smooth enough process, a sudden baring. Panting, a little bit, with the desire to taste, and his hand captures Daniel's cock, a feeling and assessing kind of contact, memorising his specific dimensions, a fingertip questing over the head of it.

His, his, his. At this point, requesting permission would be an overly polite show of manners, but Armand thinks he would have asked or found a way to extract it before he slides further down and tastes him with an open mouth. Does not, clearly, his cupping hand and the hot-wet of his tongue sudden things in the dark, hungry too for the sounds Daniel is making, the shape of his hands on his back and shoulders.

Movement is so different. Daniel has never fucked around with another vampire, as he's already reflected on, but it's stark— Armand slips lower so effortlessly, quick and easy without any fumbling and shuffling because he's so unhindered. It's dreamy, it's shocking, but it feels so much more real.

A hand around him, then more all at once, and Daniel's breath catches in his chest on an expletive. A dizzying view of the ceiling as what's happening sinks in, the impossible velvet heat of Armand around him, elegant fingers, the threat of teeth that cranks everything up. Then, hands engaged again, scraping through his hair to cradle his skull and touch his shoulder, before Daniel is up enough on one elbow to do this and watch him.

Is this really happening? Jesus Christ. Apparently. This is his life, and this is Armand, and Daniel is more into this than he's been into maybe anything. He thinks to reach into his mind and to the bond between them, and shudders.

He can feel his own excitement like a slow winding up tension, and it happens without reluctance, without qualification. Without the ability to slip his awareness through the seams of his partner's skull and take measuring assessment of his own performance, their unspoken desires and needs, and anticipate them, or divert them. But he can hear Daniel's breathing, feel his hands, feel him shift to sit up so he can look.

And that brings about a flush of warmth, as does the tasting touch of his tongue at the tip of him, at the desire to encourage him deeper, just that little bit, and tip his head so Daniel can watch. Little fangs present, still, but kept out of the way enough that if there is the slight sense of them scraping sensitive flesh, it should mainly encourage stillness more than anything else.

Service, possession, both things can be true and complicated in the simple act of taking Daniel into his mouth in contemplative strokes of movement. His hand, flattening against his abdomen.

Blowjobs are always good. Armand makes it a thousand times better, and his brain is scrambled a little because of the intensity of the sensation, having been diligent about condom use since turning. Explaining to humans— just, you know. Pass. His mouth directly on him is maddening, and seeing it just makes everything so much hotter.

Every now and then, the faintest touch of teeth. He holds very still in his propped-up position, trying not to squirm despite ragged breathing and the clench of his hand against Armand's hair, his shoulder, attempting not to dig claws into him during moments of too-good near-flinching. He's not sure if this Armand is serving him by doing this or if he's the one offering it up, held here to give Armand whatever he wants.

Good thing, actually, that Armand can't read his mind. He wouldn't find anything useful in there, no roadmap for better pleasure, just deranged shit like It wouldn't be the worse if he actually bit me here, okay yes it would, okay stop thinking about it.

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