followups | way down we go.

Armand, eager for that bare line of contact, knees to chests, pressing in as urged. It will be gratifying when sleep does take Daniel from him to feel like he might join him there, and if not, enjoy the fucked out relaxation of holding him and listening to him sink into that deep, vulnerable sleep. Long minutes, then, of returning to kissing, friction, the mess they've made between them on their skin, on the sheets.

His hand at Daniel's cheek, thumb stroking along against soft skin, and then around to his chin to force the kiss to break as he pulls back a crucial half-inch.

"Say what you would like," he bids. "And I may give it to you."

Will give it to him, of course. But what's wrong with flirting.

Making out and warming up again, free from stereotypical post-coital male helplessness; being a vampire is fucking great. Daniel's going to go insane if Armand decides this was just a one-day thing, even aside from the earth-shattering profound emotional impact of this.

A shuddering breath, with that instruction. His hand flexes where it's clutching at Armand's side, venting restless energy in the face of flirting. What a fucking tease. But he had to know that was in there, surely. He did the same thing torturing him. Meticulously unspooling him.

"I'd like—" Fuck. "I'd like you to bite me again."

Shy? A smidge. He also wants the reverse, but he's keeping in mind Armand's boundaries.

"You're the only one who's ever done that, you know. I mean, since way back then. I never expected it to feel this way."

No blood sharing on the disaster road trip, at least not with Daniel. Armand, and only Armand, after Louis gored his neck.

Armand opens his mouth like he might say something, but he doesn't. Lured, more like, as if tasting the air when he breathes in.

Thumb trailing down from chin to throat, gentle down the centre of it. A fond and gluttonous memory, as if the velvet texture of throatfuls of blood surpassed how extremely horrible everything else was about that moment—which, well, it did. This biting would not be the indulgence of that taking.

But it would be an indulgence. "You're going to be hungry tomorrow," he says.

No one else. Louis, briefly, but the taste muddied with drugs and poor memory. He's not sure he would have been capable of rending either of the other two apart for daring, what with his long habit of watching helplessly as the things he wants are scattered apart, but he can enjoy the fierce gladness of a thing that had scarcely even occurred to him.

"That's only a problem if you don't intend to let me out of the house," he notes. Flirtatious if you squint. (Please squint.)

No blood bags in the fridge. Gross. NYC has an overpopulation problem, Daniel has no problem killing. Armand knows that. Daniel palms over his chest, his belly, slides fingers over the curve of his hip. Considers.

Decides that there's no reason to buck the trend on honesty.

"You've never indicated an openness to sharing your blood. I wouldn't want something that you're not comfortable with." A squeeze, where his hand is laying on his side again, obviously reluctant to stop touching him. Knees bumping, close enough to be oh-so-quiet. "I liked that you did it. I mean it: Everything's yours."

Important that Armand knows he has blanket permission to do what he wants to Daniel. And besides, nobody talks about fledgling blood like it's a tool to be bartered with and used as some kind of video game level-up, the way ancient blood is talked about. He doesn't want Armand to feel like some ... commodity. He'd want him to enjoy it.

It's what he wants. What he expressed wanting. There is no specific change to Armand's expression as Daniel talks, save for the flickered emergence of flirtation, and then stillness again. The telltale shift of eyes at close proximity reading the other set in front of them, and then a deeper breath in.

A mirror, almost, of the feeling of—no, not exactly after Dubai, when he'd found himself slingshotting himself around the world in search of nothing, too much freedom. More like that one last night in Paris, when Louis had taken his hand and proposed they fuck off to Africa, and the anxiety and the fear abated, momentarily, in favour of something hopeful. A blank canvas of a future.

"That's," he says, and then the sentence fails, and his eyes flick down. He should speak of where he stands on bloodgiving, but this sober reiteration is so consuming that he forgets about that for the moment.

Hands on Daniel, tightening, bodies pressed firmly together, insistent, still.

"That's a relief," he manages, finally. That Daniel liked it. (That everything is his.)

Is this is a good reaction? He hopes so. Armand doesn't seem to be withdrawing, rather, he seems like he's seeing something past this basement. But then his maker clutches a little tighter, and Daniel thinks: maybe it is a good reaction, and he hasn't pushed too far. He could try to make excuses for himself, that he's just trying to be transparent, and sure, he is. But there's also greed in him, he can't deny that. A part of him wants it all to be too fucking much.

Because it's Armand, and Armand is out of his goddamn mind, and as much as Daniel wants to help him, he just wants him authentically, too.

Which is insane.

Daniel nudges forward, bumping noses and pressing foreheads together. Here we fucking are, together.

His eyes hood as Daniel settles in closer, feeling that sense of his, his, his like his own pulse. He could ask, maybe, if this means Daniel trusts him—but what does that mean? Trusts him not to abuse the privilege? Perhaps. Does Armand trust himself? This, perhaps, the part that overwhelms him.

The concrete wall, cracking behind his back. Louis had never looked at him that way, not even in Paris. It was not the same way Lestat had looked at him, not the same way Marius had as well, but they all had some flicker, towards the end, that indicated to Armand that they found him lacking, or too much, or—

His nails, dimpling into Daniel's skin. Maybe this is why the past feels so close. Louis, a part of it, and it has barely been months.

Armand angles his head, kisses him. Sweet, brief. Back on task.

"I would like it," once he is sure his voice will come out level, "for you to take from me, sometimes. Perhaps if you ask for it. And don't mind if I tell you no."

"You can always tell me no."

Boundaries. Important. Very important, if they're going to do this. Daniel had been mocking in Dubai, during the interview, maitre in the bedroom, maitre when it's hot or convenient, and it was deliberately unkind. He knew what he was doing, at least potentially, as he'd yet to be fully convinced of anything the odd vampire had asserted about himself. He was angry at Armand, he knew it would hurt if it landed. (Honesty is not a tactic.)

And so he's got the potential for it. He realizes that Armand is handing him yet more potential, and whether or not he trusts Daniel, he's trusting him with that. Boundaries that have been pushed. Daniel, with fingers laid on them.

"Think I'm clever enough to figure out when you'd like me to ask?"

He can always tell Daniel no, and not be punished for it, not resented, not withdrawn from. This is what Armand understands him to mean. It would be unfair to Louis to say he might have contributed to some habit otherwise (not that Armand minds being unfair to Louis), but some little reflection in himself. The way he might respond to refusal. The way it can feel.

But Daniel is made of sterner stuff than all of that. Perhaps it's why he chose him. The question evokes a twinge of amusement in Armand's expression, and he says, "Yeah."

Yes he does.

He remembers his insistence, when he was playacting as mortal. Daniel refusing by pretending to prefer Damek. Armand, as Rashid, one of a selection. A certain kind of debasement that, had Louis pushed any further, might have brought out his fangs. Or perhaps it might not have. I serve a god, he had said, and there had been the too vivid imagining of draining a sampling into a glass, or something even more obscene, Molloy's mouth to his wrist. His neck.

Maddening.

He kissing Daniel again, pulling their bodies closer together. Daniel wishes to be bitten, and Armand thinks he wants to do it while they are fucking. It's been a long time since that specific configuration of sensations. His hand slides down his back, a grasping across his ass that communicates that desire, little pinpricks of claws drawing white lines in pale skin.

He'd been captivated by 'Rashid' immediately, despite everything between himself and Louis. That whole encounter, being stared at (through brown contact lenses, you fucking weirdo) during something so obviously intimate even though it was being passed off as food. Daniel has too many conflicting thoughts about that whole thing, but it stands out in his mind now, a mirror of Armand's own thoughts.

Until he sets it aside. Being here right now is more important, especially with the way Armand is pawing at him. It makes him shiver. He nips his maker's lower lip, gentle and teasing, even as his own breath hitches.

(Daniel decides he's going to wait to ask, and pick a time when he's sure Armand is about to fucking kill him for not asking.)

"Yeah?"

Been decades since anyone's fucked him. No complaints (howsyour—) historically but he wonders if he's still, you know, got it. His dick is pretty interested in finding out, his pulse ticking back up with sharp excitement.

"Yeah," again, but less of a word, a breath, a sound.

Here, Armand would ask: may I? Do you want me to? But Daniel has been clear, the limits (or lack thereof) of his permission, and the idea of just having thickens the blood in his veins, makes his mouth sting bright in the wake of teeth. He thinks he can hear Daniel's heart beat quicker.

It has, likewise, been decades since he fucked anyone. Where the careful dynamic maintained itself between himself and Louis allowed for deviation, such instances were rare, and only became rarer. Armand hadn't minded (or cared), but he considers it now, his own want, an intrusion of desire.

They could talk about that too. Maybe they will. Not now.

"I want you on your back," he says. "So I can look at you."

Maybe his eyes will change a whole new colour.

Daniel kisses him firmly. Armand wants him. Fucking crazy.

"I want that, too."

He's nervous about it, but it's not a bad kind of nervous. Settling into his skin all over again, peeling away things he thought he'd put to rest, and all of it quicker than he might have imagined— though of course he didn't, not in earnest.

"I have to grab something, though, unless you have some trick I didn't manage to interview out of anyone—"

Comedy fumbling to grab lube?

"That's not a gift known to me."

He has jokes too. Just because they didn't appreciate the sunglasses bit—

Armand lets up, allowing Daniel to fetch what they need. His awareness expanding, permitting the edges of the bed, the room, back into his consciousness, as if he has been spending the last however long its been within a coffin-sized dimension, population two. He snags at the edge of the sheet to clean himself off a little, but distracted, preferring to watch Daniel.

Feels the next pulse come a little harder. Want. Desire. With more distance between them, he can look him over better, imagine where in the future he might feel him with his hands, or sink his teeth. The desire to dominate and consume, the desire to serve and to fawn, and maybe also, the desire to just be normal. To tangle in ordinary ways, and have affection, and—

Hm. Something in that sentiment like a sharp, broken off thing. Warrants further investigation or none at all.

Shifting to kneel up when Daniel returns, hands out for him.

Armand is funny sometimes. A fucked up theater kid.

Every bitter argument, every awkward overture of peace, there was always something. Something. A deeper thread stitched somewhere unbelievable. Now this strange thing they've sewn together is being flipped over and exposed, and all the handiwork holding them together is right here, and Daniel is marveling at it.

Just a touch of cleanup while he grabs something. Kept in the bathroom, a half-guilty purchase. (Daniel is straight and he doesn't fuck men anymore, Daniel is single and even though both women he married were as adventurous as he was, he just isn't doing much anymore, he's content enough with is lot in life, Daniel is, is, is, a bunch of shit he should be embarrassed for pretending.)

Less guilt, when he returns. The sight of Armand waiting for him like that, reaching, makes heat and affection flood him like being dunked in hot water. He should run the other fucking way from an ancient creature with arms extended towards him, claws and fangs and inhuman amber eyes. Daniel's hands find his, back in the bed, climbing to meet him and press another kiss to his mouth, flickers of his expression as he goes both shy and elated.

This expression is studied intently in the split seconds Armand has to view it, and it evokes a rare kind of smile out of him by the time their mouths are pressed together. Keeps one of Daniel's hands while the other wraps around the back of his neck, enjoying the difference of position, the way gravity isn't bearing him down against his fledgling, who comes to him so willingly. Eagerly.

He had told Daniel that he often thinks about the fact that vampires should not exist. That he should not. The logical conclusion that he had drawn Daniel into the perversion of nature that is them. Punishment, anger, revulsion. A lot of complexity, philosophising, for something as simple as wishing he could cease to be, with only a duty towards persisting keeping him tethered.

Daniel as tether. As companion. (And there is a lurking essay about how Armand hated that notion, too, of a vampire forcing someone into this world just to make it more bearable for themselves, and on and on—)

He gets a hand under Daniel's chin and pushes it aside so he can kiss down his throat. Warming back up.

Why did Armand make him? Will he ever have a real answer? Or does it just not matter, because they're here and going forward?

Daniel sinks against him, hungry for it, but he tips his head back to let Armand have whatever he likes from him. It makes him shiver, and he slides hands over Armand's shoulders, letting the bottle drop down beside him. Pointy nails are a bit of a nervous-curious note around the prospect of anal sex, but also, intriguing on a kink level. He expects it'll be less racy than it seems, though. It's not like he's ever accidentally sliced a toe off while absently scratching an itch.

Thinking about existence, thinking about the exact mechanics of getting fucked. Duality of man, etc.

"Every little thing with you feels so fucking good," he says, his voice a breathy clash of appreciation and exasperation. How.

Daniel's voice, the things it says to him, the specific swift unfiltered away words emerge cloaked in it, feels as textural and real as his hand sweeping down over his shoulders. Warm as the skin under Armand's mouth. He finds himself greedy for it.

So he asks, "Did you think of me like this," after his teeth leave blunt little marks in Daniel's shoulder, "before you knew what I was? Or only after?"

However Daniel might interpret that. Before he knew Rashid was Armand. Before he knew Armand was a monster, specific to him, specific to Louis. Before Armand was his maker.

Perhaps there was nothing, and it was Armand alone with his fascinations. That would be fine too.

Moving them, meanwhile. Urging Daniel backwards by invading his space, a hand catching the side of his knee.

Sweat prickles over his skin as Armand teethes at him. Daniel grapples with him a little, light and playful, as he's crowded and re-arranged. He hasn't felt this light in so long, hasn't felt desired like this in so long. He didn't think it was still possible.

"Jesus, all that—"

Really, bringing up the psychosexual headgames going on in that penthouse? Daniel lets himself be manhandled, and thumbs over the sides of Armand's throat to feel his pulse, his breath, draws a hand down the center of his sternum.

"I had pages of notes about you as soon as I walked in the door." A wry confession. "I was embarrassed to think about you, some twenty-something, mysterious, beautiful but obviously bonkers butler. Being bothered all day by a creepy old man."

And yet.

A breath that's like a laugh, around obviously bonkers. A warm furling feeling in his chest.

"You weren't meant to notice me," Armand says, and he can sound amused at himself, now, the kind of fucked up innocence of smiling fondly about the young human men Louis had flirted with his Paris, that Armand hunted for sport. But worse, probably. Insisting Daniel onto his back, kneeling between his legs. A hand, sliding up his thigh.

Looking at him as he adds, "I couldn't leave well enough alone, I know," and yes, they're talking about the strange happenings beneath the even stranger circumstance of him hovering over the interview i a bid to continue his long term control over his husband—

It's fine. Digs a thumb into the meat of inner thigh as he retrieves the bottle with his other hand.

Daniel makes a laughing sound of disbelief about the idea that he wasn't meant to notice 'Rashid'. The thought of it is so fucking absurd. Louis' surreal majordomo, staring a hole in his head even before he popped his contacts out, even before Daniel started to see him in his dreams.

"You were setting up little interactive encounters and waiting for me to walk by instead of just engaging me in conversation," he teases. A funny memory now. Fake Rashid praying, or wandering around on the phone in a thin shirt, then big eyes when interrupted, oh, Mr Molloy, what a surprise, something something, weirdest speech patterns in the world. Of course he was distracting.

He shuffles a pillow behind his back, leverage for participating, one hand still petting down Armand's chest and questing between them to circle fingers around the base of his cock. He can't stop touching him, even if he's getting in the way.

"Rashid wasn't meant to engage in conversation."

He was being in character.

And the next exhale comes heavier at the feeling of Daniel's hand, exploring, touching, holding. Rewards this act of reaching for him with the slightest insistent shift inwards of his hips, before following impulse, pressing the cap on the bottle to open. There, a casual spilling of liquid down onto his cock, Daniel's hand, enough for some to leak through, smear on abdomen, inner thighs.

"It was, in part, a game for myself and Louis," admittedly. Yes, utility, a means of monitoring the interview and preserve his anonymity while they got their bearings, but they didn't have to do all that. Armand, wrapping his hand around the top of the bottle, tipping it to fill his palm, grease his fingers. "But it quickly became something else."

Surreal and electric to be able to talk about this now, the drama and hurt of the incidents around it laid to something resembling rest. It feels like evolution. Daniel strokes him, getting the slippery substance all over, doing a better job at just feeling him than efficiently coating him. Knowing it's Armand makes him twitch in eager sympathy.

(What if they'd fucked in 1973? A horror story. But...)

"What'd it become?"

He can guess. Distractions in both directions, when Armand took off his disguise. He thinks the elder vampire was supposed to be keeping tabs on him, and instead found himself involved in checking in on Daniel's increasingly inappropriate curiosities. He was mostly focused on the interview, sure, a dogged workaholic who loves nothing more than the angle, but he would look up and find Armand staring at him.

Armand barely snaps the bottle back shut before it's abandoned on the covers, an edge rising against the velvet warmth of sensation as Daniel gets him slick. Coaxes blood through veins, the sense of his own pulse.

"Baiting your curiousity," he says. Gets his hand between them, smearing his palm broad along Daniel's cock. Momentary, before tucking in between his legs. "Your attention from the task at hand." From Louis. "It was stupid of me. You were going to start remembering."

But he wanted it, just a little, beneath the stone tower of certainty that he didn't want it, that it would be ruinous. Some part of him buried deep that wanted to be ruined.

The press of his fingers, gentle. No sharp bits, somehow. Not going slowly, just methodically.

His breath catches at the touch, marveling at being hard again this fast. He laughs sometimes to himself, this feeling, getting younger. The vampire experiences is probably supposed to be the cognitive dissonance of the opposite. Then Armand's hand moves, and Daniel takes a steadying breath. He knows how to do this. He did this plenty, just most often on his knees one way or the other. The potential intimacy of eye contact during fucking is as terrifying as it is exciting.

"You wanted me to see you."

There, in the present, in Dubai. In the past, in his mind. Even if it was dangerous and it was going to lead to a fucking nuke. It sends a shiver up Daniel's spine, to think of Armand risking his entire life collapsing just to get Daniel's attention.

"Didn't I always?"

Even at the fucking bar. Even all the way back at Polynesian Mary's. He looked up from laughing with Louis, struck by his looming partner. Easy enough in those days, typical of gay couples, everyone just having fun. Free love. But he was still caught for a second, like a fish on a hook. Another steadying breath, letting Armand do this.

Did he always? Armand tips his head, studying him now—with a hand braced on a thigh, encouraging it open, and his fingers burying themselves slow. A long, raking look, right down to the current arrangement between them.

Asking Daniel if he thinks the vampire bond is what draws them together. Wondering if a week's worth of torture is what made him fascinating to the fascinating boy, even when he didn't remember it. Tonight, he is in the mood to enjoy these realities, and the attraction between them in spite of-because of. There will be plenty of time to pick at it, fret at it.

Or maybe not. Maybe he will distract himself with Daniel every time. Encourage scalding truths and affirmations both.

Working him, slowly but surely, gently but ceaselessly. The scrape of vampire claws a sensation that doesn't push past into pain and damage. He has practice. Thinks of a good place to score, I did what I had to, and asks, "Do you like that?" in the hush tone of bedroom talk, the intensity of curiousity.

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