followups | way down we go.

He can always tell Daniel no, and not be punished for it, not resented, not withdrawn from.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.

Daniel looks back, meeting the searing gaze, letting Armand see everything he wants. Staring back into him at the same time. Closed to each other, but connected. Everything else has well and truly fallen away. Vampires, hostilities, wounded friends, the whole fucking world. Like it did every so often before the bond was there at all.

Does he like this?

He's not an incoherent mess. Despite the allegations he wasn't a closest twink shaking and gagging for it. Just a regular closeted weirdo. It was good sometimes and bad other times. He'd hoped it would happen with Louis, he wanted it even if it would have been bad. Be careful what you wish for, and all that. Since it went real fucking bad.

"Yeah." The real answer. Holding himself so still, hyper-aware of the intrusion into his body and the potential for harm. It makes him nervous, which makes it hotter. Long past the point of pretending fear isn't tangled up with sex, for him. It's the intensity, he thinks. Always looking for the inescapable, inevitable feeling. Never able to find it honestly, so looking for it through risk, instead. "You've got pretty good aim with those." A slight tremor in his voice; Daniel's eyes fall closed for a moment, face scrunched up. The deep ache slowly spiraling out from that point of connection, catching him suddenly in its current.

The mechanics of this touch shift from the coaxing of muscle to relax and the slicking of flesh, to the pursuit of something a little more deliberate. Watching Daniel with unearthly intent as fingers stroke, prod, feeling the temptation of hot-tightness like a hand on his cock. A small breath of a laugh, a show of teeth. No fangs. No blown out pupils.

But humanlike desire, forcing his mouth to part, his eyes to hood. Good, he thinks. Progress being made, on finding out what Daniel likes. In general, or with him. What he might learn he likes. If Armand had his fangs in him, maybe he could pick up on that little hint of nervousness.

Thinks he can, anyway, and it doesn't feel unwelcome. Maybe there will come a time when he no longer makes Daniel nervous. He should enjoy it while it lasts.

Slowly, easing his fingers out, letting himself be felt as he does so. That hand immediately straying to his own cock, squeezing himself near the base, a checking kind of action. Daniel, laying open and willing to him, letting him have it all. Strokes himself, and replaces that previous twinge of his fingertips with the blunter presence of the head of his cock, rubbing himself there as he shifts to balance over Daniel, a hand braced by his shoulder.

Just when his fingers are starting to feel really good, Armand pulls them away. Something about that seems typical, even though this has never happened before. Nerves return, and he chides himself internally that he's too old to feel like that, no matter how long it's been, no matter who it's with.

Armand, shifting. Armand pressing against him, that's his cock, hard and so, so fucking present, all slicked up, Armand over him, pressing him back, caging him in. Daniel instinctively wants to participate but this position makes it difficult, gives Armand total power over him, and his thoughts flinch to 1973 again, and Armand trying to convince him that death would be better than routine, absentminded missionary sex with a someday-wife.

Ha ha. Maybe death is better. Even though this is still missionary.

"Yeah," he breathes. One hand circling fingers around Armand's wrist at his shoulder, not restricting him, just a point of contact, the other a mirrored hold on his shoulder. Yeah.

At some point, Armand will have to experiment with Daniel's patience. See how long he can linger at the entryway before being invited in, so to speak. Begged in. A touch of that impulse here, but it doesn't last—he wants it too much, and so, as he feels Daniel's fingers wrap around his wrist, as he continues to watch his face, Armand sinks inside of him in a long, patient stroke of movement.

Not quite bottoming out but close, pressing close, enough to satisfy the itch that had wanted so much to feel Daniel pressed around him this way. The alluring resistance of muscle, the appealing way it yields, has to yield. Breath caught.

His hand darts from the base of his cock to Daniel's hip, his thigh, then chest, little careless smears of slickness as he feels him, testing the different points of contact he may wish to grip. Palm smoothing down to his side to settle there, claws dimpling skin.

Doesn't begin to fuck him. Waits, then pushes in deeper, until he is buried. As keyed into the sensation as he is in watching.

Not unlike fangs in him. The mechanics of penetration are all over this fucking life (this fucking, life). Stitching them together, piercing skin and drawing it tighter. He wonders what their tapestry will look like someday. Also, this feels crazy. Like every time he gets fucked, his first thought it always Why am I doing this, this is a terrible idea, but he forces himself to stay still and relaxed, and experiences a rush of euphoria for being able to. No strain, no cramps, no tremors. And he's staring right at the monster who made it possible in the first place.

Armand sinks in further and Daniel's hand scramble to touch him, shifts then doesn't, tries to figure out where to arrange himself. Remembering, not remembering at all, because his brain is being re-arranged by a vampire's dick. (You're a vampire, too, remember?) (Right, sure.)

One knee up, restless, rubbing the inside of his thigh against Armand's side, hand flexing on his shoulder. A deep breath in, out. He stares up at Armand, and paradoxically feels like he's falling.

"It's been so fucking long I don't actually remember if this is what it feels like," is a weird thing to say, maybe? There's fuzzy logic. Not sure if he's making sense. "Or if it's just you."

A shaky breath out for the feeling of Daniel trying to adjust to him, the wandering up of his knee and scrabble of hands, a long breath in. Feels powerful for it, allows himself to enjoy the feeling, even though Armand is certain he is moments away from his own scrabbly sense of desperation. That it's probably already visible in his expression.

"It's just," he starts, panting already. Trying again. "It's just bodies, Mr. Molloy." A gleam of teeth, and maybe his canines are sharper now. Drawing back, pushing in, still adapting. "Just blood, just. Friction, and tension. Just neurochemistry, electricity."

Does he believe that? Probably he has, previously. He hasn't said Mr. Molloy since, when, possibly Dubai? Maybe a sarcastic echo later on.

It shouldn't feel like distancing. Not when he is beginning to fuck him this way, and his hand catches desperately at Daniel's hip, and his eyes are as bright as hearth coals. Teasing, perhaps. Challenging, even now. Being insane, as standard.

Fuck Daniel feels incredible. Made to be fucked by him, even.

Mr Molloy, and Armand trying to play it cool while his breath is coming so much quicker, driving slowly in and out of him. Daniel feels something in him tighten and twitch, every nerve keying in to the feeling of this, hitting the threshold of where fingers started to feel good and going past it into much, much better.

"Purely mechanical?" Breathless. Voice scraping deeper as everything coils in him, and he finds the ability to engage in something besides mindless grasping. "Yeah, I get it. Like that."

(Metronomic, my Rashid / Counting down your thrusts)

"You push in, and the pressure around your dick feels good, and it goes over all my nerve endings to reach the anterior position of a gland that feels good in me, and you pull back, and we both want to fucking die from the removal of it, so you push back in. Hormones change. The brain says, I like that."

Daniel's eyes are almost yellow. Sweat on his temples, his throat, his chest. He is a writer, but he's never tried erotica. Too blunt for it.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Yes it does."

Nothing wrong with mechanics. Blood pressure and nerve endings and secretions and the vacuum of pleasure with each withdraw, filling it again with a shift of muscle and bone that won't tire no matter how long Armand chooses to keep Daniel here, folded beneath him. Realises his gaze as wandered and reorients it towards golden irises and jetblack pupils, the shimmer of blood-tainted moisture on Daniel's brow.

This is better. Better than erotica, flowery prose, professions of love and passion. Dissection, revelation. No need to make something what it isn't when it is already good. At least, not today.

Armand's fangs pressing against his lip, visible when he curls it. No known reason to him why his never seem as wolfishly long as most others, even in the midst of a hunt rather than just love making, but they do the job. Probably hurts more, anyway.

Shifts his hands, or reaffirms them. A grasp at Daniel's hip, keeping him still. The one near his shoulder settles on it, bracketing him close. Like, let's test this theory, before moving—the slow, adjusting motions resolving into something real, and the initial earnest impact between them punching a sound of Armand even as he does it.

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