Work Text:
New York, 1978
Daniel shivers on the bare mattress of his shitty sublet, curled on his side and wrapped in a blanket ripped off from some swanky hotel, a towel under him slowly soaking in sweat.
He’s been out of smack for three days. No sign of his regular guy, just the tinny echo of Daniel’s unanswered call as he wrapped the metal payphone cord tighter and tighter around his fist. He’s sounded the vibrations of all his various feelers with an addict’s quick, slavering senses, but had no luck scoring anything in the Village but a blowjob that made him ache for the touch of colder lips. Rumors of a batch of hot shots have every dealer south of 110th Street leery, and his junk sickness has now tipped over into full-blown withdrawal. There’s no way in hell he can haul his ass up to Harlem on the subway now, and his connection doesn’t have a phone.
His muscles clench and release in waves, his pounding head swimming with the nausea that keeps casting him up out of the comfortable oblivion of sleep. He grabs for the plastic takeout bag by the bed and retches painfully into it, long past the point of having anything to bring up, the yellow smiley face printed on the plastic mocking him. He collapses on the flat pillow, a fresh sheen of sweat plastering his t-shirt to his wasted chest, and groans.
Armand, I need you. Please. I know you can hear me, you vindictive asshole.
It’s the closest thing to praying he’s done since he was a kid. At least his cruel, indifferent god occasionally answers. Daniel smiles bitterly as he slips back under the roiling black waters of sleep.
“Wake up, Daniel,” says the familiar, aristocratic voice. Oh, he loves it, loves the fiery beacons bending their eerie light on him. “I brought you a pizza.”
Daniel guffaws at that, because how can he not? Then the burnt cheese smell of it has him reaching for his crinkling barf bag.
“You should drink something, at least,” says Armand when he’s finished, appearing instantly at his side with a glass of water that Daniel sips at diffidently. If he’s disgusted by the pathetic spectacle in front of him, he hides it well. With a flash of embarrassment, Daniel realizes he’s come in his cotton boxers–-his wires are so crossed that the anguish twisting his body must have become pleasure for an instant. The thought horrifies him.
“Nothing human is repugnant to me, beloved,” says Armand softly in answer. He caresses Daniel’s sweaty, matted curls like they’re raveled silk. Daniel’s teeth are chattering Morse code. “Come, let me run you a bath.”
Daniel’s hand snaps up to grip his wrist.
“Wait,” he rasps, licks his cracked lips. “Your blood…please…” One taste of that sweetness would take this pain away.
“My blood is not methadone,” Armand says curtly. He slips his slender arm easily from Daniel’s grasp. “It means something when I give it to you.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Armand cocks his head. “I often wonder.”
“It’s yours to give.” Daniel closes his eyes and draws the blanket tight around his shoulders. He intuits that this is important to Armand, the conscious act of sharing. The volition of it. Daniel tries another tack. “Yours like I am.”
Armand gives a sharp laugh. “Shameless little whelp.” He grabs a handful of hair at Daniel’s nape and scents his neck, making him cringe away, ashamed of his unwashed, unshaven state. “I suppose that’s why you keep running away from me, is it?”
From me. Not us.
“I’m sorry. I just get kind of mixed up sometimes. It’s all so much. You and Louis, you treat me like a toy. Like a fucking ping pong ball.” He swallows the sourness in his mouth and takes a drink of water. “I have a life of my own, you know.”
“So I see.” Armand releases him but lets him squirm a minute under those golden flaying knives of his. Okay, yeah, he walked right into that one.
“I’ll kick this time.”
Armand’s look softens and grows faintly pitying. Oh, fuck you, Daniel thinks, then becomes conscious of a sudden, euphoric absence of pain in his head. He’s stopped shivering, and the mattress no longer feels like a dinghy adrift in a hurricane. Armand must be working some mental magic, cutting off the pain. There’s a thuddingly obvious metaphor in here somewhere.
Before Daniel can thank him, he’s vanished and the pounding of running water drums in the bathtub. After a few minutes, he returns and methodically strips off Daniel’s soiled clothes, then picks him up as easily as he would a paper doll.
“You don't have to do that,” he mumbles into Armand's neck, but he likes the secret thrill it gives him. The water smells divine, herbal, like rosemary and sweet almonds if his addled senses are any good. It's just shy of too hot, and Daniel gasps as he’s lowered gently into it. He imagines Armand slicing up carrots and onions and flinging them in the bath with him like something out of an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, making both of them chuckle.
I hardly need seasoning to eat you alive.
Daniel’s mouth goes dry at that, the usual response to the primal cocktail of fear and arousal that has become his drink of choice. His neglected libido flickers to life under Armand's avid gaze. His monster’s face is saintly, gilded by the light of the votive candles he’s placed on the tub rim and toilet tank in this cramped bathroom. Daniel shivers.
Armand gives no comment, guiding him to lean back to wet his hair and working shampoo into it. Those talons of his feel deliciously sharp on Daniel's scalp, then he rinses out the suds with a clean coffee can he must’ve salvaged from the kitchenette. He scrubs Daniel all over with a washcloth, gently but inescapably, lifting his arms and turning him this way and that. Making a marionette of him.
There’s nothing sexual about the way Armand is touching him, but he's absolutely devouring Daniel with his eyes. They have become blackened pits with the thinnest rings of gold, glassy and vacant with animal hunger. If Daniel were a man with a functioning amygdala, this might have triggered some kind of survival response. Because he is who he is, he licks his lips and bares his neck, eyes closed and fingertips tracing his juiciest artery. Jesus, every time he hits his mainline, he imagines the pain-pleasure coming from those fangs.
“Wicked boy,” rasps Armand, and yeah, he likes that. “You would tempt the devil himself.”
“Not bad for a guy who was puking in a bag twenty minutes ago.”
He smirks, wondering if he's spoiled the mood, but Armand is still wearing that eerie, half-present expression. He presses his mouth to Daniel's shoulder, his throat, his hard nipple, his kisses messy and lacking his usual patient finesse. Daniel sighs and gives himself over to it. It feels unspeakably good to drift in the warm water getting hard under this onslaught, to want something besides slow poison in his veins.
Fragrant water laps the dark curls at the base of his cock. He wishes Armand would just touch him already instead of teasing him like this. Armand cups his jaw in both hands and thumbs his cheekbones, as if in reassurance. He presses a kiss to Daniel’s mouth that starts out chaste and becomes a starving thing. Daniel’s the one whose body was just collapsing around him, so why the hell are Armand’s hands trembling on his shoulders?
Let me take care of you, he whispers into Daniel’s mind, making him sigh and grow pliant, limbs loose in the water. The cool, silver-ringed hand that wraps around his cock is slick with sweet oil, silken iron, unrefusable. He sucks a sharp breath and lets it out on a moan. Feels good, doesn’t it?
“Yeah.”
It’s meant to. It can be like this always, sweet boy. There’s a strange quality to Armand’s words, at once intimate and distant, as if he’s reciting them from memory. No one will hurt you ever again.
“What do you…?”
“Shh,” Armand soothes, mouthing at Daniel’s collarbone and the rounded point of his shoulder. “Hold on to me.” He guides Daniel’s arms around his neck and resumes stroking him with deliberate slowness, base to tip, now and then sliding his palm over the head until he’s leaking precome and rocking up into Armand’s fist, making ripples rush along the sides of the tub. He clings tightly to Armand’s upper back, teeth bared in a snarl as he chases his agonized pleasure.
“Faster,” he begs, soft black curls tickling his lips. “Harder, please.”
Armand shushes him again, but he’s smiling softly. He murmurs something soothing in some long-dead caressing dialect of Italian and quickens his pace. He works Daniel’s cock with a kind of lordly indulgence, clearly savoring the way he whimpers and writhes. His free hand is buried in Daniel’s wet hair, cradling his head, and Daniel has never felt so utterly possessed. It’s thrilling.
He works his hips in furtive little thrusts, pushing into the tight channel of Armand’s fingers. God, he’s so close he can taste it. He doesn’t need to understand the soft words pressed into his skin to sense the praise and encouragement behind them, like Daniel is some trembling virgin who needs to be coaxed. The thought is enough to have him spurting into the bathwater, panting hard as Armand wrings every last spasm of pleasure from him.
Armand’s look is fond, but, beyond that, inscrutable. He helps Daniel from the water and wraps him in a fraying blue towel, then presents him with a fresh set of checked navy pajamas once he’s dry. He drains the water and puts out the candles one by one, and they step out together into cold electric light. Whatever whammy he’s put on Daniel’s brain must still be in effect, because his stomach growls when the smell of the pizza hits him. He ambles over to the kitchen (also the bedroom) table and helps himself to a still-warm slice of pepperoni.
“I was tempted to add anchovies,” says Armand lightly, taking the other rickety chair across from him, “but I decided against it.”
“Thank God for small miracles,” Daniel mumbles through his mouthful.
“They were quite the delicacy in my time. Roasted with suckling pig or served cold with bread and oil. I can hardly recall the taste now.”
Armand is rarely so forthcoming with details about “his time,” and Daniel wonders if this is because of what just happened. Some instinct tells him not to push it, not now. Instead, he asks:
“Where’s Louis?”
“Louis is abroad traveling.”
“Been abroad a lot lately.”
“His curiosity has led him to Egypt. I think he hopes to find some answer there about what we are and where we came from.”
“You think he will?”
“There are no answers, Daniel.” Armand blinks slowly. “In this, it’s not so different from being mortal.”
Daniel smothers the urge to roll his eyes and takes Armand’s hand instead. He looks beautiful with his dark clothes and curls against the backdrop of a white sheet tacked up over the window, a prince amid squalor.
“Thank you for coming when I called,” he says.
“Of course.”
“Can I…can I come back with you?”
“That depends on you, beloved. Can you stop asking for that which I can never give?”
Daniel nods.
“Will you stop running?”
“Yes,” he breathes. “I promise.”
“Then we can leave tonight, if you wish.” He thumbs Daniel’s knuckles. His smile is so lovely. “Don’t bother packing. I have everything you need.”