love of the form and essence divine !

" you already pretty, " louis says, voice caught in the gruff want of his throat, thirst thirst thirst aching through him, and lord, why has he made himself a fortress, a creature of withholding? he tugs armand's hair, tugs and releases with the rhythm of armand's hips on the leather of his shoe. " i ain't askin' for pretty. i want you raw. "

one smooth movement, made with preternatural strength, and louis is pulling armand off his knees, away from the shield of the bed, releasing his grasp and casting him onto his back in the center of the room, beneath the criss - crossed lines of photographs. on the floor, just like he's been beggin' for. " you been so good for me, " louis hums, taking himself in hand, slow, steady strokes dampened by the wetness armand had left with his mouth, " you like that? bein' called a good boy? that what you want me to tell you when i'm inside of you? "

a few steady steps as he strokes himself, and louis is standing between armand's legs, standing over him, making himself an audience to the vulnerability he's demanded.

He glimpses himself again, staring back, captive, from the paper frame, and swallows hard.

Good boy. Wide eyes blink up at the praise, feeling it, and feeling embarrassed to be feeling it in the hollowness of him. A long time indeed since anyone talked to him like that. Is that what he wants? 'Good boy, sweet Amadeo, that's right, take it, take it all...'

Fangs unsheathe, and he can feel the descent, the swell of them behind his lips. The tongue that had laved over Louis's hardness now rubs at one fatal tip, and conjures fantasies of sinking teeth into Louis. The snap of the skin's barrier bursting open under them, the rush of life, of Louis flooding through him... Armand thinks of Louis filling that emptiness inside him, thrusting between his spread legs and gushing into his open mouth. He thinks of taking and taking and taking it all. He is salivating at the very idea of it. He could devour Louis whole.

Was it an instant ago that he told himself Louis would have to finish undressing him himself if he wanted more? The resolve evaporates under the scorch of those eyes on him. He'll do it. Louis's tone brooks no negotiation. But complying with the order is hardly graceful; he's fumbling with buttons and canting his hips up as he squirms out of and then kicks away the garment. Not beautiful. Is that a mark against him? Does Louis hate the crawling, scrabbling thing at his feet? Does he mean it when he says he wants Armand raw?

Want you, says the smolder of amber eyes. Need you, says the loose-lipped panting.

"The Louis Triptych (Burnt, Broken, Buried)"

“Is it better that I’m warm? I usually need a cool rag or the bathroom floor. Hold on– give me a second, let me take your shoes off.” He pries Armand’s chilly, marble fingers from him as he speaks and sits up. Armand has his knees nearly to his chest as Daniel pulls off his sneakers without bothering with the laces and tosses them to the floor. 

“There’s a trash can by the bed on your side so just tell me if the spins pass back around. They usually do whenever you move. Or aim in that direction.”

It wouldn’t matter if Armand puked on the bed if the booking weren’t in Daniel’s name– even if they’re in another country tomorrow, he’d prefer not to receive any alarming voicemails. He slides off the mattress and kneels to snatch his pink liquor from the mini fridge, then shuts it with his foot. He twists off the top and gingerly climbs back to his place beside his lover. 

For a moment it seems that he might make no reply at all, holding his aches down with the stillness and silence of stone. But a long, tensing inhale comes, and then its low-moaned release. “Not now, no. Not even a drop.” But he doesn’t know if it wouldn’t help to drink clean blood; he only knows the thought of it makes his bile churn and must be rejected out of hand.

He cannot think clearly enough to reason with his condition. If he could hold it up against the light, compare it with his centuries of knowledge through his and others’ experiences, perhaps he would see his remedy. But his thoughts slip away between his fingers when he tries to study them. (What warrants their agility when he still feels himself wading through mud?)

More traitor still, he feels the sting of frustrated tears coming on, and all he can do is shut his eyes against them and grimace. While his mind trails behind, his heart lurches with an irrepressible sense of misery and dread and loneliness, in spite of Daniel’s comfort. Why should he feel lonely in his lover’s arms? Why should he feel dread when the danger of discovery is past? ‘I am helpless,’ surfaces a thought like a diseased fish, belly-up, repugnant. And not his. ‘I can’t do anything right. Worthless, stupid, screw-up,’ come the words in the voice of a wilting wallflower in a last gasp effort at connecting with someone, anyone, in a dark dance hall. ‘Yes, I want it, yes, soft curls, brown eyes, quick death…’

His meal. These are final thoughts and memories of his meal, usually digested with the blood, now impressing themselves upon his senses. How ridiculous, and yet how unyielding the sensation!

typical armand, to face down the hurt he's caused with emptiness. typical, to act as though nothing can or should be said to the pain he caused. this, louis remembers so well about his former companion : the way armand could seem so small, so pitiful and weak, even when he wasn't. little arun, victim of all. louis hadn't understood it for what it was, when they'd been companions. it had taken time, separation, to know that the man of whom he'd once demanded true vulnerability wore that mask easier than louis had once assumed. the whimper only frustrates louis more. he won't trust any of it.

and this, this anger ---- let armand feel it. that's what he wants, right? a reaction? a moment ago, louis had been prepared to hold himself cold. he'd spent so, so many years, dead to it all. so many of them with armand. it surprises him sometimes, when the hate comes pouring back in, and he remembers how much he'd once held inside him, a monster gorged on self pity and rage.

But it wasn’t about Daniel. His surrender to the sunlight did not have a thing to do with his and Daniel’s fractured companionship, or with any desire to drag him or Louis toward any particular feeling on his account. The Veil. It was about the Veil, about Him, and the certainty, in that moment, that he could die for the perfection of that ikon. The fire hadn’t started with the sun, but with that face upon the Veil, burning him from the inside. The char, the desiccation of him only followed naturally. 

Not made by human hands, he had cried! The veil, the imprint, human, ghostly, perfect, whole, incarnate — What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? — Heart aching, aching at the thought of Him so close, and so impossible to hold onto. His lips break from Louis’s skin with a ragged gasp.

Open up is all it takes. Daniel tastes Armand before the food, and his freezing and perfect fingers like icicles are more welcome and familiar than anything on the table. As he breaks the skin and chews the grape's soft insides, he is overtaken by the sensation of being examined. It seems that Daniel is all mouth and throat. The rest of him is of less interest and may as well not be there at all, like being set up in a dentist chair. He doesn’t know where to look and opts to keep his gaze trained on Armand. He looks like he is eating too. When Daniel swallows, he politely leans forward into the knuckles curled up against his neck. He should be less indulgent, or at least make it harder to earn, but he doesn’t know if he could help it if he tried.

Your Daniel? Come on man—

He’s drinking Daniel in, the mouth, the throat, yes, but he notes too the way Daniel has settled himself, the reluctance to set all his weight down on his feet or his thin ankles. He reads the discomfort, now only a murmur, but which will surely mount the longer he holds the position. And Armand lets him, thinking about how much greater the relief will be when the hands readjusting him come after a long, dull hum of pain. And then there’s the drumming fingers, anticipatory and impatient. Daniel is waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s years too late to convince Daniel he isn’t up to anything. But what if this is the something he’s up to? Can Daniel imagine that?  That the novelty of putting Daniel on his knees, on the floor, at heel and finger-feeding him to watch him take it is what Armand is after?

Another grape is offered, pushing past Daniel’s lips. Then another. He watches Daniel accept bite after bite until his handful of fruit is spent, and reaches then for the ornamentation of a prosciutto rose. Fingers peel away a fleshy petal and the paper-thin marbling of the meat lays draped on Armand’s thumb. This time when Daniel opens his mouth, Armand presses it to his tongue in a grotesquerie not unlike a communion wafer received by the sinner. 

Armand’s decisive tap wakes Daniel with a little jump only because he wants to be alert enough to listen to Armand’s answer. 

Marzapane first, and then panforte with pepper, which was spicy and sweet. It feels important. The anecdote nestles somewhere in Daniel’s heart to be admired later like a stolen trinket. If Daniel has tried panforte, he cannot place it, nor can he conjure the image. His head is not keen on cooperating with him any longer, and he refuses to try and force it. 

What floats through his mind instead is the brisk jet of shower water from an hour or two prior. He thinks of sitting curled up with his phone resting on the arm of the bathtub where he watched the dark screen unhappily, waiting for another notification. He thinks of resting his cheek on the bathroom tile. He was past waiting out waves of nausea and merely taking refuge in a cool place, familiar and welcoming as always. 

I wish you didn’t eat today. You’re too hot. I miss the tile. 

He hugs Armand tighter anyway and tries to fit more of himself in Armand’s lap.

“Give it an hour, Daniel, and the warmth will fade. All too quick, I promise you.”

Their nights tend to fly by in a blur, almost too fast to feel. But he knows Daniel feels every second of this night, so much stiller, more stagnant than Armand usually allows. He knows Daniel has been cross about his illness for the reminder that he can still be made so weak so easily. That he is human, and struggles at times to keep up with all Armand’s grand plans. Is that why he asks, in spite of his evident fatigue, for the kinds of touches that thrill? How does Daniel want to wait out that hour until the chill sets back in?

The hold on his waist loosens. The hand travels down Daniel’s arm and plucks his hand away from the press between them to bring it to his lips. Armand lays kisses on the knuckles and the fingertips, on the clammy palm and the silk-smooth skin of the wrist. Sharp against soft, a nip, playful, fleeting, follows his ministrations. 

'My tongue? Whatever will make you happy, my beautiful boy.'

That tongue, redder even than the rosy lips, emerges and runs over the spot where Daniel’s pulse beats most forcefully. From it and from the charge of Daniel’s thoughts, Armand tries to read a reaction. Exhausted or excited? Which way tends his want?

He feels pinned down. Beneath Armand’s palm, his heart beats faster, perhaps only to remedy the distance between it and Armand’s hand. A shudder hides in the slow breath slipping past Daniel’s pleased smile.

“You make it difficult when half of what you say is only true on technicality,” His words are a sliver quicker than they should be. Faint color dusts his cheeks, and he finds himself helplessly grabbing hold of Armand’s hips. “If you loved me, you’d answer my questions. Lovers do less talking.”

He lets go just as quickly to push against the sheets as he tries to shift position. It does little to help him and only creates more friction between his lap and Armand’s ass. Daniel is not yet so far gone as to forget that he wanted something else from Armand. He is not yet so far gone as to forget that for someone unhappy to have Daniel in his coffin, Armand went very quickly from affronted to fucking him.

"Am I not answering?" he asks, tone honeyed and teeth bared. He will not bite Daniel again, not tonight, but he teases them both with the tip of a fang peeking through his smile, electrifying his kiss. "Are we not still talking?"

Armand's hands snake over Daniel's skin, down his arms, and latch onto his wrists, stilling them against the sheets. His boy is so much taller, all length, all limbs, and when Armand stretches to match his reach it pushes him flush against Daniel from grinding hips to the lips at his throat. There is nowhere to hide from his touch, no way to squirm that does not excite the friction between them which is slowly eroding Daniel's will to argue. Armand feels it without such human distraction. The sensation is there, all the nerves still singing, but it is a mere shadow to the rush of the blood. His body does not drive toward that one, limited sense of satiation, but feels every inch in its equal erotic potential. It is not the thrill between his legs that mounts to sweeter and sweeter peaks; it is the thrill behind his eyes, in the mind of him, wanting Daniel shivering, humming, twitching for him, wanting to play their hungry, voyeuristic games, wanting to pick Daniel and put him back together, with or without the idea of any preconceived climax. Armand learned long ago that he doesn't need that dead mortal reflex to fuck a human and love it. The pleasure surpasses the physical.

'We call that kink, boss,' Daniel had once deadpanned in response to Armand's poetics.

The grip on Daniel's right wrist shifts, and the pad of Armand's pointer finger rubs over the tender bite marks there. (He could have healed them, of course, but Daniel gets cross at him when he does. Daniel likes to feel the wound later.)

Was there love in your suffering, when you went into the sun?

He remembers it all. His mother's face. The voice of the choir as it became one. The glimpse of himself at the alter, human and grown as he never could be. Sybelle. Benjamin. The promise of love still to come, even in the fall.

Armand gives him a catlike smile, and the approval alone stokes the heat blooming in his chest. Daniel would do anything so long as Armand watched him with pleasure.

It is not Daniel’s job to decide when his wants will be acknowledged, nor is he any good at guessing. So it catches him by surprise when Armand nods to the hideous need crawling from his bones and snatches him forward like an unruly animal.

It elicits a startled yelp and his palms hit the hardwood. He intends to hiss out a curse, but all that comes out is a breathy hum. The fingers of his left hand tap erratically, nerves and eager anticipation mixed up into the same color.

Humiliation grinds hard against him at being commanded to crawl to his own debasement. He does as Armand expects and peers upward, both indignant and feverish with desire, and a pair of eyes as unyielding as his hands reflect back at him.

The hand that doesn't hold that electric point of contact is extending to hover over the meal. Armand seems to be weighing, not by the look of the food, but by reading the spark in Daniel's eyes, where to start the feast. Whatever he sees there, the nimble fingers are quickly guided; he plucks a grape and brings it to Daniel's lips. The knuckle of his forefinger drags across his lips for an indulgent moment. "Open up." And then the grape is pushed into Daniel's mouth, the tip of Armand's thumb pressed to his lower lip.