MISERY / ECSTASY

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. 

A lashing buzz of emotion stumbles over arousal and the jarring sensation of exposure. The vague smell of meat hits him before the taste, and he sooner tastes the perched tip of Armand’s nail. It does not drive into his tongue, and it does not slide back and pull a retch from his throat, but rather holds him steady and open.

On instinct, Daniel scrambles to straighten his spine, then keeps the rest of himself stiff and still. It will be an ongoing problem he thinks, knowing what to do with his body from the chest down. A finger is braced against the tender space between upper and lower jaw. It will jut into him if he tries to close his mouth over Armand’s thumb. Stupidly, he finds himself searching for the press of the shard-tipped fingers cradling his face. He waits for the squeeze, certain it is only another heartbeat or two away. Or perhaps his thumb will angle downward like an arrow tip and mingle blood and table meat before Daniel has to swallow.

He cannot see whether Armand is drinking his fill of the inside of his mouth. Or perhaps Armand is too pre-occupied waiting for the presence of the meat to make Daniel drool down his chin. Regardless, arousal is a warm caress rubbing down over the front of his jeans as he submits to being examined.

Armand goads him with his question, but his thoughts are pink-tinged and swimming. What comes back is an echo, courteously indignant, nakedly needing.

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.

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—

A thoughtful hum buys him a moment to remember such a thing as sweets — to remember a boy who would have thrilled at the taste of sugar on his tongue.

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.

Make me! Now that Daniel has satisfied Armand's desire to see him put himself on his knees, flushed and indignant and nevertheless obedient, Armand will take the nasty decisions out of Daniel's hands and let him feel pushed around. Armand will take care of him.

"Awful?" he echoes thoughtfully, the crooked finger releasing the ring of Daniel's collar to trail its glassy nail down the bare skin in the hollow of his throat. The even voice, the placid expression, the teasing touch all say they do not credit Daniel's outrage. Armand does not deign to contradict it. The single, disbelieving word is sufficient to insinuate the damning truth: that Daniel is hungry for whatever depravity Armand can think up for him, just starving for it. And that he wants the demands to come with a force he has no choice but to surrender to.

The eyes narrow. The lips curl in a grin. He gives a bemused little hum of laughter. "Closer." The velvet smooth order is chased by another jerk of the collar ring, so casual and yet so powerful that it unbalances Daniel and forces him to catch himself with his palms.

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 nag of Daniel's logic won't go away, though. Not tonight, and not when Armand crawls back into his coffin alone at daybreak. A seed of doubt is planted. 'Armand would sooner find an excuse than a solution...' Is that true? Does he just want an excuse? Is it just easier to say a thing is impossible than to ever acknowledge the wanting of it simmering within him? Armand's entrance into the modern age has been characterized by so many impossible things becoming possible before his eyes. He has seen a sunrise with the craft of the camera. His voice has reached the other end of the world with the telephone. He sates his every caprice by easily-won wealth. His name is known by a mortal who lives. He has fallen back in love with humanity. He has fallen in love. Why not one more impossibility conquered...?

But his doubt is not to be bared in front of Daniel, who will coax and plead and dig his fingers into the slightest crack and pull Armand open wide into the yes he loves to spoil Daniel with. ... And after all, he gave a little bit, Armand tells himself. He gave a truth or two more than he'd have liked to, and that was something like a compromise.

And what he wants to give Daniel now, he is certain his beautiful boy will not refuse.

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.

The accusation in Daniel’s voice is not new. It’s one of the things that will always haunt Armand from their final fights. His fledgling had accused him of so much; it was easier to accuse Armand than to accept that it was his own mind failing him. He used to lash out at Armand with such conviction that he was lying about something, that Armand lied about losing the ability to penetrate Daniel’s mind. ’I heard you! You said it in my head! Why are you lying to me?’ Ironic that tonight’s accusation is of an opposite restraint — why didn’t Armand use that nefarious tether to Daniel to find him? But the truth is as it was then. Armand has no such power anymore. Not for scheming or for saving. In its absence, they should have learned how to talk, really talk, and understand one another. The first years of Daniel’s immortality were a bitter testament to how impossible such communication had been. Will it really be any different now?

The fire dies down into an anxious whimper, and Armand’s claws keep stroking the back of his neck, pushing through his locks which would never grey, using his thumb to rub away the mist pooling red at the corner of Daniel’s eye.

“Shh. Hush now, you are working yourself up again. Listen to you, ‘how is it you didn’t think of me? How was it so easy?’” He shakes his head, and it gives him a moment to swallow an accumulating thickness in his throat. “You always imagine me stronger than I am. I have thought of you every day. Do not doubt it.” 

Were Daniel himself, fully himself, and in possession of his wits, Armand tells himself he would apply himself to the terrific trial of explaining. He would try to make Daniel understand how it had all come to be, remind him how he had resented Armand at the end, suspected everything he did. He would ask if Daniel thought differently of him now. But lost in his clouded memory, ignorant even of his own vampirism, what would Daniel understand of all that? What good would it be to shatter his soothing illusion? If he can give Daniel honesty or happiness but not both, he knows which he will choose every time.

And then, the despair that weeps from him is cauterized at the mention of a plane.

His breathing shudders, and suddenly all he wants to do is sob until he can’t anymore, but he tries to breathe because Armand reminds him to. He swallows and forces his chest to take in enough air to speak again.

“There’s a plane? Wh—where? Are we going home?”

He wants to go home so desperately it could split him down the seams. He wants the smell of coffee when flushed hands pull him out of bed. He wants his feet to hurt sleepwalking through and endless night, like being awake grinds against his soul. He wants to hear the ocean outside his bedroom window, and the eternal murmur of thousands of guests on their island.

They must have been traveling for some time, and it must have done something to his head. Homesickness is not a disease that often afflicts him— how little opportunity it would have if he is always next to Armand. But he is weak with it, like it has eaten out the marrow of his bones and made him brittle enough to snap.

“Please don’t lie to me. I’ll die if you’re lying, you’ll kill me.”

His hand skitters like an insect, as if frighted of letting go of Armand, and reaches over his chest to feel for his amulet. It isn’t there. His gaze drifts like an untethered boat, as if only now seeing their surroundings. They seem to be encased in a stone block of nothing, only tight corners and windowless walls.

Did he sound just like this when he begged Louis for a taste?

Armand does not say it. He thinks he will — can feel the words' weight on his tongue, the flare of jealous possession that sparks them... but a moment passes in silence, and then another, and another, and he finds he can keep them locked behind his teeth.

He listens passively to the babbling pleas and to the echoes of his own voice in Daniel's mind, hearing again the warp in them: Daniel's own assessment of himself bleeding through. Worthless. He doesn't realize yet, he doesn't understand that—?

"Don't stop? Desperate thing, in love with his pain." 'Did you forget this is supposed to be a punishment?' He fists his hand in Daniel's hair and holds tight, grounding him in the places they grasp one another. "Do not worry, it won't stop, not ever. One high to the next, isn't it? And I give it to you because," — a hand knotted in Daniel's hair, another curving with the line of his jaw, stroking his cheek with his thumb. 'Look at me. I mean it. Hear it.' — "because you are not worthless, but precious." He puts the flash of memory into Daniel's fumbling mind: Armand on the couch, eyes boring into him, saying without speaking, 'Of course I want you, Daniel, I want you desperately, or else I would never work so hard to keep you, to help you.' "Remember, Beloved: all this because you endanger yourself. Because you cross boundaries I set for your own protection."

How the grip in his hair stays, steady and steadying, as Armand disappears from Daniel's clutch and vision, is a dazzling, momentary mystery. But the instant Daniel loses sight of him, Armand's voice is at his ear, and his presence is at his back, close enough to set the air between their bodies crackling.

"The words are good, but it's only the feeling you'll remember. And I don't know that you feel it, really, truly feel it yet, how you need my forgiveness."

A hand ghosts around Daniel's waist, dipping below the waistband of his pants and pulling the half-hard cock out.

Piercing need grips him in one hand as Armand seizes him with another. He forces his head back, and Daniel watches him with scared and wholly attentive eyes. He wants Armand to throw him down and grind him to the floor. He wants the pain clawing through his hand and down his back to dissolve him into unthinking. He does not want a puzzle. 

It does not startle Daniel to hear Armand contradict himself– that he says Daniel is worthless and then says he is not– but he dreads the echo of keep him? Endanger? His own protection? Daniel is still present enough in himself to know he does not understand what Armand asks him to hear. For a terrible flicker Daniel tries to discern what he is supposed to already know, and wading through panic and confusion, and he almost asks. But Daniel is grasped between the obsessive jaws of something unyielding, and it is better to lie still– writhing will only make it worse. He strangles the question before it can take shape. If Armand thinks him only pretending to understand and deems it another lie, he is helpless to it. 

Armand vanishes for only a breath, and terror floods the space of his absence. The only unendurable punishment his lover could inflict upon him tonight would be to leave him alone. Just as quickly, Armand is everywhere. Daniel curves into the shiver dripping down his spine as hot words caress his ear. Fingers plunge beneath his waistband, and something needy and keening escapes his throat. More than Armand’s forgiveness, Daniel needs his eyes.

The layer of adrenaline coating the livid nerves in his hand has carved away nearly completely, unwilling to be ignored as he wrestles against the instinct to protect it. A bladed ripple of pain scores him anew as Armand curls fingers abused beyond use around his base.

Take it, trust me, take it, trust, trust, mine, mine, mine--

'There is nothing of you I will not take, nothing too foul for me.' He does not share the thought with Daniel - thinks he doesn't have to, it's so obvious.

Settled, he reaches to draw Daniel close, and the kisses that peppered his jaw now linger on his lips. His tongue slips into Daniel's mouth, and in the press and pry of it, Daniel surely feels just the briefest jolt of the blood. Armand had promised, after all that the next taste he got would be from his lips, a languid tender kiss— Oh. When he touches Daniel's mind, he sees something else. A different desire. The blood pouring into his seeking mouth, yes, but not from a kiss — from fingers pushing past the circle of his lips, bleeding pads dragging along his tongue.... Fascinating boy, always, always, his fascinating boy.

Maybe Daniel will get what he wants. Maybe he won't even have to ask for it. Would that be reparation enough for making him wait tonight?

He blinks away his disorientation as Armand pulls away, then remembers himself. He glances over the honey remnants of his drink, fingers still tangled around the neck of the bottle. 

“No, I was about to pass it to you.” He flips his hand in a dismissive gesture as if sweeping away the obvious and tips back the rest of the bottle, then tosses it aside. He shoves his hands underneath Armand’s shirt and snakes his arms around his waist, tucking his knees close. Daniel hides his face somewhere close to Armand’s heart. It hurts to keep speaking aloud, but he does so on habit, and he likes to be sure Armand hears him anyway. 

2. The extent of my perversity overwhelms me! (Aimé Césaire, ‘Notebook of a Return to the Native Land’)