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There is a period where Daniel floats alone, time slipping by unmarked as his body and mind begin to rewire themselves. The thick, coppery film coating his tongue is all the sensation he's really registering; he keeps having to unglue it from the roof of his mouth, which is about the only movement he can manage. Reminds him of a hundred mornings after, floating in the heavy, endless moment before consciousness and consequences settle in. A fragile peace that he has just enough presence of mind to cling to, while he still can.
Then the pain hits.
Louis had not been exaggerating in the slightest, because holy shit, there has never been anything worse. Every muscle, every organ, every fucking vein and artery and capillary now filling up with whatever unholy brew powered Armand these five hundred years. He's being pumped to bursting with acid, skin only barely containing it, and it's boiling him cell by cell. He curls up foetal – more out of the drag of cramping muscle than any deliberate movement – and vomits onto the concrete, whimpering as the spasms squeeze his rotting insides.
The footsteps rushing towards him register only after arms have locked around his chest. They're temperature-less and strong as iron bars, and he hangs from them with infantile gratitude as they lift him gently, stop him face-planting into his own puke. The last food he's ever going to eat, and he didn't even get to digest it fully.
"Oh, my poor boy." The voice comes from far above him, and Daniel can't even spit on him for a condescending bastard; the pain in those words is too clear. "My poor, poor boy."
"You weren't kidding," he grits out, twisting his head to press into soft, expensive cotton, headless of the smears he's no doubt leaving. If whoever does the laundry round here can manage blood, they can deal with vomit. "Hurts like a motherfucker."
"It will pass," Louis soothes him, one cool hand petting over his back while the other cradles his collapsing skull. "Just breathe, it'll pass."
Daniel is going to spit something like Easy for you to say, pal, but then he tilts his head back and meets Louis in the green, green, green eyes, and they are the most beautiful thing he's ever fucking seen, and that includes his baby girls in their first weeks and everything he ever looked at on dope. Everything is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen and there's so much of it. Every inch of concrete is its own tiny cityscape, every scattered artwork a planet. Beyond the glass, Dubai is a marvel beyond marvels, a sci-fi dreamscape, and Louis a moonlit demigod, a fallen angel in designer clothes cradling Daniel's head to his perfect shoulder.
"Oh," he breathes, lips splitting into a grin despite himself. "Oh man, I'm high as fuck."
"There's the spark," Louis murmurs, as if to himself, and Daniel buries his face into his chest and quakes with ugly, broken laughter.
~~~
Louis gets him a meal delivered. Whoever he's got left that isn't Rashid drags in a struggling, snarling man with a hard face and fear sweat as umami-rich as the best soup broth, and books it out of the dining room immediately afterwards. On his mother's grave, Daniel is planning to ask Louis about their selection criteria, about who this guy is and whether he has a family and if he's ever helped an old lady cross the road, but before he gets a chance, Louis is moving faster than human thought, pinning the stranger's arms behind him with one hand as he slices a shallow cut into his throat with the other.
The blood smacks Daniel full in the face, metal and sugar and something bitter as amaro, and any half-formed protests about the morality of killing to eat are smoke on the wind. The man's body is hot and hard against him all of a sudden, all muscle and no fat as he curses in Arabic and writhes to free himself from the two monsters surrounding him. He leaks a strangled cry as Daniel sinks newborn, aching fangs into his slick and weeping wounds, and it tastes –
A handful of deli meat straight out the fridge in the dim dusk, after he's forgotten to eat that whole day. The first cigarette after a long run without them, the first sip of beer on a hot day after a long hike. The man's blood tastes like blood, hot and rich and so much more filling than he remembers anything liquid being before. He gulps and gulps, gorging himself, warming all the way through.
Louis pulls them apart just before the man's heart stops, gentle but firm. Uncomfortably bloated, stomach churning, Daniel collapses heavily into a chair and tracks the grey, slack face of his first victim as Louis hoists the corpse over his shoulder and carries it out. There's a quiet conversation with not-Rashid, the words fading in and out of focus, while he swipes his tongue around his teeth and gums. Just as Louis had narrated to him over this same dining table, back when Daniel was tucked at a remove behind his laptop screen, the recorder of horrible tales and not a participant.
Ah hell, who does he think he's kidding. He hasn't been an impartial observer to this particular story since 1973.
Louis is bending down in front of him now, hand on his shoulder. "How are you feeling?" he asks, mouth twisting a little when all Daniel can manage is a rusty laugh.
"Did you catch his name?" he asks back instead of replying. "Or keep his ID? I should make a note of it."
"Why?" There is frank empathy in Louis's stained-glass gaze, and it pisses him off something unholy.
"Because I just murdered a man, Louis, and I want to check his Facebook to see how many kids I took a father from."
"No, Daniel," Louis tells him, still in that gentle voice that he imagines Claudia heard a lot of in her first years. Wonders if it made her want to put a fist through his face too. "Don't torture yourself, and don't ask me to help. I won't be an instrument for masochism."
"That what you told Armand?" Daniel snaps back, and there's a moment when he thinks that might have shaken something loose, but Louis just lets out a sharp little sigh. The new baby has upchucked on his shirt, and it's annoying, but there's really nothing to be done but pat its back and wipe its little face.
He wants to be angrier about it, except that he is. A baby. He can't be more than an hour old, an hour dead. Seventy-one and a newborn, and Louis the only adult left to rock the cradle after mama dumped him on the doorstep and ran off into the night.
"Why'd you leave me alone with him, anyway?" he mutters, and that gets a reaction, something crumpling behind Louis's eyes.
"I'm sorry," he says. "Truly, I –"
Daniel scoffs, full-throated. "Not what I asked."
A familiar pause, as Louis thinks through his answer while settling down on one knee, hand coming to rest on Daniel's leg. It's embarrassingly grounding. "I needed some air," he says eventually. "Needed not to be looking at his fuckin' face–" his voice dipping into real, dark rage for a moment, "to be out of temptation's reach before I did something I really would regret. I'd thought the ultimatum would be enough to keep you safe; that, and your own ability to talk yourself out of harm's way."
"Yeah," Daniel drawls, "cause that worked out fantastically for me the first time."
Louis's smile is painfully fond. "And since then, you've survived pushing your luck with some of the more dangerous mortals on the planet, not to mention myself. I could justify the risk." He looks away then, nostrils flaring for a moment before he gets himself under control.
"I didn't think..." he starts, then stops and chuckles a little, cold and unamused. "Never would have expected this. You heard him – Armand only ever seemed horrified by the idea of making a vampire. It never entered my mind that he..." He shakes his head, voice and face sour. "Seventy-seven years. Thought I knew him so well. More fool me."
"Any idea why he did it?" Daniel ventures. Maybe it's fitting that he can't actually remember what they'd said to each other, when Armand had picked himself up out of his crater and ambushed him before he could reach the dubious safety of his room. There had been something, he's sure – he doesn't think Armand had gone straight in for the kill, and unless he'd been jumped immediately, Daniel can't imagine himself letting the opportunity for one last dig pass by.
Whatever it was, it's gone, wiped clean by shock or mindfuckery. Just blurry shapes and half-conceptualised voices, a vivid slash of pain, a slow going cold. He can't even swear if that was Dubai today or San Francisco in 1973. Then thick heat filling his mouth and slipping down way too easy, the way whiskey used to after the first few, before he swore off it.
A moment of transcendent connection, lamp-like eyes locked on his as the world fell away. In that moment, had Armand asked, he'd have forgiven him everything. All the bullshit, the calculated cruelty, the memory scrambling and the murder attempt and the gentle coaxing into accepting it, into thanking the bastard for cutting him off before he could do anything, be anything. None of it had mattered, as the blood ran between them like fibre optic cables across the Atlantic seabed, like a river through fertile soil.
A shrug, Louis's jaw tightening. "Spite?" he suggests, voice hard.
Daniel raises an eyebrow. "Hell of a precedent to break just out of spite." He rubs absentmindedly at where his neck throbs, even with the wound healed as if it had never been. Motherfucker had opened him up right where they'd both scarred him in 1973. As if he'd been wearing a target all those years, his fate writ in his own collagen since he was twenty-two. Or maybe vampires are just partial to a certain spot.
If he's entirely honest, he wouldn't have been surprised to die here, not with the precedent that scar had set. He'd made his peace with it on the plane; the story is worth it, he's still sure of that, and he's lived his life. Yet here he sits, thrumming with the unnatural energy of undeath while strangers dispose of a corpse for him, the first life of many that he's going to end. And he will, he knows himself well enough to be sure of that. No rat-fuelled asceticism for Daniel Molloy; he just does not have the self-control. So there'll be more bodies, more grieving loved ones. More little girls not getting their promised pet ponies.
He won't see a proper sunrise again until he hits five-hundred-and-something, he's probably going to have to go into hiding at some point in the next twenty years when he very obviously isn't dead or ninety yet, his specialist is going to want to see him the moment he gets home and what the hell is he going to say? No worries, Doc, I've decided to handle it with herbal enemas and positive thinking. The fuck is he going to tell his daughters?
Louis's hand squeezes his knee, nudging him a little way out of the spiral, and Daniel looks down to meet his eyes. The empathy still burns, but of course Louis knows everything running through his head right now, without even having to peek. They've already been through his version. All the things Daniel's got to look forward to.
All vampires are born from trauma, Louis had said at one point, and he has to wonder if the guy really believes that. If it was just a line for Claudia, for Daniel and the book. If he's right, and Daniel's going to spend the rest of eternity circling back to one moment he can't even properly recall.
In that case, he thinks – a little hysterically, maybe – he might as well make it a night worth remembering.
Louis is still staring up at him, big soft eyes in that old face. He fancies those eyes go a little wider as he bends down – noting only in retrospect how much easier that is now than it was a few hours ago – and plants one on the vampire who got him into this shit in the first place, full on the terribly lovely mouth.
There's a long moment where he gets no response, Louis still as a statue beneath him. Then, all of a sudden, there's a hand tangling in his hair and Louis is clambering up into his lap to get a better angle, tilting Daniel's head where he wants it. There's a desperate hunger there at first, the hand on his shoulder gripping to the point of pain, but as Daniel continues to be there, it calms by degrees, until things get slow and soft and deep.
Kissing Louis is even better than he'd tried not to imagine it, better than every half-formed, quickly-buried fantasy. Practice really does make perfect, he guesses; Daniel feels like he's being led by the hand down a dark and twisting path, each press of Louis's lips coaxing him further from the safety of the herd.
Except it wouldn't be his herd, not anymore. He might be a stubby-limbed little cub, falling over its ass as it tries to stand, but he's a wolf now nonetheless. The danger that every inch of Louis is promising has already come knocking at his door.
In that vein – hah – he nips at Louis's mouth, only realising his fangs are a little bit extended when he feels skin slice open under his teeth. The cut heals in seconds, but the burst of blood on his tongue shocks a full-throated moan out of him. The taste is worlds away from his victim's blood, like how good brisket is distinct from an aged A5 wagyu steak, and the only thing stopping him immediately trying to get more is Louis's grip on his head tightening to restrain him. That, and the shaken, anxious thrill of it. Like the first time he'd stolen something; he'd been seventeen and had run all the way back home, electrified with transgression. He clutches at Louis's back, head swimming, and is rewarded with more kind, hungry kisses.
"So, we're doing this, then," Louis breathes when they next part, and Daniel briefly considers the merits and drawbacks of being the rebound in a divorce between monsters that he catalysed, before deciding that he doesn't fucking care if Louis doesn't. He'd thought the bastard hadn't been bluffing when he'd offered to pick up where they'd never gotten to the first time, and frankly, after the day he's had? He deserves to make good on this one.
"Think we could both do with letting off some steam," he points out. "Am I wrong?"
For a moment, Louis looks to be running the same pro-con assessment as Daniel had, before coming to the same conclusion. "You rarely are," he says, smile going rueful, and Daniel drags him down to kiss again so they don't have to dwell on that too much.
Louis shifts their bodies closer, and Daniel blinks through a rush of sense memory; it's the first time he's felt another man hard against him since his twenties. He's about to set expectations and point out that while Louis may be eternally preserved at a youthful, healthful thirty-three, some folks hadn't been so lucky – except Louis rocks their hips together and he realises that he is hard, like he hasn't been in years, the weight and press against him like a river boiling and bursting its banks after a drought. Thank fuck for the dark gift, he supposes.
"Do you think we can manage a bed?" he pulls away long enough to ask. "Cause I don't know about you, but my days of fucking on non-padded furniture are a bit behind me."
That gets him a huff of laughter, Louis pulling away just far enough to smile down at him. "Yeah, I think we can manage that," he says, and is out of Daniel's lap and pulling him upright before he can blink. He's back in Louis's arms immediately, no space at all between them. Daniel presses them even closer so he doesn't have to look at where a few drops of blood had splattered onto the dining room wall.
He lets Louis take charge of directions as they kiss their way towards some sort of horizontal surface, which is how they end up in the master bedroom rather than the perfectly nice guest suite. It's very, very tempting to say something, but Daniel doesn't want to interrupt their plans any more than he wants to think about Armand right now. Later, he'll press, and hope Louis is mellowed out a bit by then.
Louis is efficient and apparently on a mission, and their shirts are off before Daniel can think to flinch from the comparison. Of course, he's just as deathlessly, maddeningly handsome as he had been in San Francisco, as he must have been in New Orleans; forever the man who first drew Lestat's eye, just like Daniel is always going to be the man who wound Armand up till he snapped.
He'd make a comment about how much better immortality looks on the other guy, but he's not in the mood to invite pity. Especially not when Louis's eyes, sweeping up and down his grey chest hair and sagging skin and weird wrinkly bits, have stayed so gratifyingly hungry. If anything, they've sharpened, his obvious appreciation prickling Daniel's skin until he feels like that idiot kid again, trying to score off the most beautiful guy he'd ever seen.
"Want me to suck you off?" comes out of his mouth before he can think to stop it – fuck off, he's been thinking about it for decades – and Louis smiles at him, hungry and fond, even as he shakes his head.
"Not that I'm not tempted," he says, eyes sparkling, "but you haven't gotten used to those fangs yet, and that's one injury I'd rather not have to heal."
Daniel considers not saying the first thing that pops into his head, then does it anyhow. "Tell me Lestat found that out with you the hard way."
For a moment, he thinks this is another push too far, but then Louis cracks up, that unguarded laugh that Daniel's been able to surprise out of him a few times now. The bastard won't confirm or deny, just swoops in to kiss him silent again.
"I'd like to fuck you, Daniel," he murmurs against his lips when he finally lets him up for air. "May I?"
Daniel is way, way too old for those words to hit like they do, low in the gut and heavy as a really good red wine. "Well, since you asked nicely," he manages, and Louis smiles wide and not a little predatory.
This time, he spots Louis moving, faster than any body should be able to move through space, but not in time to keep from being all but tossed onto the bed. He braces himself for a flash of pain that never comes, from joints and a spine that seem to have been oiled to gleam good as new. By the time he's over that, Louis is back, curled over him and crowding him down onto the ludicrously silky sheets.
He's got a plain bottle in hand, and Daniel blinks before choking back a laugh. "Sorry, just - Is that you two's lube? That you bought as a couple?"
Louis arches an eyebrow. "Did you pack any? Then hush." He ensures Daniel stays hushed by getting to work on stripping him of his pants and boxers. He's slowed down now he's got Daniel where he wants him, and the last clothes he's got on are practically peeled away, until it's taking all Daniel has in him not to squirm. Louis's gaze is so fucking intent as he moves in, spreading Daniel's legs to fit himself between them. One hard, still-clothed thigh presses right up against his erection; no painful friction, just perfectly calculated pressure.
His head is still swimming, there's a predator looming over him with hunger in his shining eyes and he's had his species forcibly changed since he woke up this morning. Daniel does what he always seems to do when backed into a corner; spreading his legs wider, canting his hips up for easier access, he doubles the fuck down. He'd feel like more of a decrepit joke if Louis didn't immediately take him up on it, pressing in even closer as he slicks his fingers. One hand comes up to cup Daniel's jaw while the other dips down between his legs, and Daniel's body is too busy deciding which to flinch from to flinch at all.
Louis kisses him as he gives him the first finger, easing him through the sensation with a more familiar distraction in a way Daniel is immediately suspicious of. Has he sought out closet cases before? There's a power in being the seducer that might appeal to a man once so fatally seduced.
"Stop writing the damn book," Louis murmurs against his lips, "and be here."
"Couldn't get away if I tried," Daniel replies, voice breaking just a bit as Louis starts fingering him in earnest, "and get the fuck out my head."
"I don't have to be in it," Louis rejoins. "You don't think I know you by now?" He's got a second finger teasing around Daniel's asshole, rubbing gently where he's starting to open around the first.
"Like I know you," Daniel reminds him. Then, in a display of flexibility that he's not sure he's been capable of since his twenties, he raises his hips and pushes himself onto both of the bastard's fingers, hilting them with a choked gasp. Fuck, it feels nice, perversely satisfying, even after all this time.
Louis snorts a laugh, eyes shining, and then crooks his fingers, dragging the pads experimentally until he's found his target. He rubs at it coaxingly, building the heat until it's a low, slow burn all through his lower half, and thank fuck Daniel hasn't had any trouble with his prostate yet, cause he would have missed the hell out of this. A little noise leaks out before he can stop it, and Louis hums in response, smug as a cat who's wiggled its way into the aviary. He keeps it up until Daniel's hips are moving with his fingers with absolutely no input from his brain, until he can't bear to look at the bastard anymore and has to stare at the ceiling, has to force his hands flat before he starts tearing sheets that might actually cost more than his mortgage payment.
"Okay, enough," he snaps after Louis starts flirting with a third finger. "I'm ready, get in me."
"Don't suppose you could ask nicely?" Louis teases, but the fingers come out nonetheless, sending a shudder up his spine as they slip from him. It's embarrassing how empty he feels without them, but at least there's the consolation prize of watching Louis skinning out of his pants and definitely silk underwear. His dick's as gorgeous as the rest of him, no surprises there. He seems completely unselfconscious as he slicks himself, in a way Daniel's never seen in a man; like he never was Catholic at all. Maybe that'll be Daniel, after another hundred years in the same unchanging skin. Maybe human beauty standards stop meaning anything one way or another after the fiftieth human you've drained dead.
When Louis nudges back between his thighs and lines himself up, he's half-braced for pain, a little tense in a way the hand petting his flank like he's a nervy racehorse isn't doing anything to fix. Louis isn't packing anything ridiculous, but he's hardly small, and every other time he'd done this, it'd hurt at least a bit. But Louis slides slowly home like it's nothing, Daniel's body giving it up as if he's still twenty-two and Louis is still a gorgeous, fascinating stranger; just a warm burr of friction over nerves that feel like they've just been wired in and need to make up for lost time.
"Good?" Louis purrs, because he's a bastard and he knows exactly what he's doing. Rather than swell his head any bigger, Daniel gets a hand in his hair and pulls him down for a kiss that's more of a bite, especially once Louis starts rocking into and out of him, gentle and smooth and, yeah, really maddeningly great.
Once he's good and silenced, Daniel pulls away to ask, "Were you gonna fuck me like this in San Francisco?" He's been wondering if that had been Louis's original plan, after they'd wrapped up their interview to his satisfaction. Consummated and drained, Armand had said. "Was it going to be the bed, or the coffin?"
"I believe I'd considered the table, actually," Louis muses, hips rolling so slowly, as if he's got all the time in the world. Damn him, it's working too.
Daniel snorts, swallowing down a groan as Louis presses deep. "That thing? It could barely take the weight of a recorder and an ashtray, let alone two grown men."
"Ah, but that would've been the point," Louis tells him, smile curving wide and wicked. "Make you stop the tape and crowd you up against it, with you fighting for balance as it shook. You would have needed to cling to me to stay upright, like a raft in a storm at sea."
Like how he's clinging to him now, every nerve ending sparkling, heat suffusing his whole body. It's been decades since he's taken anything up the ass and he can't remember ever having tried it sober, but he's certain it hadn't felt as incredible as this. The aftershock of the turning sending him on the trip of a lifetime, enhanced vampiric senses extending to the sense of touch, or just getting fucked by someone who knows how to use his dick and gives a damn about Daniel enjoying himself? Hard to say.
He'd been right; it's exactly what he needs.
"I like you better like this, I think," Louis tells him, free hand cradling his face, tilting his chin up to keep eye contact when Daniel can't help but look away. "Older, wiser, grown so completely into yourself. My beautiful boy."
The fucking nerve of him, Daniel thinks, even as his whole body twitches with the jolt to his cock "Still not your fucking boy, Louis," he growls, like maybe the bastard won't have noticed Daniel clamping down on his dick.
"Aren't you?" Louis grins down at him. "But you're being so sweet for me." Which is utter bullshit; Daniel's never been sweet for anyone or anything in his life, nor has he ever felt inclined to be. There's no fucking reason this patronising crap should be getting to him like this, like a shot straight to his chest and his cock.
He can't help but wonder if it's a race thing, kinking on reducing a white guy the same way he'd been reduced. Or maybe it's down to age, and Louis is enjoying reminding them both of the 70-year gulf of experience and power that stretches between them and puts Louis firmly on top. Like any of that stopped Daniel working his way into his head and cracking it open, after an express invitation.
On top of whatever that is, Louis won't fucking speed up, seeming content to rock them together until the end of time. "Can't you go any faster?" Daniel snipes, trying for pissed and sounding uncomfortably close to desperate.
"I could," Louis hums, then pulls out so slow it raises goosebumps on Daniel's arms, an endless maddening drag.
"Yeah?" He nearly manages to keep the tremor out his voice, but fails when Louis starts to ease himself all the way in, deliberately taking his sweet time filling him back up. "Prove it."
"Brat," Louis admonishes, and when Daniel growls and tries to push back onto his cock, get a sensible goddamn pace going, hands with the strength of stone pin one hip to the bed and press down on his shoulder. Something instinctive in Daniel's body knows he could fight this, even if he might not win, and he's about to try it when Louis murmurs "Let me be gentle, hm? I'd like very much to be gentle with you, right now."
Damn these vampires and their big, sad eyes. Louis's face hovering above him is soft and open, and while Daniel's been rightfully accused of being interpersonally oblivious at times, he's not entirely hopeless. Whatever this is, now is not the time to poke it with a stick. He slings the arm not being held down around Louis's shoulder and goes lax, lets Louis have him how he wants.
"Good boy," Louis praises, the hands holding him still moving to cage his head in.
"Motherfucker," Daniel shoots back, but he can't scrape up much heat for it. He turns his head into Louis's arm, forehead against cool skin, and tries to control his breathing at least a little. There's a moment where he considers opening his mouth and biting down, or leaning up and sinking his teeth on that smooth brown throat, but no, that'd be– too much, right now. Too strange, too intimate. His head would probably explode.
He gets so wrapped up in it, floating in the plush ocean of that bed, getting fucked like a goddamn pillow princess, that he doesn't even think to get a hand on his dick. By the time it occurs to him, he's not particularly willing to move a finger. Orgasms aren't everything; the wisdom of age, that. If Louis wants him coming on his cock, he can do something about it. Daniel's fine where he is.
Except that Louis seems to have other ideas, because he shifts both their bodies like Daniel's made of feathers, getting an angle that nestles his dick right up against Daniel's prostate. To his shame, that first deliberate thrust makes him whine. Louis chuckles, unrepentant even when Daniel turns his head to glare at him.
"Lovely," he tells him, and cuts off Daniel's response by doing it again, and again. He's not so much sped up as focused in, each thrust rubbing inside him with terrible precision. It's fucking good, and then it builds and builds and it's too good, jolting him out of his reverie as he scrabbles to hold on.
"Fuck, I don't- what-" Can that really be him, babbling into Louis's shoulder? Whatever's building in him feels so utterly out of his control, rushing up on him, and no matter how fantastic every inch of him feels, he's this close to slapping his hands down and asking to get off the ride before something breaks.
"Hush," Louis croons, petting his hair like he's not driving Daniel out of his mind. "I got you, shh, let me make you feel good." And Daniel does, just lies there and takes it from the bastard because somehow, despite the threats and attacks and that pleased fucking smirk the time he'd broken him down to tears, he trusts Louis. At least a bit.
It comes over him like a wave breaking. He'd heard coming this way was different, and fuck, but how. The pleasure rolls through his whole body, drags him helpless and shuddering along with it. He didn't know he could make half these noises, little shaken things that Louis kisses away.
When it ebbs, he collapses back down again, every muscle limp and thrumming like a shot guitar string, every neuron buzzing white noise. Louis's blood is slick against one palm, where he's managed to claw the other man's back open. His other hand is tangled in the shreds of those pricy sheets.
Louis draws a shuddering breath, face tight as he holds himself still inside Daniel with impressive effort. "Can I keep –"
"Yeah, yeah, go on," Daniel pants, drawing the head he's spent so long getting inside down to rest on his shoulder. "Come get yours, beautiful."
And Louis does, thrusts still so gentle they barely jostle him, breath catching wet against Daniel's skin as he chases his orgasm and whatever else it is he's reaching for. It only takes him a little while, and Daniel floats the whole time, sated and still full, little sparks of overstimulation going off behind his eyes. There's not a single thought in his head. It's fucking bliss.
Eventually Louis stills, coming nearly silently, just a full-body exhale as he slumps down onto Daniel's chest. It's shockingly endearing, and Daniel can't help but wrap both arms around the monster sprawled over him and hold him close, distantly surprised by how light he suddenly feels. All the magnetic, neatly packaged power bled out of him.
So quiet that Daniel can't swear he even hears it, Louis whispers "Thank you," into his shoulder. With herculean effort, Daniel lets it pass without comment. He owes the guy that much.
Louis slipping out of him is half a relief and half an ache to grit his teeth against, and it leaves him both leaden and empty. Daniel closes his eyes against any analysis, forcing his breathing even as Louis shifts off the bed, listening to footsteps he rarely managed to catch before padding away. A tap runs in the en-suite; the powdery, mingled scent he's dragging in with each breath, embedded in the fabric of the room, separates out into two distinct vampires. The strangeness ebbs.
He keeps his eyes closed as Louis walks back towards the bed and he climbs back on it, even a washcloth, as soft as all the towels in this place, swipes cold and gentle over his belly and between his legs. He's too worn out to jump.
"What a gentleman," he mutters, and Louis laughs above him. When Daniel's as clean as he's getting without having to stand up, the washcloth gets tossed into some obscure corner that he doesn't have to care about, and Louis settles in beside him.
It's all a little too domestic, and Daniel does consider dragging himself to the guest room – or, better yet, out of this goddamn penthouse for good and done. But the sun will be up soon – some strange animal thing in him knows it – and that's one thing that he has no desire to experience. Plus, honestly, he's tired as fuck. "Mind if I stay the night?" he asks.
"As long as you need," Louis tells him, and Daniel can tell he means it. It's enough to make his dead heart stutter.
"Thanks," he says, and means it too, more than he'd thought he would, "but I should be getting back tomorrow, provided there's a red-eye. Think we could both use some space, and I've got a book to get started on."
Louis winces, starting a little upright. "I am sorry about your laptop. The recordings..."
Daniel turns his head to grin at him, unrepentant. "Oh, don't worry. I've got backups." Two USB pens, automatic cloud backups which should have caught the last recording, and Dropbox. Because he is a fucking professional.
Louis heaves a defeated sigh, flopping back onto the sheets. "Fair enough, I suppose." For all the performance, Daniel's pretty sure he can see relief there, as the vampire settles on his back, eyes slipping closed.
It's not that Daniel isn't exhausted as well. It's pushing five in the morning, according to the bullshit modern art clock on the bedroom wall, and between staying up the whole night and a strange, soporific pull that's probably his new circadian rhythm, he could pass out as soon as his head hit the pillow. Still, he props himself further upright, staring into the artificial darkness as his mind ticks restlessly over.
He can feel his body settling to room temperature – no more inner furnace, like he's not really a mammal anymore. His stomach is still a little cool where Louis had wiped him down. First orgasm he'd managed in longer than he cares to think about. Since before his diagnosis, certainly; back when he was still dismissing every symptom as part and parcel of growing old, until he finally wised up and called his doctor.
He honestly hadn't noticed, in the moment – or, if he had, he hadn't processed the implications. But in the quiet of the afterglow, with an apex predator lying languid and sated at his side, in the bed said predator had shared with his conniving ancient fuck of a maker right up until he'd blown up their marriage, those implications get processed just fine.
No ED. No tremor. No pressing need to piss. He'd hardly noted the triumphant return of his sense of smell, what with the rest of the sensory overload smacking him around the face, but it's undeniably back with a vengeance. No stiffness, no need to compensate for muscles that keep developing minds of their own. His balance as perfect as it once had been; in fact, almost certainly better.
He doesn't have Parkinson's anymore.
All those years he'd felt stretching ahead, populated with all the pamphlets and papers he'd read until his eyes blurred. The growing stiffness, the nerve pain. Balance difficulties, movement difficulties, speech difficulties, cognitive difficulties. Neat, near-euphemistic categories for the slow locking up of his body and mind, control slipping through his fingers like so much sand. Dementia, maybe, and that possibility had scared him by far the worst. All those gathering clouds on the horizon are suddenly gone, melted back into the air, and the night sky is clear and bright above him.
He's going to live for centuries, if he plays his cards right. Right here, at the end of his life, here's another one.
He only realises he's making any noise when Louis's palm settles on his shoulder, the sheets rustling as he pushes himself upright to wrap an arm around him. "Hey, hey," he murmurs, voice rough with encroaching sleep, "what's this, now?"
"Oh, nothing," Daniel mutters, scrubbing tears from his face. He goes to wipe his hand on the sheets, notices the blood streaking his palm instead of water, then does it anyway. Louis is good for the laundry bill. "Just realised I can spend all the money I'd set aside for that nursing home." His thick voice catches and chokes him, and he buries his face in his hands, sagging back and sideways into the vampire holding him.
When he does see his bastard maker again, he's not going to breathe a word of this, this shimmering, breathless, expansive freedom rolling out in front of him. Fuck him; he doesn't deserve to know what he's given Daniel, the gift he's so sure is a curse.
Fuck him, and fuck all vampires are born from trauma. Daniel's going to do just fine.