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They’re staying in a hotel in Barcelona— a nice one, this time. Armand’s paying, so it’s the top floor suite for the vampire and his boy. It’s not quite a penthouse, unfortunately, but it’s got a couch and a television, which is all Daniel could ask for.
His Spanish is piss poor, so whatever cheesy melodrama is happening on the screen in front of him, he can’t quite piece it together. From what he can tell, Doña Blanca’s son is actually her nephew, who’s been sleeping with her daughter, who’s his cousin? And, of course, Blanca and Señora Garcia have the same husband, a bastard that’s been cheating consistently between the two of them for the last seventeen years. Daniel is weirdly drawn in by it all.
In the main bedroom across the hall, Armand has been taking apart a Walkman for the last six hours. Daniel’s learned from years of experience to never disrupt Armand’s autopsies, mechanical or otherwise. Daniel figured this was how he’d be spending his night, so he continues to watch his show, trying to piece it all together from the actors’ body language and severe soap opera facial expressions.
About an hour later, when Blanca and Garcia have discovered the truth and decide to kill the bastard together (is what Daniel thinks is happening), Armand comes into the living room. He doesn’t have the Walkman with him— it’s probably still scattered in pieces around the bedroom, a spring here, a motor there— but he sits next to Daniel on the couch, leaning his head into the crook of Daniel’s neck.
They sit like that for a while, watching in silence, Daniel breathing steadily and Armand noticeably not. Armand acted like this often, especially after taking something apart. He just needed some time to calm down, without speaking, without breathing. Daniel could give him that; Daniel would give him anything.
The women on TV bring Don Alvarez to his office and lock the door. Blanca turns around, pulls a gun out of her purse, and shoots him in the heart. Alvarez staggers back, but Garcia pulls him into his office chair to die. Blood sprays everywhere, a comic reenactment of an event Daniel’s seen Armand do with countless dinner victims. He tries not to think about how batshit crazy that thought is, and how crazier it is that he’s so calm while he thinks it.
To take his mind off of his accessory to murder, Daniel says, “Kinda tactless, don’t you think, boss? Now they have to clean all that mess up.”
“And such a needless waste of a nice meal.” Armand looks at the television screen disapprovingly. “They are terrible hunters.”
They watch as Blanca and Garcia throw Alvarez into the trunk of his own car, and push the car into the open sea. Another question pops up in Daniel’s head.
“How do you usually get rid of the evidence?” Daniel asks Armand. Of your feeds remains unsaid but implicitly understood. “Cremation, body dumping?”
“It depends, I suppose. Sometimes I incinerate them with my gift, or sometimes I weigh them down with blocks and leave them to the river bed.”
“Very mafioso of you, babe. You got any Italian in you, by chance?”
Armand ignores the question. “Occasionally, when I have the means, a full dissection is done. The advent of the autopsy,” Armand looks off into the distance with a dreamy look in his amber eyes, “was a unique delight. I had never seen such innovation before.”
“Aren’t they hard to lug around, though?” Daniel asks as a follow-up. It’s honestly hard-wired into him, at this point. “You’ve got that super-strength, sure, but aren’t they a little… what’s the word… unwieldy? Must make it hard to carry them around before dumping them.”
Armand shakes his head and says, “I never retain them long enough for the hardness to set in. My victims still droop, lifeless and loose. It’s as if they are asleep.”
“Asleep, huh? Interesting.” And Daniel knows his voice is betraying his every thought, despite the fact that Armand can literally read his mind. Daniel simply prays Armand doesn’t tease him too much about the frankly vulgar images that popped up in his imagination just now.
But Armand is looking at him knowingly, as he always does, because he always knows his boy. His minion.
First is the familiar sensation of his body losing its power; a common enough feeling, seeing as Armand loved messing around with his limbs like a puppet-master. Daniel is still sitting on the couch, slouched just as he was seconds before, but now he finds himself unable to move or to speak.
Armand stands and walks slightly away from where Daniel is frozen, leaving Daniel’s field of vision. In less than a moment the tension Armand had been maintaining in his hold on Daniel vanishes, and Daniel loosens like a marionette’s strings being cut, his head falling back against the couch, his arms and legs open and lifeless.
Panic is the first shot into Daniel’s veins, then the following one, arousal. He still can’t see Armand— his head is stuck to the right, staring hard at the popcorn wall instead of straight ahead— and two parts of him battle in his mind, one trying desperately to move, the other wanting to be good for Armand.
Although he can’t see him, he can still hear him. Would you like to be the dead one tonight, beloved? Armand sends the thought into Daniel’s mind. Would you like to be my victim?
The part of him that wants to submit wins out, like it always does. Daniel sends back a cacophony of thoughts, mostly asking for Armand to use him like a doll. It was so much easier to beg inside his head than out loud, except when they played a bit of the humiliation game in public. But this was different, and Armand was not in the mood for Daniel’s embarrassment tonight. Something else was on the menu.
In the corner of his eye Daniel can see Armand stripping quietly, but the loose grip Armand has on him is too strong to let him even move his eyes. No, he won’t be seeing Armand naked tonight, apparently. Daniel mourns silently even as he grows half-hard in his jeans.
“Are you comfortable, beloved?” Armand asks him.
No cricks in my neck, if that’s what you mean. Wish I could see you, though, Daniel thinks back at him, sending along a fantasy of Armand, naked, riding a fully-clothed Daniel to oblivion.
“In your dreams, Daniel.”
Yeah, that’s kinda the point.
He still can’t see, but Daniel can feel Armand coming to stand between his legs, looking down at him. He feels odd, like this. Floating, helpless. He feels…
He feels like a corpse.
“An excellent meal,” Armand says to Daniel’s lifeless form. “Now what to do with the body? Burn you?” Armand runs his claws through Daniel’s hair, careful not to tug too hard. His dick is positively throbbing now, the only part of him that’s not limp. “Throw you into the Mediterranean? Cut you into small pieces, then feed you to the rats? Or,” Armand says, with a theatricality Daniel thinks is ingrained in him, “perhaps I should make sure you’ve been sufficiently drained.”
Then Armand drops to his knees.
If Daniel could hyperventilate, he’s certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would be right now. His thoughts are a jumble of expletives and fantasies and hopes and prayers, but mostly he’s just thinking loudly about Armand, and his fanged mouth.
“One final taste, before I throw my leftovers in the garbage.” Daniel thanks God that he doesn’t have control over his mouth, because the moan that would have escaped his lips would have been disgustingly loud.
Armand makes quick work of his pants, unzipping them and pulling him out and tugging his underwear down, too, to draw his sac out with it. The cold air hits Daniel's groin in a way that would make him shiver if he could, which he can’t. Because he’s a corpse. His dick leaks a bit at the thought, and Armand huffs a small laugh. Fuck, he definitely heard that, then.
“What a beautiful, limp thing you are,” Armand sighs. Daniel can feel his lips moving a hair’s breadth away from his tip. He could not whimper. “Ah, but still quite stiff in all the right places.”
If you make any rigor mortis jokes, Daniel thinks loudly in Armand’s direction, I swear to God I’ll…
It’s difficult to make threats you can actually act on when your lover is a five hundred year-old vampire, who currently has control over your body and is pretending to give your rotting corpse head.
There’s not enough shrinks in the world to even begin diagnosing Daniel with whatever the hell is wrong with him.
Luckily there’s no time for Daniel to finish his threat; losing the pretense, Armand drops his head and begins to suck Daniel in earnest, tonguing his slit in between movements so harshly that it brings tears to Daniel’s glassed-over eyes.
Fucking hell, Daniel shouts in his head, knowing Armand is listening like always. God, I’m— fucking hell! Armand!
Daniel is crying now, the only thing he apparently is permitted to do under Armand’s firm hold of him. The idea turns him on exponentially: the lack of freedom, the lack of a desire to be free. Every other part of Daniel’s body is disturbingly relaxed, even as Armand sucks the soul straight out of his dick. It’s pure torture. Daniel’s not going to last long.
Very rarely does Armand blow him— only recently has he even been explicitly sexual with Daniel at all. After all, for the first three years of their so-called relationship, Armand had spent his time in a chair in the corner of the room, watching Daniel get plowed by half of the gay population of Europe. He hadn’t put his mouth on Daniel’s dick in nearly two years, which was the first time he’d done so, in fact. The first experience had been near-religious; Daniel thinks this time might actually just kill him.
Armand is getting spit everywhere, and Daniel wishes he could move a fraction of an inch to watch his head move up-and-down on his cock. The noises alone are vulgar, the slurping sounds and occasional short, quiet moans from Armand causing the pleasure to mount.
When Armand starts to mix deep-throating with kitten licks to his tip, Daniel feels the tell-tale pressure that says he’s about to shoot off like a rocket, and, like any decent gentleman, he tries to notify the other party of his imminent departure.
Hey boss, I need to— I mean, I’m gonna— but whatever warning he attempts to send to the other man is halted by the sudden scene thrust into Daniel’s mind by Armand.
It’s a third person perspective of their positions now, Daniel a lifeless flop and Armand’s head bobbing up and down between his legs. Only the difference here is that Daniel can see in this image how sickly and blue his skin is, how his eyes are made of glass, unfocused and unseeing. Daniel realizes that in this fantasy he truly is a cadaver, murdered by an insatiable thirst Armand hasn’t had in hundreds of years, reemerging only for the blood of a stupid druggie journalist, who likes having a bunch of weird shit done to him, preferably by a terrifyingly powerful immortal monster.
Outwardly, Daniel’s orgasm is silent, but the inside of his mind is a hurricane of shouts, pleas, and a veritable mantra of Armand, Armand, Armand. The feeling is like nothing he’d experienced before— the looseness and the tension all rolled into one, the submission of autonomy and of life itself. He’s riding the high without any spoons, needles, or joints involved.
Armand swallows nearly all of him, until Daniel’s spasms die out and his cock splutters to a stop. Well after he has finished, Armand continues to lick at him, light and soft enough to make the overstimulation a tender nightmare for Daniel.
A tender nightmare, Daniel laughs inside his thoughts, isn’t that Armand in a nutshell.
Armand stops and pulls back far enough to reprimand him. “I was under the impression that the dead do not speak.” Never mind telling him that technically Daniel wasn’t speaking, but rather Armand had been snooping; technicalities were a moot point between them.
A flick of his cold hand, and Daniel’s strings are reattached once again. He moves his head to look at Armand, naked and still kneeling in front of him, a beautiful thing. An evil thing, too, but beautiful. Daniel’s dick gives a fighting twitch of reanimation at the sight.
“You sure about that?” Daniel replies to Armand’s bratty quip. He places his newly-freed hand on Armand’s eyebrow, stroking it lazily. “You’re dead, and you never shut the hell up.” Daniel says it with all the venom he has, but the fond look on his face that accompanies it gives him away. Fighting’s always been their foreplay— and their aftercare as well, Daniel realizes. And most of their fucking in-between, too, if he’s being honest with himself.
Armand sucks his tip again, dropping his fangs as he pops off quickly before Daniel can pull his hips back. Daniel yelps in pain, gasps harshly not in pain, then drops to his knees in a mirror of Armand’s own position so they can get a start on round two.