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Armand stares a lot. It’s his thing, okay, the guy could win a staring contest with a painting. Daniel loves waking up and finding those eldritch Bambi eyes fixed on him, unblinking.
“So, honey,” Daniel drawls on one such occasion, then nuzzles closer, allows his own eyes to droop closed as he buries his nose in Armand’s pyjama top (today it’s some hi-tech fabric tweaked to high heaven to allegedly optimise the sleep cycle for the skin). “What was it this time? My drool did it for you?”
“You do not drool in your sleep.”
“Pretty sure I soaked you bad a couple times in the ‘70s.”
“Yes, well, you’ve grown up a bit since then,” Armand hums, amused, passing a hand though Daniel’s hair — bliss. Fucking bliss. “No, if you must know — and I know you must, Mr Molloy — it was the gentle asymmetry of your eyebrows.”
“Mm,” Daniel growls, clawing at Armand just a little, because the little shit knows what being called ‘Mr Molloy’ in that glass-smooth little voice does to Daniel. “Weirdo.”
“It’s very charming and aesthetically pleasing, Daniel. The right eyebrow sits slightly higher than the left — no doubt the result of decades of mocking little looks and entirely too clever glances.”
“Yeah, totally how human faces work, babe.”
“You’re no longer human.”
“You know, it’s cute how you say that like it’s some kind of ace up your sleeve, a checkmate in an argument.”
“We aren’t arguing,” Armand says, batting those big doe eyes at him, brazenly innocent, and yup, all Daniel can do is bite him.
He always liked breakfast in bed.
So anyway, so Armand stares a lot: at blenders; into the middle distance; at light switches; into people’s souls; at boats (Daniel makes sure they both take a walk to the marina at least a few times a month, where Armand will either infodump about the boats or just stare at them quietly).
Point is, Armand staring is routine. What he stares at is important though, so when Daniel finds him in the spare room, staring pensively at his own coffin, a little light goes off on the Armand-labelled flight control panel in Daniel’s brain. Nothing big: check frequencies, but also maybe make sure no one is flying into a mountain.
“There you are,” he says, like he’s been looking for Armand for longer than five seconds — like he needs longer than five seconds to find him in their own home, Armand’s heartbeat tethered to his own.
Armand’s posture (tight, perfect, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped) relaxes immediately, just a little, even if he doesn’t quite turn around. Daniel comes closer, slips his arms around him from behind.
“What’cha got there?”
“My coffin,” replies Armand, in that way he has where it’s a coin toss on whether he’s being earnest or an absolute little shit.
Daniel grunts, wiggles himself into a more thorough hug.
“Wanna break it out of storage?”
“No.”
Armand’s voice has a bit of a catch in it, but it’s also soft, and he’s stroking Daniel’s hands where they’re clasped over Armand’s middle, so Daniel lets it go for now; he hums, gently closes his teeth over the crook of Armand’s neck, just to hold on a little bit. Something about getting his maker back has made him all… toothy, and it just kinda stuck. Armand loves it.
A few more minutes pass; Daniel lazily gloms his way along some real estate on Armand’s neck; Armand keeps staring, miles away.
Then, with a dainty little inhale, a whole cinematic shift happens in Armand’s body, relaxing it from the rigid, angular posture into a flowing, performatively living thing again.
“Would you like to go out for billiards tonight, beloved?” he asks, like that’s what’s he’s been thinking about while dissociating in front of his coffin. “We haven’t played in a while.”
“Sure,” Daniel says, then bites gently again with blunt teeth. “Hey, you can shark someone and we can pick up lunch when they follow us out to beat us up.”
Armand trills and purrs like Daniel just came up with a plot worthy of an Agatha Christie novel, and seamlessly moves on to wanting to buy a pool table for the house.
Daniel earmarks the coffin incident for later, because he knows there will be a ‘later’; Armand can’t just go from A to B, he has to do a whole Rube-Goldberg Machine thing in his brain, jumping through hoops and rolling little metal balls along improvised tracks and passing through D and Z and F and J first. It’s way more adorable to Daniel than it should be.
The thing is, Armand doesn’t really sleep in his coffin. He just doesn’t. Not once since Daniel hunted him down and dragged his ass home; not once since they subsequently got a new place together. The coffin is just… there, perched against a wall in the spare room, along with various hoarder overflows of Daniel’s journalism and Armand’s… everything.
They usually sleep in bed together, and look, Daniel loves this fucking bed. It’s a four-poster number that Armand picked out and that Daniel was sceptical about, but then Armand put up the dark, heavy, lush curtains on it, and the moment he drew them closed for the first time, Daniel actually fucking purred. The quiet, the seclusion, the muted sounds and half-darkness, the heightened closeness of Armand rustling in the sheets beside him, wrapping him up in his arms… perfect. All of it fucking perfect.
Daniel still does like a coffin, the fledgling instinct being what it is, and sometimes they do sleep in Daniel’s box together, nice and warm and snug.
But never in Armand’s.
To be fair, even if they wanted to, they couldn’t — Armand’s coffin is only big enough for one, and barely, because the love of Daniel’s life is a 6-foot-tall beanpole, and back in whatever century that coffin was made the afterlife size chart clearly didn’t stretch that far.
So the fact that Armand is suddenly interested in his coffin definitely means something. Daniel, on a reflex bred and cultivated by two fucked-up marriages, flicks through the Rolodex of his recent deeds in search of something that may have upset Armand. Nothing really jumps out at him, beyond the obvious conversations neither of them really enjoy having, but which they both realise they need to have — you know, standard exhumations of their original decade-long relationship, the whole abandonment thing, etc., etc. Armand has been really good at those (by which Daniel means he hasn’t set their home on fire, abandoned Daniel the third time, or slipped back into his patterns of weaving his relationship into a trap around himself), so that’s not much of a lead.
Anyway, Armand needs freedom, even though he doesn’t like it. Daniel can be patient. Let him get where he’s going and then come to him. He can be a supportive husband and all that — third time’s the charm, right?
And lo and behold, come to him Armand does. Literally. Uses him as a footrest and everything.
“Uh-huh,” Daniel says, as Armand joins him on the sofa by draping his obscenely perfect legs (clad in silk boxers and fluffy slippers) across Daniel’s lap. “Hi, honey, what’s up?”
“I have missed you,” Armand says simply, aloofly; Daniel loves the face he makes to go with that voice. “And I have read that skin-on-skin contact is important for bonding.”
So he’s been reading those damn parenting books again.
“Oh-kay…” Daniel says slowly, then strokes a hand over Armand’s leg, because, well, look at it! “This helping?”
“Yes,” Armand says in the tone of a magnanimous prince that Daniel loves getting riled by. “You may continue. Although it would help further if you had more skin available.”
“This your way of trying to get me out of my pants?”
“Perhaps.”
Hey, if old man thighs are what does it for him, who is Daniel to deny him. He lifts Armand’s legs off his lap (he moves them so Armand ends up resting his feet on the coffee table, just to see him glitch), drops the sweatpants (he’s not gonna be sexy about this, okay, not with sweatpants, he’s just not programmed that way), sits his ass back on the sofa, and drapes Armand’s legs back over his lap.
“Happy?”
“Yes,” Armand says, still in that grand way, and picks up his iPad.
So yeah, so now Daniel can’t put his laptop in his lap. He probably should be more bitchy about it, but Armand is right there, and that skin-on-skin thing really is nice. So Daniel digs into research on his favourite subject: Armand.
“What are you up to, babe?”
“I’m thinking of buying a new coffin,” Armand says lightly, but way too smooth and composed, eyes still on the iPad.
The thing about having casual conversations with Armand is that they’re only casual about 50% of the time; the other 50% it’s like playing a cross between Tetris and Minesweeper at a hardcore speed, in the sense that if exactly the right brick doesn’t slot into exactly the right space, everything explodes.
Fortunately, Daniel is a smartass journalist who turned being unable to shut up into a career path, and he built most of his professional success on baiting and antagonising unstable people with the tools and capacity to kill. That, and he knows Armand, okay? His maker, his lover, his murderer, yadda yadda, but also his gremlin. His companion. His favourite person. Just… his Armand.
“Hot,” he deadpans therefore, not missing a beat.
Like a charm, it works; Daniel might never get over how the things he says, the things that earn him eye-rolls and divorce filings from others, with Armand they just work.
“I’ve had the current one for more than two centuries,” Armand elaborates with an elegant swipe of a finger across the screen. “It might be time for a change. I’m also intrigued by the various innovations and evolutions on the market in the current decade.”
Oh, Jesus, he’s found some bullshit AI-powered coffin, hasn’t he.
“Interestingly,” he picks up, and Daniel is about to learn some hella niche facts here, “the Victorian era experienced a surge of interest in coffins and various other death-related paraphernalia and rituals. Death photography, for example, where the family would dress a recently deceased loved one in their best clothes and pose together for a series of pictures.”
“Boy, did Louis miss out on a clientele-rich era.”
Armand smiles, light and amused; Jesus, Daniel loves that asshole little smirk.
“Quite. Anyway, they also became rather fixated with the potential issue of inadvertently burying someone alive, so several patents for coffins with various alarm triggers were developed. One had a mechanism of strings and cogs attached to the buried person’s finger and, upon any movement, a bell would ring outside the coffin. Quite ingenious.” He sighs dreamily. “I wish they were still in production.”
“Uh-huh, so you could ring for me to bring you breakfast in bed?”
And there’s that grin, the one that’s like a crescent moon in his mouth and makes Daniel so eager to get on his knees and worship the fuck out of this terrible, beautiful creature.
“Now, Daniel, we both know that, as much as you enjoy playing the servant boy in the bedroom, I’m the one who brings you breakfast in bed.”
“Hey, I’d bring you breakfast!”
Armand coos — actually fucking coos.
“You sleep so deeply not even an explosion could wake you.”
“Yeah, I realised that a couple months ago, when I came down the stairs and saw an entire brain-fucked fire brigade in our backyard. But screw you, I could totally serve you breakfast in bed!”
“Your nose twitches so adorably when I blow on the mug to waft the scent of blood in your direction. That’s when your breathing restarts, you know.”
“Okay, that’s it. I’m making you breakfast in bed tomorrow.”
“However will I endure such terror,” Armand sighs.
At which point, you know. Daniel has to pounce on him. For the principle.
Armand has the coffin delivered to their house because you can take the vampire out of the theatre, but you can’t take the artistic director out of the gremlin.
The little shit times the delivery to coincide with Daniel rolling out of bed and, lured by the sounds, shuffling downstairs in his slippers and ratty robe, bleary-eyed, mildly starved and in general looking very much the part of a sick old man who will soon be making use of the purchase.
Asshole.
The delivery people are funeral home workers, and they’re professionally hushed and stoic, while privately wondering why the hell this brain-shatteringly beautiful 20-something is ordering his dad’s coffin with a house delivery. Yeah, Daniel’s gonna need, like, two blood espressos to get through this.
“There you are, beloved,” Armand says, gliding over to him and causing all three guys to freeze and reevaluate as they watch him fuss with Daniel’s hair and kiss him hello. “Look, they’ve delivered it.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Daniel drawls, because one part of him relentlessly wants to be a brat, while another enjoys the show and at least one slack jaw among the delivery people — he contains multitudes and all that. “Do we tip here, or…?”
Armand tuts at him, then turns around, flawlessly commandeering their audience’s attention.
“This way, please,” he tells them, and sweeps down the hallway.
He’s also dressed to kill, because of course he is: a loose yet severe linen shirt the colour of deep mustard, plus crisp, dark green slacks tailored to within and inch of their life around that pert little ass. Daniel follows that ass, as well as the rest of the gremlin attached to it, down the hallway, while the delivery people haul the wooden crate behind them.
“In here,” Armand says, opening the large sliding door to his atelier/mad scientist lab and gesturing inside.
Relief flickers through one guy’s mind when he sees the easels, the sculptures and the collage wall; ah, it’s just an art project of a sugar baby, not a sadistic son taunting his dear old dad with upcoming mortality. Daniel snorts and discreetly pinches Armand’s ass on his way in.
The people deposit the crate and open it up; Armand peers inside, nods, and signs the proffered document on a clipboard.
“Would you like us to remove the crate?”
“No. I’ll be keeping it.”
Of course he’s keeping it. He’s probably gonna lurk in it, like a big cat.
The delivery guys leave, one of them wondering how the hell Daniel managed to pull that and deciding he must be loaded and the kid is plucking him for all he’s worth. Daniel earmarks him for a lunch next week.
After he ushers the three prospective meals out, he heads back to the atelier, where Armand is excitedly lifting the coffin out of the crate. Yes, Daniel can do that now too, but it still makes him snort, how absurd it looks when Armand, apparently so dainty and willowy in his clothes (carefully tailored to gaslight anyone looking at him) lifts up a literal sarcophagus like it weighs nothing and no laws of physics apply.
The first thing Daniel notices about the coffin is that it’s black and has a sort of sleek, half-matte and half-glossy lacquer job on it; the shape of it is restrained, but with a few gothic hints, like claw-footed legs with, yup, those are bats carved into the corners. Cute.
The second thing Daniel notices about the coffin makes his heart skip, but he keeps it to himself for now.
“What do you think?” Armand asks, cocking a hip, arms folded, one hand touching his chin in a gesture he definitely picked up from old black-and-white movies.
“It’s nice,” Daniel says, coming up behind him and perching his chin on one of those insanely well-sculpted shoulders.
“I’m going to customise it, of course.”
“Uh-huh. Customise.”
“Yes,” Armand sniffs. “As a matter of fact, I’m expecting further deliveries tomorrow.”
Well, that’s fine. Daniel knew he signed up for living with a mad scientist and DIY engineering enthusiast when he first dragged Armand’s ass home.
For the next six days, Armand shrouds himself in mystery.
It’s really fucking cute, the way he loves being mysterious; the way he thinks he needs it, as if he isn’t already the weirdest, most fascinating freak on this planet. But he’s also really hot when he stalks, all aloof (he takes up wearing flowy clothing to add to the effect) and smug, only periodically emerging from his lair.
Daniel does his best not to be a cranky fledgling demanding to be in the centre of his maker’s attention at all times, but some of it must still slip, because Armand fucks and spoils him extra hard and sweet every morning, staying with him in bed until he falls asleep, before scurrying off back to work on his coffin.
Judging by the sounds, precision power tools are involved. Drilling, sawing, sanding, the works. Also, considering the neighbourhood-wide blackout he somehow manages to cause, there will be electricity. Maybe a reading light. That’d be cute. And probably not insane enough for Armand.
As always, when it comes to Armand (and most things: two Pulitzers, everyone), Daniel is right.
“Daniel.”
“Nnnh…”
“Da-niel…”
“Hmmh…” Daniel lifts his hand, which feels like it’s made of lead, by the way, and rubs it over his face, tries to get at least one eye open; the love of his life hovers over him like a sleep paralysis demon, those unblinking orange eyes fixed on him. “Hwah… hmh— y’kay?”
“Yes.” Armand runs a hand through Daniel’s hair, and okay, that’s a bribe that will net him a lot of good will. Asshole. “I’d like to show you something.”
“The coffin?” Daniel manages to slur only a little.
Armand purses his lips. “It was going to be a surprise.”
“Oh, oh, sure, yeah, I had no idea what you were doing for six days with power tools after getting a fancy-ass coffin delivered. Sorry I ruined that for you.”
“You are forgiven,” he says, dead-serious; Jesus Christ, Daniel loves him. “And since you sounded so much more awake just now, come.”
“Buy me dinner and slip me a couple fingers first,” Daniel grumbles, but he squeezes Armand’s hand tight after he’s pulled out of the bed.
Downstairs, Armand slides the door to his atelier open and ushers Daniel in. He’s excited, practically vibrating with it, his thumb going back and forth over the back of Daniel’s hand like a windscreen wiper on its highest setting. It’s too cute so damn early in the evening, Daniel’s heart might give out.
The coffin is sat in the dead centre of the room. It’s still black and still has the claw feet and bats going on, but there have been a few additions. Armand fitted in a few sleek, long panels, kinda like racing stripes, along some of the coffin’s contours: the curved lid, the edges and the corners. The panels emit a soft purple glow. It’s like a 14-year-old gamer got edgy and designed their own coffin.
“Holy shit.”
“Do you like it?”
“I mean, it’s insane and shouldn’t exist, so yeah. Of course I like it.”
Armand preens visibly, even as he hides it by gliding nonchalantly over to the coffin; nonchalant, yeah, right. Not a single nonchalant bone in this gremlin’s body, all of it orchestrated and composed and self-directed to the second. And only Daniel gets to see him let go, sprawl on a sofa in a hideous pair of pyjama bottoms with dinosaurs on them and wiggle his toes when something suspenseful happens in a movie he’s seen six thousand times already. Fuck, Daniel wants to cuddle him even more than he wants to suck him off.
(Yeah, he’s gonna do both. He can multitask.)
“I can adjust the luminosity and hue of the lighting with an app on my phone,” Armand says, coyly brushing his fingertips along the coffin’s lid, the fucking tease.
Daniel’s eyes are still fixed on the lid, waiting for Armand to open it, so Daniel can see, so Daniel can check if it really is—
Armand opens the coffin.
And yeah. Yeah, it is.
Daniel swallows around the tight little ball suddenly lodged in his throat.
For the first time in Armand’s vampiric existence, his coffin is big enough for two.
Armand really wants to have sex that first day they sleep in it; he’s all subtly restless, breathing elevated, pupils blown, and he’s pressing against Daniel like he can’t contain himself in his own skin and needs to burrow into Daniel’s. And Daniel is pretty much always game, when it comes to Armand, so they officially break the coffin in.
Under the cover of the lid, their naked bodies are pressed close, and that’s all they do: just rock and rub together, cocks trapped between their bellies, slicking up with pre-come, their breaths huffed against each other’s mouths, hands grasping and wandering in the confined dark. It fulfils something very vampiric inside Daniel, some instinct that wants to put down roots in this space, in this moment, and he can feel across their bond that it’s the same for Armand. He’s here, in this quiet, dark cocoon of the coffin, in his maker’s restless arms, their bodies alive with pleasure and with desperate chase for more, more, more…
“Daniel,” Armand pants, trying to push impossibly closer, one hand grabbing onto Daniel’s shoulder, the other wedged between Daniel’s side and the coffin’s satin bedding, claws digging into flesh.
“Yeah,” Daniel pants back. “Yeah, you’ve got me, babe.”
“Daniel…”
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Oh, fuck, fuck…”
Armand gasps when Daniel pushes a thigh between his legs, gives him more leverage, some friction for his balls.
“Yeah,” Daniel breathes, dunking head-first into Armand’s end of their bond and the blurry, almost dreamlike pleasure drowning him. “Yeah, feels good…”
Bumping his elbow on the lid, he manages to work a hand under Armand’s arm and onto his chest, drags a thumb over Armand’s nipple, rough and slow, the way he knows always gets Armand to arch and keen, and this time is no exception. Jesus, his eyes look so sweet, all golden amber and hazed with pleasure, a hint of fangs peeking out between those parted lips — Daniel wants to eat him up. And oh, shit, he can.
He lifts his head, noses at Armand’s neck where it’s exposed in pleasure, blood pulsing so close to the surface.
“Can I?” he huffs, rocking his hips against Armand’s.
“Yes,” Armand gasps almost incoherently, hand already curling over the back of Daniel’s neck, guiding him closer. “Yes, yes, please…”
Vampire vision allows Daniel to see in the dark, but in this warm closeness, in the soft crush of their bodies, he finds Armand’s artery by touch, lips grazing over skin, the blood singing out to him, fragrant, driving him wild, and beyond any fucking drug he’s ever taken in his life.
He wraps an arm around the small of Armand’s back, gathers him impossibly closer, holds him firm in a way that makes Armand gasp and claw at his back. He licks along the artery, lightheaded with the hint of tartness in Armand’s skin, the promise of what’s just under it, and finally bites in.
Armand cries out, hand gripping Daniel’s hair, hips bucking artlessly, and fuck, Daniel loves it when he gets like this, when he lets go of everything and just feels — it means Daniel is doing good. Doing right by him.
And then he swallows the first mouthful of Armand’s blood, and he kinda whites out for a bit, stops thinking at all, other than holy shit and mine, mine mine!
Doesn’t matter how many times he drinks from Armand, it always sends him into outer space. Armand doesn’t really taste sweet (honey and pineapple Daniel’s ass) — he tastes sweet in the sense that some languages call freshwater ‘sweet’; like salvation and revelation. He also tastes like cloves and ash and ancient wine, the sort that got the gods drunk in old stories.
Daniel swallows again, moans, voice bubbling in the back of his throat, takes another pull, and he can feel Armand’s swoon across their bond, and he’s spiralling and falling with him, and this blood made him, it sings inside him, says hello to every sip that slides down Daniel’s throat like nectar, and it’s glowing in every atom inside Daniel’s body—
—and then Armand comes, coruscating and ricocheting across their bond, and Daniel moans, holds onto him for dear un-life, and he’s coming with him, pulled into that starburst of pleasure.
Armand whines really fucking sweetly when Daniel gently pulls out his fangs some hazy stretch of time later; his hand tangles in Daniel’s hair, and he grinds against him once more, causing Daniel to hiss with overstimulation. Daniel hums, licks lazily at the puncture marks until they close, Armand continuing to slowly stroke his hair.
“So,” Daniel murmurs eventually, and Armand hums happily around a smile, kisses him softly.
“So,” he repeats, elegant, the word somehow angular in his voice. “How do you like the coffin?”
“I like it,” Daniel says easily, rubs Armand’s back. “Question is, how do you like it?”
“I think I am pleased with it. I felt it was time. To… make a change.”
Daniel makes a sound in his throat; not pushing, not now. Armand smiles that fond little smile at Daniel’s silence.
“I love you,” he says.
“Love you too, babe.”
“I still prefer our bed. But. Sometimes, if you are amenable… I would wish to share this coffin with you.”
“Oh, trust me, I am amenable.”
There is no reading light; but Armand’s smile lights up the whole damn coffin well enough.