Chapter Text
Daniel was quintessentially American. It was almost charming, really, that unpolished air about him. Paris couldn’t have made his boy like this, just a bit too much, a little too loud, too brash, too rough, too cocky and overconfident. The inherent youthfulness that seemed to come easily to inhabitants of a country just now reaching its bicentennial and far too wrapped up in its own significance. Americanism was gaudy like plastic pearls and fake gold patinaed with wear and processed foods Armand couldn’t recognize as edible.
They were in Las Vegas now, a pinnacle of American excess, neon signs and windowless casinos full of lights and sounds and drinking and cigarette smoke, gamblers and dealers and bouncers all yelling over one another. Pure, unadulterated American desperation. He’d chased Daniel all the way here, and once he caught him he dragged him up to this penthouse suite. It’d been a week and neither of them had bothered running yet. The architecture here intrigued him, the distinctly space- age consumerist tilt of the Googie style a culmination of a hundred different distinct Americanisms that Armand could spend months pulling apart.
Daniel was sprawled across the hotel bed, dropping a slice of pizza into his mouth rather than bothering to sit up. He had a cigarette and a joint both burning in the ashtray on the nightstand. He was quite drunk and entirely uninhibited. Armand’s presence was hardly significant. Americanism in pure flesh and blood. He folded the pizza in half and practically inhaled it, making some sort of human groaning noise as he leaned across the bed to pinch the nub of his joint between his fingers and take a drag. Smoke puffed out of his nose as he sucked down the last of the roach and left it smoking in the hotel ashtray.
Daniel looked at Armand, watched him back for a minute before returning to what he was doing. Just an acknowledgment that he saw Armand looking.
“Why did you buy so many of these again?” Daniel asked, kicking the bag of clanking snowglobes half wrapped in old newspaper pages that was sitting at the foot of the bed.
“They are an especially absurd human creation,” Armand said, “This is a desert, does it even snow here? Why create small models of the city in which snow falls?”
Daniel shrugged. “Like so many Americans, it seems you’re trying to construct a life that makes sense from things you found in gift shops. ”
“Vonnegut,” Daniel continued when Armand regarded him blankly from behind a snowglobe that contained a very small false version of a Paris themed hotel which had its own false, half-scale version of the Eiffel Tower. None of this made the slightest bit of sense to Armand, “and it snows, but it’s pretty damn rare. Definitely better known for the summer heat.”
“Extremely American. To both of those things,” Armand replied, “I would also like to deconstruct some of these and examine their contents.”
“It’s just like, water or something in there,” Daniel said, pulling a new cigarette from the pack and putting it between his lips, waiting for Armand to light it with his mind. Lazy American boy.
“—and little bits of foam or whatever.”
“Exactly, it’s not water, it’s something else. I intend to find out what.”
“Knock yourself out, boss.”
At that, Daniel turned back to watching the television and smoking his cigarette, and Armand moved on to the next snowglobe. This one held a small version of a slot machine. He leaned over the side of the bed, held it upside down, and broke the glass off from the base in one motion, discarding the bottom along with a few stray shards of glass.
Armand dipped his finger into the snow globe water and touched it to his tongue. “Beloved, I believe there is antifreeze in here.”
All Daniel replied with was, “And why the fuck do you know what antifreeze tastes like?”
Daniel was now on his sixth slice of pizza, wiping his greasy hands on his bare stomach and worn boxer shorts. He poured half a can of beer down his throat between bites. It would be disgusting if it didn’t have Armand squirming in place with wanton energy.
Armand hadn’t eaten in the past week. He hadn’t entirely intended to go this long, at least not this time. Sometimes he was so busy, thinking about Daniel, looking at Daniel through hotel windows, following Daniel through airports and train stations and city streets, renting cars to follow him with and abandoning them when he blew a tire out on a pothole, that feeding was an easy thing to forget about. Watching him felt like sustenance enough sometimes, almost as if when Daniel was seated in the back of a diner shoveling pancakes into his mouth, drenched in butter and maple-flavored corn syrup, Armand was eating as well.
But the hunger bit at the edges of his stomach now, made him feel Daniel’s hot blood flowing through his veins even more keenly than usual. He wanted to drink from him, knew Daniel wouldn’t resist if he closed the three feet between them and sunk his teeth into his neck. In fact, he’d probably welcome it. But right now Armand was empty, and something about that emptiness made him feel holy and pious and pure. Something that existed beyond the world of pleasures Daniel sought out. He was a thin, hard, cold thing in perfect contrast to all of Daniel’s warmth and softness and hedonism. He did not want, did not desire for himself. That was Daniel’s job. He was an unfeeling, inhuman vessel that lived to observe Daniel and survive off nothing but the sight of him.
Daniel’s hand slipped underneath the waistband of his underwear and between his legs while he worked through a fresh joint. He could tell that Daniel liked it like this, mindlessly seeking pleasure, intoxicated and barely present except for the smoke spilling from his lips and the way his hips jerked up to meet his fingers.
“You just gonna watch me with your bug eyes?” Daniel asked, extending his arm to ash his joint, the other hand still making little circles between his legs.
“Well, that was what I was hoping to do.” Armand nodded.
Daniel just shrugged, but Armand could tell he was spurred on by his gaze, letting his head tip back as he continued. “Fine by me.”
Armand felt the urge to pull Daniel’s boxers down so he could see how he rubbed his clit roughly between his fingers and the way his fingers curled to press deeper inside himself. He would like to sit with his chin settled between Daniel’s legs and watch him touch himself from the nearest possible angle.
His motions were sluggish as he finished the joint, his freed hand reaching to his chest. There were a number of half-healed bite marks across it, and he pressed into each one, wincing with the pain. He rolled his nipples between his fingers, low moans spilling from his lips. There was no reason to hold himself back so he didn’t bother to, just pure, sinful pleasure.
Daniel looked beautiful as he came, leaning back against the headboard. It was something beautiful to Armand, how he took so well to being drunk and high and full and how giving into those things made him so apt to give into the lust as well. How his mouth fell open and his legs twitched. The way he shuddered through the aftershocks and took a minutes’ worth of panting breaths before he acknowledged Armand’s presence.
“Hey, do you want some?” Daniel asked, pointing to his bare neck, “You look like, grayer than usual or something.”
Armand just shook his head. Refused to speak so Daniel couldn’t see how his fangs were already out and poking into the inside of his mouth, filling his mouth with his own blood.
“I’m pretty drunk, and I just ate and smoked and jacked off, I probably taste fucking great,” Daniel grinned, then readjusted his tactics when Armand sat on his hands and leaned away from him.
“It’s okay if you want it, you know,” Daniel tried again, putting on that gentle voice like Armand was a skittish animal, “I want you to want me. And I don’t want you to go hungry, okay?”
He lifted Armand up by the hips and placed him in his lap, surprising Armand too much to give him a chance to resist. Armand felt weak and limp and like perhaps the most pleasant option was to swoon helplessly in the arms of his pretty American boy. He let his head drop to Daniel’s shoulder, and both of Daniel’s soft, warm hands cradled him there, encouraging him to mouth at the base of his neck.
“Go on, it’s alright,” Daniel hummed, rubbing his hand into Armand’s curls, “You deserve to feel good. No going hungry with me.”
Armand gulped, forcing down the blood leaking from the inside of his lip before pressing his fangs into Daniel’s neck. Daniel smelled like stale cigarettes and his blood was sweet with the heady buzz of weed and alcohol, the wave of it rushing through Armand as soon as he tasted it on his tongue.
“There, that’s perfect,” Daniel cooed, and Armand would chide him for his tone if he didn’t love it so much, being held so gently and told that it was okay for him to want and to let the wanting take him over for a little while.
Every sip made him feel less and less empty, warmed his insides and staved off the blank, hollow feeling. He moaned so loudly against Daniel’s skin that at first he didn’t even recognize it as his own voice. His hips rocked ever so slightly against Daniel, and he tried to stop himself but Daniel wouldn’t let him, wrapping an arm around him and continuing the slow rhythm. He lapped at Daniel’s neck, each drop sliding down his throat in smooth waves. It was so much after so long that he felt dizzy with the fullness of it.
Daniel’s hand slipped between them in that slyly dirty way of his, already reaching under the waistband of his pants before Armand could deny himself. He’d drunk enough to make the whole area Daniel was touching hot with shameful need, and he had to resist with everything in him at the urge to push himself into Daniel’s hand.
“Sinful.” Armand murmured. He wanted to fold in on himself with the sin of it.
“Well if you’re gonna be a puritan, we should just go back to Boston,” Daniel replied, the hand in his hair gently directing Armand to drink again. Armand allowed himself to be returned to the mark like a suckling infant. Sinful to want to be such a thing, surely. Only acceptable if Daniel places him there first, gives him enough plausible deniability to be obedient rather than perverted, “However, if I remember correctly, you were definitely giving into gluttony there. And lust.”
Daniel remembered quite correctly. That night at the Copley had done something to Armand. Watching Daniel’s eyes flit across the food on the table, the gears turning in the animal parts of him powered by the smell of cooked meat. The way Daniel berated him between bites but sat there and ate for the better part of three hours.
“Oh I know you had fun that night, didn’t you?” Daniel teased, his hand finally wrapping around the base of his cock. The pressure against him was a gentle torture, just short of true relief.
That was an understatement. More accurately, it had made the little ball of desire at his center crack open for the first time.
Armand could only choke out a whimper in response.
“Yeah,” Daniel said, casual like he wasn’t squeezing at Armand’s length in the way that made him squirm uncontrollably, “that was one of the first times you did something and halfway through I was like ‘Wait a second, this feels like it’s just for his personal spank bank.’”
There was no denying that, either. It was Armand’s pet fantasy, to be thin and empty and holy, Daniel’s silent observer. To feel the hunger pull at him as Daniel tasted from each plate, muttering his enjoyments as he licked his fingertips and downed wine from the glass he refilled until the bottle was drained. To sit there pristinely, just watching Daniel eat until he couldn’t take another bite and he struggled to prop his head up.
Then to drink. To give in. To let Daniel take him, to pass him pleasure by the handful so that he had no other option except to absorb it. To drink so far beyond satiety that he collapsed into Daniel’s chest.
When he couldn’t find Daniel for two weeks and he was left in a midwestern motel room, resisting resisting resisting the desire to bite his own wrist and touch himself, that was exactly what he was thinking of.
“Do you even like, jerk off?” Daniel asked, “When we aren’t together?”
Armand felt the tears pouring out before he could answer, the memories rushing in on a current of guilt and shame. “Sometimes I can’t help myself.”
“You know it’s okay,” Daniel said softly, even though Armand wasn’t entirely sure he did know that, finding his trembling hand and guiding it between his legs, putting his broader palm over it.
Armand’s limp hand wrapped around his cock at Daniel’s direction, making him slowly begin to stroke himself.
“There you go, just like that,” Daniel encouraged him gently through the tears, the streams of them running down his face and mixing with the blood smeared around his mouth, still drinking messily from Daniel’s neck. It was sticky and dirty and disgusting and he only sobbed harder with the feeling of it.
“—‘m sorry,” Armand whimpered, his hand moving faster under Daniel’s control.
“It’s alright, you’re doing so well,” Daniel said back, wrapping tighter to force Armand into giving himself the pressure he needed, “Go ahead, you can finish for me.”
All it took was permission to do so and Armand was spilling over both of their hands, his whole body stuttering in Daniel’s lap as he convulsed with it. His insides went soft and limp and he folded in on himself, that perfect combination of overfull and small and delicate with only Daniel to prop his weight up.
“How you feeling there?” Daniel asked, kissing Armand’s bloody face.
“Sticky.” Armand murmured.
“Yeah, I know,” Daniel laughed, so wonderfully used to him that he must have known that would be the answer, “Let’s get you cleaned up.”