Chapter Text
Should’ve got the fuck out of here, is Daniel’s last thought before Armand’s fangs pierce the brittle, flappy skin of his throat. Would be nice to get to spend that ten mill, go out in a blaze of glory —
And then Armand’s fangs retract, and his mouth latches over the wound, and he sucks. His arms are a cage of unbreakable metal, cold and unmoving and intractable, and Daniel’s vision starts to darken around the edges.
Alright. So. That’s that.
He gives in. Nothing else for him to do. He only hopes that Armand keeps his word when he whispers, “No pain.”
And then he hopes for nothing at all.
***
So, turns out — big surprise — the motherfucker lied.
Wow, yeah, shocker, Mr. Molloy. Really? The same slippery, manipulative son of a bitch, who lied through his teeth to his own allegedly beloved husband for a full seven decades, lied about something else, too? Who could have possibly seen it coming!
But, really, Daniel thought Armand would have some shred of integrity. Enough not to feed bullshit to a geriatric Parkinson’s patient on said patient’s deathbed, at the very least.
Fuck these vampires.
You never told me about shitting your guts out, he tells Louis over the mind link as he packs his suitcases in the deserted, ruined penthouse. That might have been a useful warning. For when, you know, I began to shit my guts out.
I didn’t think it pertinent, Louis says, and the concern in his voice gives Daniel a feeble measure of satisfaction. It wouldn’t have fit the story.
I disagree, Daniel counters. I think it would actually give it some much-needed grit. Ground the whole thing in realism. A nice contrast to the Gothic romance bullshit. Oh, we pledged eternal love to each other on the altar amid fire and blood, and then he turned me, and his soul was my drum, and then I shat the entire contents of my bowels all over the floor.
I prefer Emily Brontë to Philip Roth.
I bet you do.
Daniel collapses onto the bed, suitcases closed and head ringing with the millions of voices of the people — of the mortals — teeming all around him. He’s fed on three people tonight already, and he’s still fucking hungry.
... Daniel. Louis’s voice in his head is quiet. Gentle. I’m genuinely sorry. Did he really leave?
Daniel swallows, and closes his eyes.
Yeah. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Didn’t even leave a tip.
I can avenge you. And the force in Louis’s tone, the quiet rage still simmering there, makes Daniel believe him.
He sits with it for a moment. He thinks.
Nah, he says eventually. I do have a question though. When Lestat turned you, was there a moment where you couldn’t think of anything other than how much you wanted to fuck his brains out?
Silence on the other end. A twinge of shock.
... No. I was too overwhelmed with everything else. The pain, at first. The wonder of transformation. My new senses. Then the hunger for blood, and nothing else.
Oh. Okay then. Daniel rolls one shoulder, then the other. Interesting.
Daniel, Louis asks in a stiff, funny tone. Did you. Do you want to —
I’m gonna find him, Daniel promises.
Louis is silent for another moment, and Daniel can sense a strong sense of discomfort from him, which… yeah, understandable. Fair even. It’s not every day that a new friend confesses to wanting to fuck your freshly-ex-husband of 77 years. Conflicted feelings, and all that. Daniel gets it.
He’s been sitting with nothing but conflicted feelings ever since he became lucid again, looked into Armand’s terrified eyes, felt the thickness of his scent in his nose and the sweetness of his blood in his mouth, and reached out for his Maker blindly only to grasp nothing but air.
Maybe it’s better if you don’t, Louis says eventually. He won’t be a good teacher to you. He didn’t turn you as a gift. He cursed you.
Still.
I’m coming back, Louis tells him. Stay in Dubai. Use my system for blood bags and donors if you have to. I’ll be there soon, and I’ll teach you what I can.
Okay, Daniel agrees easily, because he sees the wisdom in this. He needs a teacher. He needs to learn how to control himself, how to shut his mind, how to…
Well, how to live. Un-live. He needs Louis.
But then he’s coming after Armand, and they’re going to have words.
***
In the end, the trail brings him — of all the goddamn places — to Venice.
Fucking Venice.
It’s painful how unsurprising it is once Daniel realizes. How annoyingly, dramatically cliché. Touching down into the heat of a late Mediterranean summer night, the city a riot of glitter and light even despite the late hour, Daniel drives from the airport towards his hotel room and smells him in the air, and he thinks, Bastard.
The sweetness. The light on Daniel’s tongue.
Honey and pineapple, wafting to him from the heart of the city and calling him forward like a beacon.
Daniel puts his foot down, and follows his nose in more ways than just the metaphorical because apparently that is what he does these days. What he is.
A fucking dog.
And the insult of it is, Daniel has always been a damn good hunter all on his own. He’s worked hard over the years to earn his bloodhound reputation. He’s never needed supernaturally enhanced senses or the ability to read minds or the compulsion to fucking sniff someone out. It’s insulting, degrading even, to have to rely on it now.
Because the truth is… he has.
Sure, he’s made full use of his metaphorical bloodhound journalist skills for this particular hunt. He dug up rumors, chased down leads, sat in vigil scanning the great vampire grapevine, pulled on every single thread, interrogated and charmed and threatened, and followed and followed and followed —
And in the end, none of it led him any closer to Armand.
In the end, it was simply the fact that…
Daniel already knew. Because he could sense it.
He could sense Armand.
Fuck these vampires.
***
The scent leads him into the tourist-infested inner islands: across the tight claustrophobic canals, through the teeming crowds, past the hundreds of doomed landmarks stubbornly refusing to crumble into the steadily rising waters. Past the churches and palaces and mansions and tenements, past the souvenir stores and museums and artisanal workshops, driving a stolen motorboat deeper and deeper into the medieval maze — and at any other time, Daniel supposes he could be assed to give a damn about the architecture. It’s pretty enough. He might actually want to go back to sightsee one of these days…
Nights.
It’s gonna have to be nights from now on, Danny old boy.
But not right now.
Right now, the scent beckons him forward like a ghostly hand waving him on, raising the hairs on his arms in gooseflesh. Right now, he’s growing tight in his jeans at just the memory of it, his cock hardening and saliva beginning to pool in his mouth more and more the closer he gets to the source. Right now, the honey and pineapple and light and sunshine he’s been yearning for ever since his turning hangs in the air in a trail so strong he can practically see it, a shimmering milky path for him to follow like he’s a video game character following a preset track.
He doesn’t know when exactly his thinking brain switched off during this journey, but looking back on it, it has, and it’s done so without Daniel even noticing, because when navigating through the tight canals in the motorboat gets too tedious and slow, Daniel gives up on restraint and jumps into the water. It doesn’t even occur to him that it's a ridiculous thing to do; he doesn’t spare a single thought to the murk and grime he’s jumping into. It’s just practical. He’s so much faster this way, and suddenly, for no reason that he can articulate, it’s incredibly important that he gets closer. That he gets to the source of it, the smell, the incredible smell.
And maybe that, too, is something that should have worried him.
But he’s so close now, and he’s past it. He’s past anything but the instinct to go, go, go.
The scent fills his nostrils to the brim, until he can’t smell anything else — not even the filth he’s swimming through — and the memory of Armand’s sweet blood is all Daniel can think about.
And there. Finally. That corner, this street, this palace, a plaque calling it a Renaissance Venice art museum, temporarily closed, and it’s so grim and predictable Daniel has to laugh.
He breaks in and disables the security systems with a thought. He paralyzes the guards and drains them, one by one. He short-circuits the cameras, and breezes past the display rooms and back offices alike until he finds the passage to the basement.
Later, he’ll try to remember if he’d been able to form a single coherent thought through all of this, and will come up blank.
The scent leads him down, down, down, past the storage rooms, past the filing cabinets. So much stronger now, fattening Daniel’s cock to an impossible degree, making him shiver and drool. On and on, this way, here, a little room at the back. A utility closet, perhaps. Empty now…
Except for him.
“Daniel,” Armand says, looking up at him from the floor.
He’s naked, his clothes shoved in a lumpy pile under his head like a pillow. His hair a mess of tangled curls, his fangs out, curled up on his side on the cold tiled floor. He’s got one hand on his cock, small but impossibly hard, working it furiously, and another shoved deep up his ass, gripping the base of a long marble toy.
In, out. In, out. He doesn’t stop. His ass looks inexplicably slick, a shimmering coat of sticky translucent fluid clinging to the insides of his thighs, laved over his balls and all over his crack. His eyes, feverish and madness-bright, lock into Daniel’s.
Daniel’s nostrils flare. His mouth opens. Spit drips down onto his AC/DC t-shirt.
His fangs drop, and his cock goes so hard it chafes, and he gets dizzy with it, and —
And a lot of things happen very, very fast.
Sidestep the big picture. Get the story straight first.
And the story, as far as he’ll be able to recall it later, is a red haze of nothing but lust.
He loses his mind, he thinks. Or maybe he’d lost it long before he even reached that little room in the basement, chasing down the scent through the streets and canals of Venice like a panting dog. Which is accurate, because that’s what he thinks he becomes in that moment.
No thought. No cognitive function. Just —
Need.
He mounts Armand without a word, without anything, without even stripping out of his clothes. He manages to fumble the zipper for a hot second or two, only to growl and rip the denim and cotton of his underwear alike in his hurry to get out his straining cock. Armand turns onto his back and opens his legs for him, no words from him either, just a moan as Daniel in his frenzy tries to push his cock inside with the toy still in the way, and a blind rage propelling him to grab Armand’s hand, use it to pull the toy out, and throw the thing somewhere against the wall.
And then he’s sinking into Armand, a loose wet hole, waiting heat, hothothot inside, the muscles yielding so easily for him, so eagerly, like a pair of arms welcoming him home. Fitting themselves to the shape of Daniel, to his hardness, and gripping him there like a vice.
He comes the moment his balls meet the meat of Armand’s ass. Armand clenches around him and moans, and he comes, too, untouched, his small purpling cock spurting weakly over his naked stomach, already stained with the drying remains of his previous orgasms.
Doesn’t matter. Daniel stays hard as a rock inside him. And when he moves, it isn’t gentle — he doesn’t have the presence of mind to be gentle.
He simply begins to thrust, frenzied and feverish, and Armand clings to him and shreds his back to ribbons with his claws and digs bruises into his hips with the balls of his feet, and moans, and moans, and moans.
“Daniel. Daniel. Daniel.”
And Daniel doesn’t say anything. He only growls, and thrusts, and comes again, but doesn’t soften at all; doesn’t even pause to feel the orgasm shaking him all over. He simply keeps thrusting, completely out of it, shaking them both apart, rutting forward, until he comes again… and again, and again, and again, and again.
At some point, between orgasm five and six maybe, he has the vague memory of pulling out and flipping Armand onto his stomach. He remembers the arch of Armand’s back, the shine of sweat on his shoulder blades, the soft yielding flesh of his ass when Daniel grabs two greedy handfuls of it. The way the nape of his neck curves and strains, his hair pushed forward and over his face, revealing… something.
Revealing it.
A mark, circular, teeth-shaped, faded into a thin pink outline but very much still there, like a scar, but darker.
Like a brand.
And an explosion of rage in response, a burst of fire in the depths of Daniel’s gut, scorching up his veins until he all but breathes fire. A haze of blood pounding in his ears, a ringing hunger, a voice in his mind, Mine, mine, mine. He doesn’t know where it came from, or why, and he doesn’t care.
All he knows is that someone else’s mark is branded onto what’s his, and he can’t let it stay there for a second longer.
Mindlessly, thoughtlessly, he leans over Armand until they’re chest to back, flush and glued together by each other’s bloody sweat. He locks his teeth around the mark, pushes his cock into Armand deeper than he’d ever been in anyone before — a forceful push, a pop, something strange there, god it feels good — and he comes.
And, still coming, subsumed in blind-hot pleasure, he bites until he tastes Armand’s blood on his tongue.
And then he falls, and lets go of what little remaining thought he had left, and becomes nothing but flesh, but pleasure, but Armand.
And doesn’t remember anything else at all.
***
Three days, he’ll learn later to his horror. Three days and three nights. They stayed there, the two of them, mindlessly fucking and sleeping and then fucking again, over and over and over, for three. Fucking. Days.
When Daniel finally wakes up from the drunken daze of it all, they’re still in the little room, and still on the floor, and Armand is in his arms and his cock is —
Oh, shit.
What the fuck.
“Don’t move,” Armand whispers, hoarse and rough as if he’s been deep-throating a whole shipfull of sailors. His back is to Daniel, pressed into his chest so tight there’s not an inch of space between them. His hair is in Daniel’s face, tickling his nose. Daniel’s arm rests where it’s been thrown around Armand, the other stretched out, a pillow for Armand’s head in a position that, for an ordinary human, would mean numbness and pins and needles.
Daniel takes a deep breath — honey and pineapple, light and sunshine. His head spins with it. His cock stirs feebly, weakly, a pathetic little twitch on the edge of exhaustion where it’s somehow, by some fucking miracle, still lodged into the sticky faded heat of Armand’s ass.
God. He really should…
He really should try to think now.
It’s harder than it was while he was still in the grip of Parkinson’s.
Little by little, he struggles to blink away the haze. His body is sluggish and wrung out, tingly and throbbing faintly with what seems like the aftershocks of an orgasm that he can still feel somewhere deep in his groin. He’s weak, hungry like a motherfucker, and spent; exhausted beyond even his wildest memories. His body wants nothing so much as to close his eyes and go back to sleep…
Scratch that. His body wants to go back to sleep specifically with Armand still in his arms, snug and close, the smell of him lulling him into a calmness Daniel hasn’t known since he went cold turkey.
The very thought of letting go of the body in his arms, even filthy with sweat and slick and come and blood as they both are, makes something ugly and sick stir in Daniel’s stomach.
Huh. Okay. That’s…
He really needs to fucking think.
And it starts with reviewing the things he knows for sure. So, the facts:
One, he’s found Armand. Two, they’re in Venice, in the place that used to be Marius de Romanus’s studio and Armand’s home and is now a museum. And three, they… well.
Three, he and Armand had sex.
Lots and lots and lots of sex, most of which Daniel’s thinking brain was completely offline for, as far as he can tell.
And now they’re lying on the dirty floor, Daniel’s clothes shredded to scraps underneath and around them, tangled up together, and…
And somehow, because Daniel’s life is an endless theater of the absurd, they appear to be stuck.
Instinctively, Daniel tries to move his hips backward. He pulls Armand with him, and Armand lets out a sharp gasp at the jostle.
“I said,” he hisses, “don’t move.”
What the everloving fuck, Daniel thinks.
“What the everloving fuck,” Daniel says.
Armand begins to cry.
***
“Okay, so… I’ve got questions.”
Armand blinks at him owlishly, looking just as exhausted as Daniel feels from where he’s slumped on an actual honest-to-god chaiselong.
He’s wearing a purple silk dressing gown and a fresh pair of underwear. Daniel is wearing Armand’s fancy pajama pants, one of his shirts, and his own leather jacket, which somehow survived the carnage. They’re upstairs now, showered and fed and more or less put to rights, in an apartment above the display rooms that Daniel guesses is the home of the museum’s custodian or manager or something.
Or, well. It used to be. It’s Armand’s now, for the time being, RIP the manager or custodian or whatever, their ashes scattered over the canals outside probably long before Daniel found his way here.
Which isn’t anywhere close to what is actually important in this situation.
Daniel sighs, runs a hand through his thin drying hair, and tries to wrap his head around the fact that his entire life has just changed forever because of an ill-advised fuck.
Again.
“You’re saying I went into a rut,” Daniel rephrases, disbelieving his own words even as they leave his mouth.
“Yes.”
“Like a dog.”
“Yes.” Armand doesn’t even blink. “I was in heat, and it triggered the rut in you in response.”
“Because we’re… literally a wolf thing. And not even a real wolf thing. A fake made-up slop science wolf thing.”
“I can give you books,” Armand says quietly. “It’s a documented phenomenon, albeit scarcely studied. It mostly faded from human history. But it’s real.”
“And why the fuck,” Daniel presses, “would something that was supposed to help with breeding — if it even is real, which I really fucking doubt — why would that shit manifest in vampires, of all things? Who are dead? And who, being dead, can’t reproduce?”
Armand looks away. He plays restlessly with the hem and string of his dressing gown.
“I don’t know. My Master didn’t know why, either. The knowledge is lost to time.”
“Well that’s real fucking convenient, Armand.”
“I’m only telling you what I know.”
“You’re telling me bullshit,” Daniel counters. “I don’t believe a word of it. You’ve messed with my mind somehow.”
Armand gives him a look that manages to be flat and threatening and vulnerable at the same time. “I can’t, Daniel,” he whispers. “The Maker and fledgling bond —”
“Right. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what made me —”
“That’s not it, Daniel, and you know it.”
Except Daniel doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t. Right now he isn’t sure he knows anything at all, actually, other than his body changed in more ways than he knew. Maybe Louis didn’t experience his bond with Lestat this way, maybe it didn’t make him mad with lust, but who’s to say it wouldn’t work like that for Daniel? All brains are different. That should go for vampires, too. And it’s not like they’re dealing with exact science here; he can only guess.
“When you say ‘bonded,’” Daniel tries, “what exactly does that mean?”
Armand just looks at him.
And then he stands up, and gets out of the room.
Daniel rolls his eyes. “Hey, come on now. I know you’re determined to be Mister Deadbeat, but I think this is something we should really —”
Except then, his entire chest erupts in pain.
“Fuck!” Daniel gasps, grasps at the shirt over his heart, and folds in the chair he’s been sitting in. Something there is yanking at him, like an invisible hook shoved right through the skin and into his innards, and is now pulling, pulling, pulling, forcing Daniel’s entire body to stumble up on shaky legs and helplessly follow.
Armand, his hindbrain is insisting, urging him on, yanking still, Armand, mate, have to get to mate. Daniel is helpless in the face of it, the pain reeling him like a fish caught on a fishing rod, tugging him onwards after Armand, after the comfort of his scent, on and on, out of the room and into the hall and past the guest bedroom, past the parlor, into the bathroom at the end of the corridor.
It only lets up when he forces the bathroom door open — wrenches it clean off its hinges — and grabs Armand’s arm, and pulls him in close until he holds Armand’s shaking, heaving body in his arms.
They stand like that for a while, both panting, both shaking, breathing in each other’s scents and clutching to one another like two pathetic lovesick teenagers.
This is ridiculous, Daniel’s rational brain thinks, but it’s a faint thought, distant, coming as if through layers of cotton. It doesn’t penetrate through the haze of Daniel’s instinct to soothe the ache that still throbs in his chest, and more importantly: to comfort Armand.
This instinct has him nuzzling Armand’s cheek; has him pulling Armand’s face to the side, gently, until he can press his nose to a soft spot behind the hinge of his jaw, just behind his ear, where Armand’s hair is the softest; and then he breathes in as deeply as he can, once, twice, three times, until the pounding in his blood finally quiets down.
“This,” Armand whispers, still hoarse, sounding as shaken as Daniel feels. “This is what ‘bonded’ means.”
He’s doing the nuzzling thing, too. Nosing at the mirroring spot behind Daniel’s ear. Biting gently at it, more of a nibble than anything, and breathing deeply. Something rumbles deep in his chest, and Daniel feels an answering rumble in his own, a sort of — thrum, a soft vibration just under the skin that eases him even further into his own skin, and he takes a moment to just feel it, the sweet scent of Armand satiating something in him he didn’t even know existed.
“Well,” he manages. “Fuck.”
And pulls Armand closer.
***
“You know, it would have been really fucking cool of Louis to mention, oh, by the way, some vampires get turned into animals obsessed with breeding like werewolves on the full moon.”
“Louis is a Beta,” Armand replies stoically as they watch the security guards Daniel drained earlier burn to dust on the marble floor of the museum lobby.
Daniel waits for him to elaborate, and when it doesn’t happen, he grunts. “Uh-huh. And that means what, exactly?”
“That he’s… normal,” Armand explains, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He’s not looking at Daniel — his gaze is fixed on the flames — but his shoulder is pressed into Daniel’s, a comfort they both somehow still need.
The flames dancing in light and shadow over his face give him an otherworldly, mesmerizing look. Daniel finds it stupidly difficult to look away.
“He doesn’t experience any of it,” Armand picks up again after a longer moment. “He didn’t have the trait — the gene, you’d probably say now. Most people don’t. It’s rare. It was rare even in my Master’s time.”
“Yeah, okay.” Daniel shrugs, gripping at the leather on the inside of the jacket pockets he’s hiding his hands in. “Sure. He still could have said.”
“I asked him not to.” Armand’s voice is quiet. “I didn’t want it in the book, about myself or Lestat or… anyone else. It’s private. It had no bearing on Louis’s story.”
“Seems like you asked him to keep out a lot of stuff.” It comes out bitter, like a bark.
“Yes.” Armand’s eyes, bright amber and seeming brighter in the light of the flames, flash to Daniel. “Like I said. It was his idea, his interview. Not mine. I didn’t owe you any of it.”
“And Lestat,” Daniel starts. “Is he…”
“He’s like you,” Armand says curtly, and looks away again, stiffening by Daniel’s side.
Daniel examines him: his handsome profile, the sharp slope of his nose and the jut of his cheekbones. He can feel Armand’s discomfort. It comes to him as a tug on his heart, and again, the instinct to comfort begins to overtake him.
But it’s weaker this time, and Daniel pushes through it.
“And did he ever…” he manages, and it’s kind of funny how the idea of Lestat and Armand together back in Dubai only made him laugh. Now, the mental image of it, even just the mere idea of the possibility, turns his stomach so hard he feels the bile climb right up his throat, and his claws tingle with the urge to unearth Lestat from wherever the man’s buried himself in and tear out his heart.
“No,” Armand says.
And just like that, the bile is gone. The redness clears from his vision. Daniel breathes out, and the clutch of possessive rage eases its grip on his heart.
Jesus. What the fuck is happening to him.
“We fucked, of course,” Armand confesses quietly, “but he never bonded with me. I begged him to. He refused.”
And there it is again; Daniel’s growling before he can even register the fact that his mouth moved at all, and he’s reaching for Armand, pulling him close, nuzzling into his hair and the back of his neck where he bit him during their frenzied fuck session.
Mine, purrs the beast inside him, wide awake now after apparently hibernating for Daniel’s entire life. Mine.
If Daniel had the presence of mind to examine it, the whole thing would make him sick to his stomach.
“And Louis?” Daniel forces himself to ask, despite every instinct in him screaming at him not to ask or imagine his mate in the arms of another.
“Louis was my mate,” Armand insists even as he leans back against Daniel, resting his head on Daniel’s shoulder. “He was. Not by biology — by choice. A choice we both made.”
“This is fucked up,” Daniel sighs into Armand’s hair. “All of it. Fucking… National Geographic type shit. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m doing things, feeling things I… I lose control. It’s — it’s really, really fucked up, Armand.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?” Daniel asks, his voice much smaller than he intends it to be, and he hates himself for it. “Did you know I’d turn out to be this… god, I can’t believe I’m saying it… an Alpha. Fucking… Alpha male Andrew Tate shit…”
“Daniel.”
Daniel swallows. “Did you know, when you made me, that it’d be like this between us? Did you fucking plan this?”
Armand lets out a breath. He puts his arms over where Daniel’s arms wind around his chest, and holds on tight.
He only responds after what feels like an age.
“No,” he says quietly to the darkened hall and the fire and the burning corpses. “I… I sensed the Alpha in you back in San Francisco, yes. But I couldn’t sense it in you anymore in Dubai. I thought, given your age…”
“That I was too old for it to matter,” Daniel finishes for him.
“Yes. I didn’t think it would manifest in someone of your age, past his breeding prime.”
“I don’t believe you, motherfucker.” And the words force their way out of Daniel’s throat like claws tearing through cloth, leaving it bleeding.
“The Dark Gift must never be given to children, the crippled or the elderly,” Armand reminds him in a flat, monotone voice. “There’s never been a vampire like you, Daniel, not that I’ve seen. I… I couldn’t foresee —”
Daniel laughs, darkly, bitterly, into Armand’s hair. “Let me guess: you could not prevent it.”
“Daniel.”
And Daniel wants to fucking hit him. He does. Truly and viciously. He wants to pick Armand up and throw him into the nearest wall, and then again, and again, until his Maker falls straight through it, and then he wants to sit on Armand’s chest and pound his beautiful fucking face into a broken, bleeding, massacred pulp, because Armand is fucking lying. The slimy, manipulative motherfucker must be lying. He knew, of course he knew, he must have known. Must have planned it this way. His plan B for when Louis inevitably splits, for when his house of cards comes tumbling down on him, for when he’s left miserable and broken and alone because of his own fucking actions.
Turn the nearest mortal with Alpha genes into a vampire. Tether them to him in ways more lasting than actual marriage. Daze them, drug them with pheromones, turn them into a mindless beast ruled by their cock, and have them seal the deal before they even know what’s happening so they can’t take it back.
So that Armand is not left alone. So that he has his companion. So that, if Louis throws him out, he gets himself someone who physically cannot leave.
A wail builds in Daniel’s chest, and turns into a growl when he lets it out through the cage of his gritted teeth. He turns Armand by force, makes him face Daniel, and catches his face in both his hands.
“You motherfucker,” Daniel whispers, hoarse and raw. “You evil, evil motherfucker.”
He squeezes. Armand looks at him, and doesn’t say anything, and lets Daniel try and squeeze his head into mush.
“I can’t leave you now, can I?” Daniel seethes. “The very idea makes me sick. You did this. You did this to me.”
“Do you honestly think I’d want this?” Armand whispers. “That I’d want you, of all people, to become my mate? I didn’t do this, not on purpose. You’re the one who came running after me. I never wanted you to find me.”
“Then why turn me?! Huh? Answer me that, you lying sack of shit. Why?!”
Armand’s eyes are hollow, numb. Empty. Like a doll, a pretty doll for Daniel to smash against the marble and cut himself on the pieces.
“Because I wanted to break you,” he whispers.
Daniel howls, and pushes him to the floor.
Armand doesn’t stop him. On the contrary, he helps, slicing down the seam of his own underwear to let Daniel in even faster, and Daniel bites his neck, and drinks greedy, desperate mouthfuls of sweet, intoxicating blood that has him desperately pushing down the borrowed pajama pants.
“I hate you,” Daniel manages through the furious pounding in his heart. “I fucking hate you, you smug, lying bag of —”
“Fuck me,” Armand breathes out, baring his neck, arching up against Daniel, and the bond between them throbs and shudders with need.
Daniel can’t stop it, any more than he could stop himself down in the basement. Except this time, he doesn’t lose his mind. Whatever spell it was that came over them then — heat, rut, whatever the hell animal terms Armand wants him to call it — is over now.
This time, Daniel is perfectly aware of the furious arousal pushing him on, and he’s lucid as ever when he guides his cock into Armand’s waiting hole.
He’s wet already. Again. Fresh trickles of slick all over his inner thighs. Wet, raw and still gaping open from before. He must be hurting like a bitch down there, but he’s urging Daniel on all the same, and Daniel slides in easily; and they both moan at the glide of connection, the smell of Armand once again thickening the air until it overtakes the smell of smoke and burning flesh.
The relief of it makes Daniel’s mind spin, and he stays like that for a moment, pushing himself up on his arms, Armand on his back beneath him, his strong legs around Daniel, his eyes locked into Daniel’s like a pair of burning candle flames.
“This is hell,” Daniel whispers. “You’ve pushed me into hell.”
“Pushed us both,” Armand counters, breathless. He licks his mouth, his fangs peeking out.
“I can’t even hurt you, can I? The mere idea of it makes me want to curl up on the floor and self-immolate.”
Armand gasps, and pushes his hips up to coax Daniel deeper into himself.
“It’s just the start,” he manages, his hands closing around Daniel’s neck. “The bond is at its strongest now. It… ah. Oh god. It will loosen over time. The effects won’t be so severe.”
“But I’ll still be yours,” Daniel forces out.
Armand runs a gentle hand through Daniel’s curls.
“Yes,” he whispers. “You’ll still be mine.”
“And now I can’t leave.”
“Daniel —”
Daniel snaps his hips forward, and for a while, the sound of their moans and their bodies coming together echoes off the palace halls.
***
“What the fuck are we gonna do now,” Daniel whispers much later, his head on Armand’s chest, his cock — his knot — pulsing bloody come into Armand, Armand’s hands stroking through his hair, their breaths and hearts syncing, their bond thrumming in satisfaction.
Armand sighs.
“I don’t know.”
Yeah.
And ain’t that a bitch.