acts of collusion

"Louis says he hasn't heard from you."

Armand looks up from where he's sprawled on Daniel's couch, one leg over the back, iPad making a gentle dent in his stomach. "He will," he says.

Daniel crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe. He feels a little ridiculous, yes, but less ridiculous than the last time he tried this, because Armand receives Daniel's rusty Dad Voice with a kind of glee that his actual children, needless to say, did not. And maybe it should make him more uncomfortable than it does-- it's not like he doesn't know where this particular affinity comes from. Or the uses it's been put to for the past eighty years.

But here's the thing: Daniel spends most of his time these days feeling like a little kid. If Daniel is the vampire equivalent of Armand's long-delayed child, Armand is going full firstborn on him: all the extracurriculars, president of the PTA, the whole battle hymn of the tiger mother deal. Daniel is being educated with a ferocious, exacting care that he had certainly never experienced from any other course of study in his lifetime.

He spends the first part of each night reading; enormous, dusty tomes of vampire lore and mythology, written both by humans and a few blasphemous vampires, which Armand had plucked carefully from shelves and boxes in Dubai and shipped to Daniel's apartment in acid-free archival storage boxes. He can read faster now than he used to be able to, and Armand quizzes him on what he's read, which is weirdly fun. Hell, he'd gotten pretty used to the idea that nobody cares about the written word any more towards the end of his mortal life, so there's something inspiring about his maker-cum-schoolmaster placing so much importance on Daniel knowing the contents of books written hundreds of years ago and not found in any other library on the planet. It leaves him pretty fired up to work on his own contributions to the literature, which Armand gives him a precisely timed two hours to do before they head out for more practical lessons.

On the streets of New York, before he's allowed to eat, he first has to go through his mind exercises: speaking the thoughts of the apartment's overnight doorman, the late-night bodega guy, the dreams of the homeless guy on the corner into whose jacket pocket Daniel drops whatever change his meal happens to have on them. Armand delves deeper into a mind than Daniel can, pulls out something Daniel woudln't have found on his own, and Daniel has to go searching for it. Daniel tries to put words or images into the mind of a passerby, and Armand goes searching for evidence of it. All of it is surprisingly tiring; Armand either doesn't notice his fatigue or doesn't care, pinching folds of the skin on Daniel's arms and hissing focus, boy when his mind wanders.

And then there's the feeding: almost always Armand's choice of victim, Daniel expending the very last of his mental energy to try to convince a victim to come to him quietly, usually failing and needing help. Armand teaches him how to be neat with it, and quiet, and clean up after himself even in the midst of a busy city without access to an incinerator. Privately Daniel thinks that he'd like to do it messily a few times, really go out on the town, do a bit of what Louis had going on in the 70s, but he lets it go for now. Always best to learn the classical technique in a new discipline before you start to play fast and loose with the rules.

And anyway, it's not like he would have any way of defying Armand even if he wanted to. The very first time, Dubai, the first lesson which had been more of a necessity than a planned teaching experience, Armand had aimed him towards a victim, and Daniel had-- well. There was a pretty woman in between him and the intended meal, plump and healthy and so fucking loud with all that blood pounding through her, and Armand had pinned him just as he reached for her, held him with a grip that left no question of who was in charge here, let her scurry off into the night with a small scream, then spun Daniel and slapped him across the face for good measure. Okay, somewhat antiquated parenting techniques, but he's five hundred years old, Daniel can cut him some slack.

But the memory of the ease with which Armand captured and immobilized him lingers in Daniel's memory, and not entirely unpleasantly. Armand is incredibly old and powerful and if Daniel doesn't do exactly what he says at all times, Armand will force him to. Those are the terms of his life for the forseeable future. He has been returned to the absolute powerlessness of a child being pulled across a street whose flow of traffic he does not understand by the hand of an omnipotent parent.

Which is probably why this doesn't feel as weird as it should. That when they get home, Daniel blood-sated and his mind feeling like a seized muscle and even Armand showing the strain of intense concentration, Armand relaxes, and that means.… this. Their conversation taking on the subtle teasing of reversed roles, not play-acting but also not the deadly serious assignments of maker and fledgling that colour the rest of their time. Daniel being crotchety, and Armand being petty. Daniel's Dad Voice and Armand's iPad. Daniel running his fingers through his maker's hair and Armand pulling his fledgling on top of him, spreading his legs, closing his eyes.

There are places Daniel won't go. Hell, in comparison to what he's had, it probably feels to Armand like Daniel refuses to go damn near anywhere. But it's something different, is the point. Not Daniel being taught and Armand being responsible for him. That's vampire shit. This is just two people, trying to figure out how to deal with each other.

So: Daniel folds his arms, scowls. Armand curls up tighter around his tablet on the couch, looking for all the world like a teenager about to spew the word ughhhh into the room.

"You said a week ago you wanted to be the one to tell Louis," Daniel points out.

"And I will."

"When will you?"

"I don't know. I've been alive since before Babur took Panipat, a week is hardly--"

"Don't give me that shit," Daniel scoffs, and pushes his way into Armand's space, so that he's resting his head on Daniel's lap instead of the armrest. "Interpersonal matters work on a different timescale from the turn of empires, Armand. I talk to Louis every few days, and yes, he's polite and doesn't go digging into anything I don't share on purpose, but I'm sick of keeping secrets."

"Your mind should be fortified enough that it does not require conscious effort to--"

"Here's the deal," Daniel cuts in. "You've got forty-eight hours to control the narrative in whatever creepy little way you've been scheming. I am going to mind-ring Louis the night after tomorrow, and if he doesn't already know by then that you're not an absentee father after all, he's hearing it from me. Got it?"

Armand actually does make a soft little ugh sound, and Daniel grabs his jaw and pushes Armand's head up to meet his eyes. A tactical mistake, because Armand's eyes are so exquisite that he can never stay stern looking at them.

"Please, master," Daniel says quietly. "It's not about the hiding, it's just that he's my friend. I think. I'd like him to be my friend, and maybe some day he'll even be your friend again. I want him to know."

Armand swallows. He nods, a little uncertainly, and in that uncertainty Daniel thinks that maybe he did actually learn something on his two rides around the Dad rodeo, because he doesn't need to be able to read Armand's mind to know that he isn't going to do it. It simply isn't going to happen. He thinks he wants to, says he will, but if this goes on Daniel is going to end up telling Louis in two days time, and Armand will be taken off guard even though Daniel had told him exactly what was going to happen, and he'll sulk, and you'd think that would bleed over somehow into the time he spends doing the vampire shit but it doesn't, which is almost more annoying to Daniel. Armand is a champion of locking shit up. This doesn't need to be locked up.

"You don't need to," says Daniel, digging his fingers a little into the underside of Armand's jaw to feel his tongue through his chin. "I know. I know it feels terrifying to have people talk about you without you there to steer the conversation, but-- can you trust me this far, Armand? Can you let me take care of this for you?"

Armand sighs. He looks so, so lost. Daniel pushes a finger into his mouth for him to bite, for Armand to taste his sincerity as well as see and hear it. Armand nibbles at it, little mosquito bites to the pad, rolling it around on his tongue.

"All right," he says finally. "Yes, beloved. You can take care of this for me."

"I'm actually pretty impressed," is the first thing Louis says to him when Daniel finally gets his little speech out. "I genuinely had no idea. Jesus, Daniel."

"You've been going easy on me. No digging." Daniel shuts his laptop and shoves it away. It's technically his writing time, and Armand probably won't let him make up the time he's missing, but it's worth it. Talking to Louis is like-- well. It is, in fact, exactly like having a friend. And he'd forgotten how good it feels to have, somehow, against all odds, a relatively uncomplicated friendship with someone.

Okay. Relatively.

"And the fact that a fledgling can tell that I haven't been digging, and that you can prevent the one thing you don't want to show from hurling itself up from the depths of your mind into the centre of the conversation so obviously that I wouldn't need to, is in itself proof that you are going to grow into one of the most terrifying vampires ever to walk the earth. It's a good thing he's got you in hand, fucking hell, it would be like abandoning a baby lion in the gerbil pen of a pet shop."

"Damn," Daniel says, laughing but not entirely able to disguise how the statement has unmoored him. Armand has told him that he'll grow into a powerful vampire, of course he has, but it lacks a certain amount of reality when Armand has also taken to rapping his knuckles with a ruler when Daniel makes a mistake reciting a centuries-old incantation like some kind of unhinged twinky Victorian schoolmaster. When Louis says it, though, it sounds real. Daniel will be around for centuries, millennia, until the planet explodes or however the hell this ends, and he is going to spend much more of that time as a terrifying monster than he is as a chastised schoolboy.

"Look," says Louis, and he sounds a little uncertain himself, but forges ahead, "he's-- well, you know. You already know not to trust him, you knew that before I did. But for the vampire stuff, I can admit it, you're being given the best education any of us can have. It sounds like he really is trying his best, and I don't think there's anyone under the midnight sun who knows more than he does about what we are and have been. So... I'm glad. I hate it. But I'm glad."

Daniel swivels in his chair to stare down onto the street below. It's raining; he can see the tops of umbrellas shining underneath the streetlamp. He can't think of anything to say, so he just invites Louis into the sense of almost embarassed relief he feels. At least Louis is okay with this. He'd been so afraid of-- something. He knows two people in this new world he now belongs to, and one of them hates the other's guts, and that's Armand's fault but also kind of Daniel's fault, or at least his doing, and maybe he is stretching this parenthood metaphor way too far, but he does feel a little bit like a child of divorce right now. It's not okay between Louis and Armand, and it shouldn't be, but he selfishly wants it to be okay enough.

Louis feels what Daniel is giving him, lets Daniel feel him feeling it. For a while they just stay like that, inside each other, and then Louis gives the mind equivalent of a gentle sigh and says, "I just don't think I could see him again and come up with anything to do but hit him until he cries, honestly. I know you'd like for us to talk. But I just can't yet."

"It's okay," says Daniel, watches another umbrella scurry past under the window, then adds almost without thinking about it, "Well, you can."

There is a very long pause before Louis says, "Can..."

"Hit him until he cries," says Daniel. It feels like walking out onto something precarious, but now that the image is in his mind he's genuinely not sure he could prevent himself from letting it show. "I mean, I haven't checked with him, but somehow I really doubt he'll object. He... misses you."

Misses what you did to him, Daniel tries not to say and isn't sure if Louis hears or not. He knows, either way, that's what it means. It's not capitulatory on Armand's part. It's not even particularly loving. Oh, Armand loved plenty of things about Louis, Daniel is sure of that, but by the time the sterile Dubai apartment was ruptured by a crater in the wall there was really only one of them that remained in daily view. Armand misses Louis like a man about town misses his favourite whore. He misses what only one person is horrid enough to do to him. And Daniel wouldn't even suggest it, if he couldn't feel how Louis misses Armand in the exact same way.

"That's a terrible idea," says Louis flatly.

Which isn't a refusal. "Probably," Daniel agrees.

"I really don't want to talk to him."

"So don't. Talk to me."

There is a long pause. Daniel tries his best not to go digging in Louis accidentally; whatever thought's he's running through are private as shit, and Armand is basically right that Louis' mind fortifications are not all that strong.

"Check with him," Louis says finally, "and get back to me."

Armand is naked on his knees in the living room half an hour before Louis is supposed to arrive. Which had featured not at all in Daniel and Louis' negotiations, so it strikes Daniel at first that it might be some kind of liberty. But he's pretty sure that he can tell by now when Armand is being a little shit on purpose, and this doesn't seem like it. So he carries on obsessively tidying the apartment, hell, it's been a while since there's been a guest, swiping a hand through Armand's hair occasionally as he passes by him.

"Need anything, sweetheart?" He asks once, hanging his wrist in front of Armand's face obviously and wiggling his fingers.

"No, thank you," Armand answers in a quiet steady voice. "I will want it afterwards, if that's all right."

"'Course." There isn't really anything left to tidy up, but he's having a hard time imagining just sitting opposite Armand and cracking his book back open, so he putters around nervously until the buzz comes. Louis is exactly on time, of course. Daniel gives up any pretense of not being nervous as shit in the interval between his buzzing Louis in and his actual appearance at the apartment, and paces around directly in front of the door like a housepet with a new scent. He thinks Armand might actually look slightly amused at that, but when he looks more closely at him to be sure, his eyes are back on the carpet.

And then there's a knock on the door, and then Louis de Pointe du Lac is right in front of him, in the flesh, in the eyes, in the nose.

The first interview, Louis has lunged at him. The second one, Louis has finished by shaking his hand. Now, Louis drops a small suitcase on the ground and grabs Daniel in a shockingly enveloping hug.

Daniel grabs back. The reality of Louis' body, when he had been so long just a node in Daniel's head, stuns him. Blood scent and skin scent and hard muscles. If this is all that happens here that he even likes, Daniel thinks dazedly, it's enough. Louis, who had waltzed into his life when it was a tiny thing and decided it was worthwhile. Not his maker. Not his sweetheart. His friend. Dayenu. Dayenu.

"You hungry?" Daniel mumbles into his shoulder. "Blood in the fridge. Bought the way you like it."

Louis glances at the kneeling form visible in the living room. "Sure," he says, with no apparent concern for Armand. Whatever Louis' motivations, Daniel is inclined to agree: if Armand didn't enjoy the waiting, he wouldn't have been on his knees since before Louis was even at ground level. He can wait a little longer.

He manages to pull away, and leads Louis into the kitchen. It's mostly been taken over as storage space for books, most of its original appliances being now unnecessary, but he pours two glasses from the fridge and nukes them in the microwave for a few seconds. He hands a glass to Louis, then gestures him out the window and onto the fire escape. "Welcome to New York," he says, settling down on a step. "How was the subway?"

"Disgusting, thank you," says Louis. He sips his glass of blood, stretches a hand out over the railing, leans back against the dirty metal to survey the city below. He looks cool as fuck, basically. He looks like he belongs here, not in a glass box in Dubai. But that's an argument for another day.

"Well, you made it. If you drove, you'd still be hours away. Can't wait for the--" Daniel forces himself to say the name and not laugh while he does it-- "Cloud Gift. Only practical form of transportation around here."

Louis shakes his head. "Which if you weren't an unprecedented freak, you shouldn't even be contemplating for decades at least."

"I, uh, tried it the other day. Got a little bit of a hover, I think. Heels off the ground. Don't tell Armand, I'll get in trouble."

Louis turns to look through the window. Only a sliver of Armand is visible from here, and only if you see particularly well in the dark, though Daniel still thinks they should probably close the blinds once they go back inside. "I know," he says, "this vampire heirarchy shit. It's not... you shouldn't have to defer to him forever, Daniel. For what it's worth, I think it's good that you're doing it right now. But-- hell, the version of me on bookshelves would probably say whatever I have to say about this more eloquently than I can."

"Both the you on bookshelves and the you right in front of me grew up a second-class citizen to white masters who thought they had something to teach you. The vampire heirarchy shit was just the cherry on top. I've been a grouchy old man in this same apartment for thirty years. The bodega guy used to call me sir and have my shitty coffee ready for me the moment I walked through the door. I can do some yes, master-ing of my own for a bit with no lasting damage. To either of us, if it's Armand's health and safety you're worried about."

Louis blinks. "Do you?"

"Call him master? Yeah, sometimes. The French r never really rolled off the tongue for me."

"Shit," Louis laughs a little, draining the rest of his glass. "You've got it bad." He looks fond, a litte wistful. Like a man looking at something he never got to have. Maybe he would have wanted it, in a different, kinder world: to be guided. To be deferential without being degraded.

"Well, I read in some trashy book that the maker-fledgling bond is unique," Daniel says.

Louis doesn't offer any update on his own maker, which is fair, since Daniel's people and Lestat's people are currently locked in some kind of email-based mortal combat over the scheduling of the next interview series. Daniel finishes his drink and they both end up staring through the window into the apartment, where Armand is waiting for them.

Armand, who has never felt degraded in his life, even when he literally is. He talks about Marius when he's teaching, and Daniel allows it, because he doesn't have a choice and because it would be pretty silly, wouldn't it, to try to learn about the old customs without meeting them in their own house. Once lessons are over, though, any mention of him gets a casual call of asshole! like a heckler at a press conference, which Armand hates enough that he's been effectively trained out of it.

Daniel hates this, a little. That Armand wants this, and wants not just the actions-- hell, Daniel could do that, if he put his mind to it, he's not exactly a blushing innocent even if most memories of his freakier decades were cut out of his mind with a ragged pair of scissors-- but wants someone who wants it as selfishly as he does.

"You ready?" Louis asks. It would be unnecessarily flippant for Daniel to point out that he isn't the one who's taking the active role here. Daniel is the one with nerves raging in his belly; Louis can feel them, and he's trying to be gentle with Daniel in a way he doesn't need to be with himself or Armand.

"Yeah," Daniel sighs. "Let's go--" and he can't think of any way to end that sentence, so he just ushers Louis back through the fire escape window and puts the glasses in the sink.

The suitcase isn't an overnight bag after all. Louis puts it on the floor of the living room, not even looking at Armand. As they'd agreed, he addresses only Daniel. "The Vampire Lestat's got all sorts of groupies," he says, "Or rather, he's got mainly the one sort, and they're of a specific type. The bag is borrowed. So Armand knows everything in here as a general type, but not these specific implements."

The suitcase is, indeed, full of-- implements. Some seem improvised, like a board with a handle that probably once had cheese served on it. Others are clearly custom-made, heavy leather and twisted paracord and thin bamboo and Daniel feels completely out of his depth. His job is supposed to be to choose what he wants to see Armand get hit with-- that's Armand's request, not Louis'. And sure, Daniel's not averse to a bit of slap and tickle with an emphasis on the former, but somehow the suitcase is so weirdly earnest it makes him want to avert his eyes. He's in a room of people who take hitting very seriously, and right now he doesn't want to see Armand get hit at all.

"Hey." Louis' hand is cupping his face, a thumb pressing under his eye. "Relax. Take your time. You want to know how something feels, ask."

Ask Louis, not Armand; who is an absent thing, a negative space in the centre of the room. Whatever else Armand is, Daniel's mentor, his master, his annoying roommate, the sweet loving thing in his bed or the taskmaster rousing him from his metaphorical coffin, he is never absent. But he had asked Daniel to choose, and he has never asked for anything before. Demanded, forced, wheedled, assumed, yes. But asked, like it might be refused and he could do nothing about it, that is new.

"Okay." Daniel makes a random grab and his hand lands on something that makes him want to quip about complimentary rum and sodomy for good measure. It actually has nine tails, exactly nine, with a little knot near the tip of each one. "I'm asking."

Louis takes it. "Not much weight. Knots will sting like a bitch, and right away. Compared to--" he pulls another flogger out of the bag, lots of thick strands of leather, "something like this feels heavy. Takes a while to really start hurting, but you gotta be braced on something. Could be a wall." Louis considers, or pretends to. "Could be you."

And he drops the image right into Daniel's mind: Daniel perched on the desk in the corner, his back against the wall, knees spread so that Armand can stand in between them. Armand's hands on his shoulders, or clasped tight together between Daniel's, or braced on Daniel's knees while Daniel pats his face. Only Armand's face is indistinct, in the image-- Louis doesn't know what it looks like? Or he doesn't want to know, has ignored it, forgotten it. Left it for Daniel alone.

And yeah. Okay. Fuck. Daniel can work with that. He grabs the heavier flogger and sets it to the side, and Louis nods. "Good," he says, "choose one or two more. A paddle, or something that welts, like a whip or a cane."

Daniel is not having armand caned. He just isn't. If Armand wants the thin scars on his legs worked over like he's a scared little boy in a grand Venetian palace, he can ask for it his damn self.

Daniel looks at the paddles instead, which are somehow less intimidating in that at least they resemble household objects. There's the cheese platter one, and something that looks very like a ping-pong paddle, and a long rectangular strip of stiff leather. He's about to reach for that when another one catches his eye just as his hand moves, and he picks it up more out of morbid fascination than anything else: it has studs, sized-up versions of the pyramid studs that Daniel probably would have gotten into gluing onto all his clothing in the 70s if he hadn't been so busy chasing after decidedly non-punk men who turned out to actually all be the same man. Maybe it's the spark of annoyance with Armand for all that that never quite goes away. Or maybe it's the realization that the thing actually feels good in his hand, carefully weighted like an expensive pen. It makes it a little easier to imagine himself using it. It's even easier to imagine Louis using it.

Louis grins, one of the wide dazzling ones that looks just on the edge of dropping fang. "You have a mean streak after all," he says, tapping the studs against his hand. "Well, you'll have to be quick, but the bruises might even last long enough for you to see them. He'd like that. All right. That it?"

Daniel nods, and then Louis gestures in a way that means this is yours to handle, and Daniel goes to sit down on the desk just like Louis had showed him. He takes a deep breath. "Come here, sweetheart," he says, and Armand blinks and raises his head and then unfolds himself elegantly to more float than walk over to Daniel, like making his feet touch the floor is an imposition that he can't currently be bothered with. He stands with his legs spread wide enough that Daniel has to open his own knees to make room for him. He looks at his own hands with a slightly lost expression, waiting for instruction, and Daniel takes them at the wrist and puts them on his own upper thighs; so Armand is leaning forward only slightly, the huge glass lanterns of his eyes staring over Daniel's shoulder. "Ready?" Says Louis, and once again, he is not talking to Armand.

"Ready," says Daniel, and thinks it might actually be true.

Louis has the flogger in his hand, and he is-- there's no otherword for it but stalking. He is, Daniel thinks, an incredibly accomplished stalker, exactly the vampire Daniel wants to take lessons from whenever he's allowed to explore a wider variety of hunting styles. The flogger hangs from his hand casually, his feet silent on the floor as he circles, looking. The menace in it is captivating. Daniel remembers only with effort that he isn't the one about to be hit. His heartbeat pounds in his chest anyway, strong from the recent blood. Armand's eyes are closed now.

The first hit, Daniel understands abruptly what Louis meant by "heavy"; Armand is driven forward, the hands on Daniel's thighs not enough to keep him upright. He flails for a moment, and Daniel ends up capturing his hands to hold against his chest, transferring the stability of the wall behind him to Armand.

He's more prepared for the next one, the force of Armand's body pushing into Daniel a welcome weight in his arms. Armand settles into it, after a few repetitions: stable, his forehead on Daniel's shoulder, his entire body a spring that compresses and then opens back up to ask for more after every hit. It actually seems kind of soothing, at first; the sound of the leather hitting his flesh is loud, but Armand reacts more like a cat being scratched than someone being hurt.

It doesn't stay that way. It's cumulative, of course, like all of life's slings and arrows are, and just when Armand starts shifting and making little noises of discomfort into Daniel's shoulder, Louis takes that as his cue to hit harder and faster. Daniel's been looking at the side of Armand's neck, and the elegant curve of his back, at the skin that goes briefly darker with each stroke and then fades. He hasn't been looking at Louis, because-- it's just easier not to.

Now he looks, and almost wishes he didn't. This is it, the reason that Daniel had been the intermediary for this whole thing. The bag of what the bag's owner probably calls toys, the negotiation, the genuine care that Daniel can feel from both of them for each other, handed to him like a gift he can't pass on, and just has to hoard around the house, one more useless trinket to take care of-- none of that has anything to do with this, right now. It's a decoy, the safeness of this scene, the saccharine hyper-consensuality of it. Louis is here for exactly the reason he'd first said: he wants to hit Armand, with the same unthinking body-want that put a hole in the wall of the penthouse.

Daniel doesn't see control, when he watches Louis. He doesn't even see anger. He just sees hurt, hurt being set free with each escalating strike and pained little whimper.

It's been a very long time since Daniel last hung out in press clubs to get into arguments about the ethics of interviewing. Most of the press clubs went bust, for one, and wherever bright young reporters hang out these days probably involves for disussion of tiktok than he's really up for. But the naked loss on Louis' face, more than anything else, makes him wonder what the cohort that used to wave around copies of the New Yorker and argue about Janet Malcolm would say about this, the strange fallout of his final mortal interview. The interview, the old game of confession, by which journalists earn their bread and subjects indulge their masochism. At bottom, no subject is naïve. Every subject of writing knows on some level what is in store for him, and remains in the relationship anyway, impelled by something stronger than his reason.

Had Louis known? Had Armand known, was Daniel the demolition agent brought in to break apart what had lithified too strongly to be split gently?

Armand is shaking, Daniel's shoulder wet and probably stained pink with tears, and his back is finally holding some colour, vampire healing be damned; a light pattern of purple stippling that shimmers and begins to fade as soon as Louis lets up for a moment. He's breathing, maybe even breathing hard by vampire standards, and his free hand twitches minutely but then stays where it is. Run your nails over his back, Louis instructs him instead. Daniel hesitates-- he hadn't exactly signed on to hurt Armand in any active way-- but he tries it anyway, and the whine Armand makes is far enough from pain that it makes him understand why Louis had delegated. He does it again, harder, and gets a delicious full-body shiver with that sound that yeah, he's going to be thinking about for a long time.

Louis drops the flogger and winces at the sound. He looks disgusted. And hurt, still hurt. "Lean him forward a bit more," he says, and Daniel does.

It should be lighter, almost silly, shouldn't it, to be hit on the ass, Daniel thinks as Louis runs his fingers over the studs on the paddle and Armand buries his tear-streaked face in Daniel's stomach. Thus the naval tradition of flogging men on the back and boys on the rear; part of the punishment was the deliberate juvenility of it. Hell, Daniel's given Armand a couple spanks before, that's just normal sex shit. But that's not what this is; and at the first blow Armand gasps, and the next two he grabs fistfuls of Daniel's shirt and then finally a little while later he screams, a strangled yell of pain and fear that Daniel hates.

Louis raises his eyebrows. "Better keep him quiet," he says, "if you don't want trouble with the neighbours."

It's true. Armand mind-whammies the upstairs and downstairs neighbours when they have sex, because otherwise the live reaction commentary in their heads can become quite distracting. But Armand is not available for anything of the sort at the moment, and even if he were, he'd have to do Daniel too if he wanted an audience willing to hear that again.

But getting other people through things, letting them find their way to the other side, is an interviewer's skill. It can't possibly be any less morally defensible to use it for this than any of the other things he's done with it.

He puts a palm on Armand's cheek, thumb over his lips. "Hey," he murmurs, not at all sure if Armand can even hear him but hoping at least the tone will get through. "You're doing great, sweetheart. I'm so proud of you. This is going to hurt but you can do it, okay? You need something to bite?"

Armand doesn't answer but when Daniel puts his forearm in front of his face he bites down on it immediately, hard, and jesus fuck that hurts, there are blunt teeth as well as fangs ripping into him and Armand isn't even drinking, just grinding down with his teeth like Daniel is a strip of leather at a medieval surgery, but it's fine. If it's what Armand needs then it's fine.

Louis hits him, and Armand's screams turn to vibrations directed right into Daniel's ulna, and Daniel lets his arm be mauled and pats his hair with his other hand and says the kind of thing he thinks Armand would like to hear, you're so good, so sweet, you're doing so well.

He doesn't know when it ends; Louis had said I'll stop if he asks me to, like always, which Daniel suspects is a hypothetical that has never been tested in the real world. He'd tried to impress on Armand that the no-talking-to-Louis rule had an exception, but Armand had just given him his best I'm so old and you're so cute look and changed the subject. So he just has to wait it out.

Armand is damp with iron-scented sweat. Daniel can feel his shaking in his teeth. The strikes get less frequent but harder, Louis digging the studs into Armand's skin, Daniel jostling against the wall behind them to keep them all in place. Daniel goes momentarily silent, and it's only then he realizes that Armand was listening to him after all; he nuzzles into Daniel's hand desperately, visibly asking for another kind word to get him through the next one.

Daniel gives it to him. How odd; he'd assumed the only supply of words that he'd never run out of was the irascible kind, the cutting rejoinder, the cynical summary. But now it turns out that he's also an inexhaustible fount of reassurance and praise. How else could he have ever found the source of that stream inside him?

The pain in his arm gets worse, and then a little better, and it's only then that he realizes that Louis has stopped, and is standing surveying his work. He looks satisfied. Armand has pulled his teeth out of Daniel, and lays his cheek flat on his lap, eyes closed, breathing.

Daniel swallows. Without the sound of the strikes, the apartment sounds very quiet in comparison with the street below. Night-sounds, shouts of joy and sorrow. "You done?" he says to Louis, which should sound a little mean, but it comes out in the same voice he'd been using with Armand, and then Daniel thinks maybe that's the way he meant it after all. Louis doesn't look hurt any more, but he does look tired. A little uncertain. He nods.

Daniel grabs Armand gently by the shoulders, levers him up. His legs seem unlikely to support him for long. "Let's get him to the bed," he says, and he does mean let us. He half-carries Armand, and Louis trails after them, and Daniel feels suddenly very tender towards both of them, these strange old creatures who need him for things Daniel has never considered being needed for before.

Louis settles onto the bed without being invited, off to the side, leaving plenty of room. Daniel pours Armand onto the other side and he immediately rolls onto his back, which must hurt, staring up at the ceiling with a small, private smile in the corners of his lips. They don't look at each other. Daniel stands at the foot of the bed for a moment, watching them. Isn't this an inspiring little domestic scene, he might have said six months ago, if the soundscape around them were the groan of a Dubai skyscraper and not the bustle of a Manhattan night.

He crawls on in between them. Armand's smile gets wider. Daniel offers him his wrist, but instead Armand pulls Daniel on top of him, more pressure on his bruises, making the most of them before his unnaturally resilient body erases the pain. He pierces Daniel's throat and drinks more messily than usual, letting it run down his chin and stain the mattress. Slurping noises that sound a little obscene. He stuffs himself with honey and pineapple-- yeah, Armand has been waiting to do this for a good long time. Daniel rests his full weight on Armand, and lets him.

When Armand eases off it's to take little sips out of his shoulders, his wrist, his hands. Daniel rolls off him to lie on his side, half propped up where he can look down at Armand and over his shoulder at Louis, leaving just his fingertips behind, being suckled at gently. It is unimaginable, how happy Armand looks like this. Daniel wouldn't have believed it, before, even knowing how much he wanted it.

Louis is radiating his own kind of peace. Not Armand's wiped-out bliss, but some kind of pride. And a lessening of pain, the contentment of having given it away and had the gift accepted. And something else. Stay out of my head, he commands when Daniel tries to figure out what it is, but he sounds gentle.

Talk to me, then.

There is a long pause, enough that Daniel thinks he's not going to answer. He feels something very like amusement from Louis. His fingertips are going pleasantly numb from being gnawed on. Finally Louis says, You're doing alright together. That's all.

They are, Daniel thinks, and he can see how that might be surprising. Right now it just feels normal. And that feels good.

"You want anything else, sweetheart?"

Armand looks up at him, more clear-eyed now, Daniel's bloody fingers still between his soft lips, and says, "I'd like to watch you and Louis have sex."

Daniel flops onto his back, unable to prevent the bark of laugher that escapes him. Armand lets go of his hand and he presses his palms to his eyes, probably tracking blood all over his face. "Christ, Armand," he says.

"Well, you needn't if you don't want to. But you asked me what I wanted. That's what I want."

Louis is going to put a stop to this. There's no doubt in Daniel's mind until his pulls his hands away from his face to look at him, sitting up a little straighter and so looming vaguely over Daniel, looking thoughtful. "It could be argued," he says slowly, "that you still owe me a blowjob."

"One blowjob from 1973," Daniel says, "must be worth at least seven in today's dollars."

"Don't push your luck, kid," Louis says, and yeah, Daniel might not like exactly the shit Armand likes, maybe the night was off to a bit of a slow start for Daniel personally because of all the fucking crying, but it's definitely picking up. He can't pretend that the way Louis is looking like he's considering granting him a favour doesn't do it for him. And then Louis pushes two fingers into Daniel's mouth, feeling his teeth, pressing down on his tongue, checking the merchandise, and Daniel is rock fucking hard and rolling over to paw at Louis's clothes because yes, he needs a cock in his mouth only about fifty years ago.

"Hey," says Louis, "easy," and he's laughing but still pushes Daniel away, only one person gets to paw at him like that and he's not in the room. "Do it properly. On your knees."

Daniel's knees aren't what they used to be but also, they aren't what they used to be, because they used to be shit and now they're basically usable. So he slithers to the floor, far enough away from the bed that Armand can see just by propping his head up on a pillow, sits back on his heels, and opens his mouth like a dog hoping for a treat.

Louis stands up slowly, leisurely. He unbuttons his shirt, throws it on the bed, pulls his belt out of the loops, unzips. Daniel's mouth is literally watering. He didn't know it even worked like that.

Kicked myself for not taking you up on this in Dubai, Daniel thinks at him, because banter would ruin the show for Armand, and he's not sure Armand needs to hear them talking about that day anyway. Also, he's hoping to lose the use of his mouth real soon. Louis is mostly hard, and Daniel thinks he probably has been for a while. That part's none of his business.

Louis steps forward, runs a hand down the back of Daniel's head. There were, regrettably, more important matters at hand. And I was pretty sure I was going to get another chance. He doesn't give Daniel any time to process that piece of information before sliding his cock in, past Daniel's light gag and right down his throat.

Fuck. Yeah. This is what he'd just assumed he'd gotten, all those years ago, one more memory he'd rather have kept that was washed down the drain instead. Being of use to someone interesting, giving something of value, something other people might look down on but something real, of the body. Some things aren't supposed to be bought and sold only because they're too valuable. Emotions. Bodies. Drugs and sex. Buying one with the other is the most powerful thing you can do if you're an idiot kid with no power at all. Now Daniel is an idiot vampire, and he's not buying anything at all with this besides Armand getting what he wants. But he'd buy that at any price, and this one feels so damn good.

Louis is being pretty polite, all things considered, letting Daniel do the work of sliding up and down on his cock. Come on, Daniel encourages, use me properly, it was good blow. Louis breathes the hint of a laugh out through his nose and then he does, gabbing Daniel's head with both hands and fucking into him firmly.

His life could have ended like this, Daniel thinks. If he hadn't pulled out the tape recorder at the bar. If he'd stuck to the usual script, get a favour, do a favour, done. The one hundred and twenty ninth boy dead at Divisadero Street.

Not quite like this, Louis tells him. You were sweet. I'd have made it good for you.

Good like--

No. Not like Armand did. You expressed interest in the coffin, if I recall.

In and out, in and out. A soothing rhythm, even when it hurts. Daniel loves this; Armand lets him do it but not like this, not fucking his face like Daniel's pleasure doesn't matter.

Course it matters, Louis comments on that thought, that's why I'm doing it this way. You want me to show you how you'd have died after?

Fuck. Yes. Which is sick and twisted, sure, but all of the good bits about being a vampire are, so he's learning to lean into it. He goes at Louis with his tongue, swirling it around the head when he can get it, spit escaping his mouth and dripping down his chin. Louis pants a little, curling in on himself, and it really doesn't feel like it takes very long at all for him to be coming down Daniel's throat. Or maybe Daniel's sense of face-fucking time isn't as acute as it used to be, since it no longer makes his jaw hurt. Also isn't the third time he's done that his week, so there isn't much to compare it with.

Louis sits down heavily on the edge of the bed and Daniel tries to follow him, licking at his softening cock and then just resting his chin on Louis' thigh once he pushes him away. He could get used to this, Daniel thinks. He's got eternity. He's hoping to at least be allowed to make up for inflation, at some point.

Daniel wonders if he's allowed to kiss Louis, or if that will be the line in the sand that's going to get him decapitated onscreen during his first encounter with the glam rock revival. Louis laughs at the thought and tugs on his hair in answer and then they're curled up together on the bed, making out like teenagers, Armand watching like he might next ask for an x-ray of the exact positions of their tongues.

"You got a coffin?" Louis murmurs into his mouth.

"No," says Daniel. "Stairs were too narrow."

Louis scoffs "You're a multi-millionaire, Daniel," and Daniel is glad Armand isn't allowed to join in on this conversation, because he doesn't fancy the two-on-one that would result.

"Which is good, because that's about what it takes to live a middle-class lifestyle in Manhattan. So, thanks for that. But the bed is it."

"Well," says Louis, "It's better in a coffin." But he pulls Daniel around anyway, positioning him with his back to Louis' chest, face to face with Armand.

He's not subtle about it, no teasing. One hand on Daniel's dick, the other cupped in front of his mouth. Daniel knows what to do. Louis starts nosing at his neck. You good for another drink?

Armand hadn't taken much, and Daniel eats like the growing boy he apparently is and has plenty to go around, but even if that weren't the case he'd probably say yes anyway, because holy fuck does he ever want Louis to bite him. "God, please," he says, just as Louis' spit-slick fingers start to press at his hole.

"Yes," says Louis, as if that plea had been an intellectual argument to be agreed or disagreed with. Louis' finger breaches him, moving in gentle circles that make him want to squirm. "You were offered rest, at Divisadero Street, but you didn't want it. He was so focused on trying to figure out what made you special, he overlooked what made you the same."

With Louis talking about Armand behind him, Daniel can't help but stare at Armand himself in front of him, his eyes huge, attentive, his mind shut like an ancient vault with an extra lock just for Daniel. He feels caught and held between the two of them, the exact inverse of how he had felt like he was the one holding them together previously. And he feels caught on a physical level, too; one hand on his dick, one in his ass, nowhere to go that isn't pleasure. All he needs in fangs in his neck, and those must be coming.

"What made me the same?" Daniel pants. "Desperation?"

"Shame," murmurs Louis, and strokes over his prostate. Daniel twitches, wants to close his eyes but he can't, he has to keep looking at Armand. "A shame that I could recognize. That I could remove, at least for a little while, until I also removed everything else."

And there's probably a whole other book that needs to be written unpacking that statement, but this right here is not an interview. "Please bite me," Daniel gasps, and Louis strokes hard with both his hands, and does.

They lie there together afterwards, Daniel's come drying on Armand's leg, Louis' fingers inside of him for so long that he almost forgets they don't belong there. He winces at the feeling of them finally slipping out, and grabs Louis' hand to intertwine their fingers, then says, "It wouldn't have been a bad death. But I have to say, I'm glad you didn't."

Louis laughs a little. "I'm glad too, Daniel." In his head, I'm glad he got to keep you.

Not "we"?

Is it "we"?

Looking like it at the moment, isn't it?

Daniel shuffles forward to get closer to Armand, who flows into the contours of him gladly. He almost asks Armand if he's satisfied with the show, but the answer is so obvious he doesn't bother.

Louis licks his neck one last time, then taps a few fingers on his back, not exactly in keeping with the just-a-few-hours-to-dawn vibe of the room.

Daniel sighs. "You're going to go, aren't you," he says.

"Wife at home's gonna worry," drawls Louis, while treating Daniel to a technicolor montage of all the inventive ways Lestat has been "worrying" lately. At the same time, though, something quiet in him whispers sorry. Not ready for some things yet, I guess.

Daniel levers himself up and kisses Louis on the cheek. He's about to get up to walk him to the door, because the weird human niceties of the century are old habits that die hard, when Armand says, "Daniel, please thank Louis for me."

Daniel freezes. That's not really in the spirit of the agreement, and what's he gonna do, turn around and parrot something that Louis just heard perfectly well with his own ears? He's about to open his mouth to apologize and then tries to catch Louis' eye but can't, because it's momentarily on Armand, for the first time the entire evening. It's just a moment, the sliver of an expression that Daniel doesn't catch sliding from Louis' face and then passing over Armand's. Then the moment is over, and Daniel trails Louis out of the bedroom, and hugs him, and helps him pack his ridiculous suitcase back up, and listens to him descend the staircase and fade back out into the night.

The next time he wakes at dusk, it is to Armand clapping loudly. "Wake up, Daniel," he says briskly. "We have a busy schedule tonight. And before we begin lessons: listen to me, fledgling, and listen well. When I give you a curriculum, I expect it to be obeyed. And I have recently been informed, by someone familiar with the matter, that you have been secretly trying to experiment with the Cloud Gift."

Motherfucker, thinks Daniel.