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Daniel is attempting to lose himself in draw after draw of blood, but it’s almost tiresome. Six months of immortality have been less glamorous than he’d thought, and this guy’s bloodstream is soured by an IPA and some kind of tropical vape. Gross. 

Meal’s a meal, though, and he can’t waste it, cannot take for granted any abatement of his furious thirst. 

So sue him, if he doesn’t notice the figure sneaking up in the frigid January night. Autumn ended early this year, endings all over, and the winter has been cruel and brittle. 

Hey, stranger. 

He looks up, pulse rocketing, adrenaline spiking. His mouth curls in a snarl. Instinct, he can’t stop it. Just like he can’t stop his mouth from falling open when he sees him. 

Louis, haloed by an orange streetlamp, bundled against the cold. His extraneous breath fogs a cloud around his face. Beautiful. The Black Angel, Daniel thinks. “Look who made it to the city.” 

“Danny.” 

The nickname gets him more than it has any right to. “What’re you doing here?” 

“Funny enough, I’m here to make sure you’re eating. And then I interrupted your dinner.” Louis doesn’t look away, but his eyes go kind of vacant as he observes the cooling body on the pavement. “You’re a messy eater.”

Gore drips down his chin. Daniel thinks to wipe it but stops himself out of defiance. Emotions sit too close beneath his skin. They have since he turned. He feels wild. Spinning out a little, thrumming with life and thirst and Louis, here. 

He’s been so fucking lonely. 

“I’m not apologizing for the hyena-mouth,” is all he says. 

“Didn’t ask you to.” Louis’s voice is a little cool. It’s hardly fair. Silence stretches on. 

“He was rude to the bartender,” Daniel offers up. “Tried to slap her ass.” He settles on wiping his mouth with the guy’s sleeve in a way he hopes is more blasé than bashful. 

Louis attempts a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “So chivalry’s not dead.” 

Mouth as clean as it’ll get, Daniel lets the man’s arm fall. It makes a pathetic thump against the concrete. 

“Didn’t take you for a vigilante,” Louis pushes. 

What kind of answer does he want here? Daniel gives him the default: sardonic. “Oh, you know me. Playing savior.” 

Louis’s eyes linger on him. On where his mouth was wet. “Played mine well enough.” 

They’re quiet for a moment. Daniel tilts his head: am I reading this right? 

Louis doesn’t answer with words, telepathic or otherwise. He just looks at him. 

So Daniel makes himself say, “A meal’s a meal.” He cleans his glasses on the hem of his flannel for something else to do with his hands. Old habits; he doesn’t need the glasses anymore, and he doesn’t exactly dress like a creature of the night. But like he’s gonna start dressing in slutty low-cut ruffled blouses or some shit—he might be a vampire, but, still. He’s almost seventy, will always almost be seventy.“I don’t pretend to be discerning.” When he pops the glasses back on, he looks at Louis head-on. Steady. “Not pretending to be anything these days.” 

It’s Louis’s turn to tilt his head. I mean it, Daniel thinks. 

Green eyes glitter in the dark. Take me home? I want to see where you’ve been holing up. 

You want me to invite you in.

I do. 

A vow of sorts. Daniel feels his dead heart kick in his chest. He shoots to his feet, a blur, nonsense, defying physics. His fine motor skills leave something to be desired these days, just the other way from his human existence. 

The body goes in the dumpster—a statistic for the morning news. He extends a hand. 

It surprises Louis. Earns Daniel a smile, the true kind that makes Louis’s eyes crinkle at the corners. 

And they go. 

The apartment is a fucking wreck. Stacks of books, loose papers, mail he won’t read or answer scattered everywhere. 

Louis takes it in, still holding Daniel’s hand. He recalls their younger selves in Divisadero: Getting some bail bondsman post-divorce vibes. 

Daniel snorts, despite himself, but can’t quite shrug off his self-consciousness. He flits around, dropping his keys in the bowl like all this is normal, and then he clicks on the lamps. He’s always hated overhead lighting, so the apartment brims with his thrifted treasures, reminders of travels past. They pool warm, honeyed light on the floor and counters. 

He’s still not quite used to the dark. 

Louis lingers by the door. “Shoes off?”

Daniel never bothers. “Yeah,” he says anyway, because it feels like the right answer, and kicks off his boots as an afterthought. He goes to the sink, watching Louis from the corner of his eye. 

He toes off his loafers and shrugs out of his tan wool coat, probably Prada or some shit, worth more than the apartment in sum—

“It’s Burberry,” Louis says. He sounds amused. “And it’s a nice apartment.” 

Daniel doesn’t justify that with a response. It’s his home, still. It is what it is. The silence hangs until he turns on the faucet. 

His guest tries again: “So what have you been up to?” 

We’re doing small talk? Like hell. “I’ve been sulking. After my little horrorshow in the UAE, I put myself in time out.” 

Louis hums and moves toward the dining room table, folding his coat over a chair. “And the pendulum swings.” 

Daniel has always been prone to extremes. He scowls. It irritates him to have his faults pointed out. That’s his job. He scrubs under his nails, their pearlescence re-emerging from the gore.  “I’ve been busy, alright. Writing your damn book.”

“Our book. Your editor mind your new office hours?”

Daniel dries his hands on his shirt and turns back to him. “She minds a lot of things. We’re fighting right now.” 

“Oh?” 

“She thinks I’ve started using again. Or cracked entirely. She wants to market the book under fantasy. So, hey. You might get that Gothic romance you tried selling me on, after all.”

“I gave up on selling it.” 

“Yeah, well. Tell that to her.” 

Louis doesn’t say anything. Daniel gets more flustered, feeling awkward in his own kitchen. “Don’t just stand there like an asshole,” he snaps. “Sit, or something. Make yourself comfortable.”

“What about a drink?”

He’s lost all social niceties, he’s basically feral at this point. Daniel rubs the back of his neck. “Shit, yeah. I’m a bad host. I’ve got bourbon and vermouth, uh—” 

“Not what I meant.” 

Louis unwraps his scarf from his neck. It’s yellow cashmere, the deep color of an egg yolk. He puts it with his coat, then starts unbuttoning the collar of his white button-up. 

Daniel goes preternaturally still in the middle of the kitchen. Can’t pretend to be a living thing in his shock. “Whoa. What?” 

“You need to feed from another vampire.” 

“I’m fine, actually,” he snaps. There’s no overcompensating for the way his heart races. 

“Could be better.” 

“He’s not the step-maker, folks. He’s the Maker that stepped up.”

“You should be feeding twice a day for the first year,” Louis insists. 

Daniel just stops short of rolling his eyes. “Yeah, thanks, Mom. I’ll get right on that.” 

Louis’s reaction surprises him, a flicker of heat, some kind of flutter that rolls into Daniel’s stomach. Another surprise of turning has been his ability to read others. Thoughts are almost easy, an Ancient’s Mind Gift strong enough to impart on him without any teaching. What he wasn’t ready for is that he can read emotions, too, the feelings of others seething around him, catching behind his teeth.

Now he can really be the worst person at the party: I’m an empath. 

The new input floods his thick head, overwhelms his sharp senses. It’s been another factor keeping him low, since he’s ventured out into only the scummiest of dive bars and darkest of alleys to feed, avoiding crowds at all costs. 

So whatever Louis is feeling right now? It’s a lot. It’s too frustrating to bear. So Daniel turns and asks plainly, as best he can: “You’re really here to be my TV dinner? Why bother?” 

Louis glides across the room but stops short of touching Daniel. Instead, he leans back beside him, hips to the kitchen counter. “Is it so hard to believe I’d like to take care of you?” 

“I’m not a child,” Daniel snaps, crossing his arms. He sounds like one. Peevish. He thinks of that first session, their reunion: I’m not your fucking boy. 

“You are, though, Daniel. You’re a fledging. A new spark in the dark.” 

He used that phrase to describe Claudia. It shocks Daniel into silence and shoves the argument back down his throat. 

Is he so dear? To be spoken of like that? 

Louis’s face softens. “Of course you are.” 

“No pretense, huh, about reading my thoughts? We’re not pretending to be polite?” 

“I thought we weren’t pretending at anything. And your thoughts are damn loud. More than before, and I didn’t know that was possible— ” 

Daniel can’t stop a snort. “Yeah, alright.” He bumps Louis’s shoulder with his own. Gently, he knows he has to be now, with his fledging strength. It’s satisfying to worry in reverse, not about how his body might fail but how it might harm. 

Louis had returned to Dubai after a week, once the hurricane cleared out of NOLA, expecting an empty penthouse. And it was, for the wrong reasons: Armand was nowhere to be seen, and Daniel was terrorizing the city in a blind rage. Entirely unchecked. 

Louis had offered a drink, then, and Daniel passed it down, a snarling, frothing rejection. He wanted his Maker, he needed his Maker— 

Louis didn’t fight Daniel on that. He’d wrangled him back into the apartment, set up regular blood deliveries from the farm, even provided a few live meals for Daniel to shred apart, and then…he left. Let him at his misery. 

And that was too familiar. Daniel’s been to rehab thrice over. He knows his way around facing the music, amending his fuck ups. 

So. He got a grip. Got a ticket back home, then he’d fed from humans and animals and that was it. He’s been working on his manuscript, sleeping like shit—there’s no denying the pull of the sun, now, how it drags him under every dawn, but he can’t stop dreaming. About ruins in Pompeii, white bedsheets against brown skin. Flashes. Stolen little fucking glimpses he cannot grasp long enough to understand. 

He’s met no other vampires in the month back in New York. He figures they’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted when the book is released and they all come to kill him. 

He and Louis were both just waiting. On borrowed time. On tether hooks.

They both wait now; the silence has grown long. Louis’s face is set in determination. Daniel shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says again. 

He’s not. He’s a goddamn wreck. The cord between him and—even in his thoughts, he hesitates to say his name. It makes everything hurt more, and he’d thought that wasn’t possible. But it is. It hurts—

Armand—

(There, he can name him, he can do that, confront the hole in the center of his head and chest. The thing he’s circling, will circle for the rest of his days)

—Armand is out there, somewhere, in the blue wide world, and the cord tethering them together is stretched thin, thin, thin. Daniel doesn’t know what makes him angrier: that he can still feel him, even now, or the possibility that one of these days, he might not. That the bond will snap. Leave him entirely untethered. 

All he can do is keen, these days, slamming up against the walls of his new, sharp psyche, screaming, Why did he leave me? 

“He’s evil,” Louis answers, picking the question out of his head. He sounds exhausted. 

“You don’t believe that,” Daniel says immediately. “Didn’t, even as you said it.” 

He shakes his head, a weak rebuke. “He shouldn’t have left you. All this…it’s my fault. I can’t make it right, I know I can’t, but I want to try.” 

Daniel’s pretty sure it’s his fault, his fat mouth and insistent nosiness and unpleasant general demeanor getting him got. He doesn’t say that. He asks, “ Why?” again. Ever impertinent. Every bit the stubborn child. 

Louis takes a big breath. Holds it. Daniel listens to the crackle of electricity running through the walls, the traffic outside, the dual thuds of their hearts. He should say something to break the tension and free Louis from whatever compassionate delusion is making him do this—

“Something should be,” Louis says, just then. His beautiful face is twisted up. “Right, that is. If I can help, I want to help you.” 

And there it is, the crux of Louis de Pointe du Lac, the thing that propels him through the world. He needs to be needed, not wanted, lusted after or longed for, but needed. By family. 

He longs to take care. 

“You’ve helped enough,” Daniel says.

“Daniel.” 

His hands curl into fists. The pinpricks of his claws dig into the meat of his palms, and he lets it happen, focusing on those sharp points instead of swallowing down what he’s thinking. “I feel like I did something,” he blurts. “To make him leave.” 

Louis’s mind conjures the dining room table, the magician’s exposure, cracked concrete, their fallen angel in the debris—

Not because of the divorce of the century. Before. When I was young, when we were…before. 

“Ah.” Louis leans back against the counter, arms folding over his chest. He’s easy, he moves like liquid. “I don’t know that part of your story.” 

Daniel’s shoulders hunch into a shrug. “Neither did I, until he turned me. Now, it’s coming back in bits and pieces. It’s like getting t-boned by a semi but it’s the truth of my life. Ours. He, he fucking takes and he takes and then he...fuck. ” Daniel chokes back the next thought—something’s wrong with me—but Louis hears it, probably tastes it, bitter in the back of both of their throats. 

“No blame for you there. It’s him,” Louis insists. “There’s something wrong with him.” 

Daniel forces out a bark of a laugh. “No shit.” 

Louis crooks a finger, pulling him forward, and Daniel doesn’t even pretend to resist. He goes, damn it, damn him. It’s like he’s enthralled. Maybe he is. 

Maybe he always has been. 

Louis takes Daniel’s hands in his own and focuses on uncurling his fists. He smears a fingertip across the pricks of blood on Daniel’s palm. Moving across his lifeline, or some other psychic shit. He doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know. 

“He’s a fool,” Louis says gently. His voice gets low. “Pushing his baby bird outta the nest.” He drops Daniel’s hands to brush the stray curls from his forehead. Daniel stops pretending to breathe. “Should be taking care of you, fledgling.” 

When Louis’s hand moves to cup the nape of his neck, one cool fingertip strokes at the scar he left so long ago. Armand took Daniel on the other side of his neck, a claim all his own, twined bites, fated—

Daniel tries to quip, but it lacks any bite. “Seems like you’ve got ideas about how that should be done,”

Louis’s voice is low. “Got a few, yeah.” 

He steps closer despite himself and laughs, a juvenile, nervous habit he’d worked hard to break. It comes back now, a fluttering sound that scrapes out of his throat. Damnit. 

Daniel wants, so fucking badly, to yield, to go boneless in Louis’s arms. Pliant. A scruffed kitten. 

You’d make a cute kitten. 

Fuck off, du Lac, Daniel projects back. He forces himself to tense up, lock in against the comfort. 

 “S’not like you,” Louis murmurs, his finger continuing its hypnotic stroking over his jaw. “Fighting your impulses.”

“Maybe I’ve changed. After all, my impulses made me a shit person.” 

“Makes you a great vampire, though.” 

“You disdain great vampires.” 

Louis huffs. His breath is somehow warm on Daniel’s cheek. “Don’t let him give you his bad habits when he’s not even here.” 

“What?” 

“Denying yourself what you want.” 

Daniel scoffs. “He doesn’t deny himself anything.” 

“Why do you think he ran away, Danny?” 

Daniel’s stomach pitches. He wants, so bad, to be what Armand wants. He wants a lot of things. It makes him sick. He shakes his head, skews up his eyes. “I don’t want your—you—” 

“Daniel?”

If you pity me, that’s worse. He can’t look Louis in the eye properly, can’t force the words, but he lets himself think them. That’s the worst it could get. 

“Ah. Daniel.” Louis’s voice goes woundingly soft. 

Daniel jerks away and flings himself across the kitchen, pacing its confined length. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted you?” His voice isn’t confrontational, it’s frantic, strangling on its way out. “And if we finally…and it’s because of him—” 

“Hey. Look at me.”

And Daniel does, spinning on his heel. Helpless to it. To him. Rewarding those fucking impulses. 

“It’s because of you, ” Louis says firmly. 

He wants to believe it. He almost does, and he tries not to: “You think you can show up here and feed me. Fledgling. Kitten. Poor baby Danny.” 

Louis says nothing, so Daniel carries on because he has to, he’s built like that: “Just ‘cause my daddy ran off to the Kwik Mart for some cigarettes and never came home—” 

“I’m not here to be your daddy, Daniel.” Louis tries to look exasperated, but there’s a note of grief there, a deep hurt. A sweet voice calls for Daddy Lou in memory. It bleeds over. 

Okay, ouch. That one’s on him. The fire goes out, the argument dying in its own embers. “Sorry.”

It surprises them both. Louis didn’t realize he’d projected the memory, but he recovers quickly, rubbing a hand over his sternum. Self-soothing. “S’okay. Come here?’ 

Daniel closes the distance between them again, putting one hand atop Louis’s and the other at his waist. Louis tucks into him, his face into the crook of Daniel’s neck. Easy, easy. Like they’ve always been this way. 

We should have, Daniel thinks fiercely. 

They stand like that for a long while, pressed together fully down their bodies as if trying to absorb the other. Seems healthy.  

There’s something lingering, though, something Louis wears at the front of his mind. A fervent interest when he’d entered the apartment. A desire that sits in the pit of his stomach, the center of his heart. 

“Not Daddy, then,” Daniel says. 

Louis hums something like a laugh. His fingers soothe down the column of Daniel’s neck, slipping beneath the collar of his flannel. “Yeah, no, thanks.” 

“Mama?” Daniel tries, quiet against Louis’ neck, and it’s ridiculous, it’s insane of him to even attempt, but Louis’s breath stutters in his chest, his pulse pulling tight in the knot of his throat. 

“Something to that?” Daniel asks, even though it’s clear as the dawn that’ll sweep him under its waves in a few hours. 

Louis takes a moment to reply. “You don’t have to.”

“What if I want to?” 

He says nothing, just shakes his head. “This is all about you. I’m supposed to be, I—” 

“What happened to letting yourself have what you want?” 

He leans back to look at him. Daniel misses the physical contact but endures it to look into Louis’s eyes. Green as an alchemist’s bottle. Green as pale reeds. 

Louis looks afraid. 

“If there’s something you want, you should have it,” Daniel says, his voice low with intent. It feels better, to insist, to be on offense instead of defense. Old habits, in pursuit of something new. “Nothing to be ashamed of. We’re past that.” 

Louis shakes his head again, another little laugh huffing from his beautiful mouth. “When have you known me to be past shame, Daniel? I’m never past it. I live there.” 

More old habits. Daniel is determined to break them both of it. “Then change your address.” 

Louis laughs again. He’s the frantic one now. “Oh, shit, alright. I’ll get right on that, then.” 

“I mean it, Louis. You don’t have to carry all that around.” 

“Where should I put it down?” 

“Put it down on me.” 

That’s all it takes and Louis is on him, surging with feeling, his mouth open and hot and sucking bruises onto Daniel’s throat and jaw, unminding of the stubble he has to fight back every sunset. 

The bond between their minds is blown wide open, like both of their pupils must be, like nothing Daniel has felt—not true, (fact-checking himself) he’s had it, he’d had it, his Maker’s bond open to him for just a blip of eternity—

Louis’s teeth sink into his lower lip, not bothering with a nibble. Going straight for the bite. Daniel groans and lets him, but snarks, Thought I was supposed to be feeding.

Louis’s not impressed. “You’re here with me. Be with me.” 

But Daniel wonders if the Maker bond affects him so much…

“What about Lestat? Didn’t you and him—?” Make up? 

“Does that matter right now?” 

Daniel shifts closer to him. Hypocrite. “A little, yeah, ‘cause if I get a voicemail from Blondie in the middle of this, I swear to God or Nosferatu or whoever the fuck—“

“He knows better than that,” he says, and there he is, a little smugness returned to him. It suits him like it always has. Must’ve been a good visit to New Orleans. 

“It was, yeah, thanks for not asking.” Louis shakes his head, amused despite himself, but still agitated. “I just…this isn’t about that. I know. How things are supposed to be, and I know I can’t give you that, but…I’ll give you whatever I can.” 

It’s a gift. A generous one. Daniel closes his eyes and focuses, and Louis lays it all out there. His mind, unguarded. Everything is open for Daniel to rummage through, and he is nothing if not nosy. But when he lets himself look, Louis’s full scope of feeling staggers him: the love, affection, the shame, the grief he houses. It’s all for Daniel and it isn’t, because it’s for Lestat, it’s for—

“You still love him?!” Daniel blurts, because he is an ungracious asshole who ruins all good things. 

Louis’s hands fist into his hair. He doesn’t seem angry; he seems determined. Sure of each touch. Daniel’s head jerks back, his throat straining. All the blood he had outside the bar rushes South. 

“You really never shut up, do you?” Louis almost marvels. “Couldn’t if your life depended on it, and it did, actually, but you just can’t not be like this.”

He doesn’t sound surprised at Daniel’s lack of tact for bringing it up, at any of it. 

“How can you—” Daniel chokes out the question. Louis takes it as a sign to wrench his head back farther. His eyes are locked in on the knot of Daniel’s straining throat. 

“Is that the question you really wanna ask right now? ‘Cause you’re just the same as me and he’s not here to fuck you.” 

Ouch, again, and Daniel deserved that one. He takes it on the chin, because he has to, because his head is tilted far back and he’s looking at Louis down his nose, glasses slipping off his face. 

Then Louis wrenches his head forward, pressing Daniel’s straining mouth to his throat. Daniel groans into his jugular. “Who are you here with?” Louis asks. His voice is even. Chiding. Fuck. 

“You,” Daniel mumbles, directly into his skin, his pulse—he can feel the blood thrumming in Louis, under his lips, beneath the fangs extending in his mouth—

“Who?” 

He forces himself to lift off a little. “Louis de Pointe du Lac,” he enunciates. Like he’s introducing an interview. For style points. 

Louis hums, satisfied. “There we are. Now shut up for once, please. Drink, Daniel.” 

And Daniel can leave well enough alone, sometimes. Sometimes, he can listen, he can listen so well. He sinks his teeth into Louis’s throat and gasps. His brain explodes, light and color. A perfect hit. Human blood is good, fine, necessary, but this is…intimacy. Trust. The difference between wolfing down fast food during your commute and a lover feeding you by hand. 

Louis tastes like clear, distilled liquor and the first bite of a stone fruit. Ripe enough to rot your teeth. Strong enough to make you blind. 

Daniel drinks and drinks. He only notices he’s crying when Louis pulls him away, hands back in his hair, guiding this time. Daniel lets up, lets himself be pulled away. It surprises them both, how little he resists. 

He hasn’t fucked anyone as a vampire. Ridiculous, isn’t it, to be given the Gift and not use it for all its worth? But he’s been staying away from people as much as he can bear, unsure of his self-control and temperament post-Dubai. He is hungry, always, and so, so touch-starved—has been, for years, but he let the chronic pain dull that input, telling himself that part of his life was over. That it was all winding down anyway. 

Now, all he has is this new sensory, tactile input and an absent Maker. It’s only reminded him how alone he’s been. He’s been miserable. Isolated. The feeling overwhelms them both for a moment, but Louis steers them right. 

“I got you,” he says, and he does. “Steady, now. S’alright. I got you.” He takes Daniel’s red-smudged glasses from his face and places them gently onto the counter. Then he pets down Daniel’s neck, runs his hands across his shoulders. “Was that good?” 

Daniel blinks at him, tears running in his vision. “Thanks,” is all he manages. I understand what you’re giving me. It’s a gift. I know it is. “Thank you, Mama.” 

Louis’s hands stutter over his leather jacket. His eyes are blown wide, green yielding to black. “Oh,” he says, sweet, he’s sweet, he’s running down Daniel’s chin. 

“That okay?” Daniel pants out, he has to be sure, he has to take care, like how Louis’s taking care of him—

Louis nods. Swallows hard. “Yes, baby,” he says. 

Daniel groans and leans back into him, kissing over the bite he left, the tears from his cheeks smearing onto the long column of Louis’s throat as he nuzzles in. 

Louis’s hands lift from Daniel’s back. He thinks to protest until he realizes he’s tearing at his own shirt, baring his beautiful chest. If we’re doing this, Louis thinks, more to himself than to Daniel, might as well do it right. 

Daniel doesn’t need any prompting. He mouths down Louis’s collarbones, lips almost frantic until he finds his chest. He’s lovely, of course, everywhere but especially here, hair dusting his pecs, nipples peaked already. Daniel licks at one and then the other, testing suction, relishing the feel of them in his mouth. 

Louis makes a really fucking beautiful noise. His hands are back in Daniel’s hair, guiding him closer. “There you go,” he says. His voice shakes. “Latch on proper, now, be good for me.” 

Daniel has never wanted anything more. He opens his mouth wide and sinks his fangs in, above and below Louis’s nipple. He uses his tongue to draw blood from the wound, then to flick across the firm bud of his nipple. Back and forth. He could do this forever, forever. He realizes somewhere outside of himself that Louis has angled a leg in between Daniel’s. He’s grinding against him, subconscious, all that impulse he was fighting earlier catching up with him, pleasure sneaking in, right there, if he lets it be. 

“That’s good,” Louis gasps. “Good, good boy, Daniel.” 

It’s unfair, how much those words undo him. How quick it draws heat to Daniel’s gut. Louis has one hand at the back of his head, the other at Daniel’s waist, urging him to grind harder. He can’t form words, exactly, but projects a warning, a question into Louis’s head: Mother, may I? 

And Louis laughs. “Beautiful boy. Give it to me.” 

That’s all it takes. Daniel comes, still clothed, barely touched, blood flooding his mouth, pleasure zipping up and down his spine. 

When he lifts off Louis, they both groan at the loss. Blood is smeared across Louis’s chest, down Daniel’s chin. “Made a mess of me,” Daniel says, trying to be wry. It comes out wobbly instead. 

Louis studies him, unbearably fond. “Barely took doing. You’re an easy thing.” 

“Whoa, slow down. Bit early for round two, but talking like that…give me a minute to catch my breath.” 

Pulling him close, Louis decidedly does not let him get his breath, crowding in with the kind of kiss that makes Daniel go even more boneless. “Round two, huh,” he murmurs when he pulls away. He nibbles at Daniel’s ear, kissing down his neck. “How many you gonna give me?”

There’s only one answer. “As many as you want.”

Louis hums, contemplative. “How many can you give me?”

“Same answer.”

He laughs again. “Nothing like a young man’s enthusiasm.” 

“Stop underestimating me, or I’ll fall in love with you for real.”

That quiets Louis but doesn’t take his smile away. It’s a little honest to say out loud, but they’re there, aren’t they? Minds wide open. Legs on their way. Cards on the table. 

And he must know. He’s always known. 

Louis’s face does something complicated. “I really didn’t,” he says quietly. “I wish I had.” 

That surprises Daniel. He asks what feels like the obvious question:  “Would it have changed anything?” 

Everything, Louis thinks immediately. “I don’t know,” is what he says. 

“Say what you mean, Louis.” Daniel even adds on a please for good measure, even if it's telepathic. 

It coaxes the truth from him. Louis looks at him, lost, and says, “I should have turned you.” His voice goes rough and wavers. He says it like a confession. “It should have been me. My blood, inside your veins. Making you.” 

Daniel’s reaction hardly makes sense to him. Half of him snarls away, rejecting the call of any other but his Maker, his blood protesting even as it rushes in his undead veins. The other half can see it: the Dark Gift given as just that, a gift. 

A reward for a job well done. A calm passing over, more like Madeline’s and less like a crime scene. His eyes, just a greener shade of blue instead of molten, burning amber. 

A kind of love that hurts a little less. 

Those thoughts bleed over, they must, because Daniel feels Louis’s regret, his exhale in his body, both of them shifting with it pressed so close. “I’m so sorry, Daniel.” 

Daniel heaves in a breath of his own. There’s no point in dwelling—that’s one lesson he’s determined to learn from the fucking odyssey of recollection. “I’m not,” he lies. Hypocrite, again, when he just asked for the truth. “Now you’ll just have to make it up to me. For the rest of forever.” 

A sort of vow of his own, hidden in snark. It’s the only kind Daniel knows how to make. He never got his vows to stick, but he needs this one to. He needs Louis. 

That all goes through their link, too, it must, because Louis, for the first time that Daniel’s known him, moves away from melancholy and offers a strained smile. “I’ll get to trying.” His hands flit down to Daniel’s belt. “You probably want to take these off, huh.” 

He’s right, of course—it’s unpleasantly sticky, coming in your drawers, it’s an insane thing for a sixty-nine-year-old to do—but Daniel is himself so he has to simper, “Getting me out of my pants? What a gentleman. ” 

“Well, I’m a giver,” Louis says, and his smile goes a little warmer. It makes Daniel’s stomach flip. Round two might be possible, soon, the sooner the better, actually. Thanks, vampiric refractory period. 

Louis snorts, undoing Daniel’s buckle, working his jeans and boxers down his hips. “That doesn’t last forever.” 

“Shit, really?” 

“Not like a fledgling. But you’ll be just fine, baby. We’ll make the most of it.” 

That sounds like it goes beyond tonight, but nothing is promised, so Daniel must make the best of now. He shivers in the cold kitchen air, blood-cum smeared across his dick which is filling out again by the moment. He shrugs out of his jacket and starts on his flannel. He can’t stop looking at the bite mark on Louis’s chest. It’s started to bead, seal up, the wound healing in quick time. He wishes it wouldn’t. 

Louis ruined his undoubtedly expensive dress shirt earlier, its tortoiseshell buttons scattered on his kitchen floor. The tattered remaining fabric slips off his shoulder, artful, couture or some other fashion shit beyond Daniel. He’s beautiful, is the point. 

“You’re beautiful,” Daniel says. 

Louis tilts his head, stretching out against the counter. “This all it takes to get you so sweet?” he murmurs. Smug again. “Should’ve let myself have you earlier. Maybe you’d’ve been nicer to me during the interview.” 

Daniel forces himself to scoff, ignoring the blood— Louis’s blood— blooming on his cheeks. “Not a chance in hell of that, I’m afraid. I’m a professional.” 

“C’mere.” 

Louis swaps their positions, so Daniel’s against the cabinets, back to him, and he has some room to work. He urges Daniel down to his elbows, leaving his ass sticking out, trusting his weight to the counter. Daniel’s head spins. 

“That okay?” Louis asks.

“Yeah, s’good.” 

Louis’s hands settle on his hips. “You’ll tell me if that changes.” It’s not a question, it’s a fact. Indisputable. 

Daniel nods. Proving the point. He’s gone all pliant, punch-drunk, coasting on a fuller stomach and endorphins and…and. Consideration. Company. 

“ Sweet thing,” Louis coos again. “Look at you.” 

Daniel lets his head drop to his forearms. “That’s just the afterglow,” he protests, muffled. “I’m never sweet.” 

“So you’re saying I bring it out in you?” 

Yes. “Coy bastard.” 

“I wanna hear it.”

“What?”

“Tell me.” Tell me yes. Something good, for once. I want to make it sweet for you. 

It’s too much, for a moment, too overwhelming to be in both Louis’s head and his own body. Daniel squirms, his hips bucking back; Louis’s still wearing his crisp, dark jeans, but for one moment, Daniel feels the outline of his straining cock against denim. He moans, full-throated. Like a fucking whore. 

Louis swears.“You call yourself that, you make noises like that, and you’d still deny me?” 

It’s easier to call himself a slut and be done with it, wouldn’t be the first time, but…Daniel won’t deny Louis anything, not even his apparent sweetness. Even if it's buried under sedimentary layers of bullshit. 

So. “Fine. M’sweet,” Daniel mumbles into his arm.

Louis’s fingers tighten at his hips. “Speak up, baby.” 

Despite the tells in his body, his thoughts, Louis manages to make his voice so polite. Disaffected. It’ll kill Daniel, it really might—

He yields. “I’m sweet for you, alright. That’s all you’re gonna—” 

The word get dies in his throat when Louis kneels behind him. “Oh, God.” 

“Nope. Just me.” Daniel hears the smile in his voice as Louis spreads his cheeks and licks a hot stripe down from the base of his spine to his hole. Again. Again. 

Daniel gasps. Louis’s groan reverberates in Daniel’s body. Like they’re the same, for a moment. Blood of my blood. He fucking wishes. He keens. “ Louis— ” 

“Right here.” He pets down Daniel’s thighs, grounding, soothing. “I’m gonna eat you out until you’re nice and loose for me. Then I’m gonna fuck you, just how you need it. That sound good?” 

Daniel nods furiously. He’s already trembling, not from strain like the last years of his human life, but from anticipation. From need. 

“You come whenever you feel like it,” Louis tacks on. “No need to ask me. As many times as you want, love, and then a few more, I think.” 

Daniel’s hips give a little involuntary jerk. He presses his face to his tiled countertop and groans. The room has become very warm with Louis’s hands on him. With the implication that Daniel would seek out his permission, and he would. Tonight, at least—the brat’s been beaten out of him by the heavy weight of the last half year.

“I doubt that,” Louis says, but it’s a gentle ribbing. A kindness.

“You want me feisty?” Daniel tries to tease back, but again, his voice wavers. “You could’ve had me feisty.” Could’ve had me any way you wanted. 

Yeah? 

Still can. Who am I kidding. 

And Louis says it, out loud, firm but quiet, soft but sure: “Good thing I want you exactly as you are.” 

Daniel’s eyes burn, blood beading at the corners. “For fuck’s sake,” he says roughly, wiping his face on his forearm. The tears don’t stop. He doesn’t try to make them stop. 

And, thankfully, Louis doesn’t give him time to dwell; his mouth is back on him, lazy, loving, tongue teasing his rim before fucking inside him. 

Daniel makes a noise that doesn’t pretend to be a word. He only assembles his scrambled wits when Louis drags the tips of his claws down his legs; there’s an unexpected dullness to two of his fingers. 

“You cut them ahead of time?” Daniel gasps. “A little— ah —anticipatory, don’t y’think—” 

And yet, we’re right where I thought we’d be. Louis hums and the vibration almost undoes him.

So Daniel shuts up right about then. Lets himself collapse onto the countertop. Lets his face hide in the crook of his arm. He leans into the corner as Louis does as he said he would, works him open, loose, murmuring a string of affectionate nonsense directly into Daniel’s body, there you gos and isn’t that goods. 

If Daniel were of a sounder mind, a surer self, he’d quip something like you gonna make a girl beg? but Louis has his number, has him. His job is to take what he’s given. That’s it. And it is good. It’s good, it’s good, it’s good. 

Somehow, that babbled thought was what Louis was waiting for. He slips two fingers inside Daniel no problem and begins to stroke him from the inside out. 

“Babe,” Daniel pants, “Sweetheart, fuck, yeah, yeah—” 

“How’s that?”  

“Yes, Louis, Louis— ” 

When he finds Daniel’s prostate and lavishes it with firm strokes, Daniel lights up toe to tip. 

“You’ve always been like this, haven’t you?” Louis says warmly. “Greedy. Eager. Taking what you can get. Y’know, I’ve half a mind to keep you like this. All strung out for me. You’re gorgeous like this. All the time, but, shit, Daniel. You’re something special.”

As a human, he’d considered himself a garden-variety son of a bitch, a scrappy bastard if anything. But as a vampire—

The one and only fledging of the vampire ancient Armand. 

The idea repulsed me. Repulses me. Something special, indeed: a mistake. 

Louis doesn’t catch that, somehow, too focused on pulling ridiculous noises from Daniel’s mouth, and if his cries go a little hoarse for a moment, what does it matter? He teeters on pleasure’s edge just because Louis wills it. He’s wanted right now. Here. 

Then Louis drags him back to the present. He sinks his teeth into Daniel’s left ass cheek and takes a long pull of his blood. 

“Fuck, ow, ” Daniel whines, rutting back into him, seeking more of his fangs. 

Louis’s focus scatters the moment Daniel’s blood hits his tongue. He snarls, wordless, and Daniel feels his thought more than hears it: 

Tastes like him.

All the hair on Daniel’s body stands up. There is a beautiful, beautiful apex predator between his legs, pissed the fuck off, and despite his new form, he’s prey. He is unthinkably hard. 

So he pushes the point because he knows no other way; “Pineapple and honey, huh.” His voice shakes as hard as his legs. 

Louis snarls again, the affirmation dolling in his head like a bell. That anger isn’t put on for the scene: it’s real, bright and furious and tinged with want and hurt and hurt. 

Daniel forces his heavy head up from his arms and looks behind him. Louis has removed his fingers and is staring inside him, looking into where Daniel is spread wide, fury blanking out his features. Daniel’s cock jerks involuntarily, leaking onto the kitchen cabinet—I am so fucked in the head, the thought runs in the background, like a software update, because when hasn’t he been—and he tries for an order, but a plea comes out instead: “Drain me dry.” 

Louis’s eyes snap to his. In the low light, they’re dark, almost black, pupils eating his irises. “What?”

“Drink all of his fucking blood out of me, then feed me yours. Make me taste like you. Make me—” He doesn’t finish the sentence. It’s not make me yours; Daniel is Louis’s, was his, first, despite the rest of it. Has been Louis’s for forty-nine years. His fascinating boy.

Make me, then, on its own. Make me real. Make me something worth keeping. 

Another growl rips from Louis’s throat. He drags his teeth down, thin hot lines sinking into the back of Daniel’s thigh. His skin is thin, here, sensitive, and he comes again, comes untouched again, the pain crystallizing his pleasure into something sharp and cold and grounding. 

Louis lets out a stream of curses in French, then licks up the back of Daniel’s leg, soothing the bites closed with the flat of his tongue. “Garçon miraculeux,” he says. Almost reverent. 

“Why are you—” Daniel’s voice gives out. He heaves in a breath and tries again. “Don’t stop. Keep going.” 

“What?” 

“Keep drinking. I meant it.” 

Louis stands with supernatural speed, scooping Daniel up from the counter by his tits, pressing close enough to bruise, all up his back. The close contact is necessary, almost better than either orgasm so far, because Daniel is still shaking. Doesn’t know when it started or will end.

I’ve got you, Louis thinks, almost to himself. Got you, got you. He presses a bloody kiss to the nape of Daniel’s neck. “We’ll need a bed for all that, then.” 

“Should I, ah, put down a tarp?” 

Louis snorts. He’s unfairly cute. “Let me carry you.” 

He sighs, put on. “Seeing as I left my dignity in…I was gonna say Dubai, but if we’re honest, like, back in seventy-three, so why the fuck not.” 

Louis rolls his eyes, but the bridal carry he swoops him into doesn’t feel undignified. It feels good, safe. Daniel lets himself nuzzle into the side of Louis’s neck. His fangs itch to extend, but he denies the impulse. It’s no good, not yet—he needs to be empty so Louis can fill him. A mimicry of his turning. The best they can manage. 

“You took all that in stride,” Louis says, contrasting Daniel’s self-deprecation. 

He takes the walk slowly, pitying the trembling disaster in his arms. The lights are off in the hallway, its shadows pulling long and blue. 

“Already told you I’m a whore. A sweet one, apparently.”

“Not—not just. The—the, ah, rest of it.” 

Daniel blinks dazedly. His head swims post-pleasure, his body buzzing with Louis’s blood. “What rest of it?” 

Louis looks down at him, incredulous. A little embarrassed. 

“Ah,” Daniel says, realizing. “Give me a break. My brain feels like mush.” He tucks closer into Louis and closes his eyes. “I meant it when I said it’s nothing to worry about. Not my first time at the gender rodeo.” Not his best metaphor, but, again, mushy brain. Chemical overload. He’s excused. 

“What’d you mean?” 

“In the seventies and eighties, I fucked about half of New York City—all kinda folks, all kinda ways.” 

Louis hums, appreciative. Daniel feels the sound buzz through his throat, against where his cheek presses in. “I’m interested in hearing more about that,” he murmurs.

Daniel shivers, goosebumps pebbling on his arms. Easy, reactive: he can’t pretend to be anything else. “You’ll have to try your hand at interviewing me, then,” he manages. “What about you?”

“Short interview. What about me?” 

“You done this before?” 

Louis doesn’t answer immediately, so Daniel opens his eyes after a moment. He offers up, “We don’t have to talk about it, but, I mean it, Louis. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Not unless you want it to be. I’m not doing you a favor, here. It was…I came twice and you haven’t even gotten to my dick yet. I’m good for it.” 

Louis’s face does something complicated, folding into itself with heaviness. “I’m not trying to…withhold.” 

“You don’t owe me anything.” 

That knocks him out of it; Louis gives him a withering look. I owe you everything. Everything. He doesn’t say it, but he thinks it, then he extends his wrist. “I can show you better than I can tell you.” 

Daniel nips in without another thought, and the memory rises through the blood, settling his tongue: Louis, kohl smudged around his eyes, wearing a slip of green silk. He’s arched against the satin lining of their marital coffin, Lestat’s hands on his chest, his pleased growl, a murmuring in French, Il te va si bien, mon amour, prends-le comme une bonne petite mariée—

“Jesus Christ,” Daniel gasps. He has to blink several times to see the real Louis past the writhing memory. It burns behind his eyelids like a sunspot. If he’s lucky, it always will. 

Louis shrugs, but a bit of blood rushes to his cheeks. “We only did it just the once, that night.” He sighs. 

Daniel blinks again. “Didn’t like it?” 

He shakes his head, then nudges the bedroom door open with his hip. It’s as messy as the rest of his place, lit by a solitary orange-bulbed lamp Daniel hasn’t turned off since he got back. Amber light drenches the nightstand, the sheets. 

“Liked it too much,” Louis admits quietly. “That’s when I was in the habit of denying myself things, especially if Lestat wanted to give them to me. Punishing us both.” He pauses, then tacks on: “It was real good, though.” 

“Looked like it. You, uh, done it since then?” 

Louis shakes his head. His eyes go far away for a moment. “No,” he says simply. 

Daniel nips at his jaw. Tries to bring Louis back from wherever memory pulls him. “Then I’m glad to be your first in this century.” 

That brings his smile back. Louis noses at Daniel’s temple, kisses him there. “Speaking of…did I catch that right, earlier? You haven’t fucked anyone?” 

Daniel tenses in his arms but just for a moment. A few quips line up on his tongue, defensive, fleeting things, but he swallows and lets them dissolve. “Nope.” 

Louis tosses him on the unmade bed, a surprising moment of free fall. Daniel’s stomach jolts, like he left it in Louis’s arms, but Louis follows quickly, not pretending to be human in the way he moves. He tucks in close again, arms tight around him. 

“Then the good news,” Louis murmurs into the shell of his ear. “is that this’ll piss Armand the fuck off.” 

Daniel breathes out a laugh, a shaky thing. Part of him wishes—no. Treacherous. Ungrateful. Louis is no second-place prize, and Daniel is more than glad to have and be had by him. Especially if Armand might suffer. Might hurt even a fraction of the way he’s made Daniel hurt these last few months, the way he made Louis hurt for decades. He sends that thought through the void, up and down their bond: spite, spite, bitterness. 

“What’s the bad news?” he asks. 

Louis reaches out and traces the heavy lines of Daniel’s forehead, then the ones branching out from the corners of his eyes. “No bad news,” he says quietly. “Not tonight.” 

There’s gravity to it, to him. Louis’s a burning sun, and Daniel’s a dead satellite burning up in his orbit. 

“You’re a star, at least, mon cher.” 

“You already got me in bed. Don’t start with poetry. Or the French.” 

“You started it.” Louis gives him a smirk that goes straight between his legs. “How attached are you to these sheets?” 

“M’not. I hate them, actually. Fuck ‘em.” 

“You really want me to drain you?” 

“As close as we can get to it, yeah.” 

“And what else do you want?” 

Daniel says it without another thought: “To ride you while you do it.” 

Louis’s eyes widen, just that much, his lashes fluttering. “Yeah, alright.” He scoots up the bed to reposition, a mundane motion for such an unnatural creature, and sits against the headboard. Daniel stays put, staring up at his body, holding his immortal breath while Louis shimmies out of his pants. No underwear—slut. 

Louis shoots a possessive, warm look at Daniel. He’s taking his time. He knows he can. They’ve got nothing but it. 

Daniel feels his mouth water—bigger slut, yeah, yeah, he knows— when he finally takes in the sight of Louis's cock, flushed and curved against the soft of his stomach. When Louis rips a gash across his palm and strokes himself slowly… fuck. It’s good Daniel’s come twice, already, or he might’ve lost it just watching him. 

“Like what you see?” Louis says, amused, chasing that train of thought. Vain thing. It’s well-earned. 

“I think I get why Lestat and Armand are both like that, now.” Daniel barely stutters over the latter’s name, and it's worth it for the way Louis’s eyebrows arch, the laugh that spills from his mouth. “You’re incorrigible,” he says. 

Daniel swallows the excess blood-spit in his mouth. “Heard that one, before.” 

There’s a pause, a breath, a moment, where Louis seems to gather himself. He tilts his head, jerks his chin. “C’mere,” he says softly. “Come sit in Mama’s lap.”

In anyone else’s mouth, it would be filthy, obnoxious, maybe, but Louis is painfully earnest. Vulnerable. He wants this, too, bad enough it thrums between their minds, in the blood they’re sharing. The blood they’ll keep sharing. 

Daniel will do just about anything to give Louis what he wants. 

So he crawls up the bed, into Louis’s arms, nuzzling in close. Turns out Daniel is a real Velcro baby, and he can’t be sorry, not for a fucking moment. 

Louis guides him up, one hand on his hip and the other slipping to the small of Daniel’s back. “Easy, now,” he says, “Take me slow.” 

Daniel groans. “Don’t wanna.” 

Louis clicks his tongue, disapproving. “Thought you were being good for me.” 

Is it that simple? All it takes? Tonight, sure. Daniel’s thighs tremble from holding himself up, but he does, frozen in a straddle, anticipation sharp enough to cut. 

“There we go,” Louis murmurs. “Not so hard, huh.”

Daniel is mustering up some retort about elder abuse or how he’s actually quite hard, thank you very much, when Louis nudges the head of cock to his hole, and then Daniel is thinking nothing at all. Louis was right to caution him; it burns despite his work in the kitchen, it’s so much after so little for so fucking long. Daniel makes a ridiculous noise, one that unspools from his throat. 

“Breathe,” Louis urges him. Not like Daniel needs it, but it’s good, the mechanics of it, it’s grounding. He heaves in a breath and lets it go in a moan when Louis moves inside him. 

“Good, there you go, bear down. Good boy. That’s good. I’ve got you.” Louis kisses his ear, his cheek, then quietly, gently, “Mama’s got you.”

If you told any younger version of Daniel that, at near seventy years old, he’d be in the lap of a devastatingly beautiful man, taking his cock and calling him Mommy—well, shit, he’d probably shake his own hand and say sounds about right. 

But there’s just something about it. About Louis’s hands on him, warm and careful. About the patient way he waits for Daniel to open up for him, the stretch straining then becoming perfect. About how Daniel can see it, in this softer light, the high curve of his cheek, the slope of her neck. 

Maybe it’s just something about Louis, always has been, beauty transcending gender or label or time or place. 

Louis gasps, catching that thought on the tail end. Daniel feels his quick inhale under his mouth. He sucks a bruise on the side of his neck and says, his voice dipping lower, almost shy, “ So pretty, Mama.” 

“ Darlin’ boy,” Louis says. It’s a little choked. 

“I wanna be,” he admits. With wild abandon, with his whole chest. He really fucking wants to be. 

Louis rocks up into him. “Lemme give it to you, everything you want—“

Daniel shakes his head, panting. “Doubt that.” I want to crack your chest open and crawl in. Belong somewhere warm and wet and dark.

I think I’d let you if you ask nice enough. 

“Let me get right on that.” And Daniel does, bucking his hips, seating himself fully on Louis's cock. They both cry out at the connection, the rightness of it. Daniel’s hands move from Louis’s shoulders to cup the back of his head, urging him forward, clumsy in his desire, guiding Louis’s mouth onto the side of his throat. 

“Take it,” he says hoarsely. Take me. 

Louis doesn’t hesitate. He sinks in, an enormous bite, his mouth hot and right against Daniel’s pulse, coaxing his pulse to stream into his mouth. He sucks hard enough to make Daniel’s head spin, his heart kicking in, frantic. Rabbit-quick. High in his throat. 

Daniel peers into his open mind as he drinks. Right now, Louis’s thoughts are not quite literal. They are all seething, consuming want, love returned, unsure of the exact form but ever-present. Bright and catching in Daniel’s throat, something like synesthesia. It punches the air from his frozen lungs. 

And it doesn’t take long before Daniel goes languid, swimming in it, in Louis’s grace and will. Stars bloom behind his eyes. He can see the headboard, the warm light spilling across Louis’s shoulders, and then his vision swims and doubles. 

The sense memory isn’t lost on him: cement dust clouding the air, Armand straddling Daniel in the crater Louis made of him. Long fingers twining in his hair, pinning him, giving him back his memories, their life that he’d stolen, stealing the life from him with every swallow—

No. Here. You’re here. Daniel forces his eyes open and grinds his hips down. “Give it t’me,” he demands weakly. 

Louis groans and fucks up into him, setting a quicker pace. It sends Daniel bouncing in his lap, Louis’s teeth digging that much more into his throat. The bite is an anchor, forcing him to stay relatively still, to take it and take it. 

The blood loss is like the best of body highs, a joint easing the edge of the comedown. Daniel’s breath gets shallow and quick as everything else slows down. Pleasure sparks up and down his spine. With every thrust, Louis hits his prostate and he knows what he’s fucking doing, shifting Daniel’s heavy limbs in just the right way. Whatever blood he’s got left flushes out his cock, then leaves it. He comes again, or he doesn’t. He can’t tell. Everything is one long, sustaining note of pleasure. One endless feeling. 

There’s a hand at the nape of his neck. Firm, catching his lolling head. Daniel didn’t notice Louis unlatch. 

“Alright?” Louis asks. “Don’t have to speak, just tell me.” 

Good, he thinks blearily. S’good. He’s featherlight. He’s barely there. He’s crying again, a real fucking sap who can’t afford to lose any more blood, but he can’t help it. 

Louis tucks a curl behind his ear. “That’s enough, I think,” he murmurs. “Your turn, love.” 

Daniel finds his voice to protest: “Come first. I want you.” He’s wrecked. His voice slurs. 

Louis shivers with his whole body, with need Daniel can taste in his own mouth, but he counters, “You have to feed.” 

He shakes his head, furious as he can be right now. Isn’t Louis supposed to be giving him what he wants? 

“You’d be in hypovolemic shock if you weren’t already dead.” 

“Just— ah —just what the doctor ordered.” It makes no fucking sense, but Daniel is more than a little delirious. His head rests entirely in Louis’s hands, Louis’s palms cupping his cheeks now. 

“Daniel—” 

Your blood at both ends, he thinks. Sealing me up. Airtight. 

Louis swears, then again in French for good measure. “That’s filthy.”

“Y’love it.”

He shakes his head. “Ornery, stubborn, beautiful boy,” he says desperately. “You’ll be the death of me.” 

I’d be so lucky. 

The blood has made Louis fierce and wild, Daniel’s life— Armand’s life— in his veins. He flips them, still connected, and pins Daniel into the bed. He pounds into him, quick and brutal, just fucking right. 

Supine, Daniel can do nothing but take it. His cries are weak, hitching little hiccups with each thrust. Send this to him, he thinks, head spinning. Show my Maker. 

Louis chokes out a gasp. “Daniel—“ 

Hell, show all of them. Daniel can only sob, but he thinks it, begs it: Show him what you do to me.

It’s enough: Louis tenses, his hips bucking wild, and Daniel uses the last of his faculties to clench down. Louis rewards him for it with a beautiful, trembling gasp and exquisite heat at his deepest point. His orgasm brings wild undulating pleasure that flows between their minds. 

Daniel shivers in his—their?—aftershocks. Louis goes to pull out after a long moment, but Daniel pleads stay. So he does, his full weight pressing him, anchoring him to the bed. “You must eat, Daniel,” he says softly. 

Another plea: just a little longer. 

It feels like—he can’t press exact words to what it feels like. Like maybe the mistake of him has been undone. Louis has unmade him. Drained him, fucked him into a clean slate. A better vessel for the Gift. 

Or…or. For something else. 

Daniel is still settling into his immortality, still thinking like a human. He feels an unbearable confusion. He never wanted to be one of those shmucks wallowing in their eternal bounty, and he’d thought Louis one such shmuck, once. He’d begged Armand for the Gift for years and years and fucking years. Then he’d grown old and sick. 

And now, here he is, hiding in his apartment until Louis came for him. Frozen. Free. Alone. 

It hardly makes sense, the weight of it, the thoughts spilling from his mind, the steady flow of this strange mourning. He’s done his best not to submit to the grief of it for the last six months, throwing himself into Louis’s instead, piecing together the narrative of their interview, but it was no good. Look where it’s left him. 

And Louis feels all that, Daniel too raw and undone to think to hide, and the worst thing is that he understands. He’s been in this place.“Right here,” Louis murmurs. His accent is stronger in this afterglow, thick and sweet in his mouth. “Not lettin’ go anytime, you hear me? Step back from it. We’re not goin’ that way.” 

Daniel sobs. It’s louder than he should be able to manage, so weak, but maybe that’s the last of his strength leaving. A final protest. He’s felt like this before, once—gentle hands on his face. Those eyes, like something prehistoric swimming in eternal amber, trained on him. 

It'll feel like a bath. Rest. Like honey on your tongue. 

“No,” Louis says firmly. His hands go to Daniel’s neck, his jaw. His thumbs press at its hinges, coaxing his mouth open. He slots his neck in between Daniel’s lips. “Be mine, instead.” 

How could Daniel say no to that? 

When he sinks his teeth over the earlier bite, the tear is gruesome, marring Louis’s beautiful skin, and Louis is only glad for it. Daniel feels it, feels him, and then the blood hits his brain like a car crash, airbags and shattered glass. 

It brings him back to himself, his senses. Away from l'appel du vide or whatever the fuck that was just now. An honest, bleak moment, he amends, and a stupid one. 

“There he is,” Louis grunts. His blood and body thrum like live wires. He’s a strike of lightning, pinning Daniel to the spot. Kickstarting his heart. Inciting his spirit. “There we go. Back to me, now. Keep comin’.” 

Louis tastes like…well, Daniel, of course—he didn’t think that through, did he—but Daniel’s, Armand’s, honeyed notes are diluted by the moonshine burn of him, the bright, lush punch of Louis’s blood. The tastes complement, intertwine. 

Of course they do: Daniel’s blood is Louis’s blood is Armand’s blood is Daniel’s blood. He belongs to both of them, wholly. Like he always has. 

Like he always will. 

Louis makes a broken sound and finally slips out from inside him. Daniel, with all the willpower he has left, unlatches from his throat. Louis folds down beside him. A slug of blood beats with his heart, painting his neck. Making it wetter. Daniel’s heart lurches again. Heat floods his body again. 

But it’s not time for that yet, because Louis fixes Daniel with a hard, searching look. “Scared me for a moment.” 

I’m sorry. “I’ll get a grip. Any minute now.” 

Louis’s expression softens. He leans forward and licks the lingering tears from the seam of Daniel’s eyes, every bit an alien for a moment, tongue swiping his eyelashes. Daniel thinks he should be surprised by it, but he isn’t. He’s glad to have Louis as close as they can manage. 

“I’ve got you,” Louis says again, kissing his cheek. 

“I know.” Daniel’s voice keeps getting rougher and rougher. He’ll be reduced to just growling soon, an animal in all ways. 

Louis pulls back and looks at him. He dares a smile. Promise?

Daniel laughs. Everything feels lighter now, his body alive as it’ll ever get, buzzing and full. “Who’s incorrigible now?” 

“Depends. Got one more in you?” 

He nods, still smiling. “Whatever you want.” 

“Fuck. Goes right to my head, when you talk like that.” Louis’s hand moves to the mangled side of his neck, where he’s still spilling blood. He collects it with his fingers and moves his hand between his legs. 

Daniel leans forward. “Let me—” 

“No,” Louis says simply. “You get that grip you’re after. Take a breath.” His own breath hitches when his fingers press inside himself.

No shot at that with this view, Daniel thinks mutinously. Louis’s lips quirk, then part with a sigh as he scissors himself open. “Go on,” he says, a little breathless himself. “Give me somethin’ to look at, then.” 

Daniel responds by reaching between his legs and gathering Louis’s spend. He fucks into his wet fist, cock refilled by Louis’s generosity. He should be exhausted, the fire licking at him tamped down, but it only sparks brighter. He feels more alive than he has in months. 

“Play your cards right,” Louis says, breathless, “And this’ll be the shortest fuck of your new life.” 

Daniel groans. “No wonder you’re all crazy. Get over here.” 

Louis goes to his lap, but Daniel switches them, positioning himself on top. “Let me put in some work, yeah?” he says, nosing along Louis’s jaw. “Grip gotten, or whatever. Let me.” 

The noise Louis makes is the best affirmation he could hope for, so he lines up and moves inside him in slow, long strokes. The way Louis feels around Daniel…words fail. So Daniel lets them fail, against every professional instinct he has, some journalist, and lets himself just feel it instead. 

He finds the ways to move his hips to make Louis make these sweet little gasps and he keeps doing that. He licks up Louis’s jaw, lavishing his tongue over the bite mark he left, healing it, then presses his face back to his chest. 

When Louis’s hands lace into his hair, he bites down again right over his heart. He drinks, again. 

Maybe not being Louis’s fledging is worth it, because Daniel can still hear each thought rolling through his head, the pleased, possessive warmth he feels for Daniel, the way he thrills at being taken like this. He sees fantasies from over the years through the blood, little blips of desire, passing wants for this, exactly, for Daniel moving inside him, for them pressed close. 

You’re such a fucking bottom, Daniel thinks. And a romantic, to boot. Playing the long game. The effect is somewhat diminished by how soft his voice is in both their heads. 

Louis smiles, open-mouthed. “And if—ah, if I say you were worth the wait?” 

Daniel flicks his tongue against his chest, then lifts up, kissing him bloody. If you can talk, I’m not doing my job. 

He puts his back into it, gets a hand around Louis, and with the way he arches beneath him, it’s over fast, nothing between them but pleasure and the blood, shared. Louis comes, Daniel comes again. Insane.  

They look at each other for a long while, after. 

Daniel speaks first. “I’m canceling everything. Let's just do this back and forth. For the next ten years.”

Louis laughs, his eyes crinkling. “Could think of worse ways to spend a decade.” He squirms even closer, nosing at Daniel’s cheek and smushing their faces together, the greeting of a cat. It’s ridiculous. Almost close enough. “Thank you,” he murmurs. 

Daniel scoffs. “Thank me? You’re the one who—” 

“You let me take care of you,” Louis cuts in simply. “I know s’not easy for you.” 

Daniel cups the back of his head and sighs. “I don’t have anything smart to say to that. Give me, like, fifteen minutes and a cigarette, and I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Yeah, alright.” 

Lingering in bed would be more pleasant if it wasn’t absolutely soaked in blood. “Forget the sheets, I’m gonna have to trash this mattress,” Daniel grumbles. “We look like a goddamn crime scene. And sunrise is in, like, an hour.” 

“Well, you don’t…wait, Daniel.” Louis props himself up by the elbow. His brow furrows. “You don’t sleep here, do you?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Where’s your coffin?” 

Daniel grumbles again and starts to untangle them properly. “My office. We should shower, yeah?” 

Louis follows him out of bed, taking his hand as soon as they’re both standing. “Show me the office.” 

Down the hall, then, into the spare room. Daniel lets out an honest-to-god hiss when he turns on the overhead light. He gestures aimlessly. “There.” 

“That’s your coffin?” 

“It’s fine.” It’s shoved in a corner and it is, objectively, a wreck. Like he gives a shit. 

Louis does, though. Louis is ramping up to throw a fucking fit. “Where’d you get it, a dump?!” he exclaims. 

“Upstate. From some guy from Facebook Marketplace.” 

“What the fuck is that?”

“It’s how plebeians without ‘fuck-you art dealer in Dubai’ money furnish their homes.” 

Louis is aghast. “Daniel, I gave you ten million dollars.” 

He crosses his arms. “I’m frugal. Sue me.” 

“I just might,” Louis says darkly. He squats down and examines the coffin’s hinges. “And that means something since I’m not a fan of court.” 

It’s a passing thing, a snipe more than anything, but it sobers Daniel into offering up: “I don’t sleep much, but, yeah, in the bed, I guess. Sometimes in here. On the floor. In there.” He nods at the coffin. It’s ugly, alright, was sitting in some weirdos barn, but he didn’t feel like visiting a funeral home. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“The coffin’s better for you. It’s restorative.” Louis scowls at it, standing in one fluid motion. “In theory.” He turns on his heel, heading to the bathroom, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ll place an order.”

“What, you moving in?” Daniel says, following him. He says it before he can think, too hopeful. 

Louis turns only in the bathroom’s doorway and looks at Daniel carefully. “If you’ll have me. I’d like to get to know the city again. 

Haven’t been here since the nineties.” He says it easily. Like Daniel would be doing him a favor by hosting. 

He doesn’t buy it. “And Lestat’s okay with that? Or are we gonna get a ‘heard your hearts dancing’ redux?” 

Louis doesn’t seem worried. He’s beaming, suddenly. “He might pop in, actually. He wants to talk to some recording execs. He’s been writing an album.” 

Daniel groans. “Oh, Christ. Seriously?” 

“He won’t be here any time soon,” Louis assures, still grinning. Daniel was more wary of the album than the visit, but hey. “He knows where I am, though. He said he owes you a je vous remercie for…all of it.” 

“Well, isn’t that nice.” 

Louis turns on the shower and tests the water with his hand, waiting for it to warm up. “Will you have me, then?” 

“Pretty sure I just did.” 

“There he is. And you didn’t even get your smoke.” 

Daniel shakes his head and steps into the bathroom. He presses against Louis’s back, tucking his head on his shoulder. “Yeah,” he lets himself say. “That would be…yeah. Stay as long as you like.” 

Louis turns to kiss him, and the water’s steaming before they think to step in. Things don’t get randy again, miraculously; they’re both tired, and the impending sunrise makes them both move a little slower. They wash one another, careful, simple, the kind of domesticity Daniel hasn’t had in decades. He tries to file each moment away, every brush of Louis’s palm, his fingers gently scrubbing his scalp.

He swallows a yawn, but can’t resist the next when Louis triggers it, his fangs poking out as he does. 

“You think we can both fit in your bargain coffin?” Louis asks as they towel off. He tries to scowl, but there’s a smile pressing behind it.

Another intimacy. Another gift, that closeness, another first. Daniel’s glad for it to go to Louis. 

“Let’s find out, huh.” 

So they get out, dry off. Louis helps himself, dressing in Daniel’s sweats and an old band shirt. That’s distracting enough, but there’s no time for anything else, there’s nothing for it but to curl into one another. Daniel throws on pajama pants and follows him down. The coffin is…surprisingly comfortable if a little busted. It felt too big on his own, Daniel realizes, but with Louis’s arms around him—it’s fine. More than. 

But he cannot leave good enough alone. Never could, never will. So. “You showed him?” Daniel asks. His voice smears with sleep. He almost hopes Louis doesn’t hear him, has already dropped off. 

But then Daniel sees himself in Louis's the hour prior, overwrought, blood-smeared and teary. Begging Louis to show him off. Looking kind of beautiful for a trainwreck, he thinks. 

“I don’t know,” Louis says softly. “I’ve blocked him out since the penthouse. I did…I let my guard down. For just that moment.”

“So he might have seen.”

Louis strokes the small of his back. “Might’ve.” 

Daniel nods. Somehow, it’s enough. It has to be. He presses his forehead to Louis’s shoulder. Slips a hand over the dip of his waist. 

And for the first time in a long time, Daniel sleeps easy. He doesn’t dream.