Chapter Text
Daniel can’t sleep.
Of course, he can’t fucking sleep. How could he? He’s basically laid up in a luxury crypt, and no matter how luxurious it may be, Daniel is keenly aware of where exactly he is, what exactly he is doing, who exactly he is doing it with. This awareness digs like the sharpest point of a knife into his jugular, reminding him the painful precariousness of his mortality. His mortality that is slowly waning, the wet embers of his life and legacy withering and dying, that threaten to go dark without so much as one last wild flare.
The bed is comfortable, one of the more comfortable he’s laid on. Even his own tempurpedic mattress doesn’t hold a candle to this one. It’s probably stuffed with something ridiculously exorbitant but Daniel turns onto his side and feels as if he’s sleeping on a mound of rocks. He feels like he’s breathing in dead air, corpse breath, even though that’s ridiculous, the air here is the same as any other air, if not a bit more chilled. Outside it would be muggy, hot and thick in the back of his throat, heavy on his tongue. Daniel fancies going out onto the balcony for a cigarette but he’s gripped with the same self-consciousness he felt as a kid at sleepovers, unable to confidently stride through another person’s house while they’re lost in the throes of dead slumber. Though he knows for a fact his host isn’t sleeping.
Eyes track him in the dark, keeping him pinned, like a moth to a corkboard. Except that’s ridiculous. Louis isn’t watching him. Daniel would know if Louis was watching him.
Daniel doesn’t think it’s Louis who is watching him.
Daniel rolls over onto his left side, his hand striking out haphazardly for his phone. Bleary, exhausted eyes slide like oil off the nova-bright screen - it’s late, too fucking late, or too fucking early, depending on how one looks at it. Daniel’s sleep schedule is fucked. Usually, the interview goes through the night, stopping only when pink begins to bleed over the sky, the clouds bruise-like as Louis excuses himself. But with those tinted windows sometimes Louis can hold on until early afternoon, though Daniel can tell it puts a strain on him. If Daniel was a decent man he’d tell Louis not to put himself out, but he isn’t, and he’s pretty sure it’s not for his comfort that Louis resists the sun’s narcotic pull anyway.
Louis, Louis, Louis. Daniel turns the vampire over and over in his mind like one might observe a particularly dazzling diamond, trembling fingers careful not to cut themselves on the sharp edges, fluttering eyes wary of looking too close, lest the brightness blind. But Daniel has never been afraid of cut fingers or damaged retinas. Louis has many secrets and only so much time to divulge them to a dying man. And there is the desire to share, and the desire to covet - it is human nature to want to bare the truth but still conceal its ugliness, and apparently vampires don’t lose the need to keep face, to present only the best of themselves, even after death.
But then, Louis still clings to some frayed tatters of his humanity, doesn’t he?
Or does he?
There’s something he’s missing. That’s probably what’s keeping him awake. Inconsistencies, missing scenes, contradicting stories, so many holes to trip over and fall down. Though it’s different from the interview in ‘73. Wildly different. Night and day, and not just because no one’s tried to take another chunk out of his neck. Yet.
Daniel’s not too worried about it, having one foot in the grave already, after all. Well sure, of course, there’s that icy, instinctual terror that floods his veins involuntarily at the thought of death, but with a disease like Parkinson’s and his age, Daniel’s become resigned to the inevitable. Still. There are ways to go out. Not that Daniel’s looking forward to it being in some fluorescent-lit room dripping in antiseptic and filled with the cacophony of beeping machines, nor does he really fancy a quiet, droll ending, the closing of a book after which nobody claps but….there are worst ways to go out. An easeful death does not equate to a boring death, but easeful is not choking on his own blood.
Daniel’s no longer that shitty, drug-addicted kid, and Louis is no longer an unstable mess of heartbreak and anger and need - but plenty of things could still go wrong. Plenty of things already have.
Daniel sighs aloud. “Fuck me.” Whether he said it or thought it, it matters little. If someone was really listening in, they’d have heard it all the same. Self-control had never been one of Daniel’s virtues so he decides to treat himself to that damned cigarette.
What’s it going to do, kill him?
*
It’s only when Daniel’s already out on the balcony, the night air an unwelcome friend that immediately cozies too close up against his side, that he remembers he doesn’t have any cigarettes on him. Of course, right, he couldn’t take any on the plane and when he landed he’d been whisked right to the penthouse and he really didn’t feel like asking the tight-lipped driver who looked like he could crush Daniel’s head like a peanut between his two fingers to stop at a local gas station so he could get his fix. Besides, Daniel doesn’t really smoke anymore. He’s ‘quit’ in the sense that he only ever reaches for a pack if he’s either particularly restless or delved discomfitingly far into the dumps. Sometimes it’s just something to do with his fingers. He keeps odd packs in drawers and loose cigarettes in house plants around his apartment when he has nothing else to do. It is, in the great, grand scheme of things, one of his more harmless vices.
Well, this is just embarrassing, standing outside in his old sweats and a ratty tee rubbing the sleep out of his eyes for no discernible reason, the complete picture of an old man going senile. Good thing there’s no one out here to witness it.
Except there’s someone standing behind him.
“Mr. Molloy,” Rashid greets when Daniel turns his head, his smile perfectly in place despite the late hour. “Is there something you require?”
Rashid was the last person Daniel wanted to run into. He’d have actually preferred Louis.
Suddenly the cold lick of the night air matters little when it feels like he’s running a fever. Thank God it’s dark. Small mercies.
Daniel almost gives in and asks Rashid if there are any cigarettes lying around - those big, brown eyes do always look so eager to please - but he’s a shitty millennial and if he doesn’t scold Daniel for the unforgivable sin of smoking he’d probably offer him one of those ridiculous vapes. The ones that look like a battery, or like they’ve come from Mars. The last time he spoke to his youngest she was nursing one but Daniel couldn’t really say anything because you can’t throw stones from your crack house.
Daniel shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Just….needed some fresh air.”
Hilariously, it’s the exact opposite reason why he came out here. And Rashid somehow looks like he knows it.
“You cannot sleep,” Rashid asks, but it isn’t a question.
“It’s fine,” Daniel says. “When you get older sleep is really just a series of naps.”
“Is the room not to your liking?”
“The room’s fine. I mean, it's no coffin….”
Rashid’s eyebrows furrow, adorably - do not think the word ‘adorably’ in relation to Louis’ assistant Daniel, Jesus. Daniel clears his throat. “That was a joke, kid.”
“Ah,” Rashid nods, features softening. A little smirk might be teasing at the corner of his mouth. “Because a coffin could be arranged….”
“You just have spare coffins lying around?” Daniel blinks. Maybe he’s already dreaming. Then again, if this was a dream, Rashid would already be slowly, sensually stripping his shirt over his head. Fuck. Fuck. Daniel’s eyes dart back to the alight city line. “No thanks, I have claustrophobia.”
And a sick, perverted mind, apparently, but that’s old news. A silent sigh ghosts his lips like a facsimile of cigarette smoke as briefly his eyes flit towards the city, glittering lights a blur in his eyes.
Daniel can’t sleep because if he sleeps, he’ll dream. And if he dreams he’ll be taken into a world of lurid, burning, breathless moments, moments in which he feels as if he is losing his sanity.
He can’t stop dreaming about Rashid. Louis’ fucking assistant. A boy more than thirty years younger than him. He’s become a real fucking sad stereotype.
Logically, Daniel shouldn’t pay any mind to the dreams. They’re dreams, after all. Not even unpleasant ones - and it’s not as if they’re going to escape from the confines of his skull into the damning light of day and take his hands, forcibly puppeteering himself to do something he can’t take back, something he’s going to regret. He might as well enjoy the fantasy for what it is. It’s fiction, plain and simple. If he dreams about Rashid lying on his back under him or falling to his knees what’s the harm, truly? It’s not like he’s hurting anyone even if the dreams are - intense. That’s the safest way to put it.
But the trouble comes in moments like these. Moments in which Louis, the buffer, Daniel’s singular motivation for being here, is absent, but Rashid is not, and he looks at Daniel sometimes as if he knows what the hunger in his eyes is and, sometimes, in those dark answering eyes Daniel thinks he sees an offering. A promise that no matter how depraved Daniel’s hunger may be, it is a craving he is more than willing to feed.
But that’s crazy. And stupid. A lawsuit waiting to happen, so he ignores it. Mostly.
But in the still liminal quiet of the dark, it’s hard. It feels like anything could happen.
And sometimes Daniel doesn’t know why he bothers with the token resistance like he’s a better person than he actually is. But addicts are good at rationalizing. You start filling every crack pipe with petty justifications and you never run out, really.
Daniel would always be an addict, but he was sober now. His drug of choice was the thrill of chasing a story, writing down words both spoken and unspoken, coaxing forth secrets, choking out every last gasped detail.
And in this story, Rashid will not be a footnote.
He can't be. He reminds Daniel too much of his first ex-wife, for fucks sake.
“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow," Rashid says lightly, and Daniel finds himself torn between a grimace and a grin.
“My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake,” he replies, scratching the bridge of his nose. “I’ve always been an insomniac. Some of my best writing has come when I’ve been awake for longer than thirty-six hours.”
“You would sacrifice your health for your craft?”
“You would sacrifice yours for your god?” Daniel counters. It seemed he’d managed to catch Rashid off guard, which was always a satisfying liquor that filled his gut. He could get drunk off the slight widening of those doe eyes, the almost rictus-stillness of that placid - if not slightly smug - expression frozen in place. It was rare, and precious because of that fact.
In one swift movement, Rashid had damned the distance between them, crossing over from the sprawling darkness of the penthouse into the three a.m. grey of the night. He came to lean against the railing beside Daniel and Daniel had to force himself not to shift away instinctively. It was fine. It was fine. Sure, it may have seemed like Rashid was standing an inch too close, but that was only his imagination running wild. Oh, how wild it longed to run….
“It seems to trouble you,” Rashid said at last, still resolutely avoiding looking at Daniel. “Devotion.”
“It depends on what kind of devotion we’re talking,” Daniel replies, voice dry as sand. “What do you get in return for your devotion to a vampire, Rashid? A 401k? Good health insurance? Paid holidays?”
Rashid glanced at him then, the lights from the city hitting those brown eyes just so. They seemed to glitter. They seemed to tell many stories all at once, a myriad of emotions playing out within those stained-glass depths.
“To live a worthy existence is what I receive in return for my devotion,” Rashid says. “What more could I ask for?”
He sounded so genuine. So much so that Daniel could not believe it.
“This,” Daniel gestured towards the penthouse, every inch of his expression writ with incredulity. “Is what makes your existence, uh, worthy?”
Rashid tilted his head. An undercurrent of something that had the potential to turn dangerous lingered like shadows behind his next question.
“You question Louis’ worthiness?”
Daniel shrugged. “It’s not a question of worthiness - how could you ever possibly measure that? It's a question of benefit. What do you gain from this? It can’t just be about the sex.”
Immediately, his teeth clicked sharply shut. He had not meant to say that. He very carefully had not even thought it - didn’t think about it - just in case Louis was around.
And again, there was that look. A strike through his eyes like a thrash of lightning rending the pitch-black sky. A subtle parting of those maddening lips, as if to make room for a gasp that never came. A lost look, a look that did not promise to be found, but nevertheless enticed one to seek.
When Rashid speaks, his voice is full of breathless incredulity, and a bit of humor - all at Daniel’s expense.
“You think I’m having relations with my employer?”
“Well-” Daniel could have swallowed his tongue. Perhaps, that would have been a mercy. “That…came out wrong.” Daniel wouldn’t dare ask Rashid to confirm it. He wouldn’t get a straight answer, anyway, and the mortification might kill him. Mortification! It was such a novel feeling, a feeling rarely felt these days. But Rashid had the upper hand now and he was going to play it for all that it was worth, turning fully to appraise Daniel, his posture now loose and relaxed and - God have mercy, could Daniel even think it? - nearly coquettish.
“The truth often doesn’t,” Rashid mused and yep, that was definitely a smirk he was wearing. “I see now. I see. Hm. That puts some things into context.”
Daniel wasn’t sure he wanted to know. No, he most decidedly did not want to know. Especially while his eyes were drawn to the long, long lines of Rashid’s elegant body.
Changing the subject when one was caught out was a cheap trick. Daniel often berated those he interviewed for employing it. Now, he shamelessly did the same.
“Has he offered you the gift?”
A muscle in Rashid’s jaw twitched. That infuriating smirk slowly cooled, the newfound light in those dark eyes fading away. “No.”
“But if he offered, you’d accept. Eagerly,” Daniel says, quite confident about this. Unconsciously, he found himself staring at Rashid’s throat, his voice unwittingly lowering. “The sacrificial lamb baring his neck for the blade.”
“You are wrong again, Mr. Molloy,” Rashid shakes his head, pushing off the railing. Backing away - no, not backing away, coming closer. Daniel held his breath. He was frozen. Rashid’s presence - usually so shadow-quiet, so unassuming - was all at once suffocating. Yet, for a moment, Daniel was almost tempted to draw nearer. To peek over the precipice into the waiting abyss below. Rashid looked up at Daniel through his lashes and murmured, “Not all of us desire to live forever.”
Why was Daniel’s heart beating so fast, as if it were trying to break free from his ribs? His fingers ached with tremors that raged to overtake him, and he knew he couldn’t blame it on the Parkinsons. Not only on the Parkinsons.
“I suppose,” Daniel felt light-headed. Perhaps from the fact that he suspected Rashid was wearing cologne - at three o’clock in the fucking morning - something that smelt like oak and old blood. Or perhaps it was because, for a moment, he considered damning the distance between them himself, despite the scant space between their bodies. Because of it.
Rashid wasn’t much shorter than Daniel, but like this, Daniel felt like he was eclipsing him. But it was a mere illusion. A trick of the light. Rashid possessed an instinct that prey kept close to their breastbone, always appearing small, helpless. Deceptively delicate.
Or was that a predator’s instinct? To lure in the lamb, the wolf dressed in its skin.
The sudden shock of a car horn jarred Daniel out of his stupor. He flinched, straightening up and away, trying not to make it appear as if he were fleeing. “Jesus.” He muttered with a shake of his head, glaring balefully down. It was an exclamation of surprise so much as it was a recrimination. The moment was, of course, broken.
But he thought he could still feel Rashid staring at him, those deep, alluring, unfathomable eyes boring into his skull. He didn’t dare turn his head to confirm.
He cleared his throat. “Alright, I’m gonna turn in. For the second time tonight. Let’s see if this one sticks.” Daniel tossed it over his shoulder, resisting the temptation to behold Rashid backlit by the city, haloed by the light of stars. “Night.”
“Goodnight, Mr. Molloy,” Rashid called, his voice whisper-soft, yet like the ringing of bells through the dark night. “Sweet dreams.”
Daniel almost chokes. It almost felt as if Rashid knew.
*
Sleep’s seductive embrace came easily when he lay back down.
Daniel descends into that dreamlike state like a falling star. Reality and dream tangled their limbs, trying to become indistinguishable from one another, one single enthralling, ensnaring form.
In the dream, he is burning up.
He is on fire. No, he is drowning, in abominable, all-encompassing heat. There is a body pressed flush to his, grinding hotly against his hips, his aching cock, pinning him to the bed, making his head spin even though he is lying flat on his back. Daniel can barely breath, gasping in serrated, humid puffs of air as his lungs stutter and his chest squeezes tight.
His surroundings are indistinct and blurred, as if he is inside a sauna, or trapped inside a hungry fog, but it matters little, they are unimportant. Daniel is an exposed, pulsating nerve, skinned raw with desire, all-sensation, writhing under the onslaught of a feeling that is not simply one thing. The grip on his wrists is unrelenting and renders his body a taut, breathless heap of trembling flesh.
There are lips, a sliken, wet smear against his own, though Daniel can’t tell where his begins and the other’s ends. It feels like swallowing fire. Like consuming the sun whole. His mouth is alight with the sensation, filled with their shared spit, sloppy with it, spilling over-
It comes with a strange aftertaste. Strangely bitter - no, strangely sweet. Saccharine, sanguine.
Ambrosia brewed from the forbidden fruit.
This is the taste of life.
Those lips pull away, only to whisper soft, quiet things into his mouth. Daniel’s blood is incandescent. His soul is separate from his body. He sits, an observer, taking in everything that is happening to him - and feeling each last biting detail. Two bodies entwine beneath sheets, their shadows a dance across the wall splashed with sunset red. It seems almost as if they’re twisting in flame, overcome in rapture. It could be a painting.
“Please,” Daniel hears himself begging, voice high and reedy. Tear-choked and nakedly desperate. Not his own. Not his voice.
A past version of his voice, one without the roughness of age.
“I’ll give you what you want, if you’re good,” sotto voce, the promise both pains and soothes him. Clothed in only thin cotton, his ass grinds provocatively against Daniel’s straining cock. “Can you be good, Daniel?”
“Yes, yes, yes-” Daniel chants, a litany, single-minded in his pursuit of pleasure. “You know I can be, I will be, come on Armand, fuck, I can’t take this-”
“You can,” the body shimmies down, leaving nothing but empty, shockingly cool air against his throbbing erection. A hand, deft and fine-boned, wraps around his cock, squeezing the base, moving so torturously slowly to pull from his throat agonized whines. They’ve been at this for hours.
It feels as if it has been a lifetime.
“Can’t,” Daniel whines, a sound only desperation could pry from him. His hips thrust up with a harsh snap, uncoordinated, shaky, until a strong forearm braces hot and firm across his abdomen, pinning him to the bed, trapping him fully. As if in retaliation a sharp, sharp fingernail digs into his slit. Daniel gasps. It feels like evisceration.
Daniel wants that, to be torn apart. In this moment, he wants it more than anything. For flesh to be parted from bone, sinew stripped from tendons, to have the monsters claws dig so deeply inside of him he’ll never not feel them, coaxing his pleasure forth from the dark, frothing depths of him. This feeling is too big for his body. It yearns to be consumed, to dive into the yearning, hungry maw of the other.
“Beloved,” that voice gasps, rasping, gut-punched. “Your thoughts are grotesque. Utterly obscene. You tease me.”
Daniel’s cock is so wet with precum that the hand wrapped so tightly around his length keeps slipping, has to keep readjusting. “Then do something about it,” Daniel snaps, but it’s undeniable he’s pleading.
Daniel wants to feel this beast melt into the marrow of his bones.
A growl, a sound so lovely, so utterly inhuman and so much the lovelier for it, is pressed into his sweat-damp skin. Slick fingers trace his terribly empty hole, clenching in hungry greed. His legs, thrown over shoulders, are trembling, of maybe it is the shoulders that are trembling, about to shake apart because of this unsated need. He should take Daniel. This man should take Daniel, right now, ravage him, claim him, make Daniel his, for in almost every way Daniel is, has been, and always will be. Daniel needs-
More than his monsters is willing to give.
“Bite me,” Daniel groans, his index finger in between his staveling teeth, because he needs to gnaw, needs to eat, craves the sting of bone sinking into flesh. “Do it. Do it rough. I know you want to. I know you’re thirsty.”
“Is it really my thirst you wish to quench?” the man asks, tone entirely too-knowing, but still, he obeys. Suddenly, all feeling is concentrated on two twin, burning points on his thigh as fangs sink deep in, piercing his flesh, sliding into a hot, awaiting vein. Through the thick veil of his lashes Daniel glimpses a head, bowed, dark curls cascading, his fingers winding through them, tangling, tugging, begging. The hand around his cock speed up, grows tighter, grows warmer, his blood is screaming through his veins alongside desire. A tongue laves worshipfully over the wound. The inexorable pull through his veins and the intoxicating, relentless tug on his cock is too much, overwhelming, and it doesn’t push Daniel to his peak - it shoves him off over the edge, throwing him into the black jaws of the beckoning abyss below. Daniel goes willingly, the eruption in his gut like that of a dying star.
He’s always chased after what he wants senselessly, endlessly, relentlessly. Always greedy for his pleasure, seeking to forever sate his near unsateable satisfaction. He is an addict, he can’t help it - those quiet, dark moments of bliss in which he is untouchable, where nothing matters but the lightness of his body and the sudden coalescence of all the broken pieces inside of him is always what he has been searching for. And the soft hands roaming over his flanks and the ravenous mouth ghosting breaths of warm air against his bloody thigh might be even better than any drug he’s ever tasted before.
Daniel’s blood sparkles as it settles, shivering from the knowledge that it has been savored at tasted. “Good boy,” he’s telling him, “You did very well,” even before Daniel’s turning over, boneless and malleable, head stuffed too-full of cotton to even care about the fact that he’s presenting like a bitch in heat. The shuddering intake of breath behind him is heady enough to make up for it, anyway.
“You’d turn your back to a monster?” he asks, strained. “Charming, but foolish.”
“I don’t care,” Daniel murmurs, ruined. On cloud nine. Somewhere that mere mortals could never hope to reach. A plane suspended above all else, filled with golden light. “Take what you need.”
Those hands grasp his hips, bruising now, pulling him back, back. He is drowning inside this boiling abyss, eyes fluttering, throat bared.
“So needy,” hushed, and reverent, a voice slithers like a serpent into his ear, coiling around his heart. Prepared to sink fangs in and fill him with delicious poison. “Do you need me Daniel?”
“Yes,” It comes out sounding like a vow.
Daniel
Come to me, Daniel
Come….
Come here. I’ll hold you.
Daniel wakes up on his stomach, limbs awkwardly splayed, pillows crushing his chest, hips pressed flush to the mattress, cock half-hard. Self-awareness and shame were immediately merciless, hitting him like a truck.
At least, Daniel tried to console himself, he’d woken up before he’d managed to cum all over Louis’ mattress, after having a wet dream about the man. Which was odd. And embarrassing. Daniel couldn't recall ever having a sordid dream about Louis before, like he was still some randy middle schooler who'd just gotten his grubby little hands on his first playboy. It must be the proximity. The story weaving itself into his bones. Daniel couldn't even remember much about the dream as he slowly woke up - though the impression, the sensations lingered. He remembered being pinned down. Ravaged. He remembered being drunk from. He remembered and he didn't, because surely, surely, it hadn't felt so earth-shattering, so breathtaking, so painfully, wonderfully good.
Daniel internally screamed at himself to get it together, and then hastily stepped into an ice cold shower.
*
The ice had not been enough to extinguish the abominable heat blistering inside of his veins.
Daniel felt hung over. He felt half-high. He felt like death and probably looked it, too, but not in the ethereal, otherworldly way Louis wore it.
“Daniel?” Speak of the devil. Daniel and his eye bags looked blearily up from his mug of coffee as Louis walked into the dining room. He hadn’t a smudge of purple nor nary a wrinkle under those bright, sapphire eyes. “Are you alright?”
Daniel’s mind very carefully and very purposefully went blank. In this moment he was a hapless, wobbly-legged baby deer making its way through a wolf’s lair - a lair he had willingly, eagerly traipsed into, mind you.
“Fine,” Daniel said, with a tired nod of his head. “Just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, I guess.”
Louis gave him a curious look. “Something on your mind?”
Louis very well knew there wasn’t. Could probably sense Daniel was on pins and needles thinking of every little thing beside the hot, dark-
Molten, heaven-lit eyes-
Daniel immediately redirected his thoughts to a memory of his daughter puking all over him the one time he had tried to play at being a dad. No, wait, that had definitely been some random kid some random junkie had dumped on him for the night. And it might have been his puke.
Since Louis didn’t look at Daniel like one might look at dog shit smeared on the bottom of their shoe, he probably wasn’t inside of his head for the moment. Daniel relaxed fractionally.
And then immediately wanted to self-immolate when Rashid, from behind Daniel - and Daniel hadn’t even heard him enter, Jesus Christ, the kid looked small, but could he seriously walk on air? - announced that if Louis required nothing further of him in this moment in time, he would busy himself with changing sheets. Luckily, there was nothing staining Daniel’s, no evidence to clean, but-
If Daniel hadn’t been a devout atheist, he might have thought Rashid was sent specifically by God to punish him.
But he had a job. Something to do with his hands. Something to occupy his mind, someone to lead him down a twisted labyrinth of love, damnation, madness and ruination, in that order specfiically. It kept any lingering thoughts of his filthy little dream far, far out of his skull. Which was a good thing, because Daniel had a tendency to ruminate. His dreams had always been strange and Daniel, for some reason or other, was cursed with the need to analyze everything, even the nonsensical whims of his subconscious. But there was no need to lose himself in his dreams. Dreams that he, strangely, could scarcely even remember.
He was awake, wasn't he?