Work Text:
Dubai, September 2022
The blindfold still feels cool against Daniel’s eyes even though he's been wearing it for what must be at least thirty minutes. He wonders what material it is. His best guess is silk, but -
“Focus, Daniel,” Armand says, “This is about your mouth, not about your eyes.”
“I thought it was about sensation?”
“It's about sensations of the mouth. We can focus on your eyes some other time.”
And doesn't that sound ominous. Daniel's all for letting Armand put things in his mouth, but he doesn't want him putting shit into his eyes.
“I won't be putting 'shit' or anything else into your eyes, Daniel,” Armand says, exasperated. “Now focus,” he repeats in a tone that tells Daniel he'll be in very serious trouble if he doesn't obey.
They're doing a 'tasting menu', which means Daniel sits still with his blindfold on while Armand puts shit – sorry, carefully curated culinary sensations – into his mouth.
It's... Well, 'nice' probably isn't the word for it, but Daniel’s enjoying it, on the whole. It's intimate and exciting and about trust and just a little bit scary (because this is Armand so unexpected things are definitely going to happen). The blindfold really does heighten the experience and some of the things Armand's feeding him are genuinely delicious.
It's also familiar.
The combination of food and blindfold is new, but Armand has always loved watching Daniel eat.
It was something he did before they even started fucking back in the seventies. Before Daniel stopped running. There's so much food in the world that Armand has never had a chance to try, that didn't even exist or wasn't available to him when he was human.
So Armand would order or bring Daniel things and just sit and watch Daniel eat them, digging deep into Daniel’s mind so he could share in the experience.
Eating by proxy.
He'd ask Daniel to focus on the textures in a dish, temperature, smell, on individual spices, did it remind Daniel of things he'd eaten before or of a certain period in his life and did he know that applesauce was the first food eaten in space?
Daniel ate all kinds of things for Armand when he was young. Exotic stuff from all over the world, haute cuisine in Michelin-star restaurants, street food from little hole-in-the-wall places, avant garde shit that Daniel was a little afraid to try.
But also things that were completely normal or even boring to Daniel; instant mashed potatoes, Poptarts, marshmallows, frozen TV dinners.
One time Armand brought home twelve different brands of ketchup and made Daniel rank them first from least favorite to favorite, then from least salty to most salty, by levels of acidity, levels of sweetness (“No, Daniel, it's not the same, sweet and sour aren't opposites.”), thickness, mouth feel (also apparently two different things), from least expensive to most expensive (this was a guessing game), most value for money (after Armand had corrected his ranking by price), which brands he thought were better-known, which brands had existed longer and which bottle he liked better based on shape, label design and user-friendliness.
Daniel didn't eat any ketchup for eighteen months after that.
It wasn't always fun for Daniel back then. Sometimes Armand liked watching him eat things Daniel didn't like or that were downright objectively gross. Sometimes there was an element of punishment.
But things are different now, their relationship a little healthier. More boundaries (though still not a healthy amount, but they're still working on that and let's be honest, if Daniel wanted something healthy he wouldn't have agreed to being some five-centuries-old demon twink's boy).
It helps that Daniel isn't doing any drugs that aren't prescription at the moment and that he's more of a “Get off my lawn” than a “Live fast, die young” kind of guy these days. Because he's old and if they did completely go back to the crazy whirlwind of whatever the Hell their life together was the first time around, Daniel would probably die of exhaustion within a week.
Things are still wild when it comes to sex, but their day-to-day pace is a lot less frantic than it was back in the day. Daniel is less of a pushover than he used to be, worships Armand a little less, and Armand makes a genuine – though still often unsuccessful – effort not to steamroll all over Daniel at every turn.
When Armand takes things too far, Daniel just tells him to fuck off and Armand usually backs down. To be fair, he told Armand to fuck off plenty of times when he was in his twenties, but his success rate was different then. Now when he says it, Daniel means it at least 60% of the time and Armand listens around 85% of the time, and Daniel’s pretty pleased with those percentages.
Daniel can hear Armand move around in front of him, can hear him pick something up and put it back down on the coffee table. Something hard. Probably a bowl or a plate. He’s taking his time moving on to the next ‘course’ of the tasting menu, which has Daniel a little nervous. So far Armand hasn’t fed him anything weird yet today, which is…weird. Not like him.
The most outlandish thing on the menu until now was licorice and that isn’t really all that weird. Daniel ate a ton of licorice that time they went to Amsterdam.
So Daniel’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Armand to feed him something outrageous and pretend it’s totally normal.
Thank God Daniel doesn’t have any allergies.
He mostly has been eating normal food the last few months. They stopped with the highfalutin nine course meals and rare animal meats after Louis left and Daniel agreed to stay. Armand admitted those were all part of whatever mind games they had going on before Daniel got back his memories and Daniel doesn't want any reminders of those.
Armand's chef is amazing and can make almost anything from any cuisine provided he's given a little advance warning to get the ingredients, and he'll make Daniel anything he asks for. It's great (even if he sometimes has to fight Armand about things like sodium and cholesterol).
And sometimes Armand watches him eat again.
They initially agreed Armand would only listen in on Daniel’s thoughts while they have sex, but a month into their rekindled relationship, Daniel apparently made an 'orgasm face' while eating the best strawberry cheesecake he’d ever had and Armand asked if he could share in the experience like he'd used to.
Daniel said okay, but not all the time, Armand has to ask every time he wants to do it, and Daniel does not get 'orgasm face' from eating cheesecake and, no, Armand isn’t allowed to make Daniel eat cheesecake in front of a mirror to prove that he does.
So Armand occasionally watches him eat again and now they're doing this.
So far Armand's fed him: a single raspberry, tapioca pudding, a spoonful of cold coffee, Japanese fried shrimp, a Cheeto, beef in a red wine reduction that was so good it made Daniel moan, and that licorice.
“Palate cleanser,” Armand announces. Daniel opens his mouth and receives a small spoonful of cold, smooth cucumber sorbet. It melts over his tongue and quickly takes over his entire mouth in a mild, pleasant way Daniel would probably have appreciated a lot less without the blindfold.
“Do you want some water?” Armand asks.
Daniel nods. “Yeah.” The licorice was salty as Hell. The sorbet's great against thirst but Armand won't let him have a lot of it because it's only a palate cleanser and if you eat it all now, how will we cleanse your palate in between the courses yet to come, Daniel?
Daniel hears Armand place the spoon back into the bowl of sorbet. A few seconds later, Armand puts a single finger on the underside of Daniel’s chin, tips his head back a little and presses the cool, hard rim of a glass against his lower lip.
Drinking from a glass someone else is holding and you can’t see is a lot more awkward than Daniel imagined it to be.
Armand says, “I have a straw right he – “
“No.”
Armand pulls the glass away. “It’s just – “
“No,” Daniel repeats. He doesn’t like the idea of drinking from a straw. It makes him feel like a sick old man. Which he is, but he isn’t that sick or old yet and he’s going to keep drinking from a glass for as long as he can.
Daniel can’t see Armand’s face but knows what it must look like; lips pressed together, nostrils slightly flared, eyes a little wider than usual. This is one of those moments where Armand needs to let Daniel ‘win’, preferably without Daniel having to tell him to fuck off. They have about twenty to thirty of these moments a day (and they’ve already come a long way).
The glass is back at Daniel’s lips and he takes a few more sips.
“I’m curious to see what you think of the next one,” Armand says after he puts the glass back on the coffee table.
Ah. There it is.
Daniel shifts on the sofa. “It's not something weird, is it?”
“Come now, Daniel. We both know that your notion of what is and isn't weird doesn't always correspond with mine. I can't possibly answer that question. But I can tell you that everything I have here today was meant for human consumption.”
That isn't actually all that comforting. Humans make all kinds of disgusting things to eat. And the last time they did this, Armand fed him a spiced dried grasshopper. It actually tasted pretty okay, but it got stuck on his molars and they had to stop so he could brush his teeth.
So yeah, Daniel isn’t eating any more bugs.
“I already promised you no more insects.” Armand sounds vaguely insulted. “Though I still find your aversion disappointingly ethnocentric. Many cuisines incorporate insects as a source of protein and grasshoppers in particular are – “
“Babe,” Daniel interrupts, “put the thing into my mouth.”
“Oh, Mr. Molloy, the things you say to me. You'll make me blush.”
“Oh, ha ha. Come on, I – ”
Armand pops something hard and rectangular into his mouth. “Don't chew it, just let it melt on your tongue,” he instructs.
Daniel lets the thing sit on his tongue. It’s…chocolate? Yeah. Dark chocolate. It’s already starting to melt a little. It’s bitter but sweet and really fucking spicy!
Holy shit.
Daniel coughs and it takes everything he has not to spit it out.
Armand is quiet and Daniel would bet his second Pulitzer that the vampire’s looking at him like he looks at his messed-up sciences experiments: with wide-eyed but detached curiosity.
And Daniel is dying here.
“I have milk or yogurt, if you need it,” Armand says.
Daniel shakes his head and holds up his hand. I can take it, he thinks at Armand. But maybe he can’t.
Daniel’s had spicy chocolate before but holy shit. His mouth is on fire and his eyes are watering and he’s beginning to sweat. Armand better not start asking him to guess the cocoa percentage or the chili’s Scoville score or tell him about how the ancient Aztecs invented hot chocolate.
“Actually, archeological findings suggest – ” Armand begins.
Daniel points at him and thinks, Do not, very emphatically.
Thankfully, Armand shuts up. Daniel guesses he should count that as a win but he doesn’t feel like he’s winning anything right now.
The piece of chocolate is still too large to swallow but Armand said not to chew and Daniel isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of spitting it out. So he sits there and waits for the chocolate to melt down enough so he can swallow it and then he sits and waits for Armand to say they’re done with this ‘course’.
“We’re done,” Armand declares after an absolute eternity.
Daniel lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and says, “Give me the cucumber stuff,” while motioning for it wildly. “You fucking asshole,” he adds.
“It’s probably best to have some dairy first. The fat will neutralize – ”
Daniel motions more frantically. “Gimme!”
Armand tells him to open up and feeds him a bite of minted yogurt. Daniel snatches the spoon from his hand, grabs around until he finds the bowl in Armand’s other hand and shovels all the yogurt into his mouth. It doesn’t just have mint. There’s garlic and spices and a sweetness he can’t quite define. But he isn’t going to analyze its finer nuances because what the fuck.
“You know, you could have spat it out at any moment,” Armand says like that was an actual option and Daniel’s silly for not considering it.
“Yeah, right,” Daniel says. “Cucumber.”
Armand hands him the bowl of sorbet and Daniel scoffs that down as well, then he drinks the rest of the water. Armand presses something soft – probably a towel – against his forehead and dabs away the sweat.
“Are you ready for the next course?” Armand asks like he didn’t just try to kill Daniel.
“Fuck you,” Daniel says, but without much conviction. A second later he dutifully opens his mouth.
He feels Armand sit down next to him on the sofa, then something cold, large and wet is pressed against his mouth.
It’s Armand’s wrist.
And it’s bleeding.
Daniel gasps, grabs Armand’s arm with both hands and sucks greedily.
There’s a moan and Daniel’s not sure if it’s his or Armand’s. A chuckle (definitely Armand). Another moan (also definitely Armand). And then Daniel stops hearing sounds because Armand’s blood is flowing down his throat, coating his tongue, and talk about sensation.
Armand’s blood is hot and cold and smooth and every flavor at once. It’s the best thing Daniel has ever tasted. Or felt. There’s nothing in the world that could top it. Not hazelnut ice cream, not a gallon of that red wine sauce, not orgasm-face cheesecake, not actual orgasms.
Great electric shocks pulse through Daniel and Armand is showing him memories. Memories of Armand watching him eat a hotdog, raw sea urchin, cotton candy. The both of them – probably high – laughing their asses off with their mouths full of popping candy. Small, brown hands (a young Armand’s?) pulling apart a piece of still-warm bread.
“That’s enough,” Armand says gently. Daniel holds on a little longer, because he’s a junkie who has issues with boundaries when it comes to Armand’s blood. “Daniel,” Armand say, a little sterner, and Daniel lets go. He falls back against the sofa, panting. He swallows, licks his lips.
“I’m not doing the palate cleanser after this,” Daniel says, his chest still heaving. He’s going to savor Armand’s taste as long as he can.
“Well, you did eat all the cucumber sorbet already. That’s alright, though,” Armand says. Daniel feels him lean closer and then he’s undoing Daniel’s blindfold while he says, “This concludes today’s tasting menu.”
Armand doesn’t move back after he removes Daniel’s blindfold and he gives Daniel one of those looks that say he’s an innocent little cherub who’s never done anything wrong in his life. It would be very convincing if Daniel didn’t know a lot better. Armand bites his own lower lip and asks, “Am I forgiven?” because of course he thinks he can buy Daniel off by giving him his blood.
Daniel says, “Hmph,” which they both know means he will forgive Armand for his little stunt with the chocolate somewhere within the next thirty to forty minutes.
“Do you have any comments I can pass along to our chef?” Armand asks. There’s still some blood on his arm, though the cut has already healed. He licks it off in a slow, absolutely obscene motion.
Daniel swallows again. “Yeah,” he answers, “tell him I liked the dessert course best.”
Armand chuckles and stands up. “Come,” he orders and he’s already walking up the steps to the door. “I’m going to study your actual orgasm face.”