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It’s loud, some nights. Inside of his head. Like a writhing nest of crying baby birds, each screaming in disparate hunger, each thought its own symphony of unfulfilled need. There are things that make it quieter—the blood, for instance—but some nights quieter isn’t enough. Some nights, even when he’s full, he shakes with it. With the strain of holding five hundred years aloft over his shoulders and endeavoring not to let the weight of it all crush him.
Tonight is one of those nights, where the permeable membrane that holds Armand inside of himself feels especially porous. Feels ruptured, as though he’s spilling out into the ether, the colors of him bleeding like wet paint. Like someone is dragging their fingers through him until he’s all mixed up with everything that came before.
Tonight, the years whisper to him, Who are you, if not your memories? And he knows the answer: he is a container ship stuck in a small pond. He is a derailed freight train. He is a disaster waiting to happen, a disaster that’s happening, a disaster that has already happened.
Tonight, the years whisper to him, What are you, if not your past? He is nothing. He has always been nothing and he always will be, too.
Tonight, the years whisper to him, Why are you still here? But he isn’t. Not really, not right now. He is floating above and apart from his body like a child’s lost balloon. He’s rising through the sky and towards a sun that cannot burn him. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s—
“Boss?” Daniel’s voice cuts through the miasma. It grabs his hand and pulls him back to the ground. “Are you okay?”
No, he isn’t. “No.”
“What’s wrong?”
That he isn’t real. That he isn’t a person. That his body is so very far away. He tries to tell Daniel as much, but all that comes out is a faint whimper.
“Oh, baby.” It ought to be insulting, the softness in Daniel’s voice. Like Armand is something he’s trying not to break. Instead, it makes him feel like maybe he’s not already broken. “C’mere.”
Dimly, he becomes aware of arms wrapping around him, the sensation dull and muted as though originating from the other side of thick wall. Nevertheless, it’s easy enough to fall into them, to allow them to hold him up so he doesn’t have to focus on doing it himself anymore.
“Daniel,” he murmurs as he nestles into the touch. The name feels solid on his tongue. Like maybe Daniel, at least, is real. It’s reassuring, in a distant sort of way.
“What do you need, baby?” Daniel asks, his voice delicate as a soap bubble. Armand can just barely feel the puff of air on his neck as he speaks. He can feel, too, where Daniel’s hand rubs at his arm lightly, where his caress brings goosebumps to the surface. The parts of him that Daniel touches light up like a switchboard, like isolated stars in a constellation that hasn’t been drawn yet. Each point of contact something sharp and alive in the graveyard that is his body.
“Touch me,” Armand begs, turning his face into Daniel’s chest. Listening to the soft thud of his heartbeat, the same heartbeat that flutters beneath Armand’s rib cage. Their heart, their heart, their heart. “Everywhere, please.”
Daniel wastes no time obliging, sliding the palms of his hands down Armand’s spine until he has a spine again. Over the curve of his thighs until he has thighs again. Over his knees, his calves, his feet until they all come back to him, too. Armand wiggles his toes and they curl into the plush comforter beneath them, and he realizes that they’re in their shared bed. Realizes that he is somewhere safe.
He opens his eyes and he can see what’s in front of him now, though his vision still blurs pink with tears, and when he leans back he can make out the shape of Daniel right in front of him. His pink, pale flesh and his ember-glow eyes. The exact same eyes that sit in Armand’s skull, staring back at him with quiet concern.
Armand opens his mouth next and uses his dry, heavy tongue to plead for more, for skin-to-skin, so Daniel strips himself of his pajamas and then strips Armand of his. Once they’re naked, the night air brisk and almost grounding, Daniel lowers him carefully against the soft blankets and the expensive pillows. He’s still half in Daniel’s lap, but it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough, so as soon as his back hits the mattress, he keens and tries to drag Daniel down too, to drape him over himself like the lid to a coffin.
Daniel chuckles but doesn’t budge, instead grabbing Armand by the wrist and bringing his lover’s hand to his mouth. He peppers kisses down the line of Armand’s pinkie until he reaches the webbing at the bottom, then he repeats the process with the ring finger, then the middle, the index, the thumb, until each of them stirs back to life at his urging. Next is the palm of his hand, the meat of it, before Daniel slides down to mouth at his pulse point. As he does, Armand flexes and curls his fingers into the hair at Daniel’s temple, and it feels like his hand now. It feels like it belongs to him.
Daniel kisses down his forearm, up his bicep, across his shoulders and into the hollow of his clavicle. All the while, Armand pets him, tangles his fingers in white, white hair and then tightens them as the tip of Daniel’s tongue runs over his collarbone. His other hand rises to rest on Daniel’s arm.
“You’re right here, baby,” Daniel whispers into Armand’s sternum. His thighs stretch out to cage Armand in. “You’re right here.”
“Please,” he gasps, squirming when Daniel’s mouth finds one of his nipples. The barest hint of teeth scrapes over his flesh, and the sensation of it floors him; it’s lightning splitting a tree down the middle, it’s a door slamming shut so hard it shakes the frame of the house. He feels it in every part of him, how it rattles his bones and then makes him ache in want of more. God, it’s so good, and he can feel Daniel growing hard underneath him. Wantonly, selfishly, he grinds down into it. He needs, he needs—
“Slow down, boss,” Daniel says with a breathless laugh, removing his mouth from Armand’s chest. “We gotta get you right first.”
Armand whines and rolls his hips down again. “Need it,” he pants, his fingers clawing into Daniel’s skin. His head falls back against the pillows. “Need it.”
“How about this,” Daniel offers, his grin curving up into Armand’s stomach. “If you can give me a full sentence, I’ll fuck you.”
He frowns. “Please.”
“Not a full sentence, boss.”
Armand furrows his brow. Tries to concentrate. “Please,” he starts, and his lips form the words a little easier now. “Please fuck me.” He punctuates it by rocking back into Daniel once more.
“I don’t know,” Daniel muses, tone wry, before dragging his tongue back up to Armand’s chest. “I was hoping for a sentence with a higher Scrabble score than that.”
“Daniel,” Armand groans, beginning to grow frustrated. He lifts his head to level the other vampire with an unimpressed look. His eyes are more focused, his tongue looser in his mouth. “You are being incredibly annoying.”
Daniel ignores his ire and beams at him. “You back, baby?”
Armand kicks him. Gently. Sort of, and even then only really because the angle is awkward. “Yes. Now are you going to fuck me, or shall I find someone who will?”
His lover just laughs at him. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, princess.”
And Armand almost starts complaining, but then Daniel is spitting on his fingers and sliding them inside of him, twisting them so they put pressure exactly where he needs it, and he abruptly forgets how to talk once more. This time, though, he finds he doesn’t mind so much.
Then, when Daniel has him slick and ready, when Armand yields to the press of Daniel inside of him, when they’re joined at the hip as close as if they’d been sewn together, the years start whispering to him again.
Who are you, if not your memories? He is a body floating in an ocean, and he is the ocean, and he is the shoreline that holds them all in place.
The way Daniel moves inside of him, deliriously slow and deliberate, sets Armand’s skin on fire and makes his teeth vibrate. He cries out so loud he can feel it buzzing in the back of his throat.
What are you, if not your past? He is the present, and fate willing, he is the future too. He is every moment that ever will be all at once, and he feels each and every one of them right now.
Behind his eyelids, he sees supernovas, sees solar systems born and destroyed and new ones rising to take their place. He can feel every single electron where it mingles with Daniel’s own, can feel the places where the matter of him becomes the matter of them.
Why are you still here? Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel—”
“I’ve got you, baby,” Daniel tells him between kisses. “I’ve got you.”
Armand knows that he does.
