Work Text:
"So," Daniel says, trying not to feel like he's hovering at the door of the sitting room, as Louis's tired eyes come up from his book to meet his, "when do I get to try out a hunt?"
Daniel hasn't been allowed out the penthouse yet. Not since Louis got back from his walk round the block to find his biographer curled bloodstained in one corner, his doorman's exsanguinated corpse in another. He's not being starved; whatever his personal dietary ethics, Louis seems perfectly happy to keep Daniel well-supplied with fresh meat. They all seem like pieces of work, which Daniel could care less about, but at least they're not literal bags of blood. He's got a new laptop, though Louis has counselled him to think twice before sending any emails, given where his head's at. He's got leave to ask Louis any follow-up questions he likes, plenty of time to put together the first book of the rest of his life.
He asked, in one less fractured moment, if Louis had ever met a vampire turned as old as him. Louis had looked sad and said maybe, that he hadn't been sure how old the vampire he and Claudia had met in Romania might have been before she was turned. The one who'd tossed herself in the fire. Maybe nearly as old as him. So that's been comforting.
If someone had asked him a few weeks ago how he'd handle what the vampire Lestat had apparently termed the Dark Gift, he thinks he would have cackled. Told them to ask his critics, or his ex-wives, if he'd make a good blood-sucking leech. Asked them how they'd toss up between Parkinson's and eternal life, plus the strength and power of a demi-god.
Not that he hadn't meant it, when he'd told Louis to save it for the guy Daniel had been pretty sure was the rent boy at the time. He'd meant it right up to the end. His memories of the vampire Armand crawling out of the rubble and coming for his throat aren't very clear, but he does remember saying no. Snarling it. Twisting his limp, torn-open neck to the side to avoid the cold, wet wrist pressing against his lips, until impossibly strong fingers had dug in and coaxed his jaw open.
Once he'd gotten a taste – purely cold as a mountain spring, rich and clinging as good beef fat or the velvet blackness just before unconsciousness – that had been the end of any struggle. But he'd tried, is the point. He hadn't asked for this, hadn't wanted it, and had it poured down his throat anyway. And now it's in every artery and vein and the net of capillaries he could've sworn he could feel when Armand's blood first filled him, every one, a sprawl of Lichtenberg figures through his flesh.
It hurts. To be so full of life, throbbing with it, after so many decades of resigned, grit-teethed work to accept its slipping through his fingers. The last few weeks have felt like the absolute worst parts of being in his twenties; foot strapped down the the accelerator, gunning it towards the brick wall he can plainly see looming up ahead of him. Daniel supposes he was due for one of those, this decade.
If he didn't have his very own vampire stepfather keeping the door barred, he knows exactly where he'd go about scratching that awful, overwhelming itch. First alleyway with a crackhead he could find, then the next, then the next, until other people's hot, tainted blood and shit decisions have filled up the raw and pulsing pit that's hollowed out his abdomen. No reason to keep up with the sobriety shit, given none of it can even hurt him anymore. Probably end up on the news, or in a jail cell, waiting for the sunlight to stream in if he's lucky enough to get a window.
Since he left what had passed for his family home, there hasn't been a single person with the authority to stop him blowing up his own life whenever the hell he feels like it. Something he's always counted as a bonus.
He can admit, he's not been particularly nice to Louis about his position as the bulwark between Daniel and his own self-destruction. Has, probably, been an almighty piece of shit. It wouldn't take a guy who's spent the last few weeks rifling through all Louis's bullshit – and in fear of his life the whole time – to see that Louis is fraying. And why the hell not? Daniel was a mess after both his divorces, and those were very nearly all his fault. Besides, when he and Alice finally cut each other loose, the girls went with her without either of them ever needing to discuss it. Sign of the times, he'd have called it, if he hadn't been so utterly unfit to parent in any decade. Certainly, nobody ever left him with a furious, fractious, incredibly annoying kid to solo potty-train after they'd blown up his life.
If Daniel was a better person, he'd give a shit. But he's not a person anymore, so what the hell does any of it matter?
So yeah, he's been pushing. He's been sniping. And every time Louis shuts him down with the exhausted ease of a man who's lived longer than Daniel can properly comprehend right now, the urge to tear that beautiful, calm face to shreds spirals higher and higher. And right now, the way Louis's looking at him, like he's a puppy who pissed on the rug, like he's one more problem his piece-of-shit ex left for him to straighten out, is not helping matters.
"Not for a while yet, I don't think," Louis passes sentence at last, without even rising from the couch, and Daniel has to physically grit his teeth to keep himself from snarling. A normal reaction, apparently, now.
"Why not? You've had human staff in the penthouse since-" he tries, he does, but the words won't actually come out his mouth. Maybe that doesn't help matters, doesn't make him any nicer about snapping, "And have I ripped any more throats out? You were alright to mingle with society the week of your turning."
Am I that fucking broken? is what he doesn't say, and he hopes to God Louis doesn't hear it.
"Alright, lets say I let you loose," Louis replies, and Daniel's nearly too busy taking offence to that to listen any further. "How do you propose to pick your victims?" He's loaded his emphasis on the most evocative word in that sentence, as if Daniel really buys the ethical vampire shit anymore. If Louis wants to prove a point about his superhuman self-control to God and Lestat de Lioncourt and all vampirekind, fine, he's got that right. He doesn't get to pretend he's the Lord's gift to humanity about it, rather than one self-hating anchorite of a vegan. "Trust me, Daniel, picking someone truly deserving of death out of the crowd isn't nearly as easy as you'd–"
"You really think I give a shit about that?" bursts out Daniel's mouth before he can think to censor it, but when he manages to think about it, he realises that he wouldn't take it back.
"'You robbed a daughter of her father,'" Louis quotes at him, tight-lipped, face gone cold and remote, eyes stone-hard. "Seemed pretty disgusted by indiscriminate serial murder when you were the one on the wrong side of the fangs. Has so much really changed?"
Hasn't it? It's so hard, now, to put himself back in the headspace of the man he'd been at that table, trying to rip through the spectacle of Louis's fuck-off course meal to get to the heart of the man who needed to throw up all those walls after letting a single tear loose. Probably that tractor salesman had had it coming, and Daniel bets he'd been tasty as anything. Soft, hot skin splitting under his fangs – why the fuck should he care whose skin it is? He's an apex predator, an obligate sanguivore, the monster that every human civilisation has imagined under their bed. What the fuck does it matter if he plays his role?
"Yeah," he bites out, as Louis's face steadily darkens from across the room. "Actually, plenty's changed. If you hadn't noticed."
Is it his imagination, or did Louis flinch, just a little? It's gone as soon as it came, though, the mask of authority slipping back into place. Worse than the first day of their interview, when at the least, Louis wanted to spill bad enough to open up when Daniel pressed. Louis knows where they stand, now, and has no qualms about telling Daniel to sit and stay where he's bid. Daniel isn't the fascinating mortal boy anymore; he's Louis's charge, Louis's babe in the nest, to be wet-nursed and tended to and never once taken fucking seriously.
"You're in my house, under my protection." Louis's voice is level, cool, way too fucking calm, certain as death and taxes. Fuck, Daniel wants to claw his face off. "I don't think it's too much to ask that you follow my rules."
And that, yeah, that gets to him, hits him like a slap right round the face, like how nobody's handled him in so many decades. Fuck, maybe it gets to him a bit too much, because the next thing he knows, he's simpering, "Aw, is Daddy going to put me over his knee?"
He can actually see the moment Louis snaps. Has been waiting for it the whole time, if he's honest; breathlessly anticipating slamming up into another wall. So when Louis's face goes ice cold, when his eyes flash in warning, Daniel braces to be thrown out. Possibly figuratively; very possibly literally. Either way, it'll be something.
But then Louis doesn't do that at all. He takes a deep breath, rolls his shoulders back, straightens his spine, and then he gives Daniel this look. Cool, sharp, a little amused. Assessing.
"Alright," he says. "If that's what this is. Come here."
Daniel's heart stutters in his chest. Louis, he is sure, hears it.
"Missing your whipping boy already?" is the best he can come up with, the rest of his brain gone to static. It's got to be a joke, there is no earthly way it's not a joke. Just like Daniel was joking when he said it first.
"When I hit Armand," Louis says, voice stony, eyes implacable, "it was because we both liked it when he cried. Truth is, your maker was already too busy correcting his every move to ask for this kind of correction. You, on the other hand, might as well be begging for it on bended knees. So. Come here, and I'll put you right."
Daniel keeps his eyes on that stern face, waits for Louis to break. The seconds slip by; he can practically hear them go, a tick-tick-tick that winds up the frantic, twitching knot inside him until he could burst. Until it does burst, and he's striding across the room, the space between them collapsing until he's standing before where Louis is lounging on the couch. Arms crossed, stance strong. Yeah, fine, Daniel's here. Fucking make him.
Louis just looks up at him, head tipped, lips curved into that amused little smile he'd get when Daniel was running down a line of questioning that he'd prefer to dismiss as absurd; whenever Daniel tried to assert any degree of control. He lets it stretch out another moment, Daniel's patience stretching with it, before he enquires, "You going to make this easy on yourself?"
And isn't that a fucking joke. "What do you think?" Daniel snaps back; means it to sound arch, another dare, but the way the words come out of him, like they're tearing a strip of skin off the back of his throat…
Louis, damn him, actually softens at that. Just a little, just around the eyes, but enough that Daniel's too busy trying not to scream, or deck the bastard, to get out of range when Louis lunges.
And alright, Louis is one hundred and forty-five by Daniel's math. He also barely eats, spent a good portion of his long life starving himself on the vampire vegan diet, and talked plenty about how weak he was compared to the vampires around him the whole way through their interview. Daniel, on the other hand, is the first and only fledgling of a five hundred-year-old monstrosity. That means something, he's been informed, and he can feel it too. The power that suffuses him, the insanity of his new strength. So, yeah, not that he's cocky, but he had thought that if it ever actually came down to a fight between him and Louis – not that he ever wanted it to, but if it did – he'd win. Maybe not easily, but still.
Louis's hands on him are shocking. It's not like struggling against him had been as a mortal, when Daniel might as well have been trying to get away from a hydraulic press. Louis's strength is comprehensible, now, natural; it's just also completely fucking overwhelming. Whatever seventy years of regularly snacking on an old, cold monster of a vampire has apparently done for the guy, this isn't a fight that Daniel's going to win. It isn't a fight. He's face down in the couch cushions before he's even had time to come to that conclusion, arms trapped painfully beneath his chest, legs hanging awkwardly off the armrest. Planted ass up right in Louis's lap, Louis's thighs cool and firm beneath him.
"Settle down, now," Louis tells him sternly, and Daniel struggles, he does. For the moments it takes him to realise that he can't. That for the first time since Louis's bastard of an ex-husband sunk his little fangs into the scars Louis had stamped into his neck, he is under control.
Not his own control, but at this point, he'll fucking take it. And so he does take it, burying whatever his face is doing in the couch as, without him really meaning to, his body stops fighting. Not that he can blame it, with how his surrender is immediately rewarded. The hand that had been a vice on the nape of his neck strays to smooth over his back, firm petting as though Louis's trying to soothe something small and startled.
"Good boy, that's better," Louis tells him, nearly gentle with it, and there's no good reason why that should make Daniel's stomach flip so hard that it hurts. Like cresting the top of a rollercoaster when you're old enough to know just how easily the whole rickety structure could disintegrate and end you.
"I'm sixty-nine years old," he snaps, "you–" and then his voice deserts him entirely, because Louis has just hooked a hand into his sweatpants and boxers and yanked both down to the top of his thighs. The waistband of his boxers stays caught around his groin, trapping his cock, so at least that's not flopped out onto Louis's legs. Not that he's got any dignity left to spare, bare ass up in the fucking living room.
"What you are," Louis says, with absolutely no room for argument in his tone, "is my boy. Which means I expect a far higher standard of conduct than what I've been getting."
Fuck, he can feel himself flushing, harder than he has in decades. The D word aside, Louis doesn't sound a damn thing like his father had; his father, who'd hardly ever bothered to stir himself from his armchair for long enough to make little Danny regret whatever the fuck he'd done this time, who'd smacked him like a duty and pulled a face at any humiliated tears Daniel had let escape. No, what this feels like is standing before the one editor he'd given a shit about impressing back at the Barb while the guy tore his latest effort to shreds, sharp eyes pinning him like an insect to a board. Challenging him to do better next time. Inviting him to want to.
From above him, a firm, sure hand comes to rest on his ass, rubbing across one cheek before taking a handful. Christ, it can't be the best view. Seventy-seven years with a male model, and now he's faced with a field of saggy, wrinkly skin and grey ass hair. There's probably a weird mole or two on there, somewhere; Daniel hasn't had the heart to check. He'd crack a joke, but possibly the only thing in the world more humiliating than this shit actually happening would be Louis taking one look at the material and calling it off.
Above him, Louis hums softly, giving the asscheek he'd been groping a proprietary little pat. "Cute," he pronounces, and before Daniel can say shit to that, "and pale as anything. For now."
Daniel's face is burning, hidden in the cushion. Every crass little joke about bright red cheeks he's ever heard; hell, he's told a few himself. His body twitches before he can stop it, but if Louis notices, he doesn't react.
"Normally," Louis says, "I'd require you to count, or thank me for the favour I'm doing you. Keep your mind on what we're doing, why this is happening." A little huff of a laugh. "But I don't think you're there yet, are you? You'd only make it worse on yourself, and given the circumstances, I'm inclined to grant some small mercy."
Daniel scoffs at that, hard as he can manage, but Louis carries on as if he didn't hear shit. "So, here's what's going to happen to you, boy. I'm going to beat you until I can see that you've had enough, which is something I'll be deciding. And when I'm done, you're going to say "Thank you, Daddy". Is that clear?"
Jesus Christ, that's– Daniel tries not to gasp so loud at the words, at the molten flip of his stomach. "The hell I am," he snaps, like they both didn't just hear his heart pick up.
Louis sighs, then takes his right hand off Daniel's ass. He only gets a moment to register the sudden pressure the left is putting on the small of his back, pinning him, before Louis's palm comes slamming back down.
Daniel doesn't make a sound, can't. The smack of flesh on flesh hits his brain before the sensation, like the silence before a shockwave, but when it does hit, fucking hell. Sharp, burning, hard enough to thud into the bones of him even as the surface of his skin sears.
It hurts. It really, really fucking hurts. The sting rips through his nervous system, and in its wake comes a moment of silence, of perfect, peaceful nothing. His mouth is open, gasping wet into the cushion, as he hangs there, split down the middle, floating free.
Then Louis's hand comes down again, and Daniel does cry out at this one; voice cracking on it so the sound comes out ugly like a newborn mammal, all pink-skinned and squirming.
"Hush up," Louis murmurs, utterly unconcerned. "You're a big boy, you can take it." And before Daniel can say shit about that, he's laying into him again, viciously hard, one cheek then the other, then one then the other, until Daniel's whole world is a sequence of lightning strikes.
It burns, God, so much worse than he'd remembered from those distant childhood beatings. Each strike seems to stack, Louis's flat, heavy palm pouring on the kerosene until every skin cell is alight. He's not pulling a single hit, every blow coming unhurried as if he does have a metronome set up, ticking away with each swing.
It's not long at all before Louis hits Daniel's pain threshold and runs right over it. Lights going off behind his eyes, Daniel loses himself for a second; tries to jolt his way off Louis's lap, struggling like it's going to do a damn thing, even manages to get an arm free. He gets crushed back down, of course, Louis grabbing his wrist hard enough to grind the bones together, pinning it to his back and holding him still. It's brutally efficient, Louis's arm like a steel bar as he keeps laying into him, metronomic, obliterating.
The pain doesn't do anything for Daniel's dick – never has, and apparently that hasn't changed on this side of humanity. What it does do is knock every single other thought out of his head that isn't Fuck, fuck, hurts. Clears him right out, until the whole world is the couch under him, the hands on him, the pain radiating through him, white-hot and swelling.
He doesn't even feel it when Louis pauses, not with the aftershocks still rocking him. It takes a moment of helpless stasis before he realises he has air enough to take a breath.
"Ready to thank me?" Louis is asking into the silence, and fuck, Daniel wishes he was, because that would make it all stop. But he's still thinking, still fighting, still aching to smash himself up against the concrete of Louis's authority.
"Fuck off," he snarls with the last of the defiance he's got in him, and Louis sighs. It'd sound exasperated, finally done with Daniel's shit – except, up against his flank, where he's pressed against Louis's groin; a blood-firm line of pressure. Except for how Louis's hips shifted when Daniel's voice broke just a bit on the off.
Probably shouldn't be such a shock that this is turning Louis on – Louis du Lac, the self-confessed fetishist – but the thought still hooks itself into Daniel's guts, somewhere soft and hidden. Louis likes this. Louis wants this, is actively getting off on handling this grasping, vicious, fox-in-a-trap thing that Daniel has become.
Then Louis's hand cracks down again, and this time, Daniel really screams. Full-throated like he hasn't since he was a child, and it is such a fucking relief that the next scream is entirely lucid, just to see if he can get the same effect twice. He can. He does, every awful burning shock of impact rippling through him and tearing loose another horrible sound that Louis keeps blithely ignoring.
Hit after hit rocks through him, Louis laying into him like he's tenderising meat, lights exploding behind Daniel's squeezed-shut eyes. At some point, he's gotten his hand up to his mouth, fangs gone all the way through, lukewarm blood welling into his mouth and slicking the bottom half of his face. Probably all over Louis's couch, too. He doesn't care. There's not enough room in him for anything but Louis's hands on him, the pain, the inescapability of it. Totally impotent under the hands of a monster far stronger than him.
It takes a couple seconds of rough sobs into sudden silence for Daniel to realise no more hits are coming. The burning across his ass is steady, all-encompassing, but it's not getting any worse; just settling in down to his bones.
He's… alive. Here. Every muscle lax with the endorphin dump, all that helpless, hungry energy bled right out. Like the moment before whatever sleep is now, the soft, ringing beat of clarity before the sun sucks him down.
"Yeah," Louis is saying, somewhere above him, and the sternness has left his voice. "I think you've done now, don't you?"
Daniel tries to answer him, he does, even manages to get his fangs out his hand, but all that comes out his bloody mouth is a wet little croak.
Louis hums gently like he's replying to it, hand coming down to stroke over the skin he's just fucked up. It hurts, hurts so much, Louis's palm must have been warmed with the striking because it's hot as a brand on his abused flesh. Even so, Daniel finds himself pushing up into it, lifting himself on trembling knees. Fucking presenting himself, Jesus, he hopes it looks good. It can't, has to look pathetic as all hell, but he hopes against hope that at least something about it is pleasing Louis.
"You are pleasing me, Danny," Louis murmurs, "now that you're behaving. Now, what do we say?"
In the end, it isn't a fight at all. In the end, it's very easy. "Thank you, Daddy," he rasps into the cushions, and he feels it all the way through him. Warm and heavy on his tongue, in his belly, all through his chest. The hands on him – hands of the man who took him in, took him in hand, who's taken responsibility for guiding him through this terrifying new life he's been given – press just a little firmer down at his surrender.
A rough breath, far above him, and then Louis very gently nudges him a little down his thighs. Daniel shuffles, unthinkingly obedient even as he winces out a few more tears. He doesn't even think to question it until Louis is unbuttoning his fly, hands brushing against Daniel's side as he pulls himself out. The sound of him spitting in his palm sends a shockwave through Daniel's gut, and he full-body twitches.
That, at least, gets a laugh out of Louis, gets him a firm stroke of Louis's unoccupied hand all the way down his spine. Coming to rest heavy on his ass again; this hand cool to touch, soothing until Louis starts kneading again, proprietary and self-indulgent. Like he's trying to wring out every one of Daniel's hurt noises, the ones he's given up on swallowing down.
Including a strangled yell, when Louis fucking scratches him. Like points of white-hot light, magnesium flares across the backs of his eyes. "The fuck have I done now?" he blurts out, maybe too sharply, but Louis just laughs.
"Oh, that one was all for me, baby," he croons, voice gone so rough. Christ, Daniel can hear his hand on his dick, the slickness of it, he must be dripping pre. All this, just for Daniel, just for laying Daniel out and hurting him, taking him in hand. He wants so bad to see, but Louis wants him like this, face down, compliant, easy, so he stays.
"Sadist," he accuses him instead, voice breaking, and Louis laughs.
"And aren't you lucky I am, what with how badly you needed someone to put you down. Is it my fault you're this sweet when you're properly handled? When you're actually listening to your daddy?"
And what the fuck is Daniel meant to say to that? He just lies there, aching, helpless with it all, while Louis jerks off above him, breath coming rougher and richer. That possessive, wandering hand dips between his cheeks, thumbs over his clenched-up asshole, and Daniel fucking whines, arches up into it like he's still that desperate twenty-year-old that Louis first marked as his own.
"Fuck, that's pretty," Louis groans. "I was right, look how red it's gotten–" He breaks off, lets out a hungry, self-indulgent moan in concert with the sound of his hand speeding up, and then Daniel's gasping at the wetness splattering across his ass. Louis's come, Louis who just split him right down the middle, stuck his fingers in all the soft, pathetic, broken bits of him, whatever it is that Armand left of him, and found something in there that he liked. Louis who said he was going to put him right and then, somehow, did.
He hangs there for a moment, strung along with every heavy breath from above him, before Louis eases an arm under his chest, another under his legs, and then he's being hoisted up and into a sitting position, curled into Louis's lap. It hurts like a motherfucker to put pressure on all his raw spots, but it's good, the pain is good, red waves washing the inside of him clean.
Louis's come is no doubt smudging onto his designer loungewear, but if Louis doesn't care, Daniel doesn't care. Not when he can be pressing his face into the lightless hollow of Louis's throat, cashmere and cologne and Louis scent, the richness of him. Maybe when Daniel's got a few more decades of monstrosity under his belt, he'll be able to pick apart the notes; fin de siècle Nola, Lestat de Lioncourt, half a decade in a continental warzone, three-quarters of a century drinking down the blood of a being older than most countries, rats and and pigeons and young men on the shining cusp of their lives. Half the contents of Daniel's veins from decades ago, when he was still something approaching an idealist; a bright young reporter with a point of view.
"Shh, honey, I got you, Daddy's got you," Louis is murmuring into his hair, and if there's any tiny part of Daniel still embarrassed by this, it's fading fast. He's held, contained in arms he already knows he won't be able to fight against. Daddy has got him, as it turns out. And God knows, it is such an aching relief to be had.