#anyway now im in a panic i have ilke 2 days before i catch up to myself and have to finish or else ill look like a fool

[monstersinthecosmos]

September 26, 1973

His things are neatly stacked by the hotel room door, waiting for the sun to come up, and he sprawls on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, his gaze circling round and round, following the shape of orange light cast by the bedside lamp.

Nerves almost calm now, but the sedate white face flashes in his memory every time he closes his eyes. As the hours pass, these jolts of fear lose potency. Each a little weaker than the last, until it barely rouses him. Maybe he’s too tired, or too hungry. He’s not sure.

His stomach hurts. 

It’s not really hunger anymore, maybe. Just pain, cramping around the memory of starvation. He glances towards the windows; curtains drawn but no light spilling through the cracks yet. Too early. He wonders when the cafes will start opening. 

Fingers drum in little patterns against his hips. They take on a rhythm. Everything aches and his thoughts are scattered by music drifting in and out of his thoughts. His foot taps against the floor to the song in his head and he considers listening to the tapes again. 

This song was everywhere when he was in high school. It bounces back and forth inside his skull and he remembers listening to it in Alice’s car. She used to belt out I wake up feeling sorry I met you! speeding down Route 15 after her boyfriend dumped her. Daniel bounces through the song, wondering how long ago that was. 

What time is it over there, anyway? He can’t remember how the time zone works. Maybe he should follow up with that publisher. 

“How can I fight a love that shouldn’t be?” he mumbles, barely singing, voice scratching into the empty room. “When it’s so deep, so deep, deep inside of me…”

It feels like Alice is dead already. And her fiance. Her mom and dad. Daniel’s mom and dad.

And Connie and Jeff and everyone else he’s ever met. Even himself. The shelf of tapes in his old apartment is like a graveyard now. And the fear rises again; not the way Armand had shattered him, but something murky. Swelling inside, throbbing in his poorly-healing neck wounds. He presses his fingertips against them, feeling for each hole. There would never have to be a trace of them if he’d stop picking, he knows that. It doesn’t make a difference anymore, though. He feels marked.

His eyes burn with sleep deprivation. For a moment he wonders if it would be safe enough to sleep for a few hours—maybe he can take off this afternoon. The sun would still be up, it might be okay. He thinks maybe he should fly somewhere far from here and sleep on the plane, though. Vancouver. Buenos Aires. Sydney. 

Everything had happened too fast, back when he saw Armand. Whole body screaming in fear, unable to feel his face for a good three hours. But later, once all the sediment sank to the bottom of his head, he thinks he felt Armand’s presence in the wound. He rubs against it again, feeling the dull throb, wondering if it means Armand is nearby. 

It reminds him of his dad. The way his war wounds used to ache when it was going to rain.

Armand doesn’t seem like the same person Louis described. Daniel’s hands twitch, and he turns to look at his bag. Thinks about listening to the tapes again, even though he probably has them memorized by now. As if one more time will really make everything make sense. He’ll hear something he missed before, some piece. 

There were holes in Louis’s story, though, Daniel thinks. Or maybe some sense of dishonesty. Some emotional part that wasn’t in focus—perhaps even vampires lack that same self-awareness that people do. Because, sure, Armand was beautiful—Daniel saw it himself—and perhaps to Louis he was the patient mentor, perhaps he was wise and kind. But he’d let his friends kill Claudia. And he’d let Louis kill his friends. And he’d locked Daniel in a basement—

You are like a dog, he remembers Armand saying, cutting through the fog. He presses two fingertips to the two scabs, unsure if he’s imagining it. The night Armand took him… what?

When had pain started turning him on?

He lost his virginity to one of his classmates in junior year, on an ugly orange couch in her basement lounge. They were sneaking shots out of her parents’ liquor cabinet and she kept playing the same side of Sgt. Pepper over and over, kept starting it again instead of flipping the record, but Daniel was buzzed and horny so he didn’t complain. Anyway. She’d scratched up his back pretty bad, and it was nice. Overwhelming, and it would take a few more partners before he would start narrowing down what he liked in bed.

No one’s ever really been too rough with him, though. And he hasn’t really asked. And he knows now that vampires disarm you, they trick you, so coming in your fucking pants when they attack you might not be Daniel’s fault.

Maybe he’s been ruined, because he’s hard again, just thinking about it.

The strength. The steady hands on him.

Strength had turned him on when he first slept with a man. And that, too, took a few partners before he started understanding his type. He closes his eyes, relaxes into the bed, still anxious but exhausted enough to allow himself a break. 

Armand was short, definitely looked like a teenager. Not Daniel’s type at a glance, except for that sense of his power. Of danger, Daniel starts to tell himself, but rubs over his pants with his free hand. He still touches the scabs on his neck, wincing as he digs a nail into the edge. 

Daniel had fucked one of his professors, back in his first year. His film lit professor, who invited him for a drink when he’d stayed after class to talk about Persona. It hadn’t been like the couple of nervous makeout sessions he’d had with boys in high school, with anxiety shredding through his whole body the entire time. Not like the fumbling handjobs in a friend’s car. No, this maybe felt like a man. 

Stronger, and Daniel hadn’t been able to stop staring at the veins in the backs of his hands as he sipped his wine, or the soft blonde hair on his forearms that peeked out from beneath the red sweater. And sex had been fun, up until then, as a kid, not really knowing what the fuck he was doing, but it had never felt like this, with someone so confident in control. 

Armand was clean shaven, and would be forever, not like Daniel’s professor. Armand’s jaw won’t leave the insides of Daniel’s thighs pink afterwards. 

It’s hypothetical, anyway, Daniel thinks. Louis made it sound like vampires don’t like sex, and for some reason that sorta makes sense. But he lifts his hips, enough to slide his pants down, enough to curl his fingers around the tender head of his cock. And he remembers how his professor had lifted him by the thighs, pinned him against the door frame to suck the skin below his ear. The weightlessness he’d felt, the way his stomach flipped when his feet lifted from the ground, but the way it tangled into the arousal.

Armand could do this, Daniel knows. He would bite, though.

He gasps as his thumbnail finally finds give against the scab, as he tears at his healed skin in the wake. Needling, sharp pain for a moment, and he feels how the blood rushes in, feels it trickling down the side of his neck. He strips harder at his cock, cupping his hand around the blood to keep it from getting on his shirt, and it stings as his palm makes contact.

“Fuck,” he hisses, but doesn’t stop. 

Something disarming about his professor, about being cared for, about the warmth in the blue eyes as he sized Daniel up. Daniel doesn’t always have the best filter, has a short fuse for mouthing off, but even discussing the film over a glass of wine, feeling like the lecture never ended, hadn’t bothered him. Made him feel special or something, made him feel safe. Not disarming like how the vampires had been; not some sinister energy trying to rearrange his brain. It had been, just… something else. 

He remembers it now, for some reason. Doesn’t think of Jeff or any of the others. Goes back to that first time, and how it had been a little frightening, overwhelming, how he’d felt so small. 

Armand is short. Not small, really. Curvy in the places it matters. But he makes Daniel feel that same way, that fragile. That overwhelmed. His neck still stings, and his palm is sticky against the trickling blood, and he tries to remember how it felt to be bitten. 

To be fed on.

His toes curl inside his sneakers, and he digs a heel into the floor, arching his back as he comes. And he’d saved his shirt from the blood, but not from he pearly load that paints across his belly. Breath heaves in his chest and his ears ring as the release pulses through him, and he tries to relax again.

There’s a tiny voice telling him to hang onto the feeling for as long as he can, to enjoy the glow, because he can’t remember the last time he felt good. His body goes lax against the mattress, and he can feel his pulse slowing in his hand, still holding there until he’s sure the bleeding has stopped. The fizzy, irrational light-headedness, the warmth of the orgasm, the blessed quiet nearly convinces him that being almost-murdered was the best sex of his life.

For a blissful minute he floats, doesn’t question it. Holds the doubt at bay and tries to just stay with it.

Because it will disgust him soon, and he knows it. The haze will clear and he’ll remember where he is, remember his clothes are dirty, remember he has to flee, remember he forgot to shower. 

And he’ll wonder how long before his parents realize he’s gone, and he’ll feel bad he forgot to send Alice’s RSVP back. How long before he feels bad that his dad is disappointed in him? At least he’s still too angry for that, but while the cum soaks into his t-shirt and goes cold, he’ll ask himself if he’s a bad son, if he was a bad person.

He lets go of his neck, stares at the rusty smear in his palm, how it darkens the crease of his lifeline. He covers his eyes with his right hand. 

It’s not that he feels guilt for disappointing his dad. It feels a million miles away, too unimportant. More that it’s a cold fact now, something etched into him. Part of his old life, and it doesn’t matter anymore, except that he knows it’s how he will be remembered. 

You died a disappointment.

[previous day] | [next day]

#vamptember 1973 #stuff i wrote #daniel molloy #armand #armand/daniel #LMAO SO IVE BEEN X-POSTING TO AO3 IN MARCH #i had a few more days that i never posted here but i waited until they were up on ao3 so #anyway now im in a panic i have ilke 2 days before i catch up to myself and have to finish or else ill look like a fool #wish me luck 😂