Archive of Our Own ^beta

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"Did he enjoy you, Daniel?" Armand asks, turning his head to the approaching figure in the blue glow of the televisions. He's muted the volume of two warring sets of dialogue to focus on his lover, newly awoken, and he's even curled his legs up beneath him on the couch to suggest that Daniel claim the emptied space beside him. 

Did he enjoy you? Louis, he means. Daniel had stayed out until after sunrise, and so Armand had not been able to see him off to sleep when he came home from his rendezvous, (with Armand's one-time companion. They're all being very modern about the mutually felt interest. That's what Daniel had called it. 'Very modern.' Armand thinks the understanding seems more like that of the ancients), but the glass of water and bottle of ibuprofen on Daniel's nightstand were the quiet vestiges of Armand's care, even after the coming of the day had relegated him to his coffin. And late to bed, late to rise, as it followed; Daniel had not emerged from his room until well after nightfall, before which time Armand readily occupied himself with his screens. Now, however, he's eager to exchange the TVs for Daniel's conversation.

He might have asked if Daniel had enjoyed himself, but knows that this degrading alternative phrasing will excite him. And Armand has to play along, show his approval of Daniel's extracurricular engagement; he can feel a quiet nervousness radiating from him the second he enters the room, even without peering into his mind. Perhaps he frets that in the hours apart, Armand had changed his mind and revoked his permission? He must be assured that his is not the case — that even the giving of permission was in some way theatrical, unreal. There is precious little Armand would not allow Daniel, really.

"Come, sit. Regale me."

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Daniel had pressed the pads of his fingers to the punctures beneath his collarbone almost obsessively the night prior. While his head was swimming so comfortably in the loving embrace of a good blood high, the dull ache of the reddened wound sliced through as a delicious sensation that brought with it thoughts of Louis. His hands digging into his hipbones, his alluring voice climbing all over him…

As the high dwindled and his brain began warming up like a dormant generator, (and this is a testament surely to how fucked he is in the head) touching the old wound carried guilt along with it. A trickle at first, then more. He tried to wrestle it out of himself. 'It wasn’t wrong — Armand is crazy, he drank from Louis right in front of you just to be an asshole. It wasn’t wrong.'

But the occasions on which Daniel has intentionally disobeyed Armand are… few and far between. He doesn’t remember if he has ever been so brazen. And Armand is crazy.

It ignites his nervousness with fervor awakening to realize how late it is. He doesn’t touch the painkiller or the water which, of course, are far too kind not to conjure some emotion about it.

He misses Armand. He’s hungry. He’s sore. He misses Armand.

Shuffling out of the bedroom, it feels like something blatant should seem amiss. But instead Armand is eager and wants him close. His nerves are on a low simmer setting.

"You could have woken me up," he says, voice still a little gravelly with the remnants of exhaustion. He takes his place next to Armand, links his thin arms around his waist and buries himself against him.

'Hungry. Sore. Miss you. Nervous. Miss you.'

"Yeah, he did. I don’t know what to say about it. Wasn’t anything you haven’t seen before."

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Armand shifts readily to let Daniel's arms encircle him and brings Daniel's head in close to his chest. His fingers card through curls before slipping down Daniel's back with the languid stretch of an arm over each shoulder, in a loose sort of reciprocated embrace. The nail of his index finger idles up and down the curve of Daniel's spine, and the touch is warm. Armand has already hunted tonight, preparing for long, indulgent hours with Daniel. Lacking him the previous evening, he's eager to have his beautiful boy all to himself tonight.

His beautiful boy whose mood is mysteriously gloomy.

"A most terse account of an encounter for which you were so excited."

He reaches out to Daniel's mind, feeling the pulse of the immediate thoughts. He's hungry. Armand can fix that. He's sore. He shouldn't be, if he took the medicine left for him. There's the rolling wave of miss you, miss you which pleases him, and he hums as he turns his head to press his cheek to the crown of Daniel's head. Why so nervous, though?

"Would you rather show me? I assure you I am most interested. I have not watched you play from the remove of my chair in the corner for some time. It will be nostalgic, in a way. ... You needn't be embarrassed by the details, Daniel, if that is the source of your malaise. What embarrassment could linger still between you and I? Come, summon up the memory, and I'll see with your eyes, Beloved."

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There is no peak of shock or unease at Armand’s instruction that knocks Daniel’s feet out from under him — of course Armand wants to see. He wants to unravel pieces of Daniel far less interesting than a night with Louis de Pointe du Lac.

Upon waking up painfully sober, he did not take the time to craft any sort of plan, however. It wouldn’t have mattered. Even if he could redact his own thoughts from his ever-untenable head, choose mechanically which emotions would surface, and learn how to have a poker face, he cannot imagine ever managing to steal a secret away for himself. Armand would find a way to take it. 

Still. A plan would have at least felt more comfortable. And knowing the futility of his situation does not remove the reflexive, prey-like kick of needing to escape. 

He cannot stand the tender nail running up and down the notches of his spine, shockingly warm, horribly gentle, nor the cheek resting atop his head. As if Armand is already prodding and dissecting his guilt, figuring out how to tug at the nerves of it.

"I’m just tired," a mumble in response to the accusation of malaise, and he isn’t sure why he says it. An impulse to start pacing, to say it out loud, to redirect. Frustration. Unease. Instead, he just pulls away, removing himself from the baking warmth and dissolving safety in Armand’s arms, and shoves himself to the other arm of the couch. He keeps his left hand still. 

Daniel gives Armand as he’s asked, disjointed images of bruising fingertips digging into the jut of his hipbones, being devoured by arousal and sensation as fangs puncture his collar. Then a feverish, hazy distortion, washed over with the comforting, homelike ecstasy of a high racing across his nerves.

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He could keep Daniel in his arms if he had a mind to. He's strong enough to crush Daniel's bones, never mind simply hold him still. But Armand does not force Daniel; he never does. Daniel recoils on the loosest of leashes, withdrawing from Armand now and then, and inevitably begging for return to his demon lover's embrace — for the tightening of the collar. The other end of the couch is hardly the worst distance Daniel has thrown down between them. 

But that doesn't mean Armand is indifferent to the loss. His hands are hungry for the pulse under Daniel's skin.

When the memories come to the front of Daniel's mind, Armand's eyes are searching his face with an incisive delight. Louis's touch, oh, Armand remembers it so well. And that seething, panting need that tinges all of Daniel's recollected senses is honeyed, golden... 

Teeth. The memory of teeth against skin, and the rush of electric blood down his own throat...

When understanding comes, it is not so much that Armand's expression changes materially, but it stills, and the animating warmth it had spoken freezes over. He feels his fangs drop, quite against his will, but the desire that comes over his body at the image is distant, cold, in the shadow of the anger coming on. His intrusion into Daniel's mind penetrates further, deeper, no longer waiting for the permission of what Daniel wants to show him, but devouring everything it can find. All of last night — all of it that Daniel can remember before and after the delirium of Louis's blood.

"Oh, Daniel," he says, in a managed tone that speaks perfect comprehension and utter disappointment. "Not tired. Not embarrassed either. Guilty. That's what it is. Guilty."

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The word does not drip with venom, but is masked in a far deadlier unreadableness. Armand has made it difficult to gauge the amount of danger he is in, and the uncertainty feels like stepping with glass in his shoes.

‘Guilty’ Armand says, and it cuts Daniel open. Anger rushes from the wound to shield him from feeling anything else. To blot out the messier, chaotic emotions before they steal his footing out from under him. He had a reason. He woke up this morning with his guilt disconnected from wrongness. He had a good reason to believe he was not in the wrong.

"You never said I couldn’t!" It’s too fervent a defense against Armand’s icy, mild words. He hates how obvious it is Armand is correct to tell him he is guilty. His hands latch around his elbows, arms held tightly against himself until his left decides it is unhappy being held in place. It is not enough, but his thumb pokes into the crevices between his fingers, scrapes over the cuticles in his index. "I watched you drink from Louis. I didn’t think it would be a big deal."

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Armand does not move, but the light of the televisions extinguishes in an instant. It is a fraction of the force he can manifest with the slightest willpower, a reminder to Daniel that he is taking that tone with something infinitely mightier than he is. It makes the room appear so much stiller around this single, fidgeting shape across the couch. No other movement, no distraction.

In the darkness of the low-lit room, a silence hangs, heavy, as Armand watches Daniel try and fail to soothe himself with anxious little tics. The boy's nerves are flaring, scrambling to cover a boiling admixture of sentiments he does not want to acknowledge. Meaningless. Armand sees the tumult beneath.

"Ah, you didn't think it would be a 'big deal,'" he repeats, and Daniel's words sound ridiculous on his lips, as well they might; Armand finds this ridiculous. The chill in his voice is lethal, but it does not yet attack overtly. Daniel doesn't know just how angry Armand is, and that makes him nervous. That's well enough. Let him fret. Armand still does not quite know how to hold the outsized outrage he feels sure will crack open his ribs any second, looking for the release his frigid expression denies it. "If that is so, tell me, Beloved," — cold, biting, the name torn from its tenderness — "why do you feel any guilt for what you have done?"

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For just a moment, pale eyes flicker to the televisions blinking off, all the comfort of the nothing-drone in the background vanished. The quiet is heavy. Damn his fast-beating heart. Then, he remembers it is probably inadvisable to look away from a vampire pissed off at him. His fingers twitch. His mouth feels dry.

To rival the emerging nervousness threatening to possesses his hands, he has no choice except to get angrier. The alternative is, at the moment, unthinkable.  

Daniel asked himself the same question— why feel guilty if he did not do anything wrong? It is because Armand is a disease injected into his veins. Armand has rewired the basic connections that exist in every functional human being — self-preservation, control, judgement, autonomy, everything — so that for Daniel, everything begins and ends with him. Master over the very chemicals running through his brain.

A negligible, frightened instinct like a flinching rabbit tells him not to answer at all. He recoils from it, repulsed.

"You’ve fucked up my head, that’s why."

And the soft gestures, then? The pills on the night table? The extra hours of undisturbed rest? He wishes Armand had been cruel or at least dismissive. It would make it easier to remember why Daniel is correct.

Oh, he is in trouble now, isn’t he? If he cannot even articulate to himself with his fucked head and fucked heart why Armand is wrong.

"You never said not to. And why should you be upset over something so arbitrary? I only thought about it afterward, it wasn’t to slight you!"

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It was a mistake to give Daniel even an inch — to let his boy so much as see Louis again, never mind play at his craving, carnal fantasies with him. It won't happen again. But oh, that inch had been given, and Daniel of course took a mile. He convinced himself he was owed something of the vampire's brooding dark, so glamorous to his ignorant eyes, and he took it without permission — a horrible breach of their bond.

Armand seethes, not with the knowledge that Daniel's mouth had gratified Louis, but that it had latched onto a wound and taken forbidden blood. He is not jealous, he is undermined, disobeyed, betrayed! As if all Armand's precautions to keep Daniel insulated from the threat of the undead were a joke, as if the years of trust accumulating between them were nothing, Daniel took what Armand had obviously, if wordlessly, proscribed.

And now he has the gall to lie about it.

The composure breaks. Armand's lips curl into a bitter scowl, and his eyes darken. The moment of hesitation is past. His decision is made. Daniel's punishment is set.

"You are lying." Just his voice in the room. "I thought you were smarter than that." His voice, Daniel's pounding heart, and the quiet complaint of the couch's leather cushion puncturing under Armand's nails. His eyes bore into Daniel as he taps the vein of his denied thoughts. "'Want it, need it, need it now, never had it from Louis, new, so hot, shouldn't, Armand, Armand'll be mad, will he?, hot, god, hot, won't like it, but i want it, need it anyway, need it, please...' And you dare to tell me you did not know it was forbidden?" His accent carves around the sounds as his temper rises — as he turns Daniel's words back on him. "Have I fucked up your head, dear boy? Well allow me to make everything clear again for you."

Armand hones his senses in on Daniel's nerves, on the blood in the flesh of him, and seizes him in a telekinetic vice. With a flicker of eyes, he casts him to the floor in a heap, and then the muscles begin to shuffle and twist to right themselves. It is less a human willing itself up, and more a puppet with strings pulled. He's on his knees now. Armand untucks his legs from his seat, and sits up straighter, a wrathful angel presiding over Daniel.

"Since you are feeling somewhat confused about what happened, about your position, Daniel, I am happy to help you make sense of this. You're going to be honest with me, I'll make sure of it, and we'll get to the bottom of just what occurred. And you will see exactly why it is you're so guilty. Now why don't you tell me, out loud, with that deceitful little mouth, just what it is you did?"

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Armand’s words shackle the air like a verdict, and the dread is too slow to articulate itself to Daniel.

It stops his breath on the back of his tongue as his lover becomes vicious. Daniel shoves himself instinctively farther against the arm of the couch to create distance or perhaps to make himself smaller, eyes wide, lips parted for a response that does not exist. His thoughts are pulled from his head with more clarity than he would even be able to recall them himself and thrust in front of him, shameful and vivid.

He is not afforded the chance to reach for his anger, his indignation, a defense to hide behind. It happens too quickly to understand where Armand has taken hold of him. He makes a winded noise as he hits the ground, then shoves his palms beneath himself as if he might have a chance to stand up if he moves fast enough. But he gets no further. And then he feels exactly where Armand has taken hold of him.

Cold fingers hook themselves between his joints, tug on the cords of his muscles. A sickening, possessed sensation as he is rearranged from the inside out to stand on his knees, limbs locked into position.

A terrified gasp slips past his lips, and a cry as if wounded. It does not hurt, but it would be easier if it did. At least he could feel where he has gone from the neck down. The nervous energy that lives in his hands is imprisoned and eats at him without an outlet. It spurs his heartbeat faster.

"Armand—!"

A reflexive plea jumps so easily to his tongue. He tries to crane his neck to look up, and his body does not respond. Effortlessly, his lover holds him down. He watches instead with grey hues cast upward in their sockets, as mesmerized as he is afraid.

Armand’s anger is not a brilliant star, but it burns as brightly. It hasn’t touched him yet, not really. There is a crack running through the skin he wears, and it steals Daniel’s anger, his attention, the ground from beneath his feet.  

"Fuck! It didn’t mean anything! It didn’t! Fuck, Armand I can’t—  I can’t feel— Armand please!"

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Armand's eyes slice through Daniel, sharpened by his pretty little scowl. They read his every flinching thought now, and watch the terror and the awe wash over him like icy water. How unsurprising, that Daniel finds the threat of his anger enticing. Hasn't he been trained so well to love what is horrible, to crave what is lethal? Spoiled, corrupted thing. Forgetful, selfish brat.

"Ah-ah. Focus. What didn't mean anything?"

In the curl of his lip, one fang flashes. The hunger spurred by Daniel's lush recollections of transgression colors the rage — violet undertone in black. It goes unentertained, but if Daniel watches him with those wide eyes of his and metabolizes the fear of those fangs into desire to buoy him and bend him with, so be it. Daniel can crave whatever he wants, and Armand can reschool that craving into joyful obedience. First, cleansing punishment, then deserved release.

"You must be able to say what it is you did if you ever have a hope of convincing either of us that you are really sorry. Out with it."

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If Daniel trembles, it is swallowed up by the sightless hands locking him in position. If words or pleas were to follow, stumbling and useless, they are cut off at Armand’s redirection. A nervous hum through lips pressed tight together fills the space instead. Dread eats the crawling seconds he is unable to see the range and depth of Armand’s rage.

"D- drinking from Louis didn’t mean anything. I— okay yes, I did, I drank from Louis— "

Flashes of excuses or explanation float across the surface of his consciousness. The image of a thin ribbon of blood landing on his bare chest, and Armand’s mouth latched over Louis’s wrist, sliced open and presented. The anxiety over the pill bottle and water glass sitting on the dresser. His own jolting hunger and excitement placated with a rush of hot, liquid electricity as he drinks from Louis’s collar.

He cannot decide which words to verbalize, which would be correct. It is not the first occasion he has searched for the correct words to protect himself from Armand, but it has been a long time. And perhaps never with Armand’s displeasure as biting as if there is glass beneath his knees.

"It was just to get high! Come on, it wasn’t supposed to mean anything— Why would it?"

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Sifting through Daniel's stream of murky, anxious thought, Armand prizes out the explanations and casts away the excuses.

His head quirks to the side, just a touch. He is turning away from the insistent image of his own lips parted and pressed against Louis's skin, the wet feeling of thick red drops falling against a bare chest. He remembers this moment, and he remembers teasing Daniel with the working of his mouth right before his hungry eyes, with that brief spill of the forbidden ichor right over his prone form. He does not need to see Daniel's memory of it (and he does not want to consider that it is his own taunting indulgence that may have led Daniel to the mistaken belief he could partake equally). 

The flash of the bedside table and Armand's little tokens of care catches his attention. Another matching memory is spurred — of setting them out when he'd realized Daniel wouldn't return home before sunrise, of wanting to assure Daniel of the comfort that awaited him in Armand's embrace, and how good it was to be Armand's after the fleeting fantasy of being had by another.

Why must Daniel make him regret his tenderness?

"Oh, it wasn't supposed to mean anything? Because it was just to get high? And that somehow makes it less foolish, selfish, and transgressive?" His eyes roll. "You waste your breath, Daniel. I am not interested in your assessment of the situation. Not when you lie to me. Not when your brain is so ... unreliable. My word, as yours was so vulgar. If you want to get to the bottom of this, to free your mind of all that confusion, then we need to clarify only the facts first. You drank Louis's blood. Now think, Daniel. Was this the stated purpose for which you were allowed to see him?"

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Foolish, selfish, transgressive. These judgments are empty of meaning beyond the harsh displeasure Armand wields them with, but it is still enough to hurt.

Too effortlessly Armand overwhelms him, or too quickly. If there is ground to stand on, he struggles to find reason now to anchor his feet to it. It is easier to fold against every place Armand pushes, to remain transfixed and malleable in the blinding allure of his anger. It is easy. 

On the tip of his tongue is a frustrated noise, a desperate insistence that it does matter how meaningless it was to him, and it is again sliced away before he wastes his breath. Armand reminds him that he lied and oh— oh no. A moment delayed, but Daniel understands now that there is a bullet in his foot.

Unreliable. Confusion. These assessments elicit another hum, louder and wavering. He wants terribly to rip his hand free of the frozen block encasing it and allow his fingers to tap or claw or press or bend, but he cannot feel them at all.

"No." And he feels the next question in the heat climbing up his shoulders.

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It is simple to keep Daniel pinned like this despite the desperation of his body to break free. Even simpler to root through his unguarded mind and know exactly how badly the stillness inflames his nerves. The acceptance is coming, though, bit by bit. His futile defenses have died away.

"That's it, Daniel. Easy to think when I help you focus on it, isn't it?" His tone is settling into a cruel, saccharine condescension. Like talking to a child. "No, it was not why you were allowed to go. Now what was the purpose for which I so generously permitted you to see him? Can you manage to remember that?"

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Despite his dread writhing like a dying thing, still breathing and hopelessly alive even as he is locked out of his body, he feels angry. He tightens his jaw in a wild flare of kneejerk frustration at being chastised like a child. To articulate where all it comes from would require focus he cannot and will not spare, so he swallows it down. Because he cannot feel himself from the neck down. He is in no position to bite back if he cannot feel himself from the neck down.

Pleading will not convince Armand. Arguing will either piss him off or make him laugh. Answering is the most tolerable form of pain.

"F-fucking Louis."

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No, pleading will not convince him, nor will that argumentative spirit which usually so delights Armand. It is good that Daniel recognizes this. 

"Crassly put, but very good, Daniel. That's right. And although you are mine, I let you do it, because I give you everything you want, and I thought to myself 'what is the harm if the boy wants to feel filthy and used?' The objectification seemed a significant source of eroticism for you, or at least that is what you told me because you worried I would not approve of a more sincere desire to spend time with Louis. Tell me, Daniel, how did being used as a toy turn into taking such selfish liberties of your own? How does one thing lead to the next?" he asks, affecting confusion. "I don't see how one follows from the other. Why don't you recount the train of thought that led you to your error, and we'll see if you can figure out where your head went wrong. Out loud, now."

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Armand speaks of selfishness in the same breath that he reminds Daniel who he belongs to. If Daniel could afford to keep his head, he’d try to answer his own questions thumping loudly at the forefront of his mind. But he can’t see beyond the hand tugging at the leash latched perpetually ‘round his neck, not enough to read Armand’s intentions for him.    

"I told you! it was to get high!" A plea and indignation are the same from Daniel’s tongue, but at least they come quickly. Daniel has endured Armand’s patience when he has loved every cruel second and when it has nearly killed him, but his lover has to hold him down either way. "You know what my head looks like when you let me drink from you, I don’t have anything to tell you, damn it!"

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Still that stare, boring into Daniel, gleaming in the dark, unmoved by his urgency. The cold fury of it. No reaction to reward Daniel’s resistance. 

Does he not realize what he’s playing with? Does he really not see the protective line in the sand he has crossed, circumventing Armand’s intentional, total occlusion of the vampiric and proving that the second he is given a mere scrap of liberty, he will conduct himself like a ravenous animal? Or is this addict just too addled to care about a thing like that? 

Just a high, it doesn’t mean anything to drink from Louis. And he dares to compare it to the loving ministrations of blood that Armand gives him. Does that mean nothing too?

That squeezed sound again of Armand's nails on the leather of the couch, and then the pop of puncture.

‘It’s a fix to him, like every else,’ Armand thinks bitterly, ‘like me.’ 

No, it isn’t even that. Armand weaves through his thoughts and finds the bundle of nerves that tell Daniel this was wrong to have done, and piecing them out, he sees the knowledge of the boundary but no clear why to explain it. ‘Because Armand says no, and Armand’s possessive.’ Nothing further. 

Daniel is going to learn the why, when Armand’s rage has cooled enough to extend that kindness. But for now all he wants Daniel to feel is the deepest, most abject regret and shame. 

“Listen to yourself. Just to get high. No thought to it. Rather stupid to hear out loud, isn’t it? Are you stupid, Daniel?”

And underneath his spoken words, there are those springing up in Daniel’s mind, which sound like his thoughts but are not, echoing stupid, stupid, stupid. They wrap around his consciousness, spreading, lengthening like climbing, constricting vine. 'It was stupid. I’m so stupid. Just wanted a high. Wanted to feel good. I’d do anything for a taste.' And then at deafening volume, 'Because I’m a slut for it. Wanton slut.'

“You weren’t even thinking? Can’t trace back a single thought? Hm. Tell me again then, Daniel, since you can get at least this far: why did you do it? Be honest. You know I only want to help you understand. Why did you do it?”

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Articulation is slow to find his lips in the violent wake of the cacophony screaming between his ears. He grits his jaw and hums between lips pressed tight together not because he does not know his answer, but only because he cannot be sure of what he is even speaking as his thoughts are manually adjusted and amplified. His brain forms shapes he does not ask it to and his lover holds them in place.

Somewhere underneath the noise, and the heat rising up his chest, he feels wanted. How terribly Armand want for Daniel if he perceives a lapse in Daniel’s unwavering loyalty, and has decided to fix it. Daniel feels so wanted it makes him sick.

"Because I’m a slut for it."

It doesn’t even hurt to say — he knows it’s true. He told Armand himself with different words, and Armand has only rephrased.

"Because I’d—  do anything for it."

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Armand listens appreciatively to that sweet, nervous sound of lips pressed against the barrage of thought, just as he listens to the stream of Daniel’s consciousness. He’s gratified to detect the moment that Daniel starts to turn and to warm up to his control. He’s furious, righteously so, but it still tugs at his affections to see the beauty Daniel finds in the monstrous. His perverse desire for what his fellow mortals abhor has always captivated Armand, and it’s no different now. 

'Of course I want you, Daniel, I want you desperately, or else I would never work so hard to keep you, to help you.'

The course is set by Daniel's egregious lie. No chance of staying his punishment. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be without pleasure. Maybe that is the only right way to instruct a creature like Daniel: interlace the pain with the pleasure and wire the lesson into each nerve one by one. Make him understand that he was bad, yes, and also that there are reasons to be good. ... He needs some tools for this. He's thinking it through. 

“What was that, Beloved? I’m afraid I couldn’t hear you,” he says in that dulcet, patronizing tone that belies the words; he heard it perfectly. But still he demands, “Speak up.”

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It does not cross his mind to disobey or flinch away as Armand asks him to debase himself. It’s even easy — Daniel is easy. Armand loves that he is easy. His pride is always the first to be carved away by his own hand when something needs to give. Daniel never had enough room for it, and it is quick to burn as the edges of lover’s rage brush against it. He can feel his heart pounding in his throat when he thinks of being engulfed. Armand hasn’t even hurt him yet. There is dread, there is anticipation, and he could not have one without the other.

Even still, a boy of reflexes and utterly human, a ripple of a question breaches the surface.

'Keep?'

"I’m a slut for it, and I’d do anything for it— that’s why."

'To keep me?'

It unnerves Daniel that he does not understand, and the confusion dissolves on his tongue, because he does not have room for questions either. His lover has memorized the feel of his nerve endings and Daniel senses him calculating which ones to dig into.

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'Stupid. I'm stupid. Reckless.' The pulse of the intruding thoughts keeps up, unabating, as Daniel recites his lines for Armand. The effort it takes to seed them in his mind would hardly be visible in Armand’s face, had Daniel enough light to even see it by. In the dark, it is impossible to see any strain. But Armand needs no light to see into Daniel, to the pounding of his heart, the flicker of his anxiety, and the stirring of his perverse interest.

"Good job, Daniel, we're getting somewhere. Good of you to admit it. Though it is unfortunate, is it not? That your pleasure is so cheap, and at such a risk for something that ‘doesn’t mean anything?’ That it is all simply a fix to you, whether it comes from him or from me?" 'Cheap. Base. Stupid.' "I was not aware you saw my gift of blood as something so worthless. If it is all the same, and it all means nothing, then I suppose it doesn’t matter if you lose that privilege, does it? My, hear your heart Daniel, how it's racing, and not just with panic. With want. At my anger? At my disgust for how you've acted? Are you that easy?" He steals the word Daniel uses in his thoughts and hopes it humiliates, though he doesn't have much hope for Daniel retaining any sense of shame when his pride is so readily disposed of. 'Easy. Lewd. Pathetic.' "You said you had nothing more to tell me, but you do, Daniel, and that is a heartfelt ‘I’m sorry.’"

He stands, and in the dark his rising is accompanied all the more notably by the noise of the leather cushion shifting, of it ripping as Armand pulls his nails out of it.

“And when you are really sorry, Daniel, when you understand how deeply, wretchedly sorry you are, then I will accept it.”

There is another moment of silence, emptier than before. Armand’s shadow has vanished, too fast for Daniel to perceive the motion of it, but in his absence his grip on Daniel remains. He is not done with him. Not nearly. It is a brief disappearance, and then the shadow is back, mere inches before the kneeling figure. 

Armand releases his control over Daniel’s right arm and gives him a moment to feel the sensation rush back into it. A lamp flickers on by the couch behind him. He offers one clawed hand to Daniel, and for a moment, it seems as if he means to help him up.

“Your hand. Palm up, please,” he says, and the briefly comforting illusion is shattered; in his other hand, Armand holds the familiar length of a riding crop.

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Daniel’s days are loud, like the pulsing words gnawing through his thoughts before they can form at all. His distractions make it easier — so he never has to remember, never has to sit still and think — but he’s forgotten something that could be important. It is dangerous to forget how small he is.  

The upset Armand elicits as he speaks of his gift is clumsy and desperate and completely silent. It spills out directionless exactly where his lover applies pressure.

'That wasn’t it! That wasn’t it! That wasn’t it!'

And then, through his chaos, it stills, iced over with frigid panic. It is a panic that could not be confused with any other emotions bleeding together as Armand raises the possibility of losing the privilege.

'You’ll kill me.'

A noise like he’s been struck when Armand relinquishes control of his arm. He snatches it to his chest, fingers trembling and working aimlessly. They skitter over his left, still locked in place, reflexively attempting to pull it free. Eyes flicker dully over the clawed hand offered. He’d trust it on another day. Palm up.

Maybe he will have less to think about in a moment.

He does not entertain reluctance even as his hand twitches at the wrist and fingers drum the air. It is a betrayal to the nervousness alive and writhing inside them how easily he gives up his hand, placing it palm up in Armand’s. His dread doesn’t stir when he eyes the crop — an inevitability merely taken shape. He feels something closer to relief, but he can’t decipher it. He hopes his nerves will be loud.

"I’m sorry."

Chapter Text

"Ah-ah, shh Daniel," he coos. The hand holding the crop reaches out and strokes Daniel's cheek with the back of the knuckles. The pommel brushes against Daniel's chin. "Not yet, you're not. But you will be. I promise."

He makes it sound like such a benevolent reassurance. The voice is so sweet, almost innocently so, but the eyes are still cold. 

He'd drunken in Daniel's panic, pure and arresting, at the threat of withholding blood. It struck just the nerve he hoped it would. The dread he feels in Daniel as he presents his hand isn't half as strong as that terror of no blood. This isn't the pain Daniel fears most. Yet. 

His hand rests beneath Daniel's, deceptively warm so soon after feeding. It does not hold him there but is steady, and it does not give even a telling twitch before the tongue of the crop lands in the palm of Daniel's hand. No warning blow, no tender ministrations to bring the blood to the surface first and prepare him for the sting of the leather or the bite of the studs. It comes down hard, harder than a mortal hand could manage with such little windup. Or perhaps Armand does bring the instrument up over his shoulder and come down all in the blink of an eye, but if he has, it is too fast for Daniel to notice. A flashing instant of movement. Indeed, the feeling of the hand brushing his cheek hardly vanishes before the crack of the leather against Daniel's skin sounds. The pain will bloom to its full shock an instant later. One sensation traded for another.

Armand is careful with his force however — not enough to draw blood. He must not be distracted by temptation. 

And his eyes are devouring Daniel's face again. How does his unruly lover take it?

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The cloying sweetness of his lover’s care rots through his promise. Daniel feels nauseated as ‘not yet’ echoes through his head. He cannot tell if Armand nudges his own words to the forefront of his mind, or if Daniel saves him the effort.

There is a brilliant moment of panic that thrashes like the last kick of life in a dying thing in which Daniel searches his lover’s eyes for something he can read. A reassurance. An acknowledgment. A hesitation. A promise. Anything. He repeats himself.

'Armand, you’ll kill me.'

But his eyes are too cold.

Then, faster than he can blink, his nerves are vibrantly alight and shooting up his arm, and it is harder to think. A shout of pain jumps from his throat as he seizes back his hand to protect the ugly, swelling bruise. He is held impossibly still, so his chest does not heave, his shoulders do not bow forward, and he does not curl in on himself. The dissonance of reflexes slamming into an unmoving, unresponsive wall is worse than the pain. His ears are ringing with the reverberating crack like a bone snapping. He is deaf to his own tight-lipped humming, only feels that it is loud.

Perhaps being dazed by the throes of pain is why it is unnecessary for Armand to ask for the hand to be returned to him. Daniel can feel him watching, and he can feel the damage. He bites down hard on his tongue and stiffly presents the twitching fingers to his lover, palm up.

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Dread, pain, frustrated stillness. It all sweeps over him in swelling, stormy waves as Daniel feels it and the language of thought dissolves like foam on the sand, losing out little by little to wordless, animal emotion. The hand recoils, expectedly, and Armand can feel Daniel aching against his psychic grip to curl in on himself, to shield the wounded hand. Armand will wait a moment, let the sting ease before he draws Daniel out of his pain and makes him give his hand anew. He has the patience, and he means to make a show of the consistency of such exacting cruelty to Daniel. 

But without even being ordered, Daniel replaces his hand. He submits himself to Armand's will. 

Armand's hungry eyes widen just a bit, an expression of surprise too unanticipated to master before it manifests. 

"Very good, Daniel. You know that you need the correction, don't you?" 'Need it, need it, very good.' "You want so badly to be good, in spite of your misbehaving. Can't make up your mind which you are: a stupid, arrogant boy," — Crack. Another strike, as hard as the last, near mechanically identical. The hand recoils and is offered again. — "... or a good, obedient boy. It's all so hard. But I'll help you. I'm very forgiving, you see, and I'll help you be better, help you understand your heartfelt apology and what you risk losing when you act out. Isn't that so kind of me?" Crack. 

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'Take it, come on, take it, take it.'

Daniel’s thoughts are going blind by the third — he gives in so easily. His head is rendered blissfully blank against the brilliant flash racing up his arm. The pain crashes abruptly against his shoulder where his free movement comes to an end. He feels little farther than that.

Lungs inhale and empty themselves. Nothing is ever real unless his body cries out against it. Armand knows he needs the bruise.

A dull ache has announced itself in his still-frozen body. The exertion in his knees is becoming enough to claw through the heavy dissonance between his body, and what he can manage to feel. He cannot tell how far his arousal reaches, cannot even look down to see. He always gives in so easily.

Armand knows he is desperate for the bruise.

Through the blankness in his head, there is a stumbling wave of something muddled and yearning and degraded. ‘Obedient boy,’ ‘I’ll help you be better,’ ‘help you understand.’ His face is so hot.

And the horror still makes him feel sick as Armand reminds him of what he could take away. What he might still. How he could be cruel. How this is nothing at all.

A plea is so close to forming on his tongue, but articulation evades him as it wouldn’t have minutes before. His words are mindless, clashing together, intensified.

'Please, don’t! Take it, take it, please, Armand, take it take it take it.'

It hurts as he lifts the arm. He waits for more.

Chapter Text

Armand’s encouraging thoughts have so little competition in Daniel’s head. It feels to Armand less like he is weaving them into the fabric of Daniel’s mind now and more like ringing a bell in an empty room and letting it echo, loud and full through the space. Patches of scrambled ideation pass through here and there, and Armand picks out ‘please, don’t!’ clearly from within it, but Daniel means the blood, and Armand is not ready to talk about the blood and how serious he is or is not about its denial.

Another crack of the riding crop, but this time lighter, not so fiercely. “You just don’t know. Can’t make up your mind. Good or bad, scared or aroused, can’t tell at all. And you thought you could reason away your wrongdoing by talking? By lying to me? As if you even know what you’re saying!” Daniel enjoys the degradation — Armand can observe the obvious effects of it — and so he leans on that point further, working it to his advantage. Pain and pleasure mixed, punishment.... and then reward, if Daniel plays along, if he learns his lesson. 

In an instant, he grips Daniel’s wrist to hold it still and deal two hits, of moderate strength, without allowing the self-soothing moment of recoil. The second lands as the pain of the first is still cresting. 

“I understand what you need. You see it’s all about sensation for you. There’s no reasoning it out.” 'Too stupid to think it through,' he lets ring in Daniel's head. 'Brainless bloodslut.' “You have mistakenly connected your transgression to a happy sensation. But it hurts you to disobey me and endanger yourself, Daniel, even if you cannot see it yet. But you will.”

Another light hit. Instead of withdrawing, the studded leather of the tongue drags in circles over Daniel’s reddening skin.

“Do you want me to do the messy thinking for you, Daniel? Are you going to be grateful?” Crack. Another hit, hard again, and he releases Daniel’s wrist. ‘Then say “thank you, Armand”.’

Chapter Text

His ragged confession is torn out mid-cry as Armand lets him go.

"Thank you, Armand!"

Like the trilling in his ears, he feels as if all of him is only a stunned reverberation. His attempt to pitch forward is halted before he even moves. A gasp is dragged into his lungs, and he holds on to the echo of the leather tongue massaging slow, tender circles over swollen skin.

'Can’t tell at all.' Why can’t he tell? Why doesn’t he want to? Daniel misses it when he isn’t reeling from a fresh impact. It is when he isn’t consumed by a moment, when he is allowed to catch his breath, that he doesn’t know what to do. ‘I understand what you need.’

Guilt can find no purchase in him. It claws mindlessly without knowing why, drips off with his beading sweat. He does not notice the pained tears only just pricking the corners of his eyes.

Daniel sees his splayed fingers flat against the ground in front of him. Dazedly, he thinks he can watch the redness creeping over the back of his hand. 'Endanger yourself? Endanger?'

He peels his palm back up off the floor, blotchy with splitting blood vessels. Daniel does not have the faculties to dissect how he endangers himself, but he cannot drown out Armand’s warning, either.  

He hasn’t a choice but to trust his lover to help him understand. And why would Daniel wish for another choice? What could Daniel parse out down on his knees, where every direction is overwhelming except for the one where he cannot think anymore? Armand hands him relief willingly.

He hums, teeth biting down hard into his lip, and lifts his hand. It hurts when his fingers twitch.

"I want you to, please… tha-ank you, Armand."

Chapter Text

How quickly pain becomes a comfort for Daniel! Armand listens as his thoughts dissolve with each strike and come back like pins and needles in a constricted limb, less welcome each time they return. He watches Daniel begin to recognize that his confused, unruly thoughts are a burden, and suffering under Armand's direction becomes a release from that burden. Daniel doesn't understand, but he trusts Armand to do it for him.

'Trust me,' he echoes in Daniel's mind, as his hand peels back Daniel's twitching fingers to expose the throbbing, bruising palm. 'Yes, do. I'll be more trustworthy than you were.' 

He summons up the memory in Daniel's mind of Louis, his touch, his blood, dripping onto Daniel's tongue, but at the climactic moment when Daniel should remember the rush of the blood in his mouth, there is pain again. Armand has leaned down to press a kiss to Daniel's hand, and even this tenderness stings on skin so sensitive. From the way Armand keeps those fathomless eyes fixed on his face as he does it, he knows and counts on that sting. 

"I'm glad, Daniel. It's simpler when I make sense of it for you." Another hit. "You couldn't even track a single thought." Another. "You can't remember what you were thinking when you made the choice to disobey me." Another. They're coming faster now, underscoring every sentence, and for all the pain the blows deal, there's not a hint of exertion in Armand's voice to match. There is only the surreally cool condescension, the saccharine, mocking benevolence. "Do you even know how many blows you've taken?" Crack. "Of course not." Crack. "You weren't paying attention." Again. "But I was." Again. "I always am."

If he reaches, he can feel through Daniel's senses, and perceive Daniel's hand starting to go numb. Time to move on then. It's no good if Daniel stops being able to feel what's done to him. Sensation is key.

"Thirteen. It only took three to blur your thoughts. Seven to break you. That's how easy you are, Daniel." Armand informs him, calling back up Daniel's own word. 'I give in so easily. I'm easy.'

He steps back, and then that unnatural, invisible force works its way through Daniel's muscles again, puppeteering him, tucking his left, unmarred hand behind his back. Daniel's body begins to pitch forward as if to drop to its hands and knees, but there is only one hand free to support him, and it's the one he's granted Daniel control over — the one that hurts so terribly. Armand bends Daniel down without lifting a finger, giving him just a second to think about whether he will catch himself on the live nerves of his palm or let himself fall face first into the floor.

Chapter Text

Daniel is helpless to the memory replayed in his mind. Everything of his evening with Louis is saturated in flailing guilt, worst as he sees the beads of blood pooling over Louis’s collar ('I’m sorry! I’m sorry!'). He still manages to feel grateful when the guilt is overshadowed.

Pain sings across his twitching hand, all the way up his shoulder. The sensation of a warm mouth crawls through the protective blank haze overriding all his other senses ('Take it, take it, take it'). He whimpers and waits for teeth to sink into his palm, a second away from biting his tongue to swallow the howl it will elicit, but the teeth do not come.

The blows land over and over. It is a single, pounding wave of pain that swallows his arm, the hits inseparable from each other. He feels as if he has let go of anything except watching the peaks of pain that fall briefly into valleys and shoot back up. There is not a sliver of protest to be found. His noises are cut off through clenched teeth. He is seeing stars by the time Armand finishes with the next round with the crop. He drags in deep breaths, dripping in sweat. ('Thank you, Armand…! Easy… So easily.')

It snaps him out of the stupor when his body rearranges itself. There is a rush of disorientated and helpless panic as his undamaged arm curls behind his back. He cannot so much as control the place his fingers fall against his spine. And then he is tipping forward, falling—  He shoves his wounded hand to the floor thoughtlessly and cries out as it catches his weight, the cry spiraling into a tight-lipped moaning. A shudder wants to run across his body, but is drowned in his paralysis.

The bones strung from his knuckles stand out prominently beneath the skin. The muscles in his forearm are taut with strain, and his elbow wobbles so badly, he knows the slightest nudge would have him face first on the floor. He cannot understand how he has managed at all to keep himself held upright. He tries to rip the hand locked behind his back out of its prison to save him. Clashing against the instinct to protect his palm is nauseating. ('Breathe, come on, breathe…')

Chapter Text

"Since I'm handling the nasty thinking for you, dear," says Armand with a business-like manner, hearing and ignoring the rush of pain from Daniel's nerves, "I must say I feel there are some inconsistencies, some... omissions in your account. To be expected." 'Stupid. Foolish. Witless.' "Bear with me as I endeavor to clarify. You claim, quite desperately, that you did not know your transgression when you committed it because I had not made clear it was forbidden you. Meanwhile you attempted to conceal the truth from me out of guilt, which would seem to indicate that you knew you had done wrong and feared discovery."

He steps closer to the shaking, bent figure on the floor, scant inches shy of touching. With his head fixed downward, Armand knows Daniel can only see his shoes drawing nearer. He feels Daniel tugging against his psychic grip. Fruitless. The worm cannot even manage to squirm in its discomfort.

"And of course you deny that your tasting the blood meant anything because it was just a fix, when we both know a fix is the only thing that does mean anything to you. The only thing you care about. Even when you knew it was wrong." 

Daniel's senses are shocked again with the recollection of last night, but this time with a razor thin instant of memory. His thought, looping like a scratched record: 'Armand'll be mad, will he?, hot, god, hot.' 

"So you accepted it knowing it was wrong, knowing you would hurt me, Daniel. It is imperative that I clear all this up because you cannot be truly sorry if you don’t even understand your wrongdoing. And I cannot know how much penance you need serve if I do not know the severity of your willful sin." 

Sin. 'Penance' he had let slip too, but sin feels so much heavier, so much thicker a word in the mouth that has not dispensed sacred punishment since the days of darkness, since before Lestat. He did not bite it back in time, in his anger, but should mind it slipping out again — should avoid such an overt admission of how the zealot in him stirs awake in righteous wrath. That's not who he's been in years, not to Daniel. But then, Daniel's mind is too clouded to hear that difference, isn't it?

"You knew. Now that's bad enough. But is it all? Could it be worse?"

Another, slight step forward, placing his foot right beside Daniel's palm.

"Did you merely accept offered blood? Or did you ask for it? What sounds more plausible, Daniel? That reticent, withholding Louis thought to give it unbidden, or that grasping, greedy, addled little addict Daniel pleaded for it?"

Armand lifts his foot and sets it warningly over Daniel's hand. He does not press down, just leans his weight back on the heel, planted on the floor, and suggests, delicately, that he might.

"I think you begged him for it. That's right, isn't it, Daniel?"

Chapter Text

It is a cessation of mercy to let Daniel speak. 'You waste your breath, Daniel.'

Dully, he imagines Armand clawing through that shroud of blankness to draw Daniel back out, turn his jaw, and make him look at what he did. He’ll dissect his transgression from every angle and siphon out all the guilt and shame he deems necessary to rework the mess Daniel has made of himself. Daniel will take it until it is enough, and he does not want to stop until it is enough. He does not think he could stop until it is enough.

'I’ll be more trustworthy than you were.'

Of course, Daniel begged for it. It doesn’t matter if it took the form of words, he begs for it everywhere else. 'The only thing you care about.' Maybe Louis asked him to, maybe Daniel just dropped to his knees, or maybe Louis needed to be convinced. It doesn’t matter — he let Louis fuck him for it, and he’d let anyone else fuck him in exchange for something sweet to swallow.

'Easy, pathetic, stupid whore. Say "thank you, Armand."'

His whole body is pleading. It is always pleading. A directionless, maddened pleading. It has never stopped pleading, and it only ever grows more desperate.

He trembles worse as Armand steps closer, and he imagines, before it happens, his lover stepping on his hand, pressing down harder and harder, letting the pain escalate into a siren. Daniel is close to crying out for Armand to stop, but he chokes on the instinct and all that he allows himself is a tongue-bitten jagged humming.

Fear rips through him as his lover rests his shoe over the back of his hand, and in the reflexive jolt to snatch his hand away, his arm crumples beneath him. He falls face first atop Armand’s shoe. A slew of demands spill out madly: ('up! get up! get up!')

Anticipation and guilt weave together. Anticipation for where the crop will strike him next — he feels exposed with hips up and head bowed, shameful and unable to help himself. Armand will strike his ass or between his thighs, or make him spread himself open and strike his asshole. Then guilt as his hand twists around helplessly beneath him. He pushes on the backs of his knuckles, tries to bear down on the welt. He cannot register how much or little he hurts himself — the pain is only a sensation. He’ll pay a price for it later, and later does not matter. He makes a childish, frustrated noise as his hand slips out from beneath him.

If he could cast his gaze skyward, he would plead with streaming eyes, but he only nods at the floor, eyes squeezed shut.

"Yes—! I begged— I begged for it. Armand I can’t—!"

Chapter Text

This is when Armand knows that Daniel is truly broken — when his words come back to him over and over in Daniel's mind, looping without the need for Armand to put them there. Armand has come to learn what 'microphone feedback' means; this is the apt comparison. The sound of his voice echoing in Daniel's ears and then in his skull, ringing turning into a whining, turning into a pressing, aching tone that weighs on Daniel with its warbled rounds faster and faster until every word sounds all at once and in its fullest fullness.

There is a warp in the sound, in the mind, that comes under that oppressive tone. Armand can hear Daniel remember words he never said. Stupid whore. He wants to be indifferent to the word — whore. Somehow he isn't, for all the vitriol he's been capable of spitting at Daniel this evening, but he will not think why. Maybe it is a mercy that Daniel's down-turned face cannot see how the cold rage in his demon is compromised by a brow furrowed in ... confusion? Uncertainty? Unease?

It is too late to feel any of these things about what he is doing to Daniel. The path is set. He cannot stop it. He cannot divert it. The punishment works through him, its necessary tool and nothing more. He needs suddenly, in his power, to say he is nothing more.

Daniel collapses, and Armand lets the movement dispel his reverie. 

The boy behaved himself by not speaking out of turn, no matter how badly he wants to beg Armand not to step on his smarting hand, and now he tells Armand exactly what he wants to hear to justify rekindling his righteous anger. He is fond, almost, of the sensation of his ire, and glad to have a reason for the gratifying impulse toward sadism.

Daniel is afraid that Armand will punish more him for this fall. Daniel hopes, sick, that Armand will punish him for it. Is it relief or disappointment then when Armand removes his foot, picks Daniel up without touching him, gripping him in his mind,  and sets him back into position on his palm? Maybe there is disappointment, but Armand angles for the relief, further, thankfulness, as he speaks sweetly to his mortal.

"Oh no, you’re struggling aren’t you? It’s so hard to be good. But you want to be, I can see it — trying to get back up. Let me help. There, isn’t that better? I’m here to help you always, Daniel." 

A finger of the hand wrapped around the crop extends and then crooks up, and as if beckoned, Daniel's head snaps up. Teary eyes glisten in the lamplight. Armand asks, still so sweet, "My, have you a clue how stupid you sound? Needing me to prompt the thoughts so that they even make a modicum of sense? Begging me to think for you? I see that vacant, stumbling mind of yours, Daniel, and I know exactly what you were thinking last night. I knew you begged him for it. But it is embarrassing that you needed to be reminded of what the truth is. And I tell you that truth because I'm so kind. Now shall I get to the heart of it Daniel? The root of the problem that must be addressed? You forgot whose you are. You forgot what it means to belong to me. Because you're a desperate fool. And this is why you you can't explain it coherently. You need me to make it all make sense. There is nothing out there for you Daniel, not anywhere else, not with anyone else. And this is why you need your collar, need my hands on you, need my fangs in your skin: to remind you of your place and keep everything making sense. And feeling good. That's the base logic you can understand, isn't it, stupid, pretty boy? What feels good?"

The riding crop extends back toward Daniel, trailing against his jaw and over his lips. It pushes at those quivering lips just a bit, not enough to push through the circle of them and onto his tongue, but insinuatingly close.

"Oh," he says, feigning sympathy for the pathetic reality. "Oh, do you even know you're getting hard, Daniel? Does poor Daniel know what much? Why don't you have a look and see." And he pushes Daniel's face back down with the crop on the back of his head and directs him to look at the arousal growing between his legs.

Chapter Text

Armand rearranges Daniel back onto his palm, and he hears keening noises pulled out from behind his closed lips. The ugly ache rakes through his arm with renewed vigor. His tongue and teeth form the shape of thank you, but he can’t seem to make the sound.

It would have been better if invisible clawed fingers dug into his jaw to jerk his face upward. Instead, Daniel screams as his gaze snaps up of its own accord, a short broken off terrified sound sliced off by a staccato of tight breaths. His pale eyes are wide and glistening, casting everything in a warbling sheen as tears spill over and run down into his hair. He sees god distorted and haloed in the overhead light. His god that wants to hurt him. His god that wants to fuck him. Beautiful and merciless and needy. He can’t read anything in the features of the face above him carved of cold, unflinching stone. There is such a gentle voice dripping with affection, and Daniel could listen to it for hours ripping him apart from the inside out. It has been a long time since he has felt afraid of Armand.  

'You forgot whose you are.'

Somewhere in his foreground he sees the crop approaching almost lovingly. Yes, how could he have forgotten? He must be impossibly stupid to have needed reminding. The crop caresses his jaw and staggers his breathing, deep and hot. The tongue rests against his lips. He can’t tear his eyes from Armand. It feels like he is pleading for something without words, without thoughts. To fuck him? To stop? To hit him harder? Maybe Daniel is at his best when he is merely an inarticulate need.

'You forgot what it means to belong to me.'

The crop is a tease, traded out for his head pushed down between his legs. He can see the outline of his semi through the thin layer of grey fabric, but he can’t feel it. He would question if he is even in his own body if it weren’t for how badly his hand hurts. The shame of it blankets him, heavy and biting but familiar. He doesn’t feel like a person, he feels like a writhing wave of humiliation.

He wants Armand to shove his foot between his legs so he can rub against it. He wants the crop to push through his lips. He wants Armand to let go of him. Daniel whimpers, unable or unwilling to find a thing to say.