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“So…” said Assad, plopping down backward on the bench where Eric was eating his crafty. “Have you found him yet? Your vampiric self?”
Eric finished his chew. “Oh, years ago,” he said, grinning. “The issue’s been keeping him in check.”
“The Vampire Eric,” Assad said, matching his grin. “Is he better or worse, do you think, than the Vampire Daniel?”
“Definitely worse,” said Eric, wolfishly.
Assad sucked in a breath as he twisted one foot up onto the bench, facing Eric with his knee tucked to his chin. He looped his fingers around his calf and drummed his acrylics.
“How do you think it happened?”
“What?”
“The turning,” Assad said. “When I bit you. I mean, when Armand bit you. Daniel.”
“You’ll have to ask Rolin,” Eric said, stirring his rice bowl.
“I did,” Assad said, dropping his foot back to the ground so he was straddling the bench. He leaned forward, gripping the edge of the table to steady himself. “He said I’d have to wait and see.”
Eric tsked. “I mean, I get why he wouldn’t tell me…” His smile was slanting, self-aware. “But you’re a bank vault. You’re Fort Knox.”
Assad felt far too flattered by a compliment that he was about 87% sure had to do with American currency reserves.
“Don’t you think it would help you to know?” he asked, dropping his hands to the wooden plank in front of him, between them. He knocked his knuckles against it. “You have to play that last scene. Call me an asshole. But why am I an asshole?”
Eric laughed. “Where do I start? On Armand,” he clarified, needlessly. Assad’s chest felt warm.
“Do you think it was honestly spite?” he asked. He knew he should stop, let Eric finish his meal, but he couldn’t help pressing a little. Eric was still looking at him, focus fixed.
“I dunno,” said Eric, after a moment, abandoning his fork. “Maybe they just got drunk together and thought, what the hey.”
Assad chuckled and plucked at the fabric of his trousers. He liked that image: a détente, a drink, and then…
“Maybe we should run it,” he said, looking down at his lap.
Eric didn’t say anything at first, and pulled by a wave of panic, Assad glanced up, flushing.
Eric was looking at him, blue eyes sharp and accessing. A very Daniel Molloy look. Assad shifted again in his seat—something Armand, he thought vaguely, would never do.
“Yeah?” Eric said finally. “Like an improv thing?”
“Yeah,” Assad said. “Just for us. Just to give you…a sense of it.”
Eric nodded like he found this interesting. Assad’s flush settled into something less panicked, more pleasant and tingly.
“Okay,” Eric said, standing up, food unfinished. “If I’m not totally beat when we wrap tonight, I’ll come by your room. We can try it.”
Assad hoped he didn’t look overly eager as nodded. “Yeah, great, fab,” he said—a word hitherto unuttered ever in his life. He tried not to wince.
Eric smirked a little, too knowing. “See you in there, kid.”
Assad went and stood in front of one of the big industrial fans for a while. They had to redo his hair.
When the knock came, Assad was definitely not pacing around his hotel room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. That just moments before he’d been seated in the armchair, and moments before that he’d been leaning up against the desk—that was all immaterial.
He wiped his slightly damp palms on his thighs and forced himself to stroll to the door at a leisurely pace. As he prepared to unlock the door, he pasted the perfect nonchalant look on his face. “Hey,” he said, as he swung it open—casual, he thought. Almost indifferent.
Eric had a sparkle in his eyes that put paid to that. “Ready to get weird?” he asked. He tilted his head to expose his neck, like he was offering it to Assad.
“Haha,” Assad said, backing up to give Eric room to enter so that at least the entire hallway didn’t have to bear witness to what they were doing. “I don’t think I’d—he’d just jump him, do you?”
Eric sauntered in and Assad saw that he’d brought a six pack of Pilsner Urquell, which he set down on the TV cabinet. “I dunno, that would be pretty fun. Louis’s two feet out the door and Armand pounces.” He sank into the armchair with a slight grunt. “No polite conversation. Just fangs in throat. Efficient.”
“I think I liked your getting drunk scenario better,” Assad said, attempting a lean against the wall by the bed and then thinking better of it.
“Hence the beer,” Eric said, plucking a bottle out of the cardboard carrier as he rummaged in his pocket. He pulled out a Swiss Army knife and flipped up the bottle opener. Assad felt like he’d slipped into an American family film about a father-son camping trip, the kind that had left him with confused adolescent feelings about flannel and denim. “I’ve gone method,” Eric said, winking as he took a sip.
He tossed Assad the knife and Assad, after a small fumble, just managed to catch it. He couldn’t remember which slot the opener had come out of, so it took him a few shuffling attempts. “Armand hardly strikes me as a beer drinker,” he said, to cover for it. “Daniel either.”
“I tried to buy a canned Dukes martini at the corner store,” Eric said, “but they were fresh out.”
Assad giggled a little too robustly, then took a few steps forward with his bottle extended. “Cheers.”
They clinked. “Cheers,” Eric said. “To vampires.”
“To vampires,” Assad echoed. He took a sip; the beer was crisp and cold. It gave him something to do with his hands.
“This is a lifelong dream come true for you, isn’t it?” he said, picking at the label.
“Mm-hmm,” said Eric, lips around his bottle. “Finally earned my fangs.”
“So I think you should get to decide,” Assad said, nail beneath the label’s fake red seal. Following Sam’s advice, he’d gone for the actual acrylics and not the daily press-ons and was privately enjoying going around all the time with his own set of claws. “What’s your ultimate fantasy?”
“My ultimate fantasy?” said Eric.
Assad chanced a look up at him and immediately found himself pinned by his gaze. A vampire, he thought, would hear how his heart was racing. “Yeah, you know,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too strangled, “your dream scenario.”
“Hmm.” Eric took a long sip of beer, his throat working. Assad could see the fine white hair on his forearm where it rested along the arm of the chair, heavy-knuckled fingers drumming. “I think I want to be seduced.”
Assad gulped.
“That’s my fantasy,” Eric continued. “Armand seduces Daniel to the dark side.”
“Armand, right,” Assad said, before remembering—duh—that he was Armand. “Right, yeah,” he said, with more confidence. “I think I could see that. I could play that.”
Eric gave him a look like, go on.
Assad took a last sip of beer—for courage, or to blame this all on if it went absolutely pear-shaped—then set the bottle down next to the TV. He pressed his sharp nails into his palm and that grounded him, helped him remember who he was, who he was capable of being. He rolled his shoulders back.
“I think we have some unfinished business, Mr. Molloy.”
Did Eric’s breath catch? Later, he thought he could at least pretend that he saw Eric’s breath catch.
“I think we wrapped things up pretty thoroughly, actually,” Eric—Daniel—said, heaving himself up out of the chair, only a slight tremble in his right wrist giving the game away.
Assad merely inclined his head. “You think you’ve uncovered truth at the bottom of her well,” he said. Were references to 19th Century art seductive? Armand probably thought so. “But you have no idea how deep this goes. The holes in your own memory, still…unprobed.”
Eric’s mouth quirked for a moment before he got himself together. Assad tried not to smile too: he’d known he couldn’t resist a dirty pun.
“Oh, and I’m supposed to believe that now you’re just going to spill? Truth and reconciliation for you too, Armand?”
Armand was so self-serious but Assad knew he liked the slightly mocking way Daniel said his name.
He also would and could parry this strike easily. “You don’t know what I can offer you,” he said. “The thing you really came for. Not a chance to revisit the past. Not ten million dollars. Not even the truth.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “Fine, in the interest of hurrying this along, I’ll take the bait. ‘What’s that?’”
Assad felt his mouth spread into a sly, controlled smile. “A cure for Parkinson’s. A cure for everything, in fact.”
“Bullshit,” Daniel said, crossing his arms. Assad would not become distracted by Eric’s arms. Armand’s superior patience was his now.
“Not at all,” he said, gliding closer, keeping the movement subtle. Still he could see Daniel’s pupils widen, watching him. “As I told you, I live to serve.”
Daniel scoffed, though he looked shaken. “Reverting back to Rashid? Because that worked so well the first time.”
“Rashid couldn’t give you what I’m offering,” he said, and felt a rush of possessive desire fill his chest. He reached out a hand, like to a frightened animal. He shuddered a little, suddenly shakier than Daniel when his fingers brushed across his scene partner’s cheek. “Immortality, Daniel,” he said, taking full advantage of Armand’s elegant vowels. “Don’t you want to see if you were made for it, the way you’ve always secretly believed?”
Daniel batted his hand away. They both heard the slap of skin on skin, and Eric winced. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“No, no, this is good,” Assad whispered back. “Keep going.”
“I thought it repulsed you,” Daniel said, snapping back into focus. “Repulses you.” He stared up at Armand, defiant. “I think you just want an excuse to have at my throat. Still thinking about that aborted taste you got fifty years ago, huh, Armand?”
“Yes.”
Sometimes it was as simple as that. Assad had faith that his eyes conveyed the rest—the unspoken history between them, his longing, his bloodlust and simply his lust. It wasn’t much of an acting challenge at all, really.
He thought he saw Eric’s—Daniel’s—throat go dry, and that was very rewarding. Another thing to remember, to hold close. He could bring this out in Daniel—in Eric, who he so admired. It was a heady feeling.
Daniel—surely just Daniel—was collecting himself, looking away. “You know what,” he said, “I think you’re just lonely. Lonely and terrified of being alone. Abandoned by your maker, by Lestat, by Louis—”
Assad remembered that he was a predator; he knew Armand never forgot. He pressed forward, pinning Daniel up against the wall. “But not by you,” he insisted. “Never by you. You begged to stay with me forever.”
Daniel let out a somewhat anxious laugh. “What the fuck are you talking about? More mind games, Armand, really?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m through playing.” He tasted the cheese on his tongue from that wording—this was why they had writers—but managed not to crack. Assad saw Eric see him keep it together, and it felt like they had a little moment beneath Armand and Daniel’s moment—collaboration, unity. Assad held back a shiver.
Seeking Eric’s permission with his eyes, he wrapped a palm around the back of Daniel’s head. He wasn’t quite sure how memory restoration worked in the greater Vampire Chronicles lore, and he was sure Rolin would say what he was doing was a bit too Mr. Spock, but it felt right in this moment.
He looked deeply into Daniel’s eyes. They were the most insane, penetrating shade of blue—no contacts required. But he couldn’t lose himself in them; he had to concentrate. The dialogue would be subtle here, so he hoped Eric could figure out where he was going—follow him without being told.
“You’re still in there, aren’t you?” he said. “My beautiful, fascinating boy.”
Daniel sucked in a big breath. “Fuck.”
He didn’t say anything else for a long moment, and Assad began to worry he’d lost him. “Working in a little Devil’s Minion,” he whispered.
“Yeah, I’m digging it,” Eric replied, eyes on the floor like he didn’t want to break the illusion of Assad’s eyes staring back and not Armand’s. “Just trying to figure out how I should respond…” His head snapped up. “How the fuck I should respond to having a decade’s worth of memories shoved back into my head,” Daniel said, lashing out with a flailing fist. Armand easily caught it, held it against his chest.
“Let me give you what I couldn’t give you then,” he said. “When I was too much a coward. Too in love with you, the burning life in you, to tear it away—”
“So instead you left me, mindwiped me? Thanks a lot.”
Armand was rubbing circles into the back of Daniel’s hand, and despite his words, he didn’t pull away. Slowly, his fist unclenched. The air between them felt electric.
Great scene, Assad could imagine them saying, once this was done. Thanks. Terrific scene.
But they weren’t done yet.
“You’ve lived such a life,” he said. “I half thought, when I saw you again, I’d realize you were just an infatuation. A passing human fancy. But you fascinate even more than before.”
“I beat you,” Daniel said, with shameless pride, “at your own game.”
He inclined his head, studying his former lover, his current prey. “You did.”
Daniel’s tongue moistened his lips. Assad fluttered inside the greater vessel of Armand like a trapped butterfly. “You like that.”
“I’ve always liked you, Daniel.”
A shaky laugh. “I suppose the torture should’ve been a clue?”
“We both came up with more…mutually stimulating torments, later,” Armand said, Assad half shocked at the words coming out of his mouth. He felt possessed. “If you recall.”
“Well now I do,” said Daniel. And then softer, changed: “Now I do.”
His hand slipped around Armand’s side, slid up to grasp at the back of the t-shirt Armand would never wear.
Maybe it was that break in immersion that made Eric laugh a little and say, “I feel like we should kiss.”
Assad laughed in a manner he hoped conveyed something other than please please please please please…
“Would that be weird?” Eric asked, looking up at him.
Somehow Assad managed to shake his head. “I told you we were going to,” he said. “From the very beginning.”
“Might as well get in some practice,” Eric said, nodding. “Dramaturgically sound.”
“Method,” Assad agreed.
They were both nodding now, nodding and laughing—getting loose! Hanging out! They’d lapse into the lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue next—
They both moved at the same time. Their noses crashed. “Jesus,” said Eric, “where’s the intimacy coordinator when you need her?”
Assad would laugh again. Assad would diffuse, deflect. Assad would open his mouth and say, the tip of the tongue, the teeth, the lips—
Looking at them, Eric’s lips—mobile and clever, pink with the imprint of his front teeth—he let Armand take the wheel.
Armand, who grabbed Eric, insistent hand in his hair, and tilted his head up to kiss him.
Eric made a shocked sound, followed by a pleased one. His hand found a new fistful of Assad’s shirt. His leg inserted itself neatly between Assad’s and rubbed, dirty.
“Jesus,” said Eric again, when they broke apart, gasping. “Fuck me. This is such a bad idea.”
“The scene,” Assad insisted desperately, trying not to hump Eric’s leg while they were still in the process of negotiating.
“Fuck the scene,” Eric said. “You get that this isn’t—?”
Assad knew his eyes must look wild. He knew how he looked: babyfaced, naïve. But he was an adult—he was in his fucking thirties!—and he knew what he wanted. He’d said it—dropped hint after hint after hint, time and time again.
“I know. I know,” he insisted. “Please, Eric— Just let me—”
He tugged him toward the bed—barely a pull, more of an eager suggestion.
“I want—” he said, inarticulately—why were his writers on strike again, now? He held Eric’s gaze and tried instead to drag it down the length of his own body to where he hoped his desire was dramatically evident.
He saw Eric’s eyes widen. His gaze flickered back up to Assad’s face, and Assad flushed, not unpleasantly. “Christ, you must be fucked in the head,” Eric said, suddenly moving with him, pulling Assad down into a kiss, licking into his mouth.
“You like that in a man,” Assad murmured when he came up for air. “You and Daniel have that in common.”
“Ha,” Eric said. He grinned as the backs of Assad’s thighs hit the mattress and he fell back, tugging Eric down, half on top of him. “Guess what, though? I’m even more shameless.”
He wriggled out of his shirt. Assad grasped at his bare skin, greedy. “Is this like… a thing for you?” Eric asked, as Assad licked over his nipple, rubbed his face in his coils of white chest hair, delirious with the reality of this happening. “No judgement,” he added, twining his fingers into Assad’s hair. “Just mentally preparing myself in case you call me daddy.”
“Do you want me to?” Assad asked, looking up through his eyelashes. He did not need Armand’s help with that particular look—that one he knew how to do all on his own.
“Well I do now,” said Eric, in a way that sounded vaguely familiar.
Assad forced himself to swallow, to take a breath.
“Earn it,” he said.
Eric growled. He grabbed Assad by his belt loops and dragged him further up the bed. Assad allowed himself to be dragged, giddy with it, punch-drunk.
“Strip,” Eric commanded.
Assad divested himself of his clothes with rapidity. Eric moved more slowly, watching him with burning eyes. “You can come to your senses anytime,” he murmured, once Assad was fully naked, reclined on the drab duvet.
Assad tried a pout.
It was very effective. Eric pressed flush against him, kissed him again as his hand moved between their bodies and found Assad’s prick, wet and leaking against his belly. He could feel Eric’s cock hard against his hip: it was gloriously thick and made Assad instinctively spread his legs. He locked his thighs around Eric’s thighs and helped get them moving together, bodies slicking with sweat, their hot breath something they passed back and forth like the energy in a scene, in sync.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” Eric mumbled. “Look at you. Look at you.”
“I want you so bad,” Assad breathed back. “You make me insane, Eric.”
A huff. “Evidently.”
“Stop it,” Assad said.
Eric froze.
Assad’s eyes fluttered open, wide. “No, no—” He pet the back of Eric’s head. “I didn’t mean that. I mean stop putting yourself down. You’re so insanely sexy.”
Eric tilted his head. “As a writer I have to note that you do keep using language that suggests mental imbalance.”
“Those are the words!” Assad said. “That’s what people say!”
Eric furrowed his brow at him, which was—dammit—also very sexy.
He stroked along Eric’s shoulder. “Do you think Daniel will be insecure the first time he and Armand have crazy coffin sex?” he asked.
“Everyone’s insecure,” Eric said.
Assad let his long acrylic nails dig in, just a little bit.
“Fuuuuuck,” said Eric, shivering, grinding down against Assad again, so Assad pressed in harder. “I can’t wait to get my own set of those.”
“You want to be a vampire sooooo bad,” Assad teased, and scraped deliberately down Eric’s shoulder blades.
“Yeah, I’m a freak,” Eric said, smirking again. He kissed Assad and finished it with a nip to his lower lip. “It’s freaks all the way down in here.”
“I mean, actors,” Assad said, losing his wry tone when Eric brought both their cocks together in his fist. He let out a little whimper, back arching off the mattress. “Oh, please—”
“Please, what?” Eric asked, but Assad sucked in a shaky breath, and clamped his jaw shut. Not yet.
“Oh, I see,” Eric said. “You think I do this with all my costars, is that it?”
Assad mewled with indifference, and clutched at Eric’s sweaty back.
“Not since I was a young pup,” Eric said, thumb rubbing over the slit of Assad’s cock. “Younger even than you.” He let go suddenly and tapped at Assad’s hip. “Turn over.”
He was probably too eager: face down and ass up with his nose pressed against the pillow before he could have a conscious thought.
“Fuck, your thighs,” Eric said, calloused fingers caressing the soft skin between them, kissing against the taut skin of his sac. “You just bring it out,” he continued, breath hot on the back of Assad’s neck. “The animal in me.”
Assad’s legs were trembling. He wasn’t having thoughts so much as experiencing a semi-liquid sequence of time, trying to cling to individual images as they flickered past, both to be in the moment he’d so long awaited, and to remember.
Eric wrapped a steadying arm across his chest. He was still wiry, all compact coiled energy. “Can I fuck your thighs, baby?”
Assad nodded vigorously. He could feel sweat drip out of his hair and splat against the duvet.
“Mm, gonna need you to use your words, babe,” Eric said, petting his hip, squeezing his asscheek.
“Please,” he begged.
Eric sounded impish. “Please, what?”
There was no conscious decision to let him have it. “Please, daddy.” His breath stuttered. “Please fuck my thighs.”
Assad wished he could see Eric’s face. The sucker-punched sound of his breath would have to do. “Shit, that’s…” Assad heard him swallow. “Anything for you, sweetheart.”
They were both already quite slick, but he felt Eric smear his quaking thighs with more dripping precome, then tug him back against him. That fat cock slid between his legs and Assad clenched, made Eric a hole to fuck. It was fantastic with his ass in the air and his face smashed against the pillow, then better still when Eric hauled him up, arm wrapping back around his chest, so that he could twist around into a kiss.
“How are your knees?” he asked, unable to help himself, even through the haze.
“Fuck you,” Eric said, snapping his hips so that the tip of his cock fucked against Assad’s balls as they drew tight. “Should come on your hole and leave you begging.”
Assad whined, picturing it.
“Maybe next time,” Eric said, roughly palming Assad’s cock.
He barely managed to get his hand fully around it before Assad was shaking apart, spurting all over the fingers he’d spent so many days imagining sucking on. He toppled forward, mind pleasantly blank and Eric’s hands on him, Eric’s scent all around him, Eric’s voice in his ear: “There you go, gorgeous.”
When he came back to himself, he did roll over groping for Eric’s hand, and he did take his come-splattered fingers and suck them into his mouth, laving them clean with little kitten licks. After daddy, it didn’t seem like such a big deal.
Eric was staring down at him, wonderingly. Assad basked in that for a minute. Then he blinked. “You’re still hard.”
Eric flushed and shrugged, one shouldered. “I can still get it up no problem, but sometimes it takes me a while to…y’know, finish.”
“Humblebrag,” Assad said.
“Less of one than you’d think at my age!” Eric insisted.
Assad regarded him. Then he pushed Eric gently onto his back.
“I think I know what will do the trick,” he said.
Eric looked up at him questioningly, and his answering smile was no less toothy for being technically without fangs.
“We never did finish the scene.”
“Are you ready, beloved?” Armand asked. “For me to give you the Dark Gift? To become my first and only fledgling?”
“Yeah, yeah, come on, bite me already,” said Eric, too close to really stay in character, his prick straining in Assad’s fist. “I mean it, Assad—you can really clamp down. Give the makeup department something to gossip ab—”
His speech devolved into a wordless moan as Assad laid bare the pale skin of Eric’s throat and bit as hard as he could.
For a second he thought he’d actually broken the skin. Eric’s hips were bucking as he spurted wildly onto Assad’s chest and belly. Assad’s could taste the salt of Eric’s skin, wet with his own drool, tinged with just a hint of copper. Eric’s hands came up and shakily stroked his head.
Assad raised his eyes. He was surprised to find he was a little teary. Everything felt magnified, intense. Eric’s blinding blue eyes were burning into him.
“I think I get it now,” Eric said finally. “How to play that last scene. Why Daniel’s so pissed.”
“Oh,” said Assad. Thinking: Right. Of course. The scene. The scene.
“After having this,” Eric said, then added hastily, “with Armand…”
“Right,” said Assad. His heart was pounding.
“Who the fuck would ever want to let it go?”
Assad couldn’t say what he was thinking. This wasn’t in the script. And Armand, he thought—well, they both knew what Armand would do, apparently. Run away.
But he wasn’t Armand.
So, holding eye contact as long as he could, he lowered his lips to Eric’s neck and pressed them gently against the ghostly imprint of his teeth.