Chapter Text
With the help of the Mind Gift, the window of the hotel room shut silently behind Armand as he passed through it. Daniel was asleep, he’d sensed it from outside, and he didn’t wish to wake him just yet.
The hotel was mid-range. Far shabbier than where Armand would choose for him, someday, but much better than some of the filthy roadside hovels Daniel had moved through over the past years. The darkness didn’t obscure Armand’s vision but he took his time to scan the room before his eyes landed on the green paisley duvet of the hotel bed. It was on the floor.
Daniel was on the bed. He was laid out haphazardly, as he often was, but the sight was still arresting. Armand had been away months. Unavoidable. Louis had taken another bad turn. Some meddlesome want-to-be coven had sprung up in Los Angeles, far too close to his and Louis’ nest. And then Louis’ bad turn had continued. And Armand had picked off a few other groups and individuals just to keep his teeth sharp.
All this to say, it had been too long since he’d seen his boy. And Daniel, despite the messy sprawl, was beautiful. Something about the drape of the olive-green polyester sheet around him evoked the image of Roman youth, or perhaps a young god. Or simply the eroticism of the lovely early 18th century nude paintings. And nude Daniel was.
The sheet covered his right shoulder, and fell to the side until it crossed over his right thigh, trapped under his left. Face down, he also had managed to scrunch up some blanket or pillow under one of his hips, raising his ass just a little into the air, giving his back the tiniest arch. Armand felt the itch of his fangs.
It was, as he always had to remind himself when he was around Daniel, essential that he maintain control. Still, he paced towards him. He would wake the boy eventually anyway. It was only as he rounded to the foot of the bed, that he saw what he had been too distracted to notice before.
The bruises on Daniel’s rear and thighs should have been harder to miss. Scratches ran down his back as well. Light, just from human nails, but marking him all the same. Armand couldn’t stop the silent snarl that curled his lips.
In barely a moment, he was on the bed, straddling Daniel’s knees and examining every mark. A new flash of anger ran through him when he saw all the bruises bitten into Daniel’s neck. The back of his neck.
Armand pushed Daniel over and did not like what he saw. More bruises on the front of his neck, maybe even a handspread. More bites on his chest, some more scratches at his ribs.
Daniel murmured in his sleep at the movement and twitched his leg where it had gotten even more tangled in the sheet. At another time, Armand might have had to deny how sweet he found that. In this moment, though, it was not warmth that filled him but a furious kind of heat. Someone else, several someone elses, had marked his boy.
Armand noticed the smell next. Not of this faceless group of people Armand would dearly like to drain slowly and painfully. No, this smell was just his boy. Daniel had fucked himself to sleep. Yes, his hands smelled so strongly of his own cunt that Armand’s fangs extended before he had a chance to think, and his cock began to harden as well. Daniel hadn’t gotten up to clean himself after. Not even up to urinate after the penetration, then. A dirty little fuck into his mattress and then fast asleep. Armand wondered if Daniel had been thinking about how he’d gotten all these marks while he did it, and his stomach twisted unpleasantly.
Daniel certainly wasn’t dazed with lust anymore, though. There was a blink of recognition in his mind as he seemed to sense Armand. His eyes fluttered and, still more than half asleep, he reached weakly up at the vampire. To pull him, as he mumbled, “back to bed, babe.” It was unbearably tender.
Armand grabbed Daniel’s wrists and slammed them back into the bed above his head. That woke Daniel up.
“Fuck!” Daniel tried to scramble away, and realized how trapped he was by Armand’s body. He didn’t stop struggling. “What the hell, man?” The soft recognition in Daniel’s mind had pivoted into a very real anger of his own. As if he had any right.
Armand just stared back at him, not bothering to blink.
“What?” Daniel spat. “You’re jumping me awake after disappearing for three fucking months. What do you want? ‘Welcome home’?”
Maybe he had. It stung, to have wanted and not to have received. Armand turned the sting into a snarl. “I see you’ve been keeping yourself busy.”
He watched as green eyes flicked down, and Daniel remembered all the evidence left on his skin.
“What, this?” Daniel’s voice rose. “This?” He laughed. And it was mean. But the emotions rolling off of him were a strange mix of satisfaction and something that was about to make the boy sob. “Are you kidding me? You were gone. How am I ever supposed to know you aren’t gone for good, asshole?”
He shook his head. “You can’t be fucking serious to get mad about me getting laid. You’ve thrown me into bed with a dozen people—not really asking if I wanted to, by the way–and you’ve barely done more than kiss me in, what, a year? More?”
“You bear evidence of your recklessness,” Armand said, trying to keep his voice level.
“You drink my fucking blood, man,” Daniel snapped. “Who’s being reckless with my life?”
Armand’s hand closed around Daniel’s throat before he had actually decided to choke him. It was the urge to stop Daniel, his beloved, from thinking for another moment that Armand would ever be anything close to careless with him.
“You should be more careful with what belongs to me.”
Daniel snarled back at him. His anger was real, but Armand also smelled his arousal. Predictable. Incorrigible. Sick in the head, certainly. And always, always Armand’s.
“What, you don’t wanna hear all about it? Got four guys to take me home and one of them brought his girlfriend. They all seemed fine with me taking everything, though. You know, it really helps relieve the fucking tension—”
Armand tightened his hand around Daniel’s throat. If he had orchestrated it himself, he would have wanted to hear every detail. Or, more accurately, would have been present for all of it. He would have been whispering in Daniel’s mind the entire time, pushing and pulling in the minds of the others, so that every action was approved by Armand before it took place.
This had not been that.
“You will not do this again,” Armand said evenly.
Daniel was starting to choke in earnest. Armand eased his grip on the boy’s throat.
“Oh yeah?” Daniel rasped. “Why? Tell me why, say it again.”
His anger was not lessened but that feeling of triumph Armand had sensed earlier was overwhelming it. And his arousal was still intense.
Armand tightened his grip again, letting the points of his nails almost break the skin of Daniel’s neck. “Because you are mine.”
And he let up on Daniel’s neck just in time to hear the desperate, guttural moan that his words tore from Daniel’s throat.
“Fuck, Armand,” Daniel panted. “I know. I know. Show me. Fucking show me, Boss.”
“I will show you.” Armand leaned down. His voice steady, despite the rage he still felt roiling through him. He let his lips brush Daniel’s ear. “I will show you that it is my will that matters, Daniel, not yours.”
Daniel whined in the back of his throat and nodded frantically.
“I’ll show you that when you defy me, you do not get what you want,” he hissed. “Because I’m back with you now, beloved, and I will be every night. And I. Won’t. Touch. Where they marked you.”
Daniel froze. “What?”
Armand sat up, resting on Daniel’s knees. “If there is a mark on your skin, I will not touch you there until it’s faded.”
Daniel just stared up at him, for once at a loss for words. Armand stared back coldly. It was as much a punishment for himself as it was for Daniel. But Armand was used to such treatment. And Daniel had to learn.