#i'm so ahakdahk gosh i missed them LOL

[thefullmolloy]

"Yeah?"

They're so close still, close enough Daniel's lips brush Louis' as he speaks and send an electric tingle traveling from his mouth down into the nerves of his jaw, into his carotid until it reaches his heart.

There's the urge to pull back further. Not to end things but to see how Louis looks right now- whether the little bit of mortal blood lingering in him from his last feed has rushed to his cheeks, if his hair is fanned out across the pillow. Daniel has seen him napping on the sofa at Trinity Gate enough to know that he looks gorgeous in repose, has even seen him overtaken by Armand once or twice. But this is different. This is because of him and he aches to see.

But distance now would mean the death of whatever is building between them. And he can't tear himself away from Louis' anyways; can't stop pressing his parted lips to the corner of Louis' mouth, the hollow of his cheek. Nudges the tip of his nose against Louis' and inhales the cold exhale of his breath. Slow, gentle touches while he waits for Louis to say something, anything, but it doesn't come.

It's not silent, exactly. There's the quiet rustle of the blankets, the tattoo of their pulses. Little sounds whenever Daniel's lips press a half formed kiss against cold skin, but still, something is stretching out, threatening to suck up the air in the room and so-

"I like you like this. I've thought about it before, you know. Silly mortal fantasies when I was alive, or sometimes after seeing you with Armand, but this is better than any of that."

The words tumble out of his mouth and into the pale skin of Louis' cheek before he can stop them. It's like being drunk. Liquored up and inhibitions down, the way he used to get when he was mortal and had a itch to be the one pushing Armand back onto the bed for once. Like he might as well say anything, put exactly what he wants out there while he's got the guts.

And maybe it makes sense that Louis is the one that's got him like this. It had, after all, only taken a handful of hours of talking to him in that little room in San Francisco for Daniel to go from shy and hesitating to a shameless, demanding thing.

He drags his nails over Louis' scalp. Nuzzles at his cheek again and lets the anticipation build, burning up the back of his throat with every low drum of Louis' pulse.

"I want to taste you," he murmurs. "It doesn't even matter how at this point. Fuck, you could cut your arm and I'd lick the blood off it if you just let me."

If anyone asks, he'll tell them Daniel started it.

He did, after all, in a way. He stared it when he opened his mouth at that bar. It would have been so easy to pick him off and drain him, but he'd started it when he looked at Louis with those hungry eyes full of curiosity and lust and that strange spark of cynical hope.

He started it. Louis is simply rolling the dice for what happens next.

He tries to think of this as a gamble. Tries to remove the act from the experience, as he always does. The worldview of the vampire is one of symbols, after all; every act in service to some higher aesthetic, some grand picture in which the logistics and fallacies matter so little.

This is an experiment, and he is calling Daniel's bluff.

And maybe, just maybe, if Daniel is kind enough, he will break away eventually, mutter something snarky under his breath before they both go about their business and never speak of this again. That's his hypothesis, anyway. That's what he hopes for.

And perhaps that is why Louis had taken his chances on this bet in the first place. Because the odds are 50/50. One of them must pull away first, and then it will all be over, and Louis will finally have the answer to the question that has been lurking in the recesses of his mind for years now: Does Daniel want him— truly want him— or will the remnants of that foolish mortal dream pass into oblivion with the disappointing reality now known to him?

He waits for Daniel to pull away.

And waits.

And waits.

And when he doesn't pull away, when he shifts and deepens the kiss, and clutches onto Louis' hair as he catches his lip between the razor's edge of his fangs, Louis feel something twist in his stomach as he realizes the odds might not actually be in his favor.

The thing is— it's easy, kissing Daniel. Not wolfish like Lestat, or all-consuming like Armand. It's something soft and slow and pleasant, even when the fangs come out. He wonders what it might mean, to have Daniel slice through the flesh and taste him after all these years. Will it live up to the fantasy? Will it live up to his maker?

It's Louis who pulls away, finally, as those questions fill his mind. He breaks the kiss, but only just so. Only just enough so that the danger of being known doesn't feel so imminent. He keeps his face close to Daniel's, feels his breath and his pulse and the fluttering of his eyelashes.

"I..." He starts, and for the first time in ages, he realizes that he has no idea what to say.