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“The man fed me so well that sometimes I thought I was being kept by him like a fatted calf to be sold for food.” — The Vampire Armand
“And he had started eating, lustily, furiously-a little fish, a little beef, a little veal, a little sweetbreads, a little cheese, a little everything, put it all together, what did he care, and Armand had been so delighted, laughing and laughing like a schoolboy as he sat watching, with folded arms." —Queen of the Damned
—
They fed him well on the ship. Liked their wares healthy. Slapped the ones who couldn’t keep it down, the ones whose bones protruded from hollow spines as they curled and retched. Wicked boys, they’d say. Ugly doesn’t sell. But Arun wasn’t ugly. Fingers prodding at his belly, his cheeks. Swallowing back nausea and doing his best to keep down bread even as the ship tossed in the waves. The good houses would pay well for this one, they said, squeezing hard into his flesh. And they were right.
—
Armand orders Daniel everything off the menu. An experiment, maybe, or just a passing amusement. His motivations are sometimes opaque even to him. What Armand doesn’t expect, however, is for Daniel to actually eat it all.
Armand watches the boy in disbelief. Spite animates his movements, the quick working of his jaw. So vicious as he spears the fish, the tarts, the lamb; such anger beneath those softly curling lashes, as if he were not but a lamb himself. Delighted, Armand begins to laugh.
Daniel’s eyes catch on him before he drains his glass, staring at the table. He’s trying to maintain his composure, but Armand can read his regret, his growing discomfort. His skin is flushed from the wine. His stomach is straining against his jeans.
Armand waits until Daniel sets down his fork. Then he reaches across the table and undoes Daniel’s belt.
The boy’s face reddens with embarrassment. Armand works at the buttons, feels the tremble of Daniel’s skin against his fingers, and the sigh that draws out of him as his stomach relaxes outward is too immediate to be anything but instinctive. Armand’s fingers ghost over the curve of Daniel’s belly, just the barest touch, then he draws his hands to his lap. Leaves the boy resting there, head tipped back, eyes half-lidded, breathing heavily.
—
Arun lost weight in the brothel. The madam was angry with him for it. “No one likes paying for bones,” she’d say, so much like the men on the ship. But this time it didn’t matter. Even when she hurt him, quick lashes on the undersides of his feet and backs of his ankles and other places that wouldn’t drive down his price even further, it didn’t make a difference.
Arun had made a discovery. He’d found that if he ate little enough, he could sometimes enter a dream-like state. His mind slowed, his senses dulled. Things happened to him, but they seemed to happen outside his being. He was not in his body, that weak, sullied animal. He was in the water. He was in the trees.
The animal withered more every day. But the madam was wrong, because the bones didn’t stop the man in red velvet from paying more money than any of them had ever seen to take him home.
—
Amadeo would not eat with the other boys, not at first. His appetite was small. A muscle wasted from lack of use. This displeased the Master, Amadeo knew, and he braced for blows like the madam’s, but somehow he understood it would be worse this time. He had eaten little in this palazzo yet remained tethered to his flesh no matter what.
But Marius did not strike him. His hands were as gentle as they always were. Caressing touches. Dim, drowsy light filtering through the curtains. Amadeo began to relax. It was safe, here in this bed, here with the one he loved. Red silks, red velvet, red lips of his Master. Red grapes pressed into Amadeo’s mouth, skin tender and juices wondrously sweet. More fruits, at first, then soft cheeses and meats. Breads with rich oils. Delicate cakes filled with cream. All delivered into Amadeo’s lips by his master’s own hand. Chasing the crumbs from the smooth, cold palm.
—
Armand waits for Daniel in his hotel room.
“What is it this time,” Daniel asks warily, eyeing the spread of room service. “Breakfast in bed?”
“Yes,” Armand says, unmoved when Daniel snorts. “It’s best to be comfortable when feeding, is it not?”
“Whatever,” Daniel says. He flops onto the bed, all gangly limbs and languorous energy. He doesn’t fear Armand, not anymore, although he hasn’t yet admitted it to himself. But how else could he be so relaxed around a predator? Armand watches Daniel stretch his arms above his head, t-shirt riding up to reveal a pale flash of skin, stomach poking out just slightly over the top of his boxers. Fangs press through Armand’s gums. He bites his own lip and draws blood.
—
Marius didn’t force him. Not at first.
Amadeo spent his daylight hours with the other boys. Learned to eat with them, to make friends with them, to study from their tutors and subsume into the rhythms of the house. But always he ached for his master’s bed. The womb-like safety of its satin sheets; the cold embrace of his master’s body, so comforting despite its hardness. Amadeo himself was not such a spiky creature, not anymore. Everyday he grew less the brittle, wounded animal; fit better into the role of sturdy angel. His master was pleased, and it thrilled something in Amadeo to please him, to have that most precious ability even minutely in his control. Marius would run his hands over Amadeo’s body, pinch the flesh of his cheeks between long fingers and whisper with lips on his throat what a good cherub he was becoming.
How desperately Amadeo wanted to keep being good for him. To be so good his master would never leave. But he was willful, impertinent by nature, a wicked streak that made him raise his tongue beyond sense, beyond even the generous lenience his master gave him. Amadeo knew this but couldn’t always help himself, and when the nights alone followed, he knew with terrible, panic-scrabbling guilt it was his own fault.
But his master responded well to contrition. Feed me, Amadeo would implore, because he knew how his master liked to hear it. Liked to have Amadeo on his back, swathed in silks, cold white fingers in his mouth. Knew how he liked it himself, the relief of surrendering to his master’s control.
Rich foods. Sweet wines. Amadeo was now a plump thing, soft and pretty. His master told him so, tracing the round curve of his cheek, the swell of his hips and thighs. His cherub child. His angel. He fed Amadeo until his stomach was full, and then sometimes he’d feed him beyond that. It hurt, in those moments. And Amadeo would open his mouth to say stop, wait, no more. But the words wouldn’t come. Died in his throat. His mouth, opening and closing mechanically, his stomach taut and aching. Laying on the bed when it was finished, barely able to move, breathing ragged. His master’s hands on his belly, massaging the tender curve. Punishment and reward bundled into one. Cold lips pulling at the buds of his breasts. Sharp, stinging pain. Ecstasy rising in equal measure.
—
Daniel pulls a plate close to him and spears a sausage carelessly. Chews with wet, smacking noises. Shovels down a golden flaked pastry, crumbs showering his chest, sticking to his chin. Messy thing. Armand draws closer.
Daniel eats a good portion, then sets his fork aside. “Okay,” he says. “Where are you chasing me today? ‘Cause to be honest, I’m dead tired from last night and I don’t really feel like running.”
Armand runs his finger along the rim of one of the plates. “You haven’t finished your breakfast,” he says mildly.
“Yeah, I have.” Daniel rolls his eyes, shoves a pillow behind his neck and leans back against the headboard. “You thinking about the other day? Look, pal, I hate to disappoint, but I can’t eat like that on the regular.” He’s blasé, dismissive. Too casual. It only takes a skim of his mind to read the shame underneath. The disgust he’d felt for himself as he couldn’t stop. The perverse thrill of Armand’s hands at his stomach, the implicit absolution that touch had given him.
Dig deeper, and the boy’s memories yield more. Years of losing battles against self-control. Drugs, drink. Food. A shame more private than even his other addictions. Hunched over the pantry shelf, eating until there was nothing left. Stale crackers. Jars of peanuts. Entire loaves of bread. Divorced from taste or enjoyment. Powerless. Wretched hatred for himself during and afterwards. Scrambling for the clean high of coke, not eating for days to balance the scales. Hunger insistent enough that he breaks down and stuffs himself until his stomach nearly splits, cycle repeating in a sick loop. Out of control.
Armand considers. Tilts his head. Says, calmly, “I believe I’ll decide that for you, from now on.”
Daniel scoffs. Then, when it’s clear Armand isn’t joking, he swallows hard. The line of his throat bobs. He wants to protest, Armand can tell. He shouldn’t. Doesn’t he see what a gift Armand is offering? Surrender, and the shame goes away. Armand can liberate him. If the boy only says yes.
—
Amadeo liked his body. Liked the muscles in his arms and legs that propelled him on walks all across the city, the way it could run and dance and jostle with the other boys and seldom grow tired. Liked how it looked in the clothes his master dressed him in, dreamy blues glowing against his brown skin, luxuriant fabrics that clung pleasingly to the fat on his middle and hugged the curve of his thighs. He was much warmer than Arun had ever been. His hair was far more lustrous, long and darkly shining with curls. His cheeks were soft and round like a boy’s. Even as he neared twenty-five, his master told him, he looked almost as young as he had at fifteen. The master said it lovingly, and this was a good thing, Amadeo knew. This was important. Not just to his master, but to the artists he would soon be instructed to pose for. You’re such a good boy, Amadeo, his master had said. It would be selfish to keep you all to myself.
“Bellissimo angelo,” the first artist said, sizing him up, nodding. “Now without the tunic, I think.”
Amadeo removed it dutifully, sat straight-backed on the stool. “No,” the artist said. “Lean a little, mi angelo.” And he guided Amadeo’s elbow to rest on his knee, head pillowed in his palm. Sitting like this pressed his stomach into soft rolls, and before he could blink the man’s pawing hand was sliding over them. “Little cherub hasn’t missed many meals, has he,” the man laughed, squeezing at the jut of his lower belly, and Amadeo’s face burned. Sudden urge to strike him. To rip himself free. But why? Didn’t his master use the same words? Didn’t his master touch him in the same place? But this man was not his master, and Amadeo was not so little. He was tall. He was strong. If he straightened, he would tower over this weak-limbed man. Could snap his wrists like so much fragile kindling.
Be good for him, Amadeo, his master had said. Cold lips on his ear. As you are good for me.
How wrong they were to call him angel. Numbing shame at the betrayal of his master, even in thought. His master, who had given Amadeo everything, his name and home and unearned mercy.
Amadeo did not straighten. Did not snap the man’s wrists. Did not flinch as the hand on his belly traveled lower. Bellisimo angelo. He would not correct them. He was not good, but he would not stop trying. He had never left the boat and never would.
—
Daniel’s eyeing him. His hand draws reflexively to his stomach, and then away. “So what do you really want?” he asks finally.
Armand smiles without teeth. Clever boy. He takes a moment before answering. Settles himself in the gap between Daniel’s legs, reaches out to grasp Daniel’s jaw. “Control,” he says. His thumb brushes over Daniel’s lips. “I think you want this as well. Someone to take it from you.” His other hand slips into Daniel’s jeans. “To tell you when to sleep,” he continues as Daniel’s breathing turns to a rasp, “How much to eat. How to dress. How to fill the interminable hours of your empty life.” His fingers twist over the head of Daniel’s hardening cock, and Daniel’s hips twitch with the effort of keeping still. “When to come.”
Daniel’s panting. His hot breath over Armand’s thumb.
“Is that what you want?” he asks, and Daniel whispers, “Yes.”
Armand’s lips curl. He draws his hand out of Daniel’s pants even as the boy’s hips buck to chase the contact. He lets go of Daniel’s face and reaches for the last plate. Just a few soft biscuits left. Daniel had done most of the work on his own, but Armand needs to test him.
He picks one up and pushes it into Daniel’s mouth. Daniel opens his lips obediently. Chews, swallows. Takes the next one with only a soft groan, and then the next. Daniel has never been bones like Arun, but he’s boyishly slender, lightly muscled with just a bit of baby fat still softening his frame. His stomach swells tight and full now, rounded like a puppy’s, and he whines when Armand rubs his cold fingers into it. Up and down, sliding over the sides. He knows from memory how good that feels. But it’s not right, and nausea presses darkly down on him. His master’s soothing hand, but hadn’t his master brought that pain in the first place? Daniel curls into him and whimpers, belly quivering under Armand’s touch, and it sickens him suddenly to have dealt him this pain at all. I’m sorry, he thinks desperately. He can’t say it aloud. Keeps one hand rubbing into Daniel’s belly as the other slips down around his cock. Apologizes in the way he learned best.
—
The artist gifted the painting to his master when it was finished. Amadeo recognized himself from the pose, but the details were all wrong. The dimpling flesh of his ass and thighs was rendered baby-smooth. The spidering marks that climbed his hips and belly were nonexistent. His skin was lightened to an unrecognizable cream. His eyes were vapid, empty.
It didn’t look like Amadeo at all.
Amadeo said as much, one night in bed, cradled in his master’s arms for the first time in weeks. His master had been traveling more and more of late. Whenever he returned, he was harried, less affectionate than he’d been, and a knot of cold fear had been growing like a tumor in Amadeo’s chest. But tonight, his master held him like he used to. Played idly with one of Amadeo’s small breasts while they talked about nothing. Amadeo brought up the ugliness of the painting with a laugh, expecting Marius to agree. How wonderful it would be to see his master smile.
His master did not smile. Did not laugh. His hand stilled on his chest, then went to Amadeo’s face to force him to look at him. “Dear boy,” he said. His thumb dug into the soft flesh below Amadeo’s chin. His eyes were chips of blue ice. “Surely you cannot begrudge an artist for seeking to paint beauty unmarred by common flaws.”
Everything in Amadeo ran cold. “Flaws?” he repeated, then bit his tongue. He had worked so hard to rid himself of his youthful impertinence. Success varied.
“Amadeo,” his master chided with a sigh. “Do not be tiresome. You know you are beloved.”
Yes. Named to be so. Beloved by God. The one in heaven; the one in this bed. But that wasn’t good enough. Not after so much time spent alone, waiting for his master’s return, dreading the day it wouldn’t come.
Amadeo wrenched himself away. “Tell me my flaws, then, Master, so that I might correct them.”
The words came out more bitter than he intended, but he couldn’t bring himself to walk them back. Because what could he even do? If his master wanted the version of him in the painting, it was impossible. He could not slip on a new skin.
“There’s nothing to correct,” his master said, gentle, tender, reaching out to stroke Amadeo’s waist, and Amadeo relaxed fractionally. Then his master added, “It’s only natural, sweet one. To remain a cherub as long as you have is impressive. Do not mourn when your tenure draws to its natural end.”
The ice in Amadeo’s chest exploded. “Natural end—? What, have you been planning to toss me out like so much spoiled food? Are you keeping some other boy in a palace somewhere—is that where you’ve been going all this time? Tending to another prize angel you’re only going to fatten up and abandon at market?”
Wild, harsh words. Voice rising louder than he’d dared it. Amadeo would be twenty-six by the end of the season. He was the oldest in the house by years. He should not have been as blindsided as he was. Cherubs were children. Despite his best efforts, Amadeo was a man.
“You should have turned me,” he spat, something rising in him that’s been festering for years. Vicious. Ugly. “Made me like you. Plucked me off the vine at seventeen, fresh-faced, ripe, if you knew all along I would spoil—”
Sharp crack. Ringing in Amadeo’s ears. Taste of blood in his mouth. Belatedly, he realized his master had hit him.
His master had struck him before, of course. Cold palm or slender whip. Across his buttocks, his thighs, his belly. Never more than he could handle; stop this crying, Amadeo, you embarrass yourself, with all your padding it’s a wonder you even feel it; never more than he deserved.
But his master had never hit him anywhere as delicate as his face.
Amadeo’s fingers touched his lips. They came away red.
“I see now that I have spoiled you, my beautiful one, my angel child,” Marius said, deadly quiet. “Glutted you on so much indulgence you think you can make demands of me.”
“No,” Amadeo said. “Master, forgive me. Forgive me, I speak without—”
Marius raised his hand again. Amadeo flinched, but no blow came. Hands grasped his jaw instead, lips descending to lap at the blood. Amadeo stayed still as a statue as they licked over his mouth. It had been so long since Amadeo had occasion to fear his master. He feared him now.
Marius pulled back but kept Amadeo’s jaw in his trap. “I have kept you to myself for too long, and it has curdled you,” he murmured. “It will be good to share you more often. Perhaps then you will learn some respect.”
—
Daniel is an unruly charge. Quick to anger and quick to resist, despite whatever promises he’d made to the contrary. He runs, and runs again, and Armand follows patiently behind. Watches as the boy darts between cities, powered only by the febrile energy of gas station Pepsi and thin lines of blow, neck twisted from craning over his shoulders. Dark circles shadow his bloodshot eyes; his clothes hang from his wasting frame.
Somewhere in Nevada, Daniel gets off a bus and staggers into a paint-chipped motel. He calls a number on the back of a brochure then collapses into the sagging bed, rousing only to shove a handful of crumpled bills at the delivery man and toss the pizza box beside his pillow. He eats one slice, then two, then sleeps fitfully for twenty minutes before waking up to finish the other ten.
“Fucking Christ,” Daniel mutters when it’s done, and then it’s as if he can’t stop. “Fucking christ fuckingchristfuckingchrist.” The hand that had been grasping his stomach comes up to strike his own forehead, hard. Again and again.
Armand stops Daniel in the bathroom before his fingers can reach down his throat.
“No, no, no,” Armand admonishes, holding Daniel’s arms down as he struggles. “You will not harm yourself any further.”
“Like hell you care about harm,” Daniel pants. His curls are plastered to his forehead with sweat. He’s still thrashing against Armand’s hold, but more weakly now, energy draining.
“We made a deal, Daniel,” Armand loosens his grip enough to stroke a cool hand across Daniel’s temple.“Recalcitrant as you are, I still intend to take care of you.”
“Yeah, right,” Daniel laughs, a short, bitter sound, and his body goes limp against Armand’s chest. “As if I don’t remember the last time. Isn’t this what you’re into, anyway? You’re probably just pissed you didn’t get to do it to me yourself.”
“No.” The word comes out tellingly fast; Armand winces at his own irrational guilt. “That was—a mistake. It was not my intention to cause you pain.”
“Sure,” Daniel slurs. “Until you’re bored and decide to get your rocks off by torturing your little ragdoll.” His face presses into Armand’s breastbone, eyes thickly lashed and fluttering, soft and helpless as a calf’s.
“Daniel,” Armand murmurs, rubbing the knots in Daniel’s spine. “I can feel how tired you are. Can’t you see the only one torturing you is yourself? Why endure it. So much misery. You know I can take it away from you. You know what’s best; what’s best is that you comply. I won’t hurt you. I’ll never hurt you. I’ll only take care of you, the way you’ve always craved.”
Daniel doesn’t speak. His hand is clutching his stomach again, and Armand layers his palm on top.
“I can keep you under control,” Armand whispers. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”
Daniel takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay,” he gets out, and Armand scoops him up like a bundle of rags and carries him to bed.
The springs are sharp enough through the shot mattress that even Armand winces. “You’ll let me find our accommodations, from now on. This is abysmal.”
“Snob,” Daniel says, the word chased out by a yawn. He doesn’t protest when Armand works his hands over him, massaging gently until the boy falls asleep.
There will be no more running away.
—
If Amadeo was no longer his master’s cherub, then he no longer wanted to look like one.
For the first time, he began to hate his reflection. His lush, full thighs; his chubby middle; his thick, meaty arms. Too much of him. Sickening, suddenly, to take up so much space. Arun had been bony enough that the men sometimes had trouble holding on. How eager they’d always been to let go.
Now he remembered the artist’s greedy hands, digging so easily into Amadeo’s ample flesh. Beautiful, the man had called him, and Amadeo knew it had been true. He had been beautiful. He had been a nymph, an angel, a cherub, and yet with a word from his master all that soft prettiness was now worth nothing.
So Amadeo would take it back from him. Hollow-bodied and ugly, that’s what he would be, and a vicious rightness settled over him at the thought. If his master wanted to share him, they’d have to fight over his bones.
—
The problem, Amadeo was finding, is that it was much harder to lose the weight than it had been to gain it.
He ate half-portions at mealtimes and spent his days irritable and tired; his body did not change. He decreased it to quarter portions, and then passed two days with nothing at all; by the third, he was back at the kitchens in a ravenous midnight fugue, stuffing himself with furtive mouthfuls until the hollowness in his stomach was exchanged for a bloated ache.
All this misery, and his clothes had only grown tighter. “So much to work with,” the painters would say, fingers sinking into the thick padding of his hips. “So lovely, this one.”
Revulsion roiled. He had to try harder.
Distantly he remembered Arun. How had it been so easy, not to eat? Now in his attempts at deprivation it was all he thought about. The body clings to that which protects it, doesn’t it.
But the more men that touched him, the easier it became.
Marius began inviting them to the palazzo itself. The artists would have full license of the studios, the parlors, anything they needed in support of their art and happiness. Amadeo’s body was just another luxuriant resource at their disposal. Once, Marius had even directed a thin-fingered painter to sleep in Amadeo’s personal chambers. Amadeo had not been able to spend a full night’s rest in his bed since.
Even when the men were gone, he found he couldn’t stand to be in the palazzo. He took to wandering the streets of Venice for as long as possible, until his legs burned and his muscles ached and the soles grew cracked on his feet. When he was walking, he found, the voices telling him to eat became quieter. Easier to dismiss. His legs grew leaner with muscle. His clothes, for the first time since coming to Venice, began to loosen.
Something sickly excited was sparking in Amadeo’s veins.
He determined the smallest amount he could eat without feeling dizzy enough to fall in the canals, and he straddled that knife-edge for as long as he could.
The other boys in the house were worried about him, he knew. They brushed Amadeo’s hair and whispered at how it had thinned. They covered him with blankets as he shivered at evening prayer. They whispered sickness among each other, but Amadeo paid them no mind. He had never felt better.
His face slimmed out first. He looked at his reflection in clinical interest, feeling the sharpened bones of his cheeks and jaw, the absence of flesh below his chin. His thighs and belly clung to their fat the longest, but in time even they, too, began to waste.
When his master came home, he was dismissive. “Rebelling, dear one?” His broad white hand cupped the still-plump heft of Amadeo’s stomach. “I know your appetites. It will not last.”
But Marius was wrong. It did last, and Marius began to grow angry. “Stop this, Amadeo,” he would hiss, would wrench open Amadeo’s jaw to feed him, just as he had in the beginning. And Amadeo would comply, because it wouldn’t matter. His master never stayed for very long, and Amadeo could force his stomach to empty itself before the damage would be done.
His throat began to burn, when Marius was home, but it was worth it. This exquisite hollowness. Something he had brought upon himself, wholly within his own control. It had been at his Master’s will that he had grown so plump and lovely. It was by Amadeo’s alone that he withered.
The artists began to complain. They had been promised a soft-bellied angel, not a narrow haunched satyr. Sometimes their anger made them violent with him. Amadeo did not care. He watched the blows as if they happened to a stranger. He was somewhere else, floating in that same dream Arun had escaped in. What a beautiful dream it was.
Marius made apologies to the artists on Amadeo’s behalf. “He has an illness,” he explained. Yes, that’s right. Illness. It was beginning to feel more like that, now. His walks through the city left him chilled to the bone, lightheaded and weak.
He woke one night with his Master at his bedside, and in his confusion Amadeo could not remember why he had ever been angry with him. Marius, his Marius. His savior. His lover. So beautiful, those icy blue eyes, like the ice gripping Amadeo now. Where was his blanket? Oh, he was under it. Terrible shivers down his chest.
“Will you ever stop destroying yourself?” Marius asked, real anguish in his voice, and what horror to see his Master suffer. Amadeo wanted to reach out and touch his cheek, but he couldn’t get his arm to move.
“No,” he found himself saying, the single word enough to crack his lips.
Marius closed his eyes. Nodded. “Then you leave me no choice.”
Amadeo saw the glint of fangs before his own eyes fluttered closed.
—
Taking control of Daniel’s life is difficult. The boy had lived for so long in such utter chaos that even a semblance of routine disagrees with him.
The drugs are the first problem. How dependent Daniel is upon them. How invariably his mind returns to them, even with Armand in his bed, even with Armand granting his every wish. Armand will not tolerate second place in Daniel’s affections to anything, no. The drug use is over.
The change does not go over well. But Armand’s blood helps, yes, that’s better. Armand forever on Daniel’s mind, craved for and ached for and never quite satisfied. A natural replacement.
Armand takes over their itinerary. No more hitching rides and broken-down motels and flying commercial. Luxury suites. Private yachts. Trips to every wonder in the world, and how Daniel lights up to see them, snapping excited Polaroids and badgering his questions at locals, all clumsy enthusiasm that he showers back on Armand; sloppy lips on Armand’s cock, pulling off to share another story he’d discovered about whatever monument they’d visited, Armand laughing softly and stroking fingers through shaggy curls.
They’re nice, these moments of boyish eagerness. Armand never even has to reach into his mind to know what he’s thinking.
Daniel’s wardrobe gets an upgrade, naturally. Gone are the threadbare jeans and ragged sweaters. Armand dresses him in cashmere and Egyptian cotton, boxers of the highest thread count, mink coats and soft leather shoes.
The point of greatest contention arises around how much Armand makes Daniel eat.
Armand has no desire to stuff the boy to excess. He’d kept his word; he did not want to see Daniel harmed, in any way. But he insists that Daniel eat real meals, three times a day. Armand had done his research, after all, had read a pamphlet on the food groups and ensures each is well represented in the boy’s feedings. Proteins, fats, carbohydrates; expensive cuts of meats, tenderly buttered vegetables, hearty breads and fine pastries.
Daniel fights him on it as if it were Armand’s cruelest form of torture. He had dinner last night, he’d protest, so there’s no way he needs more for breakfast than a Diet Cola. He ate that whole breakfast, c’mon, all he needs for lunch is a bag of chips. Armand refuses every demand. Locks Daniel in front of his plates until they’re finished, until he no longer has to, until Daniel begins finishing his meals on his own. Because the boy had always wanted this, deep down. Someone to give him permission.
Daniel still has binges, sometimes. Nights where Armand steps out for a hunt and returns to find him curled in the corner, sweating and swollen and embarrassed, snapping at Armand to leave him alone. The terrible trapped-animal rage he lashes out with when Armand refuses to let him throw up.
“Fucking let go of me,” Daniel spits. “I fucked up, and I’m trying to fix it. Let go, you bastard. Please, just this once. Then I’ll stop. I’ll fix this, and I’ll stop. I promise. ”
Armand’s tongue probes the gap in his teeth where one of his top molars had been, acidic memory rising in his throat. “Not a fix,” he says, “and not your decision. What you do with your body is up to me, not you. And I do not permit it.”
At last, Daniel nods, even if he won’t look Armand in the eyes. He accepts the small sips of water Armand gives him, then the small dribbles of blood. Lets Armand put his hands on Daniel’s bulging stomach, rubbing soothing circles until Daniel falls asleep. They’ll fight again in the morning, when Armand refuses to let him restrict, but the longer he eats regular meals, the more infrequent the out of control binges become. His body adjusts to a routine of normalcy. Armand is pleased, though a smaller part of him will miss Daniel like this. Prone and powerless and utterly dependent, Armand the only one who can make him feel better, Armand’s touch the only thing he can stand.
He knows where this part of him comes from. The knowing doesn’t make it any easier to dispel.
—
Daniel gains back the weight he’d lost while on the run, and then some.
The changes of his body obsess Armand.
Daniel’s stomach—always on the softer side, even at his leanest—now begins to spill prettily over the waistband of his boxers. A roll of soft fat pokes out under the hems of his shirts, squishing tightly against the buttons of his slacks until Armand quietly replaces them with a larger size. The shirts, he leaves as is. He likes his handiwork on display.
When he showers Daniel at night, his hands draw irresistibly to the cushioned padding of Daniel’s upper arms, the swell of flesh below his chin, the doughy softness of his ass and breasts. When he dresses Daniel in the morning, his fingertips linger on the worn fabric at the inseam, where Daniel’s thighs have begun to rub together. When he bites Daniel’s stomach, teeth piercing through tender fat, the blood is rich beyond belief.
Armand catalogues all of these developments with obsessive detail. Qualitative observations aren’t enough, so he orders a scale and bids Daniel to step onto it every morning; procures a flexible tape measure and wraps it daily around Daniel’s waist, the circumference of his chest. The data collection is soothing to Armand. He likes looking at the numbers, the neat lines of the graphs.
Daniel tolerates all of this with seeming indifference until one night, when Armand’s got three fingers crooked inside him and the other hand splayed over Daniel’s tummy, remarking idly about the body fat percentage Daniel seems to have stabilized at, and Daniel snaps, “Can you not tell me shit like that while you’re inside me?”
Armand’s fingers still immediately. “I’ve upset you,” he says, withdrawing, which makes Daniel groan.
“No, put them back,” he says, whining until Armand does, massaging slowly into his prostate until Daniel’s writhing around him. “I just mean,” Daniel mutters, cheeks pinkening, “that it’s fine if you get off on that stuff. Whatever. But I don’t need to hear it, alright?”
Armand looks at him. “But surely it doesn’t surprise you.”
“Fuck you,” Daniel says, rolling his eyes. “No, I know what you did to me, don't worry. Getting fatter didn’t make me blind.”
“Nothing was done to you,” Armand corrects, a little defensively, though he knows the distinction is pedantic. “This is your body’s natural state. How you would have always been, if you had given yourself adequate nourishment.”
“I was fine before. You’ve got messed up ideas about the definition of adequate.”
“Your attitude is wearisome.” Armand slides out his fingers and squints at Daniel. “And I fail to see what offense I’ve rendered. This isn’t about your absurd modern beauty standards, is it? I had thought you’d be smart enough to discard them. You know how gorgeous you are.”
“Jesus fuck,” Daniel says. “I wasn’t fishing, for Chrissakes. I was just saying a man doesn’t need to be told his own dimensions while he’s getting fingerfucked.”
He’s not meeting Armand’s eyes, and his words hold the insecure tinge of dishonesty. Armand, taken aback, frowns. The way mortals in this century equate beauty with starvation has always seemed so ridiculous to him as to be dismissed out of hand. But Daniel is a child of his age. Molded by its biases quite completely. It’s possible he actually believes them.
“You know I can have any choice of companions,” Armand says slowly. “Do you really think I would be with you if you weren’t beautiful?”
Daniel rolls his eyes again, starting to pull away. “Look, I’m tired. Maybe we just—“
“No.” Armand grabs him hard by the hips to stop him. “I’m not finished with you yet.”
Daniel’s swallow is audible.
Armand slides his fingers back in, Daniel’s body clenching instinctively around them. “Your form is exquisite,” he says, voice low. His fingers thrust steadily in and out. Daniel shudders. His stomach bounces with the shifting of his hips, bumping into Armand’s twitching cock, and a gasp wrenches from Armand as his tip pushes into the warm, tight crease between belly and thigh. “Can’t you see the things you do to me are obscene?”
Keeping his dick tucked under Daniel’s tummy, Armand dips to suck on Daniel’s chest, the soft sagging tissue and peaked nipples, rough and erect under his tongue. “Fuck,” Daniel pants. “You’ve really. Got a thing for this, don’t you.”
“Remarkable observation,” Armand says. He angles his hips for a better angle and fucks shallowly back into the warm fold below the belly, clawing Daniel’s waist with both hands.
“Well,” Daniel says, chin pressing into his neck as he looks down and takes in the scene. “I guess they don’t call them love handles for nothing.”
Armand’s fingers falter. For a moment, an image layers over it, colors inverted. Pale fingers pawing at his own flesh. It’s hard to breathe, suddenly, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He told Daniel he didn’t want to hurt him and he hadn’t meant to lie.
But Daniel shifts underneath him, and he doesn’t seem hurt. There’s something blissed out and a little dreamy on his face, his hands coming up to touch Armand’s.
Armand slides his cock out from under Daniel’s stomach and into his waiting hole. He’d prepared him thoroughly enough that the drag is silk-smooth and easy; the sigh that Daniel lets out is as pretty as a song.
“I want to make you understand,” Armand says, “how good you feel to me.”
The angle of Daniel’s legs and back presses his stomach into three thick rolls, and Armand starts with the first, taking Daniel’s hands and planting them on the jutting base of his lower belly. Gorgeously stark stretch marks climb its fuzzy curve, and Armand guides Daniel’s palms to massage along their path. Together, they finger in and out of his rolls, lifting and squeezing and luxuriating in the soft flesh, Armand fucking him all the while with long, slow thrusts, deep enough for Daniel’s lower belly to squash against Armand’s pubic bone.
“You trying to Pavlov me into liking the paunch?” Daniel asks. His neck is flushed pink, head tipped back, voice ragged and wrecked.
“If that would help undo the brainwashing of your culture,” Armand says, “then yes.”
“I dunno. Might need you to repeat the lesson tomorrow. And the day after. I’m a slow learner.”
Armand’s lip curls. “As long as it takes.”
—
Daniel falls asleep easily, blissed out and loose, koala-clinging to Armand in that way he only does after a thorough fucking. How lovely he feels, pressed against Armand like this. Solid and sturdy. His blood pumping hotly through vital muscles; his tummy a warm cushion on the sharp bones of Armand’s hip.
Armand wonders, inevitably, if this is how Amadeo had felt to Marius.
Daniel makes a soft noise in his sleep, nosing deeper into the crook of Armand’s armpit. Armand strokes the back of his downy head with one hand and drags the other contemplatively over the flat planes of his own stomach.
For the first time in centuries, he regrets what he’d lost. His body had become such an alien thing to him by the end that it had felt like saving himself to destroy it. But there had been a time, despite everything, when the plump loveliness of his form had brought him pleasure. How much nicer it would be, if that were something he could share.
—
Armand lays off the measurements. Daniel’s not changing much, anyway, his body resting in a healthy equilibrium. Sometimes he’s still clearly uncomfortable with where he’d landed. He always sucks in his stomach when Armand dresses him, then gets angry when Armand asks him why.
“It takes some adjustment, you have to know that,” Daniel snaps. “Or maybe you don’t. Congrats on your eternity of being skinny, but for the rest of us, major changes are a mindfuck, alright?”
Armand only purses his lips.
—
“We’re going to the museum today,” Armand announces, nudging Daniel awake at midnight.
Daniel groans, shoving his head back into the pillow. “Like hell we are.” But he doesn’t put up a fight when Armand scoops him up by the waist to carry him out of bed.
Daniel trails sleepily behind Armand in the warm night air, doesn’t even blink when Armand grips him tight and floats them up through a back window. The hallways of the gallery stretch long and dark, but Armand knows where he’s going. He’s always kept track of where his images have ended up.
They stop at the end of a hall, and there it is. As he remembers.
“What’s the big deal,” Daniel grumbles, glancing up without interest. “Chubby white guy. I got one of those in the mirror at home.”
“Look again,” Armand says.
Daniel squints for a moment, uncomprehending, and then realizations dawns. “Holy shit, that’s you?” Armand’s about to reply when Daniel adds, blankly, “But why are you white?”
“Do you need a lecture on centuries of white supremacy, or do you think you can grasp the concept?”
“Right. Sorry,” Daniel says. He looks at the painting, then back at Armand, then back again, eyes lingering on the broad expanse of Amadeo’s middle. His voice is a little lower when he asks, “Were you even fat, or did they change that too?”
“No, that was quite real,” Armand says, lips twisting. He’s staring at Amadeo, the empty, dead-eyed face. Once, he’d thought it looked nothing like him. Now he thinks Amadeo hadn’t been aware enough to even recognize his own expressions.
“Okay,” Daniel slides a hand under Armand’s shirt, “so what happened, huh?” His palm presses into the flat plane of Armand’s stomach, head jerking toward the figure in the painting. “If you really used to look like that.”
The air in the gallery grows thin. Distantly, Armand hears himself say, “I had an illness.”
But Daniel’s not listening, squatting down to peer at the card beside the painting. “Cherub in repose,1507,” he reads. “Good lord, that’s not how you see me, is it? Your chubby little cherub?”
“No,” Armand forces out. “Cherubs are children.”
Mistake to come here. Fingers digging into flesh he no longer has. Marius always did feed his cherubs too much, the man said, bony fingers on Amadeo’s backside, spreading him apart. But aren’t you the loveliest of his fatted calves.
“Hey,” Daniel says, loudly. Amadeo blinks. Daniel’s in front of him now, hands on Amadeo’s shoulders. It registers that he’s been trying to speak to him for some time.
“I…” he says. “Apologies. I didn’t…”
“Just take me home,” Daniel says, quiet but firm. His fingers are rubbing into Armand’s shoulder blades. His big, splendid fingers. Armand nods.
—
Things fall apart, as they always do.
Daniel publishes his first book. He climbs easily through the bestseller list and New York publishing circles alike, young and charming and attractive, the favorite guest at every party. The boy who had slipped so completely under Armand’s control now begins to chafe. He’s a grown man, Daniel insists. He can dress himself. He can wash his own balls. Yes, Armand agrees, but why would he want to?
The parties Daniel attends are sodden with alcohol, and Danny Molloy never says no when offered. The drink dislodges the bitterest parts of his personality. He has everything, but still his life isn’t good enough. He wants the one thing Armand can’t give him. He wants eternity.
Their fights are terrible. By now Daniel’s built up such a tolerance to Armand’s blood that it would take more than Armand’s prepared to give in order to bring him back under control. Frustrated, Daniel slams out the door more often than not, whiles away the nights in bars and clubs and ignores Armand when he tries to follow. Armand knows what he’s doing. Daniel thinks if he punishes Armand enough, Armand will give in.
Daniel doesn’t understand Armand at all.
His lovely, horrible, impossibly human Daniel. How beautiful he is, even with his cheeks flushed red from anger and drink, hurling desperate cruel words at Armand’s concrete wall. What an unforgivable crime it would be to make that fire go cold.
—
Daniel gets a call one day one day that sends him immediately to the fridge, draining half a bottle of Coors before sinking to his knees on the shaggy hotel carpet. “Fuck,” he says, palming his forehead. “Fuck.”
“Bad news?” Armand asks lightly.
Daniel laughs, the sound dry and cracking until doused by another swig of beer. “Yeah. No. I mean, I, uh. There was this girl I’d been seeing, some nights. Just casually.”
Armand raises an eyebrow, and Daniel flushes.
“I guess I knocked her up, and she wants to keep it.”
“I see,” Armand says neutrally. A beat. Then, “Would you like me to take care of it?”
“What do you—No,” Daniel says, horrified. “You’re not murdering my baby, Jesus Christ, Armand.”
“No need to act so scandalized.” Cold ices through Armand’s voice. “I merely want to make you happy.”
“You know damn well there’s only one thing you can do to make me happy.” Daniel pulls on the collar of his shirt, exposing the vein throbbing below his splotchy skin.
“No,” Armand says, like he’s done a million times. “Beloved, I can’t.”
“Fine. Two things, then. Turn me, or fuck out of my life for good.”
“Daniel.”
“Go.” His voice is terrible and hard. The bottle trembles in his hands. “I’m gonna be a dad. I have to—I have to grow up, now. You make that impossible.”
“Oh, be reasonable, for once in your spoiled, pampered life—“
Daniel hurls the bottle at Armand’s chest. It smashes into pieces, drenching him with sour, sticky liquid. On the floor, Daniel begins to cry.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpers. “Fuck, Armand, I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry. Don’t go. Shit, I don’t feel good. Please don’t leave me. Can you—"
Armand squats in front of him, brushes the curls back from Daniel’s crumpled, tearstained face. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. Daniel holds out his arms, and Armand scoops him up, carrying him to the bed, depositing him among the pillows and then nestling beside him when Daniel clings to his shirt. “It’s okay,” Armand says again, petting his cheeks, his chest, his beer-bloated belly, soothing and stroking until Daniel falls into fitful sleep.
I didn’t mean it, Daniel had said, but Armand can see clearly that he had. Their situation is only careening further off the tracks. Armand had told Daniel he would never hurt him again, but that’s a lie, because it’s obvious now his presence is only killing Daniel daily.
He smooths down Daniel’s hair. Strokes his fingers over Daniel’s face, kisses his lips, his jaw, his sleeping eyelids. Reaches quietly into Daniel’s mind and carves out their years together with a surgeon’s precision and a mother’s ruthlessness.
He’s halfway across the country by the time Daniel wakes up.
—
At a press tour in the early eighties, a reporter tells Daniel she doesn’t want to be frank, but they’ve all noticed how well he’s looking lately. Couldn't he be a dear and share his secret?
Daniel, empirically, does not look well. His eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, something too manic in his smile, a jerky fervor to all his movements.
But he has gotten thin. That’s all any of them care about.
Daniel assures the woman he’s not offended, then takes a moment to think. “You know, it’s funny,” he says finally. “I woke up one day, a little before my kid was born, and it was like I was seeing myself clearly for the first time. I honestly couldn’t remember how I’d let myself go like that, or how it had never bothered me before then. But that day I just had this terrible, godawful feeling, and I knew something had to change. What’s your name—Cindy, is it? You wanna know my secret, Cindy?” He leans into the mic and winks. “Balance, and a healthy lifestyle. That’s all. Simple as that.”
Cindy nods emphatically like he’s just delivered some sage advice. Daniel answers a few more questions, and by the time he goes home to the apartment his ex-wife had ditched him in two months ago, he’s on his seventh pack of cigs of the day. Two lines of speed follow, then a handful of dry-swallowed diet pills that make his heart race and his armpits soak through with sweat, but keep him up and working on his next deadline until four in the morning.
In an apartment on the East Coast, Armand will kiss his lover on the forehead and join him to read by the fireplace. He will open a magazine and read the words balance and a healthy lifestyle beside a photo of Daniel’s stretched-thin smile, staring at it for a long, silent moment before flipping the pages.
“Something interesting in that one?” Louis asks, not looking up from his own reading.
“No,” Armand says. “It’s nothing.”
—
Dubai is a welcome change, for Louis and Armand both.
Armand can see now how he’d gotten carried away in the seventies. After San Francisco, after failing so terribly to manage Louis’ moods that he’d almost paid the ultimate price, Armand had thought, Fine. Perhaps he would give Louis some space, if space was what he so craved.
And then there had been the boy. How foolishly enraptured Armand had been. Folly, all of it. Distracting him from what really mattered—how much Louis still needed him.
In Dubai, Armand is attentive, caring, loving. Louis’ happiness is Armand’s alone to preserve, and preserve it he does. Claudia’s diaries, their archives, everything distasteful from their past, Armand stores away in floating shelves, so Louis will not feel tempted to harm himself by revisiting such unpleasantness. The mental walls around San Francisco are stronger than ever, Armand testing them periodically to make sure they haven’t slipped. Armand manages Louis’ animal imports, too, selecting the widest variety in hopes of pleasing his lover’s palate.
Louis’ peculiar feeding habits have always been a source of confusion for Armand. He seems thirsty at all times, yet denies himself true relief for reasons Armand can’t discern. Horrid animals and unsatisfying drinks from living volunteers. Baffling.
Armand’s own hunger is small. He had been frozen at a time when he could not stomach more than a few mouthfuls a day, and he supposes that appetite had transferred to his vampiric form. In the coven life, he’d been able to hide his disinterest well, but not from Louis.
“Wish I was more like you,” Louis mutters one evening, fox carcass cooling in front of him and his unslaked hunger loud and unmistakable.
Armand can’t find it in himself to reply.
—
The boy is so much as he remembers, and so much not. Scruffy silver curls. Spitfire vehemence, sharper and more focused than he’d been in his twenties. The same petty surliness that had begun to build up by the end, but magnified a hundred fold.
And so beautiful, still.
Armand had not expected seeing him again to feel like this.
They soldier through the interview. Daniel steals glance after glance at Armand and suspects—something, but not the truth.
Disappointment at that, however irrational. Maybe Armand had just wanted more of a challenge.
Daniel’s condition wears on him more than he lets on. His medication makes him tired by the end of the day, and he fumbles several questions during parts of the interview. Armand should be glad of it. The boy is pressing too hard, too close. Armand should be doing everything in his power to get rid of him. Shouldn’t be staring at him night and day, obsessed with every familiar and unfamiliar inch of him.
Armand fixes the boy his drinks. Daniel falls back in an insouciant slouch as he sips them on the sofa, legs spread wide, belly curving out in front of him, round enough to put gentle strain on his shirt buttons. Balance and a healthy lifestyle. Armand wonders how long that had lasted.
He’s been staring long enough that Daniel notices, color rising to his cheeks, moving to tug his cardigan over his middle before stopping midair and leaving it free. He raises an eyebrow at Armand, almost a challenge.
Armand’s going to take it.
Armand suggests to Louis that they prepare the boy a feast. Nine courses, Louis joining him at seven. Louis agrees, a little confused, but seemingly pleased that Armand is taking an interest in the proceedings.
“Fattening me up for the inevitable end?” Daniel asks drily, taking in the scene. But there’s no panic underlying his thoughts, and when he sits down, he digs right in.
Armand watches him plow his way through course after course. If his old shame haunts him, it’s buried deep. At course five, when Daniel thinks he’s alone, he reaches quietly under the table and loosens his belt to the next notch, and then the next, but makes no other outward sign of discomfort.
Louis joins him, finally, and the two talk, finishing with Louis’ ridiculous custom of eating human food. When Daniel finally retreats to his room, Armand follows silently behind.
He gives it a moment before knocking on the door.
There’s a muffled scuffle from inside, a hastily muttered shit, and then Daniel opens the door. His pajama pants are already on, but his dress shirt is unbuttoned, thin white tank top stretched tight across his tummy. “Rashid? What do you want?”
“Mr. Molloy,” Armand says, bowing his head. “My master instructed me to attend to you. Your comfort and happiness are my priority.”
“Right,” says Daniel. “Well. I’m plenty happy and plenty comfortable, so you can run off to bed, kid.”
He starts to shut the door, but Armand sticks his foot in to block it. He lets his shoulders drop, voice lowering, demure and seductive at once. “I’m very skilled at providing comfort,” he says. “My master is a generous man, and willing to share.”
Sick thrill at the words. Hadn’t known how it would feel to say them, but there’s no panic, only the sharpness of his intent.
Daniel eyes him for a long moment. “Look, kid. I don’t know what you’re playing at,” he says finally, “but I know that Louis sure as hell didn’t send you here to offer that. If you want it for your own purposes, fine, but you can drop the whole rent boy pantomime.”
Armand stares at him, jaw working, and then straightens to his full height. He steps closer and closer until he’s crowding into Daniel, Daniel’s gut pressing into Armand’s stomach.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Armand says coolly. And then he lowers himself to his knees.
“Jesus Christ,” Daniel mutters, but he’s not backing away. Armand pulls down Daniel’s pants, cupping the soft, thick cock with one hand and using the other to ruck up Daniel’s shirt, his belly rich and heavy under Armand’s palm. “You like that, huh?” Daniel pants, rubbing his own hand into his stomach. “Probably got carried away tonight. Doc’s gonna kill me for it, but I figure, I’m dying anyway, so my spare tire’s a little lower on the priority list, right?”
Ah. So that explained his lack of shame. Predictable Daniel, always needing an excuse.
“You’ve already gained four pounds since coming here,” Armand informs him, just to test his reaction. Daniel only barks a laugh.
“I’m not even going to ask how you know that. Boy, you sure know how to make a guy feel special, don’t you, Rashid. But why do I get the sense that you were the one who wanted to fatten me up, not Louis, huh? I’m onto you, you know—fuck,” he breaks off, when Armand gets his mouth on his cock.
Sucking a soft cock has never been his favorite activity, but Armand savors it now, every flavor he’d missed for forty years, rendered more exquisite by maturity. He works it to hardness, Daniel panting above him. When Armand takes it down to the base, his nose presses in on the soft pouch of fat between Daniel’s dick and tummy, the top of his head pushing up on the base of Daniel’s gut. He sucks Daniel until his balls are drained, then leaves him gasping in the corridor without a word.
It’s going to be a long interview.
—
His fledgling has seemingly boundless energy, and he dedicates at least eighty percent of it to sex. Armand is more than happy to keep up.
They’re doing every position possible, and some that probably shouldn’t be, but somehow they make them work. Daniel’s fucked every part of Armand’s body and Armand’s fucked every inch of Daniel’s. There’s very little left that they haven’t done to each other.
After all of it, though, Armand’s favorite position is simple. His thighs locked around Daniel’s hips, hands planted on Daniel’s belly, riding him until they both shudder apart.
“You know,” Daniel says, as Armand rises and lowers to get the pressure he needs, “when you first turned me, I thought, this is just typical. All that time I’d said to myself, don’t worry about your gut, Daniel, not when you’re dying. Life’s too short, right?” His hands join Armand’s on his stomach. “And then here you come along, saddling me with the paunch for eternity.” Daniel gives it a poke for emphasis. “I thought, great, this what I get for ignoring the docs.”
Armand makes a low noise in his throat, and Daniel laughs.
“Yeah, yeah,” Daniel says. “Course, then I got my memories back, and things started making more sense. I’m thinking, did he actually plan this whole thing? Creep on me for years, waiting 'til I had a belly again to turn me?”
Now it’s Armand’s turn to laugh. “No,” he says, squeezing into it as he rocks on Daniel’s cock. “But I’m grateful to have it.” He rides in silence for a while, and then asks, more quietly, “Does it bother you?”
“Nah,” Daniel says. “Not really. To be honest, even when I lost all that weight in the eighties, I was already kind of missing it.”
Armand bounces a little faster now, his own hardened cock slapping against his taut stomach. “I can understand.”
Daniel puts his hands on Armand’s waist, thumbing over his sides, and Armand shivers. He’s always loved Daniel’s fingers, their thickness and strength, equally equipped for drunken violence or clumsy tenderness. Daniel drags them up now to touch Armand’s breasts, where some residual softness still lingers. “Hey,” Daniel says, rubbing into the nipples, “I don’t know the full story of what happened to you, or how you looked before—“
Armand starts to speak, but Daniel, determined, talks over him.
“What I mean is, this is the only body I’ve known you in. And it’s pretty damn incredible, so.” His voice is gruff, a little uncomfortable. Emotional talk was never his strong suit.
But Armand clenches down around him, shaking with his release, and thinks that words can be overrated, anyway.