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It takes a moment for Daniel to overcome the pure, hindbrain panic of waking up with something that close to his face, but once he does, he smiles up at Armand, who is practically hovering over him, not even bothering to brace his hands against the mattress.
“Hey,” Daniel says, voice hoarse from sleep. He untangles his hands from the bedsheets, tucks the lock of curly hair that is currently tickling his forehead behind Armand’s ear, and settles his hands lightly over Armand’s hips where he is kneeling across Daniel’s waist.
“Why are you smiling?” Armand asks.
“You’re cute.”
“You think it’s cute when I behave badly?”
Daniel’s not awake enough to unpick that sentence, and he honestly probably wouldn’t bother even if he was. “I don’t miss feeling more like your science experiment than your boyfriend—“
He pauses to watch Armand mouth the word ‘boyfriend’, the crease of a thoughtful frown between his brows. Daniel had surprised himself saying that but Armand doesn’t object so Daniel continues, “but, uh, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m kinda into it when you’re creepy.”
“Kinda into it,” Armand repeats back, lips quirking sardonically.
Daniel squeezes Armand’s hips affectionately. “What are you up to?”
“So suspicious, Daniel. Who says I’m up to anything?”
“It is—“ Daniel tips his head to the side to look at the glowing numbers of the digital clock on the nightstand. “You let me sleep until almost 3:30 and were looming impatiently waiting for me to wake up just now, so it stands to reason you were keeping yourself occupied with something that has gotten to whatever point it needed to get to that it’s no longer interesting without my involvement.”
Armand smiles mysteriously before his expression shifts into impatient excitement. “Get up.”
Daniel doesn’t have time to complain that he has a deceptively heavy vampire on top of him before said vampire stands and drags Daniel out of bed in one fluid, preternatural movement, and starts to tow Daniel out of the bedroom by the arm wrapped around his waist.
There is a powdery white footprint in the hallway. Daniel jerks to a stop and Armand allows it.
“What the fuck is that?”
“That is my footprint, Daniel.”
“Why?”
“Presumably, I stepped in some flour and became distracted,” Armand says flatly.
There is, in fact, a trail of powdery white footprints leading back to the kitchen.
“How?”
“This is tedious.”
Daniel pulls away to look at Armand in disbelief. “Tedious? Or maybe it’s tedious that you won’t just tell me what you were doing. Were you baking?”
“No,” Armand says in a tone that indicates an incredible level of pedantry.
“Cooking then. You can cook?” Daniel asks incredulously. He feels a vague sense of unease. Armand’s prior kitchen adventures had been seriously unhinged.
“I can follow instructions, Daniel.” Armand gives Daniel a haughty look. “Admittedly, it was more difficult than I anticipated, and the first attempt was… messy. But I believe I’ve done it correctly now. I remember what most of the in-between phases ought to look like but I can’t say for sure as it’s not done. I wanted to wait to cook it until you were awake and could eat it right away.”
“What’s not done? You still haven’t said.”
Armand smiles beatifically.
“I hate you,” Daniel says, wrapping his arms around Armand from behind and pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
Armand, reacting to some stimulus Daniel is unable to perceive, pulls away and heads rapidly towards the kitchen.
Daniel follows. His stomach flips in protest when he enters the kitchen. It’s the particular feeling where something smells good but you’re not awake enough to deal with it.
Armand is leaning over the stove, nose inches from the surface of a small saucepan of simmering tomato sauce, peering at it like it will reveal some sort of secret. It’s arresting.
“The lowest setting on the stove is too hot,” Armand observes morosely.
Daniel hums, unsure if he’s supposed to provide input. He’s not much of a cook himself. He pulls his gaze away from Armand, who is now fussing anxiously with a wooden spoon, and looks around the rest of the kitchen. It’s not what he was expecting. Armand had mostly cleaned up as he was working—the sink is full of dishes, and flour is tracked across the floor, but the kitchen is otherwise tidy. The products of Armand’s prep work are precisely arranged next to the stove: a tray of neat nests of handmade spaghetti, trimmed spears of asparagus, hard boiled eggs, and a bowl of thick, lightly fishy smelling sauce.
“Huh,” Daniel says with some confusion. The kitchen is in a better state than the living room which was covered in a layer of opened and discarded books.
“Surely I’m permitted to cook for my boyfriend.”
“Hey, I like when you call me your lover. But when I say it, I sound like a pretentious douchebag instead of an alluring, centuries old vampire.”
“Okay.” Armand smiles, deliberately using another modernism. “Surely I am permitted to cook for my lover.”
“Yeah… the last time you ‘cooked’ for me it was a smoothie made primarily of things that were not food.”
“It was non-toxic,” Armand replies snootily.
“Uh huh. The fact that you think that’s some kind of defense makes this—” Daniel gestures vaguely at the stove, “all the more surprising.”
Armand huffs and clicks the burner under the tomato sauce off.
“Can this wait until I’m a bit more awake though?”
Armand’s face twists with gut wrenching sadness before it smooths out into a slight pout.
“Alright,” he says, going to fuss with the coffee maker. When he’s done, he crowds Daniel into the wall for a make out session. It’s been an adjustment, but a welcome one, the way Armand has dropped his carefully maintained distance since they shared blood in Pompeii. Daniel hadn’t understood at the time but, in retrospect, it’s painfully obvious how hard Armand had been struggling to hold himself back when they had been courting. Stupid word, but it’s the best Daniel can come up with for the time between when he had stopped primarily seeing Armand as a threat and relatively recently.
“This you’re awake enough for.” Armand sounds grumpy even though he had been the one to initiate.
Daniel threads his fingers through the curls at the nape of Armand’s neck and drags him up and in to slot their mouths back together. Armand’s irritation is immediately forgotten as he easily balances on his toes to make up the height difference and opens for Daniel, shuddering in overwhelmed pleasure as Daniel licks over the points of Armand’s fangs.
Daniel doesn’t think he’s ever made out with anyone else like this, like it’s a complete act in and of itself rather than a precursor to sex, but everything is different with Armand, and not just because of his perpetually soft cock. Everything—good and bad—tugs at Daniel’s gut as if there’s a string embedded deep inside. He wants to find the string, where it exits his body, and loop it tight around Armand, binding the two of them together so they wrench at each other’s insides constantly and could never stand to pull apart.
The coffee machine finishes percolating and Armand pulls away to pour Daniel a cup, eyes bright and cheeks flushed with stolen blood.
The way Daniel feels is terrifying and he never wants it to stop.
They sit on the couch, Daniel’s feet knocking against books as they find their customary place propped up on the coffee table as he quietly sips his coffee and smiles to himself while Armand vibrates with anticipation. Not that anyone besides Daniel could tell; Armand is perfectly still but Daniel knows, on a metaphysical level, his boyfriend is vibrating.
Daniel is half way done with his coffee when he gives in. “Fine, I will let you feed me pasta and asparagus for breakfast now, you weirdo.”
Armand looks uncertain for a moment so Daniel bumps their shoulders together.
Armand moves so suddenly he might as well have appeared in the kitchen. He has two pots of water heating towards a boil and the burner under the tomato sauce turned back on by the time Daniel gathers himself enough to join him. He stands behind Armand, one arm wrapped loosely around his waist, the other still holding the now mostly empty cup of coffee.
“What brought this on?”
Armand, craning his neck to look at Daniel, looks adorably shocked by the question like he had never considered Daniel would ask.
“I saw fresh asparagus at a night market.”
“Yeah, and?”
“They’re one of the few things that will grow on the islets of Venice, especially in early spring.”
“Venice, huh.”
“Yes, the last place I ate food.”
“So this is something you ate?”
“Not tomato sauce, but the rest of it, yes. As near as I could manage.”
Armand never talks about his past. Daniel itches to push—ask more questions, but instead he digs his chin into the top of Armand’s head and enjoys his inhumanly solid weight when he relaxes into Daniel’s chest.
It’s so easy to be with Armand when they both let it be. Unfortunately neither of them are particularly good at letting things be easy, but that makes these moments when they manage it all the more special.
“So you saw asparagus. Then what? Stole several dozen cookbooks to teach yourself to make pasta?” That would be far from the strangest thing Daniel had witnessed Armand doing. He thinks back to the specifics of the mess in the living room, the plastic-y covers on the books. “Wait. You stole them from the library didn’t you? That’s not—“
Armand cuts him off with a long suffering sigh. “I’ll put them back.”
They lapse back into silence waiting for the pots of water to boil. Daniel wants to make a joke about watched pots never boiling but he can’t quite put it together, distracted by the novelty of having Armand this close in such an easy, domestic way.
“I don’t believe that aphorism applies to vampires.” Armand snatches the thought out of Daniel’s head.
“No?”
Armand shakes his head, tickling Daniel with his hair. “Mmm, I can count the near microscopic bubbles as they form and track as they grow in size. The miniscule changes are endlessly fascinating. Time is not slowing for me as I am not waiting with growing impatience.”
“Freak,” Daniel says affectionately.
They wait past the point where Daniel would have said ‘good enough’ and started cooking before Armand dumps the asparagus and pasta in their respective pots. He assumes the recipe said roiling boil and Armand wants to be sure he’s achieved that.
“How are you going to get that back out?”
Armand looks puzzled for a long moment. “With my hands,” he says decisively. “It will barely hurt.”
Daniel smiles. Armand obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I think we have a, I forget what it’s called. The thing with holes in it.”
Armand shrugs. Daniel rummages around the kitchen, less because he doesn’t want to watch Armand stick his hands in a pot of boiling water (he is intrigued by the idea) but more because he does not have the patience to watch the imperceptible changes of food cooking. Perhaps he will someday, even if he can’t convince Armand to give him the gift. Just the few mouthfuls of Armand’s blood has done something to his perception.
For now, he finishes digging around the kitchen and brings back a set of tongs and a scoop with claw bits sticking out of it that he’s never seen before in his life but looks specifically designed to scoop pasta out of water. He doesn’t find what he was looking for—he’s pretty sure it’s called a colander—but what he’s managed is probably a step up from Armand using his fingers.
Daniel only spends another minute hovering behind his boyfriend—Daniel finds himself unexpectedly delighted by the word whenever he thinks it—waiting before Armand uses the tongs to pluck the asparagus from the water and plate them with the hard boiled eggs and the fishy sauce drizzled over them. It looks nice, almost professional. He stares at the scoop quizzically before he uses it to keep the pasta in the pot while he drains most of the water off and then pours the tomato sauce over it. He makes an adorable frowny face as he messes around with the tongs, and eventually ends up with a portion of pasta arranged in a neat nest in the center of a shallow bowl Daniel also doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. That, Armand probably stole during his shopping adventure.
Daniel trails after Armand as he brings the food out to the coffee table and sweeps aside a pile of cookbooks to make space. Daniel flinches when they hit the floor but sits in front of the food without comment.
“Wait,” Armand says imperiously before darting back to the kitchen and returning with a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, mug, and fork threaded through his slender fingers.
“No wine glasses.”
“I pretend to be classy when we go out, with great difficulty. I don’t need that kind of shit at home.”
Armand smiles at that and pours Daniel a coffee mug of wine before perching on the armrest of the couch and gesturing for Daniel to begin eating.
“Oh. I guess you can follow directions,” Daniel says with his mouth full. Armand frowns and pokes Daniel in the side with his toes but allows Daniel to eat without any snide commentary on his table manners. Daniel, polite in the ways that actually matter, directs his full focus to the task at hand, making sure Armand gets to appreciate his hard work without distraction if he’s spying on Daniel’s thoughts.
Daniel eats the plate of asparagus and then Armand serves Daniel seconds, thirds, and fourths of pasta as he works his way through the bottle of wine. He’s uncomfortably, but not painfully, full when Armand joins him on the seat of the couch and nudges Daniel to lie down. Armand, in a move befitting of an ancient, reanimated corpse, curls up with his ear pressed to Daniel’s stomach listening to the noises his belly makes as it digests.