i still cant get bearded eric out of my mind. since it seems like After Dark was filmed while eric had a beard, can you write something about assad rubbing his face on eric's beard and it being included in the post-credit cut? huge fan of your works 💖
Thank you so much! 💖
🚫🪒🚫
"You two are disgusting, do you know that?" Sam said cheerfully.
Eric shrugged helplessly.
"Look," he said, "I can't help it if he's turned into a cat."
Assad went right on rubbing his face against Eric's face, eyes closed in an expression of ecstatic bliss.
"I know you," he said. "You'll shave it within the week. I have to enjoy it while it lasts."
"Oh, I bet he'd keep it if you asked him to, isn't that right, Eric?" Rolin said with a grin.
Eric glared at him.
"Jo wants it gone," he said. "Don't encourage him to get into that pissing contest."
Assad was leaning back now, cupping Eric's face in his hands and stroking his cheeks with his thumbs. He wasn't actually in Eric's lap, but it was a close thing.
"You look like such a dad."
Delainey groaned.
"I am a dad, babe," Eric said. "I always look like a dad."
"Yeah, but you know what I mean."
"No, I don't. Would you like to enlighten the class?"
Assad scrunched his face up adorably and shook his head, dislodging one of his curls. Sam reached over and casually tucked it back into place.
"You should try to get more sleep, Assad," he said. "You've really got no excuse to be more sleep deprived than I am."
"I'm not—"
"Save it," Eric said. "Both of you." He booped Assad on the nose. "I like it when he's sleep deprived. He gets all cuddly."
"He's always cuddly," Jacob said, emerging from the direction of the bathroom. "Alright, I'm ready. Are we good to go?"
"Lizzie said ten minutes," Delainey told him.
"Which apparently means ten more minutes in which Assad tries and fails to stop himself from telling us about his daddy kink again," Rolin said, sounding entirely in favor of the exercise.
"I don't have a—"
"You're not fooling anyone, babes," Jacob said. "Budge up."
There was some general budging up on all sides of the couch, during which Jacob squeezed himself in between Sam and Assad and Assad ended up fully perched in Eric's lap, back pressed to Eric's front.
He leaned his head back and rested it on Eric's shoulder, managing even in this position to rub their cheeks together.
Delainey sighed from her chair.
"And what are you sighing about, young lady?" Jacob said, dropping easily into Louis's drawl.
Assad grinned against Eric's cheek.
"She thinks I need to learn some self respect," he said.
"You said it, not me."
As Delainey and Assad descended into familiar bickering and Eric began kissing his way up Assad's neck, Rolin turned to the camera man and whispered, "You're getting all of this, right?"
The camera man gave him a thumbs up. Rolin grinned and gave him two back.
ERIC: [Killing] is very erotic, no matter if it's a man and a man, or man and a woman, or– I don't know how many– do we have women killing men [in the show]? Yeah we do. Yeah!
AUTUMN: I would hope so.
ERIC: It's a connection, you know. When my father was –this is going to blow your mind, what I'm about to say– my father was very old, he was in the nursing home, and he didn't even know who I was anymore, and I would visit him and I would cut his hair. And cutting somebody's hair allows you to touch them, and just to be touching his head –I don't know how to cut hair, I was doing the best I could– but when people touch each other, something passes through them. It's one if the reasons I have a hard time getting massages and stuff. People seem to love massages, I have real difficulty being that close to somebody else's aura– them touching me, because I can feel their vibe passing from them into me. Which can be good, or weird. Somehow that gets all kind of lost in this world we live in today, where it's so pornographic. So in the world of vampires where blood is going from one person into the other –and life: when you're sucking someone's blood, according to Anne Rice, you're seeing their whole life going by, you can see everything they ever did– I think that's a fantastic metaphor.
Assad is sleepless and when he sleeps he only has nightmares. like a cute but miserable ghost he haunts the set with dark undereyes and a decreased reaction time, "uhm.. sorry.." he says and blinks slowly up at eric, who's brows are furrowed in worry. eric's hand on his shoulder causes him to jump a little.
all he needs is a good night's sleep and maybe his da- i mean eric can give him it °❀.࿔
Assad thinks maybe he's been hitting The Vampire Armand a little too hard.
He's excited for season 4, excited for the quick turnaround AMC has given them, but it means he has significantly less prep time for the season with more Armand backstory than any season before, which means he's cramming.
It's TVA time morning, noon, and night— first a quick reread to get the major beats back into his head, then a long chat with Rolin about where the scripts are headed, and another with Hannah, and another with Anusree, then a more in-depth reread, with several different colored highlighters and a notebook and scribbling in the margins. When he needs a break from studying, he's making Armand-themed playlists and collages, or boring his friends and family with character analysis.
He can't stop thinking about Armand. Even when he's trying to sleep. Even when he is asleep.
He's started dreaming as if he were Armand. He has nightmares about being consumed by a hunger so great that he starts eating his friends and family. He has nightmares about fire, and abandonment. He has nightmares about many hands reaching out of the darkness to touch him, even as he screams and struggles and tries to get away. He has nightmares that he can't scream. He has nightmares that he can't speak at all.
All of that to say, he's very tired when he shows up to their first table read for the new season.
He can tell that Eric is worried. They haven't seen each other in weeks, and Eric is fussing over him— bringing him tea, and touching his shoulders, and frowning at him, and bringing him so many snacks that they start to clutter up the desk.
"I'm fine, really," he says, a little belatedly, when Eric squeezes his shoulder as he passes for the fourth or fifth time.
Eric turns back to look at him, brow knitted, but they don't have time to talk before Rolin is clapping his hands and calling for everyone to find their seats.
Assad wishes that he and Eric were sitting next to each other. It would be nice to be able to find Eric's hand under the table, to squeeze it and to know he's held, that he can fall apart if he needs to and it will be okay.
He holds himself together.
He's too tired by the end of it even to wonder what comes next. He just blinks slowly down at his script as chair legs scrape against the floor and feet shuffle towards the door.
Again, a hand falls on his shoulder.
"C'mon, kid," Eric says softly. His breath is warm on Assad's ear. "Let's get you to bed, yeah?"
Assad nods slowly.
It takes him too long to stand, to gather his thing haphazardly into his tote bag, but Eric waits patiently, not even checking his phone, just watching him. His eyes burn on the back of Assad's neck.
In the cab, Assad tries to lean against the window and close his eyes, but Eric gathers him in against his chest instead, gently stroking his hair and murmuring into his ear words that Assad can't quite manage to get a hold on.
The next thing he knows, they're there.
"Did I fall asleep?" Assad asks groggily.
Eric laughs.
"Sure did," he says. "Out like a light. C'mon, up and at 'em. Unless you want me to carry you to bed like a toddler."
Assad would love nothing more than for Eric to carry him to bed like a toddler, but he's concerned about what that might do to Eric's back, so he manages, somehow, to sit up and get the car door open. He stumbles a little as he climbs out, clutching hard to his tote bag as Eric pays for the taxi.
"I'll Venmo you," he says, and Eric gives him such a disapproving look over his glasses that Assad has to press his legs together very hard and try to do sums in his head so he'll be able to walk up to his hotel room without embarassing himself.
"Why are you so tired, anyway?" Eric asks, when Assad has gotten them lost twice before finally finding his hotel room door. "Here, let me," he adds, snatching the key card out of Assad's hand after the third time he's swiped it the wrong way round.
"Thank you, daddy," Assad whispers.
It's not the first time he's called Eric daddy— in fact, it had become habitual while filming season two— but once they weren't in the same place all the time, only seeing each other over zoom or on the rare occasion one of them happened to be in the other's city, it had slowly disappeared from their vocabulary. Assad has never been sure why. Maybe he hadn't gotten the reaction he wanted once or twice. Maybe he'd just had time to start feeling self conscious about it.
It changes the air between them.
The door hasn't even closed behind them before Eric is crowding him against the nearest wall. The tote bag falls to the floor with a thunk.
Assad expects Eric to talk— he's always been a prolific dirty talker, a sub-specialty of his MFA in yapping— but he doesn't. He just grabs Assad's face and kisses him. Assad moans into the kiss, opening easily to the insistent probing of Eric's tongue, and lets the weight of Eric's body hold him up against the wall.
When Eric finally surfaces for air, Assad doesn't think he can stay on his feet for one moment longer.
"Daddy," he whispers. "Please. I'm so tired, I can't… I can't…"
"Shhhh," Eric says. "I've got you, baby."
Assad feels like he's in a dream as Eric guides him to the bathroom and tells him to open wide so he can brush his teeth for him. He says, "Ahhhhhh," when he opens his mouth, which makes Eric laugh, and obligingly holds his arms up to make the removal of his clothes a little easier.
As Eric takes off his pants, he kisses his thigh, then his belly, and Assad giggles and hums and sways on the spot.
He's still giggling as he's herded towards bed, barely aware if what's happening, focused entirely on Eric's warm hand on his bare waist and the fluttery sensation in his chest.
He allows himself to be guided under the covers, then tugs on Eric's arm.
"You're staying, right?" he asks. "Need you to stay. Need you to make the nightmares go away."
Eric leans down and kisses him on the forehead.
"Course I'm staying," he says. "Couldn't get rid of me if you tried."
As darkness closes in around Assad, Eric pulls him in close to his chest. The last things Assad is aware of before falling into a dreamless sleep are Eric's warmth and Eric's scent and the feeling of his whole body relaxing into Eric's embrace.
"There's one little catch," Eric says, and Assad's stomach flips.
"Yeah? What's that?"
"You'll need a visitor's badge to get into the building after dark."
Assad frowns at him and takes a sip of his coffee to give himself a moment to figure that one out.
"I don't see the problem," he says finally, when he's savored his mouthful of hazelnut flavored American coffee just a little too long. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to associate the taste with anything other than Eric, the big nut himself. Appropriate. "I mean, I don't see the problem with just getting a badge, but I also don't see why I'd need one. I'll be with you whenever I'm here, won't I?"
Eric taps his fingers on the side of his mug. He's standing on the other side of the kitchen counter in nothing but striped cotton pajama bottoms, his bare feet planted firmly on the hardwood, despite the flightiness in his fingers. Assad spins a little on his stool, waiting for Eric to speak. It's not often that he has to wait for Eric to speak.
"Well…" Eric starts. "First of all, I thought you could use this as your homebase. If you want. If you ever have work in New York."
This is a shockingly generous offer. Assad pictures coming home to Eric after a long rehearsal day, or late at night after a performance. It's a nice picture.
He also pictures opening the door to find Jo and Harry in the kitchen, or Eric playing with his grandkids in the living room. It's not not a nice picture. Just a more complicated one.
Eric clears his throat.
"But I also, you know. I just thought. It would be nice, sometimes, for you to let yourself in. Crawl into bed after I'm already asleep."
Well that's very sweet, Assad thinks.
"Surprise me in the shower, maybe."
Assad laughs.
"The truth comes out," he says. "This is all about you being a pervert after all."
Eric gives him a shifty sort of grin.
"Isn't everything?" he says. Then his smiles softens.
"Hey, don't tell anybody, okay?" he says. "You'll ruin my image as an insatiable horndog. But I just want to be able to think you could be here at any moment, all the time. I want to go to bed every night thinking I could wake up to you next to me."
Assad rests his chin in his hand and smiles up at him, besotted.
"Everyone already knows you're a hopeless romantic, Eric," he says. "But I'll keep your secrets. I won't even tell anyone that you burn the eggs every time you make me breakfast."
Imagine if they'd kissed. Do you think they would have gotten in trouble? Is that a spoiler, if they spontaneously kiss at an event before they've kissed on screen?
izzy806
baratheonpilled
gracieabrams
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