Little Drink as edging and MURDER as orgasming is the most mindbendingly hot and truthful parallel to ever be drawn. Just. Cannot get past it
Yes, YES!!!
Like I know I’m Marius Brained and everything but even when I’m reading TVA and in Armand’s POV I am always like, god this must have been killing Marius. 🥵
The Devil’s Minion era (once they warm up to each other) and Venice Era are really the only times in canon we get to see a prolonged courtship between a vampire and human, yeah? But the books constantly tell us about how killing & drinking is the ultimate form of intimacy. (Notice me being very very mature and not devolving into an Asexual VC dissertation LMAO pin that for later). I’m not counting Lestat & David as a prolonged courtship because David was Not Interested and they weren’t sharing blood before Lestat finally turned him, and still David’s turning is explicitly described as rape and written to be erotic. But the overlap of Venice & Devil’s Minion is too obvious to ignore and we see the way the human/vampire relationship finds ways to translate their interspecies erotic desires by sharing sex acts (for the human) and blood (for the vampire).
STILL!
The Little Drink isn’t all they need! Like they’re not just taking a little sip and fucking off for the night — Thorne describes it as being a bee going from flower to flower! Drinking from many many people! And the books tell us that it’s not ONLY the blood itself — it’s the murdering that’s the truly intimate and most special act!!!!!
So anyway just.
Taking little sips for years and years ! The blue balls, my god. And finally getting to take him all the way!!!!!!! God. 🥵💦
Especially like reading B&G and knowing that Armand was like, Marius’s 3rd choice rebound during that time period LMAO. He wanted Botticelli and had to leave Florence to not kill him! He wanted Bianca and had to remove himself from her social circle to not kill her!!!
This is my favorite Marius quote in VC, when he’s feeling like he’s going to murder Bianca —
For a moment, I thought my powerful self-control would be lost. I would embrace her, whether or not she would have it, and take her rapidly by force from the very middle of her warm and safe rooms to the cold and fatal domain of my soul.
He finds Armand because he’s trying to like ethically source a fledgling (great job buddy that’s the worst anyone has ever done it) by choosing someone who’s on borrowed time, anyway! Blank slate that he can groom for vampirism!!!!!!
I was just talking to @apoptoses today about how the concept of “this sounded cool until I actually tried it” comes up a bunch in VC — we were talking about Daniel romanticizing murder until he actually had to do it LOL — but same for Marius thinking he can just mold a trafficked boy to be a good vampire. So it’s not just like, Marius having a relationship with him and taking little sips as a fucking aperitif for The Act but like, he almost immediately changes his mind and doesn’t want to do it !!! He’s willing to deny himself !!!
Gosh where’s that other thing he says in TVA…
“I’m coarsened by human blood. It's always the fact. Only in starvation do I find an ethereal purity.”
"Ah, and you turn me from penance at every juncture," I said, "towards the senses, towards pleasure."
Just, oof. Especially for Marius who, from what we can tell, is a little more into humans than most of the cast? Like he’s someone that craves social connection and wants to be around them all the time. Even when he was alive and he was traveling to meet and study people in taverns. So I think there’s just a lot wrapped up in this !
I shared this a couple weeks ago but I wanna share it again because I think it will make everyone understand VC better and we’ll all write better fanfics for it LMAO it’s based on Hellraiser but it's the topic of eroticism in religious penance !!!!! Very excellent.
But the eroticism of suffering! Of denial! Inside the universe of Written By Crazy Catholic Lady VC we also have to talk about how eroticism is the kill & the blood and how abstinence is akin to starvation - how it’s something actually painful.
Anyway I’m gonna leave it here I think because I’ll talk all day but I was poking through TVA and B&G for some quotes about this and I’m just !!!!!!
Marius on Armand:
I had never experienced such pure intimacy with a mortal, except with those I meant to kill. It gave me chills to have my arms around this boy, to press my lips to his cheeks and chin, his forehead, his tender closed eyes.
Yes, the blood thirst rose, but I knew so well how to control it. I filled my nostrils with the smell of his youthful flesh.
"He is irresistible, but what am I to do?
Armand on Marius:
"Amadeo," he said, his lips on my throat as they'd come a thousand times, only this time there came a sting, sharp, swift and gone. A thread stitched into my heart was jerked all of a sudden. I had become the thing between my legs, and was nothing but that. His mouth nestled against me, and again that thread snapped and again.
I saw him staring, beastlike, from his chair, as if some ravener had come into him and banished all his civilized faculties and left him thus, hungry, with glazed eyes and reddening mouth, the glittering blood finding its myriad little paths over the silky margin of his lips.
He rose, a drugged thing, and came towards me with a rhythm of movements that was alien and struck the coldest terror in my heart.
His fingers flashed, closed, beckoned.
I ran to him. He lifted me in both hands, clutching my arms ever so gently, and tucked his face against my neck. From the soles of my feet up my back through my arms and my neck and scalp, I felt it.
"Master, Master, Master, I love you."
"Yes, well, that's not so unusual," he whispered. He didn't stop his kissing. He lapped at the blood. I writhed under the weight of his hand on my backside. "But the question is, Amadeo, why do I love you? Why? Why did I have to go into that stinking brothel and look upon you? I am strong by nature ... whatever my nature ..."
He greedily kissed a large bruise on my thigh. I could feel his sucking at it, and then the tongue lapping it, eating the blood, and then his blood coming down into it.
And this from TVA when he finally does it:
He bent his lips. A sense of dreadful awesome finality swept over me.
"You will die now to be with me in life eternal," he whispered in my ear. "Never for a moment must you really fear. I will hold your heart safe in my hands."
His teeth cut into me, deeply, cruelly with the precision of twin daggers, and I heard my heart thud in my ears. My very bowels contracted, and my stomach was knotted in pain. Yet a savage pleasure swept through all my veins, a pleasure which coursed towards the wounds in my neck. I could feel my blood rush towards my Master, towards his thirst and my inevitable death. Even my hands were transfixed with vibrant sensation. Indeed, I seemed suddenly to be but a puppet map of circuitry, all of it aglow, as with a low, obvious and deliberate sound, my Master drank my life's blood. The sound of his heart, slow, steady, a deep reverberating pounding, filled my ears.
The pain in my intestines was alchemized to a soft sheer rapture; my body lost all weight, all knowledge of itself in space. The throb of his heart was within me. My hands felt the long satin locks of his hair, but I did not hold to them. I floated, supported only by the insistent heartbeat and thrilling current of all my swiftly flowing blood.
"I die now," I whispered. This ecstasy could not endure.
(What’s also funny is that the turning from Marius’s POV is so much about Armand’s religious ecstasy and revelations - thanks Catholic Lady but also that’s whole eroticism-mysticism thing again. Also the way that Marius treats it like a wedding so. Jsdkgla.)
I’m going to be so fucking honest with you, I was gonna pull a bunch of quotes and I think there were some more I was gonna look up but I got a little too squirmy reading these ones 🥵🥵🥵🥵 dhjkadslg I THINK I’VE MADE MY POINT.
Girl, the fic about armand s sa recovery was a MASTERPICE. You have so much talent, I can t even describe it.
WHAT A KIND THING TO SAY, THANK YOU!!!!
(If anyone wants to read my lil fic it's called Gallows Bird uwu)
I usually try to keep all my fics as canon compliant as possible (for the challenge LOL) but gosh I could not resist giving them some more time together once Armand really KNOWS what Marius is.
In one of the Tulane drafts too there's a bit that mentions that Armand had KILLED SOMEONE during his wild Venice times as a human!? HELLO???
Just, something to me about, Armand being in love with this creature that is clearly not human, and realizing that this creature is very dangerous, and realizing that this creature rescued him from the brothel, and how indulgent would it be to recreate those situations over and over and over so that he can get some catharsis of being rescued again, of seeing this abusers killed, and eventually having the bravery to kill them himself.
(bravery? or axe-through-a-door horniness from being edged, you decide.)
Marius, on the other hand, trying to do the right thing when he's so far removed from humanity that he doesn't know what's the right thing, who struggles immediately (in canon) with the idea of turning him and doesn't think he can stomach it, but slowly realizing he's ruined Armand for regular life anyway. He will never have a life now! He will never be normal! Not just because of his abduction, but because Marius ruined him for human life!!!!!!!!!
anyway.
:D
I think it's easy to forget that the whipping & banquet scenes are the SAME NIGHT, and the Harlech fight is the DAY AFTER! It just happened way too fast, I wanted to sit with this for a while and give them some time with it. 😭
Okay so. I’m in the middle of writing another meta about Daddy Kink in VC/TVA/B&G so please forgive me if this post or the other winds up being redundant, but in the middle of all the deep thinking I’ve been doing about that topic in canon, I also had some interesting convo in the comments of this fic, so I wanted to park this somewhere as well. I’ll try not to be too repetitive and I’m going to try to keep the convo focused a little more on the fic than on canon (to the best of my ability since they overlap so much!) because I wanted to talk specifically about the train of thought that informed the fic, and just take it with a grain of salt because it does veer into headcanon territory at times when I’m filling in gaps from canon.
Anyway so I brought Daddy Kink/father themes up a few times in this fic, here’s some examples (this might be all of them actually, I forget lol):
During Amadeo’s dream about being raped, that the smell of wine subliminally reminds him of his father, even though he can’t quite put it together.
Matteo commenting that Marius is Amadeo’s father (during sex, and implying that Marius fucks him).
The man at the party towards the end who is thinking about his own son while he eats Amadeo out.
Marius telling the men in the final scene that he and Amadeo are named Ivan and Andrei.
BONUS POINT, less obvious: Marius musing about Rome, the fatherland, and Roman storytelling trying to paint forefathers in a better light.
I admit that on some level this is not that deep lol it was just being horny and indulging in daddy kink, but like I do want my fics to make sense when it comes to meta and I did want it to be plausible with canon.
So off the bat we have to say like, VC vampires exist above social constructs anyway. Marius isn’t someone who’s going to get grossed out by crossing a boundary like this, in the same vein as Louis and Claudia or Lestat and Gabrielle. As vampires they do not exist inside familial structures anymore. So I think this is extremely present in the Venice portions of the books, that there’s this blurry line around father/mentor/maker/lover.
I also think about this part of B&G every day of my life:
And I, with all my power, and all my blandishments, could not replace Amadeo’s father in Amadeo’s mind.
Why was I so jealous? Why did this knowledge sting me so much?
BONUS LINE IN NEXT PARAGRAPH: I loved Amadeo as I had loved Pandora.
I WANT TO BE HIS DADDY BUT ALSO HIS DADDY. I WANT HIM TO BE MY CHILD AND ALSO MY WIFE.
There’s just so much going on here!
Anyway so in TVA I think like, not knowing Marius’s POV at that point, Marius is having lots of mood swings, he can be hot and cold, at times sends Amadeo mixed signals. But in B&G when we get the insight, we learn how often he struggled with whether or not to turn Amadeo as he began to love him. (I think also a lot about when he tells Armand at the end of TVA that he sees Armand loves B+S more respectfully than Marius ever loved Armand!!)
And I want to like, balance this against Marius’s inherent selfishness with how he treated Amadeo, how he treated him like a pet or like a project. I don't think (in canon) he saw Amadeo as a full person, and it's why he interrupts Amadeo so much in the fic. Amadeo at this point in canon exists for Marius's own needs.
(Sidenote, when I was working on this fic and kept struggling with like, the POV of a Marius who doesn’t actually see Amadeo as a complete person, I kept using how I feel about my cats as a reference lol. Like I love them to death, I would die for them, but they don’t have a single fucking thought in their brains, they are little babies that I take care of bc they’re cute and I like having them around.)
I talk a lot about how I love Marius because he’s a flawed person; I find his flaws and missteps to be so human and relatable, like I too do my best to be reasonable and kind and patient and yet I do have a petty side. I can hold grudges. I think all of us are capable of acting selfishly.
Because like, his love of Amadeo is conditional, it’s like having a pet. In the book he keeps changing his mind if he should turn Amadeo or let him free to have a real life and we don’t know what his ultimate decision would have been because Harlech forces his hand. The question is: Would he have ever let Amadeo go?
He specifically chooses Amadeo because it’s someone he sees as a blank slate, A FUNEREAL SPIRIT, someone on borrowed time. Marius considers Amadeo’s life over already, so this is all bonus for him. There’s never a question of rescuing him out of goodness and returning him to his home. Marius specifically chooses him to groom as a fledgling because he’s lonely, and he doesn't see Amadeo as a human with a potential life anyway.
So in the fic I tried to make this clear, all the times Marius wonders if he can keep Amadeo, even begging Akasha for a clue, and by the end he realizes he has to keep Amadeo because this experience has ruined him. He’s never going to be able to live a normal life now, and Marius knows it*. AS FAR AS THE FIC UNIVERSE GOES, we could ask the same, like, will Marius still turn him in this fic timeline if Harlech doesn’t show up, but I think he would.
*also as an aside, I wrote this fic to be like backwards engineered Devil's Minion, so I bring this theme up a lot in my Armand/Daniel fics, and the entire thesis of The Lotus Eater is that Armand was careless with Daniel and broke him, which is what Marius does to Amadeo.
Anywhoo, back to the daddy stuff.
Like sure yeah it’s just there to be horny because I think Daddy Kink is absolutely present in canon, but Marius is enjoying this game they’re playing, too, even if he’s a little too proper to admit it. He likes taking Amadeo out and getting to protect him. He likes indulging in the kill when Amadeo is fucking wrecked, like it’s a sex act they can share. He likes that their victims think he’s Amadeo’s father. It makes him feel powerful.
And towards the end, when they’re talking about stoicism and whether or not you can simply turn your emotions off, it also leads into whether or not Amadeo can make the choice to remember where he comes from.
Canon doesn’t explicitly say this so this is where fic headcanon comes in, but I wanted to make it that Marius can see into Amadeo’s dreams, and I implied that he knows perfectly well exactly where Amadeo is from. He knows about the monastery, he knows about Andrei’s home life and his parents, he knows their names! So every day that passes in Venice where Marius doesn’t offer this information, or bring him home, is another day he’s chosen to keep Amadeo, and is ultimately selfish.
On the other hand, especially once the fic starts and Amadeo’s memories start coming back to him, Amadeo knows that Marius knows, and he never asks.
This is of course like, dubcon territory of like, SHOULD AMADEO HAVE TO ASK? Is Amadeo’s fragile mental state a clue that he cannot consent or make informed decisions? Is Marius behaving badly by allowing this wounded child to make his own decisions, or as the adult/immortal, even as the mentor/father/lover, should he guide Amadeo to do what’s right? And what exactly is the right decision?
But from the moment Amadeo realizes that Marius knows more about him than he reveals, Amadeo never asks, which means he’s making a decision to stay in Venice. And like, the morally correct thing is not really relevant here when Marius’s moral compass is so far removed from human sensibility, but it also affirms his desire to be wanted. He’s happy that Amadeo wants to stay and wants to be his pupil and his baby boy, so he’s not going to challenge it.
And that’s why he drops the names Ivan and Andrei in the final sex scene, as a climax to all of this. It’s serves both as one final way to challenge Amadeo, to ask if he TRULY doesn’t remember, but also serves to take on the ROLE of Ivan. He wants to be Amadeo’s Daddy. And even though the men in the room are teasing him about how he’s not actually going to sell Amadeo, how Amadeo must be his favorite, how he must be a freak, etc, he still owns Amadeo in this sense, and it allows him another level of release along with Amadeo’s sexual release.
WELL. I hope that makes sense!!! It made sense to me at the time when I was writing it. I love these two dweebs, please talk to me about them any time!
“I enjoyed what those men were saying to me,” he says, voice cracking. The words muffle against his knees. “I could imagine it. I wanted them to.”
Marius presses his knuckles to his lips. Patient, but hard to watch him struggle like this. He listens for Amadeo’s thoughts again, wondering what he might say to help.
The images are mixed together. The dream, but the faces of the men from the banquet. Fucked just the same, but moaning in pleasure. He imagines his body now, grown, broader in the shoulders. Imagines that he can be on top for some of it, the table scraping his bare knees as he rides.
And Marius there. Watching. Marius in the corner, observing, flashing reassuring smiles that show off his predator’s teeth.
Shame doesn’t occur to this version of him, the present one who wanted this. It’s pleasure, and power. He likes that he can seduce them, likes that they argue over who gets to go first. He likes how they drop rings onto the table to bargain.
It’s typical of human thoughts though, like always. Marius listens carefully, tries to untwist them, like listening for each chord. The dream adds an ugly framework to it; Amadeo thinks of the handsome men last night, but remembers how afraid he was in that little room.
When he looks up at Marius and their eyes meet, the thought strikes Marius in the chest. Vivid and sharp and truthful. Marius, drinking from them, his skin ruddy with their blood, his eyes alight.
He thinks Amadeo was correct in feeling uneasy by his own portrait. Seeing himself through someone else’s eyes. Marius hasn’t told him that if he comes into the Blood, he’ll have this opportunity more often, not just at the will of the occasional portrait painter.
Marius takes a slow breath. Finds his patience, his courage. He lowers himself down from the scaffold and comes closer. He doesn’t intend to lower himself all the way to the floor, but once he’s standing over Amadeo he’s just too small, too pathetic from here. Maybe it’s a kindness that he does it, to be at his eye level, to make him feel stronger. He crosses his legs and places a hand on Amadeo’s knee.
“Is it very terrible, that you wanted it?” he asks.
Amadeo chews on his thumbnail. He looks up at the painting again. After a moment, he lazily points at it with his other hand.
