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Armand closed the office door silently and placed the box with the stone bust on Louis’ desk. Louis was pacing back and forth in front of the bookcases, telephone set in one hand and receiver in the other, the cable on the deep pile carpet making a soft hissing noise in his wake. He was dressed beautifully tonight in a gray linen suit whose long, relaxed lines only accentuated the shape of his body. Armand enjoyed watching his love work over a buyer, stalking with only his words. When they had a phone line installed in one of their old houses they stayed up all night, Armand getting to be the doting and attentive pupil again while Louis showed him how to work the apparatus and indulged Armand's requests to call trades and institutions and cities pulled from the atlas of his mind.
Armand was going to go stand quietly against the wall when Louis caught his eye and, without breaking his conversation, snapped his fingers and pointed to the floor. Years after they first arranged this little signal, and it still made him flush with surprise even as he started to undress.
Louis' desk was a long table in the modern fashion with only one thick leg on each end to support it. The wire dog crate underneath was fully exposed. Armand crawled in and Louis, still chatting with his buyer about how the children enjoyed their family holiday at Capri, latched it shut.
The crate was just tall enough for Armand on his hands and knees and spacious enough for him to crawl in a circle. Tonight, there was a new addition – a plasticky blue pad on the bottom. It was too thin to be for his comfort. The material stuck to Armand's knees and palms and made a soft crinkling sound that he found both comforting and unsettling when he shifted. Usually Louis would sit and works with Armand crated underneath it, opening the door to rub Armand with his shod foot or allow Armand to lick his bare toes. Tonight he seemed content to watch from in front of the bookcases.
Armand settled himself curled up on his side and waited, allowing himself to slip into the peacefulness that came over him when they played this game, the knowledge that all that was required from him until further notice was submission to denigration and mute obedience. Depending on the evening he might be a beloved housepet or a beast to be tamed, but the crate was a housepet's place. The night it arrived Louis had in fact ordered several sizes and he made Armand try them out, crawling on his hands and knees in a circle inside them as Louis watched intently, until Louis finally leaned forward and announced "That one looks good, that looks real good for you," breathlessly.
He fed the last three nights, and fed extremely well. A vampire's body was lean in its needs and appetites, but Armand had been hunting beyond what he needed to survive out of boredom and pleasure. Blood sustained them but, like a mortal, any excess needed to be voided. The pressure in Armand's lower belly was unusual, but not unknown. The call with their buyer had been scheduled early in the night to accommodate the habits of a daytime creature. Armand had assumed he could attend to Louis and then take care of his own needs discreetly. He moved from lying curled up on his side to kneeling to give himself some relief but nonetheless soon began to squirm, first circling his hips and then pushing them backwards fitfully.
Louis set the phone down on the desk and shuffled items around over Armand’s head. From the sound of it, he must have removed the bust from its storage box. All Armand could see was Louis’ legs, but he could read the shift in his balance. Sure enough, Louis began to describe the piece. The delicacy of its craftsmanship – the proud though chipped nose, the long-lobed ears, the whorls in the crown of hair – the hue of the stone, the reliability of the dealer he acquired it from. He didn’t mention that it was older than even Armand and carried the marks of recent violence where it had been hewn off at the neck. These things were understood as long as they remained unspoken.
Armand could remember a time when he had been human and the urge to relieve himself would be present but not immediately necessary. When knowing he should find a moment to slip away or a discreet spot against a wall was just one of the many grubby little preoccupations that paced out his day. The Children of Darkness had taught him that gluttony was a sin even for the damned, and coven members who over-indulged would be humiliated by being forced to soil themselves in front of the group instead of hiding the evidence. Maybe because of his immortal body the urge had come upon him at a later stage, maybe the unfamiliarity meant it was harder for him to ignore. Either way Armand found himself shifting anxiously, clenching muscles he hadn’t thought about in decades. The noise the pad made when he moved, artificial and almost wet, did not help matters.
Louis stepped away from the desk, now back to small talk and recent acquisitions. Armand tried desperately to catch his eye and mouthed, "Maître.” A silent plea to be released. Louis looked away.
One of bookcases had a decanter of whiskey and a tray of tumblers. Louis tucked the phone between his shoulder and began to pour himself a glass. Armand couldn’t tell if was the sight or the sound of the liquid that affected him, but he didn’t realize he had made a whimpering sound until Louis paused.
"Just my dog.” Louis told the client, locking eyes with Armand from across the room. “He's old," he added, as if this were an explanation.
Armand knew, even if he didn’t really understand, what the game was. The pad was for him to relieve himself on. Louis bought the object, had watched and planned – that thought made his cock twitch involuntarily – for the right moment to force Armand to use it. It was his sweet Maître’s desire to watch Armand piss himself in the cage like an infirm housepet – and yet Armand found he couldn’t bring himself to. The thought of it made his face flush with shame.
A stab of pain shot through his bladder. It was shocking and exquisite in the way it came from deep inside his body, the knowledge that he could end it at any moment if he just let go. Armand hooked his fingers into the roof of the cage and let himself breathe more heavily. At first it was a conscious decision to try and distract himself but he found himself falling into a rhythm, huffing out breaths as he shifted his weight from one knee to the other. The motion made him think of the slap of water against a boat, the slosh of wine in barrels when he hitched a ride on a barge down the Seine, and Armand clenched down where it felt like there should be no muscles and grabbed at his shaft to stop himself from spilling over.
Across the room, Louis was assuring the client that they could ship it quickly and safely. “My secretary will contact your office later to arrange the delivery.” He was staring at Armand as he spoke, as intent as a sculptor, and Armand could see that Louis’ fangs had descended sometime in the last few minutes. The pad on the bottom rustled gently, like a promise to him and a threat to Armand that neither of them could ignore.
As Louis hung up the phone and settled himself deliberately in his reading chair, Armand felt the tip of his limp cock sting. All Louis had done was indulge him, invite him into the cage and now Armand felt as completely possessed as he ever had been, even his appetites and his bodily functions just something to be toyed with for Louis’ pleasure. All he had to do was let go and humiliate himself in this one final way, a way in which he both found himself unable to give into with ease and knew he would not be able to hold out against much longer.
Armand screwed his eyes shut and opened his mind, giving Louis full access to all the warmth and desperation and helplessness welling up in him. He projected a vision of Louis finishing his whiskey, coming over to the cage, unzipping his trousers, and pissing all over Armand’s bowed head. Louis’ response came to him through the mind gift, tingling with fond amusement. Show me you can be good and I’ll think about it.
And Armand wanted to be good so badly. He tried to relax his trembling thighs, but still nothing came. For one wild, desperate moment he wondered if he had waited too long and his bladder had hardened too much so that Armand would be trapped like this forever, squirming and agonized.
When it finally happened, Armand heard Louis’ grunt of pleasure at the same time as his own gasp of relief. The stream hit the pee pad and began to soak in while the knot inside him was still hard and aching. Armand bore down, trying to push as much liquid out of his body as possible, and turned to look at Louis. His love was slumped down in the chair, one hand stuffed down his trousers and eyes shining silver-blue as he watched Armand soil himself. The pale red piss soaked into the pad, now becoming wetter and squishier under Armand’s knees as the puddle soaked in. Armand clutched onto the top of the cage as the last few pathetic spurts of piss dribbled out of him and Louis panted “That’s it, you just let it go baby, let it go right there on your pad, such a good boy for me.”