Archive of Our Own

The Exposition Universelle of 1900 had overtaken Paris with the hasty, hazy, impermanent joy that was to become a hallmark of the new century. Plaster and staff dust was as thick as pollen, flying off the temporary constructions of ornate pavilions with their grand titles—the Palace of Water, the Palace of Electricity, the Aquarium, and Paris flaunted its wealth and taste. Lestat had slept through it all, to his regret. it had been the end of an era for his adopted city and he wished he had been able to bid it farewell. Armand, on the other hand, had done well for himself. The influx of tourists had meant a steady flow of food and funds for the theatre, even as naturalism had become the word of the day. The theatre had never been one to follow the trends but the Exposition would leave its mark on the city, and on its people. 

He had not gone to Armand with the intention of rekindling any sort of connection, let alone participating in one of Armand's juvenile schemes. Embarrassingly, it had been Daniel who had precipitated the whole thing—endless questions of his maker, his history with Lestat, their collaboration on the trial that had cost Lestat his child and his lover. Armand was not answering. Daniel was not shutting the fuck up. Lestat had been hoping for peace when he found Armand morosely wandering the darkened winter streets of Stockholm, full of sleek, brightly lit sex shops and cafes hawking cardamom-spiked pastries. 

“What could possibly bring you here?” he called out, aiming for ease. Seventy-seven years without the reality of Armand. “Getting inspiration for more bland, hideous homes?” 

At the sound of his voice, Armand had peeled off into an alleyway, as if in preparation for a fight or a tryst, and Lestat found him leaning against the brick wall, cigarette already lit and long neck extended.
He looked guileless in the guise of the young man that he wasn't—dark baggy jeans low on his hips, a swaddling wool coat enveloping him. 

“I shouldn't have thought you'd be bored already, but I suppose I overestimated your ability to entertain yourself.” 

Armand sounded as delightfully bitchy as ever, but there was an edge to it with a seam that ran along where his fingernails met his skin, where he was picking at and where blood was blooming richly.

He wanted to be in Armand’s arms. He wanted his fangs in his neck—either way around. He wanted to dash Armand to the ground like he had centuries before and then lift him from the wreckage. Instead, he sniffed and picked the wall opposite Armand to lean against. He propped up his boot on the wall behind him—casual, effortless. He wished he had a cigarette of his own, but his band refused to let him smoke during rehearsals (Larry had sent him several pointed articles on the dangers of second-hand smoke, though pills and powders and liquor were fair game), and he refused to ask Armand for one. Instead, he shoved his hands in his coat pockets and tried to look unaffected. 

“You’re causing quite a stir,” Armand went on. “Tell me, how does Louis feel about being part of your entourage?”

His name, and the way Armand caressed it as he spoke it, and the hidden sibilance that lingered beneath the surface, and the way it was all things to Lestat, like a synecdoche for the world—it sent him reeling.  

“Or did you find that having is not so pleasing as wanting?” Armand asked, mercilessly. “I wish you the joy of him, sullen nights and sleepless days, wondering when he’ll next try to toss himself into danger—” 

“Arrête,” Lestat managed to choke. 

Armand didn’t look anything close to repentant, but he did close his mouth. It almost looked like a pout; his small lips pressed together and turned down slightly, eyes looking all the larger in comparison. 

Lestat managed to get the words out between gritted teeth. “Not that it is any business of yours, but Louis has not come back to me. He is enjoying his freedom, and I am trying to—allow it.”

Armand raised a single, elegant eyebrow, and said nothing. 

“I’m here about your fledgling. He’s an odd choice but he’s got spirit. He’ll see out the century, if he’s set on the right path. But you must come and take him in hand; a fledgling needs a maker.” 

Blessedly, Armand did not speak to the looming spectres of Magnus and Marius—how Lestat had never known the benefits of a maker, and how Armand’s had been lost (had kept himself lost). Instead, his emotions played across his face in what Lestat knew to be a gift to him. Armand was more than capable of stoic impassivity, but he let Lestat see the strange blend of pride and fear and longing that was consuming him. 

Finally, he said; “Daniel doesn’t need me. He’s a grown man. He doesn’t want me either, and he certainly won’t appreciate this...interference.”

That was all well and good, but it certainly explained Armand’s stiff demeanour, and the way discomfort radiated off him, dissipating into the winter air like heat off of a human. Lestat couldn’t imagine being so far away from a new fledgling, one made with the love that Armand had poured into Daniel. His own experiences had been not dissimilar how humans described first setting eyes on their children. Love. Pure and all-encompassing and vital, like the distilled essence of something you had only ever scented on the air. 

Gabrielle, Nicki, Louis, and even Claudia—born out of his love (if not for them, his love for someone), and becoming perfect receptacles of that love. At least for a time. Antoinette had been an aberration in a moment, a lifetime, of weakness, but even then, he had longed to be close to her after her turning, giving Louis flimsy excuses as the pull in his chest worsened. He had wanted to cut the cord out, but it had still pulled and hummed with something that was beyond him. She had suffered more, he knew, but that had not been his concern, and he had been able to muffle the buzz with Louis’ tired green eyes and long, elegant neck. 

And now here was Armand, and his fledgling was surely calling out to him, and there was no one for him to use to drown out the vibrating song of that pulled-taut cord. 

“I don’t forgive you,” Lestat said bluntly. It was the truth, but he wasn’t sure that this was the moment to say it. Armand looked flighty enough, and he’d always been quick—he could duck under Lestat’s arm and be in the sky in a second. Instead, he just sighed and sagged back into the wall like it would mould to his shape if he stayed there long enough. And if he pushed back with enough force, it would give in, cradling him in crushed bricks and bits of mortar. 

“I don’t recall asking for any forgiveness,” Armand returned. 

“I will never see you as Louis does,” he told him. “Some shrinking victim who doesn’t know your strength.”

“Have you just come to berate me, then?” Armand stomped out his cigarette and lit another one. Again, Lestat’s fingers twitched, and Armand’s delicate mouth crawled into something that could be called a smile. There was a gravity about Armand, a muffling, smothering effect that he shared with his maker. Lestat wondered if it was hereditary, or learned. It had the effect of a heavy hand on the back of the neck as if to say; easy—not here, not now, not with me. Not worth it. 

Lestat shook off the stupefying sensation and the way it made him feel slow and clumsy, and reached out to pluck the cigarette from Armand’s fingers. Vampire mouths didn’t taste of anything. There was no distinctive flavour that Lestat could imagine lingering on the filter, but he set his fingers where Armand’s had been and inhaled. 

“He’s foundering, your Daniel. Staying out till the early hours, blood-drunk and out of his mind with whatever the mortals are poisoning themselves with these days. I’ve been playing the nanny, as some form of twisted recompense for your care of Louis, but one day I won’t be able to beat the sun. He’s flirting with it, Armand, and I will not be held responsible for how it ends.”

It was his turn to extinguish the cigarette and he did it brutally, grinding the blocky heel of his purple velvet boot into the ground. When he looked back up at Armand, the other vampire looked carefully miserable. 

Finally, he said; “Daniel was a gift that I cannot repay. I can’t claim him now.”

Lestat thought for a moment about offering a kind face and an embrace, but he decided against it, and instead laughed loudly in Armand’s face. “A gift! From Louis? You odd creature, a fledgling does not come with a gift receipt. What is the phrase? You break it, you buy it? Well. He is not all the way broken, but the stress fractures are developing. Who knows what will cause him to shatter.” 

Armand hunched deeper into the wall. The oppressive weight sunk lower. Lestat gritted his teeth against it and tossed his hair back. Somewhere, mortals were chattering, but the sound travelled as if through water. 

“What gift would you give Louis in return, hmm? What perfect thing would make him melt?”

“I do not expect forgiveness,” Armand said so meekly, and Lestat laughed at him again. 

“You do, of course you do. Fifty years from now, a century, it does not matter, but you expect him to see how nicely you’ve been waiting, how penitent you are, how deep the bruises on your knees are from kneeling, and you expect him to count himself lucky to inspire such devotion in one such as you.” 

Armand’s wide eyes narrowed. “And what of you?” he snapped. “You think he’s forgiven you?”

Lestat sobered, and reached out to touch Armand’s sleeve. “Of course not. Of course he hasn’t. Of course he won’t. Forgiving me would be like forgiving himself, and we both know he’ll never do that. Mon cher petit diable, you can’t only exist for the dream of Louis.”

Mutinous, Armand lifted his chin. “What do you call the last eighty years of your existence?”

Lestat felt Armand’s stifling presence slide off him like a heavy cloak as his anger rose. “That is different, I am his maker, I am the father of his child—”

“Ah,” Armand whispered. “Rules for me, but not for thee.”

Oh, but Armand could provoke him like no one else—when Claudia had grown past her wide-eyed admiration, his first thought had been Armand, evoked not just by her wide amber eyes, but by the satisfied set to her mouth when she got under his skin, and the delicacy of her hands which seemed ill-suited for evisceration, even as they dug through his guts. 

“Come to Paris,” Lestat managed to grit out. He did not reach for Armand’s throat, or lunge for his mouth. Progress, of a sort. “You don’t have to run into Daniel’s arms, but come to Paris and look upon your creation, at least. We can talk.” He let flirtation creep into his voice as he toyed with the sleeve of Armand’s jacket. “Entre autres.” 

Armand melted so deliberately. It was always strange to witness, like a candle dictating the direction of its own flowing wax. If that was how Armand wanted to play, Lestat would play. He slipped his fingers under the wrist of the jacket. It was a light touch, but his hand glanced off of Armand’s and he enjoyed the spark that burst through him at the silky feel of ancient skin. 

“To talk about Louis?” Armand asked, hopeful. 

He let the weight of Armand crush his anger down. “If you wish. We have much to commiserate over, hmm? Who else could possibly understand the burden and the beauty of loving him?”

There was one other, of course, but she was ash on the wind. 

“I will come,” Armand said. He sounded gracious about it, like this was all some great favour for Lestat. 

“Good,” Lestat breathed. He drew Armand against him delicately; he played the dashing gentleman that Armand had sketched in Louis’ book, one arm tight around his waist and the other keeping a hold of his hand to press it to his heart. “We will make new memories in that city, non? And I will not forgive you, and you will not forgive me, but perhaps we will find some understanding between us.” 

“What exactly have you been doing for the past year?” 

Armand had deigned to join him in his room after that night’s concert, the second of four planned engagements. Lestat was toying with the idea of drawing out the stop. He had not spent as much time with Armand as envisioned; Armand was reluctant to have Daniel catch sight of him, and would be sent scurrying off into the sewers or over the rooftops at the slightest hint of his fledgling. But now, Armand was draped across the foot of his bed, elegant and drab in his all-black outfit, a long line of concealed loveliness. Lestat caught his eye in the mirror as he continued to wipe his makeup away. If he left it, it would slough off his skin by morning, but he liked the ritual of removal. 

“Lurking? Killing malefactors who threatened Daniel? Leaving poor book reviews for Louis?”

Armand stretched and sighed. They were ensconced in the Liane de Pougy suite at the Maison Souquet—sumptuous purple wallpaper and dark corners in an attempt to grasp at the ghost of the Belle Époque. Armand did not care for the place, and would make himself scarce before sunup, but for now, Lestat had him in the close, dark room which sought to emulate the imagined glamour of the old brothels, the mythologized lives of cossetted luxury led by the ladies of the night. 

“I’ve been occupied. The division of assets. Not something you had to deal with in the wake of your and Louis’ dissolution. We have extensive holdings, priceless pieces of art—things need to be liquefied and tidied away.”

Lestat let his head loll back over his shoulder to regard Armand. “Mm. Tidying was always your job, non? Keeping the mess away from Louis.”

“Just because you treated him as a housewife did not mean that was his natural inclination,” Armand snapped. 

“You let me think he was dead, Armand.”

The easy, caustic banter died, and Lestat felt that weight, like a hand between his shoulder blades, like he was about to be pressed face first into the wall, the floor, a mattress—and then it lifted just as suddenly. 

“Don’t do that,” he hissed, rounding his shoulders like he could shake the sensation off. 

“I don’t intend to,” Armand told him, wide-eyed. “And I didn’t intend to let you think he was dead. We are vampires. It takes more than that to kill us.” 

“I’ve found Louis uniquely creative in the art of self-destruction,” Lestat spat. He turned back to the vanity, an ostentatious thing of dark wood and brass fixtures, and grabbed a fresh makeup wipe. The glitter on his cheekbones was stubborn and he scrubbed harshly. He was still feeling the relentless energy of the cocaine-laced blood from after the show and his hands shook slightly. “You might be recreational in your masochism, but he takes it very seriously.” 

Louis’ bold, infuriating, twisted book hung in the air between them. If they’d been anybody else, it might have served as a sort of Rosetta Stone—the key to translating one another. As it was, it felt like a grave marker for any number of relationships. 

“You’re blind, Lestat,” Armand said. His voice was eerily calm. “So fucking blind. What do you think this is, what you are doing, if not self-destructing? Your hands shake. You drink only poisoned blood. You spill your soul out to a world that will never know or believe you or want you beyond your frozen body and golden hair, and you have chased all your loves away. Why have you asked me here? To witness? I won’t, I’ve done that, and Louis suffered far more beautifully than you. You could’ve been a vampire to be respected, like my maker was, but instead...it is pathetic, you know.”

He swung his long legs to the ground and crossed to the window smoothly, brushing past Lestat like he was nothing more than an annoyance, and the stolen blood in his veins surged with manic energy and Lestat found himself pleading. 

“Armand—don’t. You said Daniel was a gift, hmm? One you could not accept? What if I help you find a gift in return? I’ve always been a gifted giver, my sweet, and Louis is hard to shop for.”

“Louis won’t be bought back. You tried for what—seven years? And I will not resort to baiting him as you did.”

Lestat shook his head as his panic eased. Absently, he rubbed at his chest. With Louis back in his life, albeit sporadically, the twinned rhythm of their hearts felt like a comfort again, rather than a taunt. “Not to buy him back. To settle the matter of Daniel.”

“My only fledgling isn’t something I can settle with a tacky Cartier bracelet.” 

“Putain, you can be unpleasant,” Lestat told him, and Armand hissed, small fangs flicking out. 

“Why are you trying to help me?” Armand asked. He was still hovering by the window, with one hand on the sill, the lights of Paris illuminating his curls like the angel that he wasn’t. 

“It is self-serving,” Lestat admitted. “Daniel is...displeased with the lack of depth in my answers. You would distract him. You will not go to him without paying Louis proper recompense, but Louis will not see you. The impasse needed to be broken.” 

“I don’t trust you,” Armand replied, but he let his hand drop from the window. 

Lestat wondered if that distrust had been shared with Daniel in the Blood, or if it was one of the things that had drawn Armand to him. Daniel was always glaring with narrowed eyes, barking reminders into the microphone to ‘check that’, ‘follow up’, ‘grab that’, and the like. He changed tacks. Perhaps they had more similarities. 

“Nor should you,” he murmured. His face was clean to his standards and he swayed towards Armand, capturing him by the hips and pressing him back against the window ledge. “Where would the fun be if you did?”

Hunger for Armand was never hard to summon, especially now—it had been a year since he had given into an eighty-year long hunger, sating himself wherever and whenever, with whoever should fling themselves into his arms. He pressed his nose against Armand’s neck, dragging it up the column of his throat until he could chew a kiss into the tender skin behind his ear. 

“Do you want me, old friend?” he whispered. “My frozen body, my golden hair?”

Armand shuddered but his arms came up and around Lestat. Lack of hunger had never been a problem for them. Armand let his head tip back, let Lestat cradle the fine bones of his skull and neck as he left wet, bruising bites along Armand’s throat, collarbone, pushing the shirt down and distorting the neckline.

“You asked Daniel to ask you questions,” Armand pointed out, seemingly unaffected even as his hands roamed Lestat’s waist, tucking up under his shirt to skate up his chest. “Why are you trying to escape them?”

When have I ever given in without a fight? Lestat asked. He didn’t let up from Armand’s neck, and he could almost feel the dull rush of Armand’s blood rolling over his own skin, like sticking his hand in moving water, as he went for the buttons on his shirt. 

Sighing, Armand let Lestat push his shirt off, and took the initiative to tug at Lestat’s—a skimpy, frothy piece of lace and latex that Armand managed to get him untangled from without even snagging his claws. “Not everything’s a battle.” 

Lestat shut him up then, shoving him back against the wall and kissing him how he wanted, which was hard and invasive and toothy. Nothing is a battle for you. The laugh against his mouth was breathy and wide. You say the most foolish things, Lestat. Fingertips circling the knobs of his spine, so smooth with age that he couldn’t feel the whorls of skin. Armand’s whole person was like a sea-washed stone; eroded and shaped inexorably towards spare, polished beauty. 

“Even this,” Lestat kissed into him. “You don’t fight, you just bend. Give way.” 

He could feel the phantom heat from Armand’s eyes when they flared. It made his own blood sing; feeling fledgling fresh, cocky and delighted at the reaction from such a stony old monster. Armand shoved him, and though Lestat could tell the movement took little effort, it sent him flying across the bedroom, back hitting the ornate wooden foot-board of the bed with enough force to send him tumbling over the end and landing dazed in the pillows. 

“You think you know me because you read Louis’ book,” Armand snarled, already atop him. “You think seventy seven years can be distilled into paperback trash, you think you have some claim to the years we spent together because you knew us first?” 

Lestat just blinked up at him, and later, he honestly would not be able to say what compelled his next words. 

“It’s out in paperback?”

The shriek that Armand let out would have brought people running if Lestat were staying in a less padded and less exclusive enclave, but as it was, it was loud enough to shatter the vanity mirror. 

“There you are!” Lestat crowed, delighted. “Kiss me, mon ange, and forget all about it.” 

Armand looked bewildered, and Lestat reminded himself that he had been with Louis for seventy seven years. Sensible, darling Louis, who hated the breakneck turns Lestat would make, wrenching them from anger to lust with one ill-thought sentence. 

“Kiss me,” he said again, and blinked ingratiatingly.

He got Armand wrestled out of his layers and all spread out, his fangs still out, his eyes still brand-bright, and just stopped to look for a moment, delighted. Armand chose his moment well. As Lestat took him in, fingers tracing the muscle of his thighs and the hair of his stomach, Armand pounced. Twisting so he could ram his shoulder into the centre of Lestat’s chest, Armand flung them down to the floor, and scrabbled furiously with him for a moment, until Lestat’s mind overrode his instincts and he went limp. Immediately, Armand dropped him. Dead prey was no fun. 

“What is the matter with you?” Lestat demanded. “I’m trying to make love to you.” 

“You’d have me like Louis had me,” Armand said flatly. He had Lestat’s wrists in his hands, pinned up over his head. Despite the price point of the hotel, it was still hotel carpet, and Lestat was none too eager to continue things atop it. 

“I’d have you how you’d have it,” Lestat told him. “When have you ever known me to have the taste for the crudeness that you and Louis got up to?” 

Armand gazed down at him. “It was beautiful.” His voice was steady. “It was ours.” 

It made him want to rage and gnash his fangs with jealousy—his Louis, his Armand, and for a moment he considered rolling Armand around the suite and bashing all the walls in, but he pulled it back just as quickly. He was older now. Surely that meant he was wiser. 

“Armand, I don’t care about the staging of all this. Your cock in my ass or the other way around, or perhaps we just sit on either ends of the bed and stare at each other as we bring ourselves off. Whatever it is we do, I would like to do it on a bed.” 

He thought Armand would fly at him in a rage—Armand having once enjoyed such unpredictability, but instead he was lifted and deposited back atop the bed in an instant. At the foot, Armand sat. He was elegant, poised. It was one of the reasons the sex had always been easy between them. They accepted the artifice of the other, felt no need to paint on a layer of authenticity to soothe or placate. The performance was mutual and understood as innate, and there was the ease of two actors meeting on stage. So Lestat let himself look; the pose was for him, and it was intended to be appreciated. Armand had one long leg stretched out, the other pulled up to his chest, and his back arched just enough to erase any creases along his belly. His cock was hard and rubbing lightly against his stomach, and he met Lestat’s eyes calmly. All lovely and long and warm to look at, Lestat wanted Armand pressed up against him from ankle to shoulder. He wanted to wash out the drugs in his veins with Armand’s ancient blood. 

“I won’t bend,” Armand told him. 

“Would you come here?” 

Armand shook his head. “You have all your faculties. I am here.” 

Lestat rolled his eyes, but picked himself up and slunk down the bed until he knelt above Armand, and could cup his neck. The kiss was good; drugging and thick, it spilled down Lestat’s throat and warmed him. He barely noticed Armand tugging him and rearranging him until Armand was beneath him, hair splayed out prettily on the pillow. 

They were both a little tentative, not something Lestat had ever thought he’d be with Armand, but he knew he needed to stay on Armand’s good side. 

“What do you want?” he cooed into Armand’s mouth. He ran one hand down Armand’s chest, rubbing at the wiry hair, sliding down his stomach, palming his cock and pressing it down against his belly with firm, steady pressure. Armand hummed. His pupils were wide and welcoming, but he was still breathing slowly. 

“Turn around, Lestat.” 

It was a test, he could feel it—Armand prodding at his obedience to see when it would break. Louis used to play the same game and he would always get that sinking feeling when being confronted with a thing he could not possibly win. Here, though, with Armand palming his shoulders and pressing firmly, he thought he might be able to meet the occasion. 

With a flourish, he swung himself around until he straddled Armand’s chest, facing the foot of the bed. Armand’s hands weren’t shy anymore as he grabbed Lestat around the front of his thighs and dragged him back smoothly. Letting out a huff of laughter, Lestat planted his hands on the sharp bones of Armand’s hips. They were of a more similar build than either of them were to Louis—heavier and broader bones, and it felt good to grip without fear of fracture. Beneath his mouth, Armand’s cock was hard, shining at the tip. He felt the huff of cool breath against his own as he dipped down to drag his nose up the side, inhaling the scent of blood and winter. The scent of Armand’s blood singed his lungs, like breathing overheated air and feeling it dry your out from within. 

“You never feared shattering Louis?” Lestat asked, between laying sharp bites onto Armand’s thighs, around the base of his cock, the protrusions of his hips. “You are so much stronger and yet you laid down at his feet...you never slipped?”

He hadn’t forgotten how precarious his own position was, but the hand around his balls still got him to freeze. 

“I protected him,” Armand said. His voice was low and angry, serious in a way that Lestat hadn’t heard that night. He was suddenly glad he couldn’t see Armand’s face because he had the horrible sense he would want to duck away from those burning eyes. “Even from me, I protected him. You think he would’ve survived alone? You think he would’ve come back to you after a few months of wandering? He would have waited for the sun to come up and you would have never known where his ashes had blown to.” 

With that, the hard hands on his thighs pulled him down, forcing him to stretch, Armand’s small hot mouth wrapping around his cock without warning. To hide his gasp, Lestat opened his own mouth and swallowed Armand in turn. It was not dissimilar to to the blood circle—biting and being bitten, an open gate of pleasure, warmth in his mouth and need curling through his tongue. Armand was familiarly relentless. One arm was wrapped around the small of his back to keep him in place while the other hand dug claws into his ass. The angle was good, Armand having propped his head in such a way that Lestat’s cock was able to slide right into his clutching throat, and it took him a moment to find his bearings. 

He had always enjoyed the act; he had a generous mouth and a clever tongue, and it was a way to show lovers that he cared. That he was not as selfish as they painted him. But in the headiness of stardom and the cliche of groupies on their knees, he had had little chance to offer himself in that way. 

It was silent in the room other than the sounds of their bodies, loud and visceral, never so apparent that they were creatures that fed off of life. He could hear the rush of blood in Armand’s thighs and he ran his hands down them, clutching at the muscle, feeling Armand’s nails dig deeper into his own skin and letting the head of Armand’s cock slide against the smooth skin of his inner cheek. Lestat got one hand free to reach between Armand’s legs—he was wet with spit and Lestat toyed with him, digging his knuckle into the space between his hole and his balls, making his hips jerk before sliding down further to circle his rim and press at the muscle there. 

Armand was losing focus a little; his mouth had slackened, and Lestat could feel the fuzz of pleasure overtaking his thoughts. Before he could press his advantage, there was a hand in his hair, wrenching him back and up until he was upright and kneeling above Armand, and he could see Armand’s long elegant throat working, could brace his hands on his muscular chest and shake as he felt the threat of small fangs scraping, felt blood rise and release, Armand not even playing at the facsimile of humanity with how relentless and untiring he was—and then he bit in earnest, fangs sinking in about halfway down Lestat’s cock and he was swallowing, swallowing, swallowing as Lestat came and sobbed and collapsed. He didn’t stop after Lestat’s orgasm, continuing to drink, fangs teasing at soft, sensitive flesh as he reopened the wounds, and Lestat could feel the way his mouth warmed from the inside out with the influx of blood; it should have looked like submission, him pressing Armand down into the pillows, cock still tucked in his mouth, the firm little nipples beneath his palms—but Armand was drinking, moving, holding him tight until he was done. 

When Armand finally released him, his thighs were shaking. He’d been shaking more and more with the drugs and the booze and the drugged, boozy blood, but it was normally confined to his hands. Lestat fell sideways and Armand let him land awkwardly, splayed across the bed with one leg still half-wedged beneath Armand’s head. Despite it, he twisted himself around to reach for Armand, but he was too late—back lifted in a perfect cambré, toes pointed elegantly, hand around his cock as he bit his lip and muffled his moans. Lestat could just watch; the play of shadow across his belly as his hand moved, and the bob of his throat as he swallowed the remnants of Lestat’s blood. 

Lestat gazed unblinkingly at the sight. He wanted to touch and he managed to get his hand splayed across Armand’s chest just as he came. A drop of come landed across his knuckles, and he took his hand back to lick at it greedily; saltier than regular blood, and less laced with pain. Armand went slack and unbreathing. Eyes closed, stomach wet, hair mussed. 

“Still such a metteur en scène,” Lestat said. He resituated himself against Armand’s side. The heavy cream sheets were blood spotted, but the dark purple brocade of the counterpane covered all sins. It reminded him of the beds he had shared with Armand in the past, the dense grain of the woods, the sumptuous feather mattresses. Armand’s eyes batted open. The fog of pleasure was clearing quickly, and Lestat tossed his leg across his hips before Armand could move and shake him away. His concern was unfounded. Armand fairly melted, tucking his face into Lestat’s hair and inhaling like he needed the air. The relief of being with a body he knew and loved, and having that person pull him close was shocking, and Lestat found himself swallowing harshly. 

“You forget that I was always the one asking you to stay,” Armand murmured into his hair. 

The memory of those entreaties made him go rigid for a moment—Nicki, tear-stained and furious, Armand, hopeful and pleading. The lure of Gabrielle and her independence. Then Armand stroked a firm hand down his spine like he was gentling a horse, and it fell away. 

“I want to get to know the city again,” Lestat sighed. His hands were shaky, which was the norm, these days, but he he reached and pressed one against Armand’s chest to still it. “Show me Paris, Armand.” 

“Paris is large,” Armand told him, and flattened his own hand over Lestat’s. “What would you have me show you?” 

“The things I missed.” 

Armand looked exasperated, but there was the hint of a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, and Lestat leaned in to kiss at it, and reel it out. “The things that passed while I slept. The Exposition, maybe.” 

“The Exposition.” Armand sounded suspicious. “Of 1900.”

“It changed the face of the city, non?” 

Lestat stretched out on the wrecked bed, rolling his wrists in the way he’d seen Tough Cookie do before performances. Her wrists clicked in an unsettling way and it would remind him of how easy it was to break a human down to its components. 

“It was a facade, Lestat. Plaster and prayers, like the backdrop to a play. Traces are left, but nothing that would be novel today.”

“Show me the art, then.” 

Armand curled into his side. Despite the tension that Lestat could sink his fangs into, their bodies were easy together. “Lestat, your mind is wide open. You can ask me things, instead of trying to lure me in.”

“Sweet little love.” Lestat carded a hand through Armand’s curls. “Don’t pretend you’re some paragon of good sense. You wouldn’t be here if you were good at asking or giving, hmm?” 

In his arms, Armand went eerily still, and Lestat prepared for the fangs, the claws. Instead, Armand just contorted himself even smaller and pressed his face into the hollow of Lestat’s collarbone. 

“The Petit Palais,” Lestat announced. “That is where we will find a gift for Louis.”

“I hardly think a museum gift shop is the spot.”

Armand refused to be pried from his spot against Lestat’s neck, so Lestat let him be, and let the images drift into his mind instead. The two of them in dark clothing and caps, dark masks on their faces and gloves on their hands, floating through the air of the silent gallery. Lestat’s imagining was foggy. He’d not been to the gallery yet, and couldn’t picture the surrounds properly, but he had the piece picked out and he showed it to Armand in careful, loving detail, letting the background fade away. 

Vibrant colours and the illumination of the light from behind the stained glass, Lestat casting his mind back to the times when the windows of the village church had been one of his few sources of beauty. This piece was not like those old windows. The people could have been photographs, so fine was the work, and the hue of their skin would never have been been seen in a French church in the 18th century. A young man stood in the centre and cradled a boy in his arms—the boy was limp, head tilted back in sleep, or death. It was unclear whether they were brother or son, but they were dressed in modern clothing and surrounded by mourners in simple, timeless robes. Behind them bloomed a sunburst and from that, bloomed red roses. 

See, Lestat said, poring over the detail, knowing Armand was peering over his shoulder. Look at the colours. Look at the people. 

And you wish to acquire this for Louis, Armand asked, sounding doubtful. You could buy it after the exhibition. 

That is not the point. The point is the gesture, Armand! 

He felt Armand study it through his memory. Felt Armand imagine the feeling of the window’s cool glass against his fingertips, and the way Louis’ smile could feel like a sunburst in his chest, or a tangle of thorny roses. 

A gesture for Paul? Claudia? Madeleine? Daniel? Louis has had many children.

Louis had always been more a parent than Lestat could ever fathom. He had been instinctual with it in a way that had charmed Lestat, and even now, the thought of him taking on Daniel made the fledgling seem just a little less objectionable in Lestat’s eyes. 

Many children who are gone, Lestat. Armand’s mental voice was cold. He felt Armand’s withdrawal from his mind suddenly and sharply, and shivered with it. That retreat was furthered when Armand sat up and began to reach for his clothing. 

“You think Louis will want a reminder of his failures?” Armand asked aloud, slipping into his trousers. 

Lestat sat up as well. Being undressed while Armand was clothed felt far too vulnerable, but he folded his arms behind his head and leaned against the headboard. In truth, he had never thought of them as failures on Louis’ part. Misshapen children, yes, a cruel world, yes, the monstrosity of ancient vampires an a coven hungry for novelty—but never Louis’ failure. 

“Saint Louis has always relished a self-imposed martyrdom.”

He would deny the cruelty if Armand ever tried to use it against him. But Armand just gave him an exasperated look and finished dressing. 

“This is your grand plan for a gesture that would even the scales?” Armand said. He leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets. “A piece of art Louis could buy a thousand times over?”

“The gesture is in the acquisition. You and I—speaking of him, doing this for him, united in our love for him.”

Armand scoffed. “Oh our love for him. That was what this was in service of, yes?” 

He gestured to the mussed bed, to Lestat himself. “Our shared love? For Louis?”

Lestat shrugged, and wished for a cigarette to complete the performance. Louis made for a convenient excuse. A pure and star crossed love, Lestat in perpetual atonement at his feet.

“Without Louis, what would we be tempted to do to one another?” Lestat asked. “I might wake up one day to find myself staked out in the sun. Or I might give in to my temper and snap your pretty neck on a whim. Louis hangs over us, hmm?” 

“You make him sound like a burden. You called him one, before.” 

Lestat kept his gaze steady. “Maybe. But a burden I will never let drop again. Would you give him this? Peace between us?” 

Armand had a unique capability to shrink. It would have served him well on stage, if he’d ever lowered himself to it, but now it allowed him to press himself against the window, make it look like his clothes were swamping him. 

“Never about me...” Armand whispered. His voice was lost in the past. The ghosts were creeping in. Lestat gritted his teeth at the way Claudia’s words infected the air. He remembered eating honey as a human, and how it would make the back of your throat ache if you tried to gorge yourself. Claudia’s voice from Armand’s mouth felt like that sweet soreness. 

“Entends,” Lestat ordered, scrambling from the bed. He gripped Armand by his lapels and shook him. “Don’t do that, I won’t have it anymore. What more do you want, Armand? What more can I give you?”

Armand let himself be moved. His head jerked back and forth sharply, and he was limp under Lestat’s hands. After a moment, Lestat let go and let him fall back against the wall. He was still slack and misty-eyed. Lestat hissed in his face, and when that failed to rouse him, he pulled the window clean out of the frame, and set it down on the floor. 

“We’ve hours of darkness left,” Lestat told him. “Come on.” 

Finally, Armand blinked and considered him. His mind was smoothly shielded, no doubt protecting the way he was examining Lestat’s words with a jeweller’s loupe, searching for flaws and falsity. “Lestat, you’re naked.” 

Lestat rolled his eyes and went for the wardrobe. “I thought the sight might make them more inclined to give up the piece, but I’ll oblige your sensitivities.” 

He followed Armand’s style, opting for dark fabrics and matte finishes, nothing too baggy, nothing that would impede movement. He could feel Armand’s eyes on him as he dressed. It always burned between them. The want, the ease of giving in to it, and for a moment he thought; let’s forget the past, let’s forget Louis and all our mistakes and climb back into bed till the sun wakes us with its burning. Armand must have heard some of it, based on his sharp inhale from across the room, and Lestat looked up finally, tugging his boot on. Armand’s clear amber eyes contained plenty of trapped memories, hardened like flies in resin. 

“Come on,” Lestat said again, and strode to the window with his hand out. “Shall I carry you? Or will you come peaceably?”

Predictably, Armand scowled at that, and neatly lifted himself out the window to hover, a hundred feet above the ground, where the bars of Montmartre still hummed, and tipsy tourists stumbled over the cobblestones. When they had first met, Lestat did not have the Cloud Gift, and Armand had been circumspect about sharing what he knew of it. He felt oddly nervous climbing out the window to follow. For a moment, they just floated. Armand looked like he belonged there, some airy spirit of the sky, with his sunset eyes and stormy curls, and Lestat reached out to brush his cheek gently. Neither one of them breathed, and Armand lifted his hand to curl around Lestat’s wrist. He closed his bright eyes, and leaned into Lestat’s touch. Like a dream from childhood, the whole scene could have been. The white domes of Sacré-Cœur glowing faintly in the background, a beautiful man in his arms as they floated high above the streets of Paris, which were cleaner than any he might have imagined back in the cold castle in the Auvergne. He gathered Armand in close, and laid a kiss on his lips. It did not break the illusion. He did not awaken from the softness of the dream. Instead, Armand’s eyes just flickered open, hazy and delighted, and he pulled Lestat back in. For a while, they bobbed in the air like buoys at sea, awash in careful touches and cold fingertips, Armand pulling kisses from him like he might pull blood from the veins of a victim. 

“The museum,” Armand finally murmured, pulling away. He pressed his lips to Lestat’s collar, like he was reminding himself of a barrier between them. 

“We could go tomorrow night,” Lestat said, only half-joking. 

“No,” Armand told him. “Tonight, Lestat. Or not at all.” 

His face was solemn; his mouth was drawn and small, and his eyes huge and syrupy, the only part of his face that was languid. 

It did not take long to fly to the Petit Palais. They drifted down off of the hill of Montmartre towards the Seine, hand in hand, neither one of them pulling ahead of the other. Paris was laid out so neatly. Countless little alleys and triangular courtyards, hidden gardens and narrow buildings. How many dark corners had he kissed Nicki in, over two hundred years ago? How many of those streets had Armand and Louis walked down, staring into each others eyes? His stomach twisted and the sky heaved against him, but Armand caught him as he stumbled against the air. 

“Is it the blood?” Armand asked. 

Lestat shook his head and it all came back into clarity. “No,” he smiled. “No, something in the air. Let’s go.”

“Kehinde Wiley,” Louis said, muted and unimpressed as he tore the brown paper from the stained glass. Lestat elbowed Armand. Louis was studying the piece intently. His clear green eyes were such a shade, that any artist would have mourned that they lived in his lovely face, and not in a tube of paint, or as a pane of glass waiting to be cut. 

“Do you like it?” Armand blurted, and then winced. The way his emotions were ricocheting behind his shields was audible—Lestat may not have been able to pick up on the specifics of his thoughts or feelings, but he could hear the echos as they sheered off the walls and spun away. 

Louis went back to the artwork. The absence of his thoughts was a relief, so overwhelming were Armand’s, and Lestat slipped his hand up to press against the small of Armand’s back. Just gently, Armand leaned back against him. It was a trust that sent a molten little jolt through his stomach—it was a trust that meant nothing, realistically; if Lestat took away his hand, Armand wouldn’t even stumble. 

Louis was still tracing the leaded lines of the glass, peering at the face of the young man in the centre. Minutely, his jaw softened as he gazed at the child in the Mary-figure’s arms. Again, Lestat nudged Armand. 

Don’t expect him to read your mind, Lestat told him. He won’t want to venture in there.

“It’s—” Armand stumbled over his words. It made Louis look up, startled. Armand did not second guess his words in any way that could be observed. The agonising was all internal. “It’s a thank you, of sorts, for Daniel. Leaving him to me.”

Scoffing, Louis stood and took a step back. At a distance, the height advantage that Lestat and Armand both held was less apparent. The easy slouch that Louis inhabited disappeared as he straightened. Lestat could see the steel curling up his spine, even with Louis concealed in the softness of a warm orange sweater and sage coloured slacks. 

“I didn’t leave him for you, Armand.” 

Louis’ voice was thick with the sort of disdain Lestat was intimately familiar with. Once, hearing Louis speak to Armand in that voice would’ve sent him into joyful hysteria. Now it just made his throat ache with sympathy. Again, the memory of too much, too sweet honey. 

“We were meant to turn him together, remember?” Louis asked, ducking his head to catch Armand’s lowered eyes. The honey in his throat cloyed, choked. “Meant to bring our boy into eternity together? You miss out on telling Lestat that part of the story?” 

Armand had, of course, removed that from his narrative. Directionless, horrid jealousy was burning in Lestat’s stomach, the jealousy he’d been biting back as Louis found himself, and the fledgling cracked snide jokes about Louis and Armand’s blissful domesticity, and he feasted on images of the two of them pulled straight from the fledgling’s mind like a nut from its shell. But—that jealousy poured out, useless on the floor, a glass of spilled water compared to the dense storm brewing between Armand and Louis. 

“He told me,” Lestat interrupted, lying. “A sweet thing, truly. I am glad you felt able to...try again.” 

Armand, terrible actor that he was, looked incredulous, and Lestat pinched his waist hard. 

“Yes,” Armand said slowly. “Yes, I told Lestat our plan for Daniel. I told him how I ruined it. This was meant to be a peace offering. Or some kind of proof, I suppose.”

Louis said nothing. With no light behind it, the glass was lifeless. 

“Proof that we could be honest, cher,” Lestat lied again. “And think of things other than you.” 

The vindictive boil in Louis’ eyes had calmed to a simmer. Now, he mostly looked confused. “Right. You went out—and stole me a painting. To prove you could be honest and think of things other than me.”

“I admit it sounds counterintuitive—” Lestat began, but Armand jumped in. “Working together. Speaking to one another honestly. A gift intended for joy, not obligation.”

There was the hint of amusement twitching its way along Louis’ jaw, and Lestat pressed their advantage. “Of course, it was not all easy. We had many disagreements. How best to approach the laser grid. How to transport the thing when it was revealed that Armand forgot bubble wrap. How, even, to deliver it to you! But you see we are here, in one piece, not maimed at all.” 

There was the heart fluttering flash of a smile, and Lestat heard Armand sigh in unison with him. Perhaps it was true that a sorrow shared was a sorrow halved. Armand had certainly shared this sorrow honestly. 

Louis rubbed his face with the sort of world-weary exhaustion that used to send Lestat into a rage, when Louis had been a fledgling in truth. “What do you know of exhaustion,” he had wanted to howl. “I slept for a hundred years and woke with heavy eyes and leaden limbs.” Now, he realised it as the retreat it had always been, and he didn’t pursue. Armand, of course, went a step further. 

“We will leave, now,” Armand said quietly. His voice was so low and respectful, and Lestat wondered if this was the tone he used for his little fantasies with Louis, full of whips and knives and shoes polished to a shine. “Good night Louis.” 

Armand’s eyes were cast down, so Lestat was sure he didn’t see Louis’ small and tired smile when he replied. “Good night Armand.” 

“Bonne nuit, Louis,” Lestat told him. Louis said nothing, but offered Lestat a smile of his own, which felt just as precious as a word might have. 

They left Louis’ echoing home in silence, and Lestat felt the sorrow ebb and flow between them, at the thought of that shared beloved, alone in his tower. 

“He is not all alone,” Armand said. He leaned against the wall of the penthouse’s private elevator. He sounded like he was convincing himself. “He is in touch with Rashid, regarding the Talamasca’s meddling. He...I believe he has grown quite close to his lawyer.”

It was astonishing, what was rolling off of Lestat these days. “How would you know all that?” Lestat asked, almost amused as they made their way towards their sleek, boring rental car. He had wanted them to fly under their own power, and flirt with the sun, but Armand had made terribly sensible points about drones and airspace and radars, and so they had flown commercial, though safely ensconced in private cabins.

“Louis does not understand technology,” Armand said shortly. “I’m still automatically copied on most correspondence. I don’t abuse the privilege.”

“The privilege!” Lestat laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t tattle. And it’s good, hmm, that there’s a way to keep an eye on him? For emergencies.” 

Armand ducked into the car. He had to fold himself down quite far, but he looked good once he was seated—fitting into the modern world in a way that Lestat was never sure he would entirely master, despite his shiny plastic clothes and his flamboyance and his ‘painfully authentic lyricism.’ He had refused to let Lestat drive, despite Lestat producing a valid driver’s licence, and now, he draped his arm across the back of Lestat’s seat. 

“Emergencies,” Armand echoed. His free hand flexed on the wheel. “Yes. We will be there in case of emergencies.”

Lestat indulged himself and reached out to lay a hand on Armand’s thigh, warm and muscled through the thin linen of his trousers. “And I am here,” he told him. It was too earnest, he knew, even as it escaped. “Regardless of emergencies.” 

They did not speak of Daniel. They did not speak of Lestat’s interrupted interviews. Armand’s hand slipped down to cup the back of Lestat’s neck, and Lestat kept his on Armand’s leg, holding firm. The tower disappeared behind them as they returned to the airport, and Lestat thought that perhaps their excuses to Louis had not been such terrible lies after all.

LAMENTATION

MARY, COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED II

2016

KEHINDE WILEY