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Louis wakes up to a buzzing sound.
He assumes it's Lestat, because of course he does. Ever since she took him, everything seems like a sign of him. Every blond man glanced out of the corner of his eye, every sound from plumbing pipe or HVAC system, now enters Louis' mind first as a thing that could be Lestat, and only second as an actual event in the outside world. It is not the same as a ghost or a dream of him, because it has no presence, only possibility; the constant nagging feeling that it's not impossible, he has to pay attention, he doesn't want to miss the moment that it's truly him. Now, he constructs an interpretation like second nature. He thinks of the electric vibrators which became so very popular in the sixties, which Armand had reacted to like it was a more potent instrument of torture than actual instruments of torture. Lestat, however, would be a different story. Lestat must be in his coffin on the other side of the room, a motorized piece of plastic buried in his ass, writhing and moaning in an effort to wake Louis up and get him to—
He opens his eyes. He remembers. These conjectures, unlike the ghosts of Lestat that had once kept him company, cannot survive the cold light of rational thought. Perhaps that means Louis has gotten saner in the last half-century. It seems like it would be easier, maybe even more pleasant, to go back to whatever kind of crazy he was before, but he can't figure out how.
The sound is coming from the bathroom. He grabs the crutches. He's good at this. You don't gain a reputation for destroying vampire covens as they slumber without the thought entering your head that someone could do it to you. Any mortal firefighter would be proud of Louis' fire preparedness, how he has drilled over and over his own ability to go from a helpless corpse to up and ready to go even without the benefit of bipedality. The leg takes too long to get on. He's no good at walking with it, still, somehow, when a mortal would have long grown used to it. The same unchangingness that makes vampires resilient makes them terribly slow learners. Or maybe it's not even a vampire thing, just a tradeoff handed down from on high: you can either be resilient or flexible. Louis has never met anyone who is both. He lurches out of bed on a crutch, and pulls up short at the entrance to the bathroom of the hotel suite.
Armand is there, nude, surrounded by an explosion of hair. It is his hair. He has in his hand the clippers that Louis uses to smooth down the faint shadow on his face, an irritating consequence of having been turned at midnight after a long day. Louis only ever uses them on his face; he has no guards of the sort one would use to specify length for hair. Armand seems to have been attempting a mid-length cut, perhaps a little shorter than Daniel's, but the clippers are not the right tool for the job, he would have done better to use scissors, he cannot properly control the length at the back of his head and so it is patchy, nearly shaved down to the skin in some spots.
"What?" says Louis. Not even what the fuck. There seems to be something he's missing, some crucial plot point that would explain this. He interprets his own fucking life like a book now.
Armand turns off the clippers, lowers his hand, and stares at Louis like it's a surprise to see him in his own hotel room, in his own hotel. "I," he whispers "I wanted..." he trails off. That's all he's got.
Louis bursts out laughing. It hits him like an attack of something, a sneeze or a hallucination, how funny it is. Armand looks ridiculous. His eye is swollen nearly shut, irritated scar tissue expanding to fill the space vacated by his eyeball. The remains of eyelashes still flutter as his other eye darts back and forth across Louis's face. There is so much hair on the floor, and more coating his skin, flecks of it spilled down his torso, congregating in the little dip at the bottom of his spine. The patchy job on his head makes Armand look like a crazed wild animal, but also pathetic, a jungle cat being given a bath like a house kitty. It is the bizarrest possible scene he could imagine. In fact, it is a scene he could not have imagined, would never have thought to place it next in whatever extended cut of Interview with the Vampire the Daniel who seems to have installed his perspective permanently in Louis's mind might be writing. It is completely without narrative logic. Like an event sent down just to prove that he's real, mock him for wishing otherwise. "Armand," he gasps, "What the hell did you pray for?"
Armand blinks at him stupidly. He looks down at the tool in his hand, like he can't see the connection, doesn't understand the question. "I prayed that the One who sees what you show and what you conceal may guard and make clear to you the parts of you concealed by others," he says.
A last, tiny bubble of laughter escapes Louis's throat, but it sounds different, not quite right, not quite like something is funny. He'd asked for it hoping for— protection, maybe. Like the illustrations in books he'd had as a child, an angel watching over a slumbering boy who'd kissed his mama and said his prayers and kept his hands above the covers. And that is what Armand had asked for, except the slumbering boy is not the polite child of the illustration. He is the unknown, the unwriteable, unspeakable parts of Louis.
So this is what he gets for it, maybe: Armand in his bathroom, giving in to one of the most obstinately human impulses: when everything else goes to shit, at least you can still control your own body. Well, sometimes. If you're lucky.
"Okay," says Louis. "Only way out is through." He holds out his hand for the clippers. "C'mere, Britney."
Armand looks at him for a moment, lips open, then one quirks in a small smile. He ducks his head, and steps forward.
Last night, Armand's ruined eye under his fingers; now, Armand's naked body once again in his hands. He can't help it; he has not lost the habit of looking at this and thinking mine. Armand clothed is easier to disavow, but Armand naked is the Armand that Louis had spent seventy years being given, over and over again, to do as he pleased with, or forced upon him to take care of, depending on his mood, on the night, on the decade. He reaches out to put his hand on Armand's shoulder, turn him around, then realizes that this is really a two-handed job.
Long breath out. A sudden pause in the proceedings. That would have been suave, wouldn't it, if he'd pulled it off, but so many things seem to get in the way these days. Last night he'd confidently proclaimed that Armand has nothing that Louis needs, and then invited him into his hotel room. He sits down on the edge of the bathtub, pinches the bridge of his nose. He could lumber out to go get it himself. Or—
"Go get my leg for me," he says. "The leg, the liner, a sock from the bottom drawer. Don't get hair on the carpet." It hardly matters if Armand does. He just wants to give the order.
"Yes, Louis," says Armand, and makes his name sound like a title.
Fuck. This is so easy. It had always been so goddamn easy for them. And why shouldn't it be? Why shouldn't one thing in this world just work the way you thought it was going to?
Armand is back, kneeling in front of Louis, holding the leg and the liner. Okay. Fuck it.
Louis lifts himself up slightly to pull his pyjama bottoms off, and there. Armand's ruined face, Louis' ruined leg, staring each other in the— well, face, and leg. The stump is smooth and slightly tapered in a way that it had never occurred to him before to be embarrassed about but now appears somewhat unappealingly flaccid, like it would be preferable to have a thick virile leg stump. He almost smiles. Sometimes he's thought Armand draws it out of Louis on purpose, this desire to be confirmed in his manhood, just so Armand can have a purpose in doing it for him.
Armand doesn't seem to be in a state to do much of anything on purpose at the moment, dishevelled, a bit confused, but he's still a good valet. "Turn the liner inside out," Louis says. "Fit it to the bottom of my leg, close as you can. Feel where the pin on the liner is, and make sure it's pointing straight out. Otherwise it'll be impossible to get in the socket."
Armand does it carefully, nimbly, somehow faster and easier than Louis does it despite surely never having encountered a prosthetic leg before. Or maybe that's just how it feels to have someone here to help him with this. To be cared for with it. To not be alone in missing parts of himself, both literal and metaphorical. He swallows.
"Roll the sock over it," he says softly. "Pin through the hole." He orders it and it happens. "There. Now the leg. Just hold it upright."
He braces a hand on Armand's shoulder, pushes himself up and sinks into the socket until the pin clicks into place. Then he stands, looking down at Armand's bowed, patchy head. "Alright," he says." Your turn. Up you get."
He'd meant to be a bit mean about it, when he first demanded the clippers, the way that usually makes Armand shiver and bite his lip, the way that usually makes Louis feel better about being with Armand. Now he finds he doesn't have it in him, or maybe he has something else in him, something larger and more insistent. He turns Armand around so that he is facing the mirror. Armand stares at the floor, avoiding his own reflection.
"It's just one night," Louis says gently. "It'll grow back."
Armand nods. Louis flicks the clippers on. "Have you had it short before?" he asks.
"Yes," says Armand. "In Rome, I would usually cut it with a blade. It would just get dirty, in the course of the night's... activities. And nobody cared how I looked." Low buzzing. Louis brings the device up to the base of his neck. A swipe upwards. A chunk of hair falls to the ground.
"And before...?"
More hair falling away. A smooth patch of skin expanding on the back of Armand's head. "Yes," he says. "It must have been, before. Or perhaps it had fallen out, I refused to eat… he told me, By the time your hair reaches your shoulders, all the hardships of the past will be forgotten."
Louis tilts Armand's chin up and to the side with a finger, running his hand up and over the crown of his head. "And were they?"
A small nod. Only a few locks of hair over his left ear remain to bounce with it. "For a while."
Louis bends the tips of Armand's ears forward to smooth the fuzz off the spots behind them. A few more swipes of the clippers down his neck, over his forehead. He is absolutely coated in tiny flecks of hair. Louis probably is, too, and he's still wearing his briefs and pyjama top.
Armand stays frozen in place, when it's finished. Doesn't look at himself. "How do I look?" he asks Louis instead.
Louis turns him around. You'd think it would make him look older and harder, being divested of the pretty curls that wreathe his face. But in reality he just looks unprotected, forlorn. One more piece of him lost. "You look like one of the little boys they send off to war," he says honestly.
Armand doesn't seem displeased with that. Louis turns him back towards the mirror just to see if he'll go, and he does. He looks sweet, is the truth. There are so many Armands that Louis hates: the coven master, the scheming manipulator pretending that every consequence of panic was really planning, the carefully pretty victim with his big sad eyes, the open wound spewing violence, the self-righteous dandy, the put-upon wife— he hasn't forgotten any of them. But there are some he likes. The curious tinkerer, the bashful devotee, the shy boy with a wicked smile and wickeder tastes; he likes those Armands. And he likes the Armand who had carved an initial into him and let him think it was an insult, right up to the moment that the Queen had looked at him and known him to be claimed by an old one, and chosen to take only part, only a symbolic sacrifice, enough to keep him occupied while she took what she really wanted.
(It's all right, Lestat had whispered to him, teeth chattering, hands shaking as her presence took hold of him, she wants me, just me, she'll spare the ones I love, I know it, I know it— bullshit. Main character of every story he knows how to tell, but not even aware enough to understand that stories only get written in retrospect. God, Louis misses him.)
Low hum in his gut, like always when he's around one of the Armands that he likes, sometimes even more around the ones he hates. He grabs Armand's chin again, hand over his throat, and forces his head up. Armand's one eye meets Louis' two through the intermediary of the mirror. Or perhaps he is only looking at one; Louis can't quite tell. It doesn't matter. Louis can tell what he needs to know.
"You want it?" Louis can feel how he wants it. He can feel it in the air, in the tension of Armand's jaw, the tremble of his flank against Louis' hips. "You can have it. As long as you keep your eye on your own face."
He feels Armand's throat work against the palm of his hand. Then, in the mirror, his gaze slide over from Louis' face to his own.
Finally, finally, something easy, something he knows how to do. He pulls his briefs down his legs, steps out of them. The stump of his leg has has started aching already in its socket but for once he doesn't want to sit down, doesn't feel any urge to take weight off it or remove it altogether, because he wants to do it like this, fuck Armand while standing on his own two feet, yes only one of them grown of his own body but the other bought and paid for, also his, just as good for this at least. Heels out, he thinks to Armand. Vampires aren't supposed to do that at the moment, mind-speak deliberately, apparently it might draw Her attention, but she had her chance with the two of them, so what does it matter? Armand spreads his heels open, pointing his toes towards each other, a slight lean forward, eye locked on his own face in the mirror.
Asscheeks spread for Louis, obscene. Little flecks of hair in the cleft. Louis ignores it and reaches in between his thighs with both hands, palms out. He rakes his nails deep into the flesh on either side of Armand's inner thighs, and Armand gasps with shock and pain; he hadn't expected that, had expected a different kind of pain, and he briefly glances away from the mirror as his fists clench on the countertop and he masters the urge to flinch away. Louis watches him overcome it, just an instant, a conscious decision to stay still and take when he's given, and then his head snaps back up to the mirror. "Sorry," he whispers, as if Louis really would punish the lapse by walking away and leaving them both as they are.
Louis used to have that kind of willpower, he thinks, or perhaps it was just the overconfidence of knowing he would always have someone to come home to. Now it's different. And anyway he loves the moment where it's truly a struggle, loves that Armand is doing something difficult, will force himself to keep doing it, all for the privilege of this. Louis' whole body feels would tight, yes his cock hard with blood but his mind also hardened with purpose, his legs strong with desire, his hands steady with Armand's shaking.
Blood seeps from the wounds on Armand's thighs, runs down the insides of his knees. Perfect. Squeeze, Louis thinks, hands on the outside of his hips, pushing his legs together. Armand does, and Louis pushes his cock into the tight, slick space in between his bloody thighs.
Yeah, that's what he fucking wanted, the maddening glide in a not-quite-tight-enough space, the way he is so very clearly fucking a vampire, not warm at all, the strange combination of sensation with no change in temperature somehow heightening the focus on sensation instead of dulling it. So he almost misses the little oh in Armand's head, arousal and disappointment mixed together. Oh, that feels good. He can make it better, he can make it worse. "Wanted it it in your hole?" Louis gasps, as he grabs Armand's hips and settles his cock as high up as it will go, trapped between the surprisingly full flesh of his thighs and the hard flat scar behind his penis, another evil done to him long ago, another long silence between them. It feels snug. It feels right.
Armand bites his lip, nods. If Louis looks at him in the mirror, Armand can gaze at both of them at the same time.
"Maybe go a century without destroying anything," says Louis, "and I'll consider it."
The noise Armand makes might be a sob, or a laugh, or maybe just the air punched out of him as Louis starts fucking the bloody cavity between his legs in earnest, doesn't matter. Louis is fucking Armand again and this was always their problem, how easy it is, how little discussion they have ever needed to get exactly what they wanted from each other. It's not a good thing. Louis had slept in Lestat's guest room, in his stupid guest coffin, for weeks, because he was scared of messing it up, because he was scared of them getting their clothes off and not knowing how to treat each other, or not knowing how to treat each other well, not knowing how to translate so much feeling into movement. And then here's Armand, stupid crazy Armand with his machete and Louis' hair clippers, stupid crazy Louis with every book in the world having narrowed down to just the one that matters, and somehow it is easy for them. Not because they know how to treat each other well but because they don't. They have never bothered trying to figure it out.
But they know how to do this. Louis fucks him, and Armand squeezes his thighs together tight and between them they manage to keep the channels of flesh open, bleeding, slicking the way for Louis' cock until he grasps Armand's hips harder and spills his own blood into Armand's waiting flesh. He hadn't thought about it like that, mingling their blood deliberately, but that's the upshot, that as he rests his forehead on Armand's shoulder from behind and pulls his member gently out from the bloody mess of Armand's thighs, Louis' blood is soaking into the gouges, mixing with Armand's as his flesh heals.
Armand lets out a breath. He is hard— Louis can't see it, but he knows, a type of instinctive knowledge that he'd rather not possess of Armand, but there it is. He's also not all that surprised when Armand's arm comes gently out to the side, blocking Louis' hand en route to Armand's groin. Could be an accident, but isn't. Sometimes he prefers not to. It hurts, now, to think about how relieved Louis had been the first time it happened, because all he could think was, sometimes I'm the same. But he hadn't said it. Armand figured it out, of course, eventually. But why couldn't he have just said it, let them both know, see each other knowing, that in some things, they're alike?
Would be stupid to say it now. "Want a bath?" he says instead. Armand nods.
Louis runs a bath. Armand watches him do it, turned around and leaning back slightly against the counter he'd just gotten a white-knuckled fuck against, turning around every so often to glance at himself in the mirror again, like he hadn't gotten enough. Vain little thing. Already, there is a soft fuzz of hair on him, the vanguard of what will grow back to the length it had been at the time of his death. The length which had been supposed to pronounce him healed. No bubble bath, but Louis pumps soap into the running water to produce a thin froth.
He takes off the leg without ceremony this time, setting the liner and limb aside without Armand's help or input. Just a part of getting undressed. Then he lowers himself into the water, awkwardly, holding the sides of the tub for balance, and beckons Armand in after him.
Just because they didn't talk about it, doesn't mean Louis didn't know. Armand's mind is surprisingly open, especially when he has something to hide, layers of decoys, distractions, that Louis came to realize even he had little idea what they were protecting. Little Amadeo in a huge scented bath, a firm hand on his childlike prick, that is no secret between them. He settles down to sit in between Louis' thighs. Tiny flecks of hair slough off of him and sink into the suds. Louis wants to hold him so badly.
Armand leans back, sighing. There, he is in Louis' arms. He looks peaceful, feels peaceful, the itch of his ruined eye beginning to build up but not leaking out of him like it did all through the auction. They are supposed to listen to the tapes together. Louis had invited him in to do it, it had seemed like it would help, to not be alone, but now he is afraid of being in company, too. He is going to sob or fly apart at the sound of Lestat's voice and Armand is going to witness it.
Sometimes it feels like, if he ever gets Lestat back, if this ends somehow, his leg will come back too. They're linked, because if he still had all his limbs he would have to describe how it feels to have Lestat gone now as like losing a limb. Instead they just blur together, like the fact that his leg ends above the knee is a metaphor and not something evidenced by a whole folder of medical bills from the kind of institution he'd assumed he'd never need to set foot in again. It's odd to think of Lestat seeing him, touching him like this. He thinks of it often. He imagines Lestat weeping over him, like he weeps over pretty much anything, and it feels warm and sweet and horribly sharp. It is something Armand would never do for him, nor Louis for himself. Lestat needs to weep for all of them.
He wants Armand's peace to suffuse him like the warmth of the water. It doesn't. All he can do is resent that Armand has this, has something that makes him feel like he's being cradled in his maker's arms even when he isn't, and that's not fair, it's not a fair comparison, which only makes Louis resent it more, and miss him more, wish he were here, wish none of this had happened, and his grip on Armand's waist gets tighter and tighter and he crushes his forehead into Armand's shoulder until Armand makes a small noise of discomfort. Not demanding that it stop, just acknowledging that something is happening.
"Do you ever miss him?" Louis says. "I know it's not the same, it's— but— it's true, isn't it, that there's no-one like your maker, ever, you can never— do you—?"
Armand shifts slightly. The water sloshes around. He shouldn't have said that. He's never said anything like that before. Then Armand laughs softly. "Couldn't you feel me missing him," he says, "Every time I said, are you asking or making me?"
Long breath out. Louis can't say anything to that. Instead he just nods, against Armand's shoulder where he can feel it.
Armand's hand brushes over Louis' calf. "He's not gone," he offers. "I can't reach him, but it's— I'd know that."
Louis nods again. "I would too," he says. A horrible thought hits him, and he lets it drip from his mouth like oil: "I guess that's one good thing. About having Madeleine, and losing her. I know how it feels, to lose your own blood. How Claudia was the one in my heart, but Madeleine is the one I feel, even if I don't want to, even if she hardly mattered, I didn't even like her, but there's still a hole in me that will never close. I pretend the hole is Claudia , but it's not. It's her." An ugly laugh he doesn't mean to make, amplified by the echo of the bathroom. "Just an accident of biology, and I'm stuck with it forever. And that's a fledgling. Losing a maker. Losing him. I'd know."
Armand's hand continues rubbing up and down the one leg curling around him. Other than that he is entirely still.
"And it makes me feel—" Armand doesn't want pity, but this isn't about what Armand wants, so Louis says it anyway— "bad for you. Because he's not even gone, not really, and I hurt like this. What if he were? The hole hurts forever, doesn't it? Even if you don't want it to?"
Armand is silent for so long that Louis thinks he isn't going to answer. But his mind is starting to leak again, a confusion very near panic. It's not that he doesn't want to answer. He leans forward, nearly out of Louis' grasp, Louis' arms a rope around his waist. He is trembling. "I don't know…" he whispers. "I don't know, I don't… it was a very long time ago… can I feel it? Will you show me?"
Louis swallows. He could, if he let Armand far enough into his mind to feel the emotions rooted so deep in him that they feel like physical wounds. Or if he gave Armand his blood, a good drink long enough to taste sensation given freely. He cannot do either of those things, not right now. Maybe not ever again.
"Sorry," Armand gasps. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked, forget I said it. I don't— I don't feel—"
Louis doesn't mean to think it. Certainly doesn't mean to think it so loudly he might as well have said it. It's the feeling, the hole, the strength of it in him that does it, the part of him that howls for the missing of Madeleine, the feeling that he keeps trying to stuff Claudia into, that he places missing-Lestat beside and knows it's not the same, the feeling speaks for itself like it has its own mouth, its own mind, and it says so that Armand can hear: If you don't feel it, he isn't gone.
Armand crumples like a broken doll. Water droplets splash over the edge of the tub. His mouth is open but no sound is coming out. It feels like being back at the concert, the helplessness, watching someone burn in front oh him. He has to stop it. This is Armand. This is Armand.
"No," Louis says, his voice weak. "It's— you're right, it was a long time ago—"
"I saw," rasps Armand. "I saw him— the house burn. I saw the house burn. He was in the house."
"Okay."
"He would have known where I had been taken. He would have— he was in he house, and the house burned—"
"Armand, you're right, he probably burned, I didn't mean to—"
But it's too late now. The simple causality of vampiric existence, if it ever existed, has been erased. Beheading is not the end. Injuries can last forever. Marius was in the house, and the house burned, but that does not mean that he is dead any more than the sight of Daniel's head separated from his body means that Daniel is. Everything is different. Nothing is certain. And the feeling of Armand's panic is familiar, so familiar, because Louis has felt it himself. He felt it as he came to consciousness under bright lights with blood dripping down his ankles and finally had to acknowledge what he had known all along: that his maker lived. The fact that he'd already known didn't make the acknowledgement better, it made it worse. And Armand has known for much, much longer.
A sudden burst of energy. Maybe that's what experience does for you; the second time you feel something, you can finally act on it. What a pity that you always need to go through the first time first. He stands up, and some part of him intended to pull Armand right up with him before he realizes he doesn't have the balance for it. He has to hop out of the tub, dripping, and urge Armand up with an ineffective hand under one armpit, and a more effective order, up you get, time to get out. Armand stands and staggers out as if drunk or dazed, and Louis can't exactly help him to the bed but somehow he manages to make it clear that that's where they're headed, and with Louis leaning on Armand and hopping under the guise of helping him, they somehow make it.
And then Louis is on surer footing, literally and figuratively, he can rest his knee on the bed and push Armand gently onto it. The sheets are soaked. Armand is breathing hard, deliberately. He stares at the ceiling as Louis kneels over him, trying to figure out how to fix this.
There is no fixing it, of course, for any of them. There are only temporary distractions. But what was inviting Armand in if not just such a distraction, a whirlwind of something that, despite himself, Louis knows how to deal with, to postpone the moment where he has to confront all the things he doesn't. "Armand," he says, and slaps both his cheeks again, hard, hovering over him, trying to catch his eye. He looks so strange like this, without curls fanned out on the pillow. It's more glaring than the eye. The eye looks right on him, somehow.
The blows seem to focus him somewhat. He makes eye contact, deliberately. "Yes, Louis," he breathes.
"Changed my mind," says Louis. "I want to see you come after all." Armand is easy to distract with sex. The most temporary kind of distraction there is, but what else can he do? Armand hadn't wanted it, and so it's a challenge, he'll take the pleasure because he likes to be told he's going to, and for a while he won't think about his maker, except insofar as all of this is, Louis knows perfectly well, about his maker. Yes, of course Louis could feel Armand missing him. but now, what else can he do?
Armand has gone mostly soft, but that's all right. He acquiesces with a little sigh, his legs falling open for Louis. It is only when Louis has finished slicking up his hand with blood and instead of reaching for his cock uses his other hand to tilt Armand's pelvis up for access to his hole, that Armand suddenly gasps, like in fear, and reaches out to grab Louis' arm, whip-quick.
Louis is so shocked that for a moment he can't quite process the configuration of their bodies; Louis over him, Armand allowing it, like always, but now Armand's hand firm around his wrist, stopping him.
"You said a century," says Armand.
"What?" But by the time the word has left his mouth, Louis has remembered. He did say that. Granted, he said it while he was actively fucking Armand, and, yes, he tends to run his mouth a little when he's hot for it. And it had felt like something deliciously horrid, in the moment it came out, a statement that Armand is not even worthy of having a cock shoved in him properly, a useless piece of meat, degrading, cruel, wonderful. But now, suddenly, Armand's eyes are bright again, he is here, not with his maker but with Louis, the bones in Louis' wrist grinding together with the force of his unprecedented refusal. Insisting on it.
"I…" Louis tries. A sudden burst of inspiration. "That was for my cock," he says confidently. "Fingers don't count."
Armand frowns, then nods and releases Louis' arm. "Okay," he says, pleased, like it was a successful negotiation. And Louis had meant it to be degrading, insulting, yes, but it also feels a bit like he's just made a promise. And hasn't he? A century is a century. A commitment is a commitment. Right now it feels impossible to imagine that there exists such a thing as tomorrow, as next week, that time will keep marching on despite everything. And he has just promised Armand that they will still be here, still be whatever it is they are to each other, in a century.
Louis slips two fingers into him, curled to stroke him just right, and Armand sighs and presses into it. He is trying hard to help Louis as much he can, working together to accomplish the well-loved common goal of distracting each other with themselves. If he were uncooperative, just lying there and doing no more than he's forced it, it could take a very long time indeed to force him to orgasm; perhaps that would be preferable, given that they have nowhere else to be, but as it turns out Armand is in the mood for it now, he wants it, tensing and releasing his muscles to urge Louis on. Other hand on his cock. He needs it hard and fast, his body isn't a subtle thing, which is fine with Louis. Armand's eye is closed now, a small frown of concentration taking over his face. He looks sweet, and it is reassuring, to be working together.
There are certain memories that Louis remembers distinctly not telling Daniel. Not important ones, not really part of the story. Just something kept back, something his own, not forgotten or obfuscated but held back on purpose. One of those memories: their first time, Louis touching him and Armand saying confidently, That won't work. I need a firm hand. He's not sure why it struck him so strongly, maybe the candidness of it, the willingness to speak objectively about himself. Or maybe because everything changed in that moment for Louis, when he wanted to say Yeah? How firm? but didn't, and opted to find out the hard way instead. He's still not entirely sure of the answer.
Armand gives little moans when he's close, every time, pretty and regular as clockwork. Louis had tried to break him of it once. They sound fake. But either they aren't fake, or he is no longer sure what fake means. In any case, Armand can't stop doing it, and now Louis likes it well enough, being told when to lean in, stroke him harder, take the hand momentarily off his cock to pinch hard at his nipples. There we go. Armand arches off the bed, an incongruously small amount of blood from his penis.
Louis takes his fingers out. He crawls up the mattress and lies down on his side, watching Armand whimper and gasp and then breathe slower and slower until eventually his breathing stops, his usual state when he is not doing anything in particular.
Louis wants to ask him— something. Did that do it? Is it better than it was before? Did I fix something? Is it even possible to leave something better than you found it?
Already, Armand's hair has grown to a noticeable length, perhaps in total the same amount of hair that Louis has. Bald, he had looked strange enough to somehow circle around and look like the creature Louis knows, just shorn and vulnerable; like this he looks different, some other man. You could set him beside a late Amadeo in a gallery and say no, this is not the same man. Maybe that was the goal, when he picked up the clippers.
Finally, Armand stretches and sighs. "I'm not going to be very good company for the next little while, I'm afraid," he says.
Louis laughs. The cruel thing to say would be, you haven't been good company this far, either. It's what Lestat would say. But the truth is that he has been. It's been nice, having him here. It's better than being left alone. Which is a low bar right now, but still.
"S'alright," he says, and he meant to say it neutrally, a point of fact, but it comes out sounding excessively gentle when he says, "It's normal to be a bit fucked up over it."
They're lying more or less face-to-face now. Armand on his back, but head turned to look at Louis. Louis kind of wants to put a hand in his hair, feel the sharp texture of the new growth, but oddly, he gets the sense that it might not be allowed, and it seems like something to keep back from, not to push at.
Armand smiles softly. And then from the bedside table, where he had placed it at some point during the day, his phone lights up.
"New flame's texting you," says Louis, which was a joke, something to direct the encounter out of the deep waters before they drown in them. But unexpectedly, Armand flushes before rolling to the side to pick the thing up.
Which is not Louis' business. It's not Lestat, and it's not Daniel, and so it's nothing to do with him. Nothing he even wants to know about Armand. Armand lies with his head propped up on the pillow, stares at his phone, and smirks at it.
Louis is not asking. And Armand is waiting for him to ask, damn him, Louis realizes. He is enjoying this. Louis reaches over and tugs on his earlobe. That's all he'll get. It's enough; Armand breaks. "Do you remember the Old One from the concert? "he asks. "Khayman. He's been, ah—" a put-on accent that is clearly supposed to be Lestat— "blowing up my phone."
Louis doesn't. What Louis remembers from the concert is Lestat, Lestat, Lestat. He remembers Lestat with a delicate pink scar ringing his neck, Lestat's tongue in his mouth like he's trying to memorize the taste of Louis' insides, Lestat striding onto the stage while Gabriella waved her hand and said ah, he is always having these emotional outbursts before he performs, it's part of his process. There were plenty of vampires there, yes, and plenty of mortals, but Louis can't call to mind a single one of them, let alone how old they might have been.
"Ah," he says, "When you say Old One… how old?"
Armand shrugs. "I don't know. A few thousand, at least? We didn't speak at length."
Louis rolls over onto his belly. He stares down at the sheet under him, now damp and flecked with stray bits of hair. Thousands, multiple thousands of years, and Armand says it like it should always have been obvious that such creatures exist. And Louis has always thought of Armand that way, the Old One, which he must be, to walk in the sun, but also because it helps Louis remember the gulf between them, that this is a creature from an age so far removed from Louis' own that there are things they will simply never see eye to eye on. He meant it as a kindness, a kind of grace. But compared to the man on the other side of his phone, making him smile crookedly, Armand is also a child. "Don't you think he's a bit old for you?" he quips, a little unsteadily.
Armand taps out a message, then sets the phone back on the bedside table. "He's nice enough," he says, and smirks. "Not really my type."
Louis laughs despite himself. "Yeah, that does sound disqualifying," he says. "What would you do with someone who wanted to be nice to you?"
"Says the man pining over Lestat de Lioncourt."
Yeah. Fair enough. Louis has to laugh again, and pull Armand towards him, and Armand nestles into his chest so that Louis can feel the feathering touch of what is rapidly growing out into a curly mop of hair. They've never spoken it before, Louis realizes, like this, like it's a fact. Only in anger and denial, the love for his maker lodged inside Louis as secret and shameful and obvious as its parallel in Armand. But Armand had admitted his own missing tonight.
"I miss him so much," says Louis.
Armand presses a kiss to the underside of Louis' jaw. "I know."
"If your new friend is thousands of years old," says' Louis, "then is it possible he would know whether...?"
"Almost certainly."
Armand says nothing more about it. Louis nods. It's time, he thinks. There is nothing else for them to do. And they both miss. Sometimes there is nothing to be done about the missing. But sometimes there is.
He pushes himself up, and puts on his best not-asking voice. "Come on," he says. "It's time to listen to the tapes."