air into fire

Taking Armand’s blood without his permission is astounding. It is so presumptuous, so completely outside the bounds of all history and reason and protocol, that Armand can think of nothing to do in response. Everything about Lestat is presumptuous and ought to be put down, from the appalling tutoiement that has been falling from his lips ever since he sauntered down the stairs with a cross slung over his shoulder, to his habit of prancing around on a stage in front of mortals like a painted doll. All of it should have been the end of him. That none of it is going to be is both a searing guilt, and a terrible sense of relief. The coven is gone. There is nothing to be done. It is not his fault. Armand has failed, and he can rest.

He lets Lestat suck from his wrist, and it is nothing like when the children of the coven used to feed at rituals. That was a dull requirement. This is a kiss, a bruise being exquisitely pressed, a radiating warmth that lances to his chest and his groin. He wants, and within these walls, at least, he still has the right to take. When it is his turn, he takes from Lestat’s throat.

Lestat responds like he’s never felt anything like it. So, at least, Armand is not alone.

“I have an idea,” Lestat says.

Armand almost laughs. “Of course you do,” he says soothingly. “I think I may have the same one.”

“No– but also yes. I’ll tell you about the other one later.” And he pushes Armand up against the wall, the fire ignored beside them.

Armand resists, just a little, a tiny reluctance in his step as he retreats, because he knows this part of the dance too well to forget the old arts. They are even older arts than the coven rituals, both for him and for the world. A little reluctance at first, a shy hesitation so minute it appears unconscious, is charming. When it is breached, and finally abandoned, it creates a sense of accomplishment that begets gentleness.

Lestat responds just as he expected, gripping him tighter and then loosening at just the moment that Armand relents and leans into him. Lestat leans in to lick at his neck, and Armand feels his mouth pull up in a tiny, involuntary smile. He may have failed at maintaining the coven, but at least he has one skill that remains. The smile is not entirely one of triumph, but when has it ever been?

By the time Lestat pulls away and begins to explore with his hands instead, he has rid himself of the expression, and he is ready. Lestat is beautiful, and recently bathed, and he will be kind. Armand will enjoy this one.

“Oh,” says Lestat, hands in his hair, pressure on the side of his face as if turning a sculpture to see at all angles, “I know, of course, tu veux m’enculer. You’re the leader of the coven, n’est-ce pas? Or rather… were. But you are,” he smiles, mocking, “so very old-fashioned and fond of ritual. It would not do for such an old and distinguished vampire as yourself to be fucked by such an appalling upstart. No matter how good I could make you feel.”

It is like the first moments after a punch to the gut; not yet painful, but shocking. Armand goes through the words again, mouth open, thinking nothing. Lestat had not gotten that from his mind: Armand’s fortifications have been solid for centuries. Moreover, he had not even been thinking it. How could he be?

Lestat touches his bottom lip with a finger, and Armand instinctively tries to close his teeth on it. Lestat pulls it away just in time, and the world makes slightly more sense again. He is being strung along; this one likes to laugh, so of course he will like to laugh at Armand. That is not so bad. He can be in on the joke, at least.

“Of course,” Lestat says, and bites his own finger. He trails it over Armand’s lips, not letting it dip inside, so he can watch instead when Armand has to lick along them to taste it. “Of course, vous pouvez, maître.”

Armand has spent his entire life as a vampire carefully guarding his mind. Too many go around shouting their thoughts; not only detrimental to them, but annoying to every vampire around. Who truly wants to hear every step of some fledgling’s meal planning? It is a very long time since he has been shocked enough to allow the boundaries of himself to waver. It is only a moment; but Lestat hears.

He steps back, and Armand immediately feels bereft. He cocks his head, a gallery patron staring at a painting with unexpected shadows, and then continues, “Did you expect me to resist?”

Armand chokes out, “No.” It sounds like an unfinished sentence hanging in the air, but he can think of nothing to add to it. I have never… he gets control of his thoughts before that one can escape the confines of his mind.

“Did you want me to resist?” That same cruel smile that he wears from the stage but now it is small, a private performance. “You enjoyed having me down on the ground, bouleversé par vous, grovelling. Do you want that again?” He begins to back away theatrically, hands raised in front of his chest. “Shall I run? Will you catch me? Will you make it hurt?”

There is no more blood left on his lips. Armand runs his tongue over them again anyway.

He hunts how his maker taught him, always. There is no wild chase. There is no screaming, no pain. His animals love death when it comes for them, ask for it, move into it with open arms and veins. And to resist–

Armand had tried it twice. First, the very first time, newly sold to a ship’s captain. He could hardly have prevented himself from doing it; he had no idea what to do instead, what arts could make it easeful for him. The second time, the first occasion Marius had lent him out. He’d known by then he was only making it worse; it was stupid. “Stop it,” he says.

“You do.” Lestat sounds delighted. “You can lock down your thoughts all you want, I can see it in those big beautiful eyes of yours.”

Armand closes his eyes. “Stop,” he commands, and puts a little force into it, just enough push to remind Lestat that Armand can pick up up and grind him to a pulp without lifting a finger if he decides to.

Closing his eyes is no use; he can still hear Lestat’s laugh echoing off the walls. He opens his eyes just in time to see his hand, just in time to prevent it if he chose to: Lestat slaps him lightly across the cheek. Almost playful. Rage, of a sort Armand has not allowed himself to feel for a long time, begins to simmer inside of him.

“Come,” says Lestat, and waits again to be prevented before he slaps the other cheek. Armand’s face burns. He is hard. He is ravenous. Lestat’s voice is low and soft, like he’s not speaking out loud at all. “Come, take your pleasure, mon petit maître enchanteur. You can give it to me like I deserve, hmm? Or were you never really the master here after all, that you will give way so easily? T’étais rien qu’un petit pute.”

The rage boils over. Lestat sees it, has been waiting for it, and is gone the moment before Armand grabs at him; but he is young, a tiny fledgling for all his bravado, and he knows nothing of what he can do. Armand catches up to him just in front of where his own throne used to sit, and throws him to the ground.

In the first instant he can think of nothing else to do; his body burst with rage he has had no practice, while human or vampire, expressing. He punches Lestat in the face, and blood explodes from his nose.

Lestat makes a shocked, hurt noise, but it descends into hysterical laughter after only a moment. He twists wildly, and Armand is so surprised that he loses hold of him; and finds himself instead on his back, Lestat on top of him, thighs squeezing his thighs, both of them hard and obvious.

This is his cue, a small, old part of his mind tells him. It’s an amusing game, and Lestat has clearly enjoyed it, but it ends now. Relax, Arun, rest, and let things happen as they must.

Instead he kicks, and puts some force into lifting Lestat and dumping him on the ground perilously close to the ring of fire still burning in the corner. He has most of his own clothes off by the time he gets over to him; and Lestat’s trousers down around his ankles and no farther. Trapping him, undignified.

Armand had been half-worried that he wouldn’t know how to do it this way. He needn’t have been; there is enough blood, from Lestat’s nose and neck and his own wrist, and after that it is easy. There’s nothing to it. He shoves in, and it feels so good it drowns out the cry from underneath him, and in retrospect, of course it is easy. Some of the biggest cretins to walk the earth manage it all the time. Armand should know.

So easy, and so good, and so powerful. It is a cheap, facile kind of power, yes– but simple, completely unlike his power over the coven. It demands nothing of him but what he wants to give. Lestat continues to fight him, twisting away, pushing at his hands and torso, but he is easy to control. He is young and weak and– on some level, Armand is aware– doesn’t really want to get away.

As he fucks Lestat, Armand remembers, so very long ago, the few times that Marius had sent him to a brothel for his own use. it would be good for him, he’d said, to have some women and boys. Perhaps it would have been, but Amadeo had stood outside, shaking, until enough time had passed that he could go home and report himself satisfied. The lying, as always, was the easy part. Perhaps, had he gone in, he would have become an entirely different person in his immortal life. Not the boy who had been sent to Paris and meekly obeyed, not the coven leader who stayed in his decaying power because there was nothing else to do, not the deposed tyrant who had allowed it to happen with secret relief. Someone who acts.

Lestat would laugh at him, probably, for being so old-fashioned as to hope that the mere sexual act could change him so profoundly. But then, it was Lestat who offered, Lestat who saw more of his insides than anyone since Marius and insisted that he take something without it being offered. Even if in a game.

It is only a game. And while Lestat is playing with all his strength, writhing and slapping at him, the game is clear. But then Lestat relaxes, thinking perhaps to actually enjoy himself without having to expend quite so much effort, and although that should make it lighter, more plasurable, it doesn’t. As soon as he no longer has to keep his prey still, and his mind almost returns to his own power, all Armand can see underneath him is the bloody nose, the red tears that slid from Lestat’s eyes from the pain, the helplessness of him.

Like shattering glass, everything that was power and pleasure turns to rot. His body revolts, as if he would retch blood, and he pushes himself violently away from Lestat. He half-rolls away in mute, unthinking panic, and ends up singeing his thigh on one of the remaining small fires. From somewhere there is a sound very like a sob, and he slaps at the fire to put it out. Armand ends up lying naked on the filthy stone floor, curled around himself in pain.

With everyone, somehow, it always ends up like this.

It is quiet and still, in the moments after. The fire doesn’t reach out for him; neither does Lestat. If he were alone, Armand could probably fall asleep here, the crypt an enormous coffin, the burial-place of everything he ever tried to accomplish or preserve.

He is not alone. When he finally pushes himself up on an elbow and peers behind him, Lestat is sitting up against the wall, watching him. He has wiped the blood from his face, and pulled his trousers entirely off instead of back on. When Armand finally looks at him, he places his hands palm up on his knees, beckoning. Their eyes catch, and hold.

“Come,” he says, “There is nothing here so bad as all that. Revenez-moi, petit maître.”

“Stop it,” Armand says. “Don’t call me that, I am nobody’s maître. Tutoie-moi.”

“You are not now. Mais tu le redeviendras. I have not yet told you my other idea, because we are not finished with the first one. Come sit here, where I can touch you. Doucement.”

It sounds like a promise. Armand goes. Lestat pulls him in, Armand’s back to his chest, squeezing him gently with his thighs and elbows. He does not ask permission before he reaches around and begins caressing interest back into Armand’s cock; but he when his nose nuzzles through Armand’s hair to his throat, and he asks quietly in his ear, “May I?”

Out of all the others who have asked for his blood, in rituals, as leader of the coven, as conduit to God through Satan, Lestat may be the first who actually seems to want it. “Yes,” says Armand.

His bite is so gentle that, perhaps, some would find it hard to believe the rumours about him. That he was kidnapped, tortured, fed on and turned against his will. An unspeakable violation.

Armand would believe it. He does believe it, because in the moment that he had met Lestat’s eyes, he had not needed to hear the other’s thoughts, nor reveal his own. They understood each other.

The following evening, Armand sits among the filth at the theatre, while Lestat speaks to him from the stage, and gives him back his coven.

One hundred nights into the coven’s new life, Armand sits in a roomy box and tells Lestat that he loves him. His lessons are coming along; Lestat can walk without his feet touching the ground, make small objects move with his mind. As he understands more of the vampire world, Armand lets him see more of himself, secure in the knowledge that they had both grown from rot and corruption into beauty and love. Lestat is with him. Lestat cannot leave. He is certain, this time, about this.