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continuons

I'll pick you up at the airport.

Sounds good

Sent a week ago, and then nothing. Nothing from Lestat on Louis' phone, or in his mind, except that it feels like all of the air over the Atlantic Ocean is filling with electricity. He's shocked that other people can't feel it, that planes can fly through it unharmed.

He hadn't been entirely honest with Armand. Honest in letter, but perhaps not in spirit. He and Lestat hadn't fucked. But they'd spent the night tangled up in each other in Lestat's squalid coffin, speaking in blood and bloody tears, probably the entire contents of their bodies swapped before morning. Both of them hard but Louis wanted to keep it, like a souvenir, restless terrified desire to bring home with him and then back again when he's ready. And Lestat doesn't push. Louis wants it to be because he knows he shouldn't, but sometimes he is afraid it's because he no longer knows how.

The first visit had been a day. It couldn't have been longer; the sheer mass of emotion would have collapsed in on itself. This time, a week.

Too much restless energy. It builds up between his fingers and the pages of his book. He had bought a ladder, instead of a bookshelf on the floor. Perhaps that was a mistake.

He picks up his phone. Almost all of his recent messages are from Armand. They aren't demanding. Just there. A picture of a plate of dal, someone else's hands blurry across the table. I ate half of this in a restaurant with my friends. A link to an app called Vampire Namaz on something called fdroid, with my app has eleven downloads! An audio file of some indistinct squeaking sounds: I think there's a mouse living in my vents. Louis gives each item a thumbs up emoji.

For all that what Armand needs is probably a blog, or even just a good old-fashioned diary, it has made things easier between them. He makes it seem easy, like he's just throwing things into their chat as he thinks of them, but Louis knows it probably isn't. Being casual doesn't come naturally to Armand. He is trying hard.

He opens the chat with Lestat, and tries to give it the same slightly forced carefree energy as Armand sending him a picture of a plate of human food. Hey. I'm looking forward to seeing you. Nervous, too. I love you. Send. Done. The sun has just come up in New Orleans; Lestat won't see it until Louis is settling down for his last sleep before getting on the plane.

Which leaves him with tonight to fill.

You home tonight?

Do I have a reason to be?

Yes.

Then I am.

He knocks on Armand's door half an hour later, a quiet street of short square buildings that he'd chosen to drive to on his own. He had, in fact, been the twelfth person to download Armand's app, which is how he knows that he has arrived just after vampire Dhurh. Armand opens the door dressed like he always used to, pressed slacks and a silk shirt, except there is a patch of bright blue paint halfway down one of his thighs that he doesn't seem to have noticed. He smiles, a little shyly, and stands back to let him in.

"Holy shit," Louis says.

Armand shrugs, his gaze sliding around the room. "I went to Alserkal Avenue," he says, "but I couldn't decide on anything I wished to purchase."

Which isn't surprising: Armand had never exactly been an early adopter of modern art trends. Louis could have offered him pieces from the collection that were more to his taste, but he hadn't, because Armand hadn't asked and because a small, wondering part of him suspected, or perhaps hoped, that he didn't actually know what Armand's taste was.

And he could not have offered anything like this. Every inch of Armand's walls and ceiling are either painted or in progress. The designs peter out around the edges of the room, the corners where vertical meets horizontal axis marked only in pencil, but the patterns warp there in a way that suggest his intention, the optical illusion of a dome constructed out of right angles. The patterns themselves have patterns, edges, meet each other at borders. Some of the borders are made up of the meeting of the patterns themselves, and some are delineated by calligraphy, most of it still feathered and often-erased pencil marks.

"Okay," Louis says. "I'm still here to jump you, don't worry about that, but give me a tour first?"

The fact that Armand complains about that not at all is a measure of his enthusiasm that Louis isn't sure he's ever witnessed before. The shyness of showing the space for the first time disappears. "There are seventeen plane symmetry groups; that is, ways of categorizing the patterns formed by translations, rotations and reflections of fundamental units," he says immediately. "The ten-pointed star on the ceiling here contains group p4m, and its radial points divide the rest of the space of the living room and kitchen into ten more sections." He leads Louis into the kitchen, which is much less painted and set up mostly as a kind of geometer's war room, chalkboards leaning against all available surfaces. "One must imagine the two rooms flattened out, dripping into each other." Sure enough, Louis can see the pencil outlines wrapping around the doorframe, creeping up from the floor, like a substance with no sense of gravity following an inexorable path away from the origin.

"Similarly, the ceiling of the bedroom-- well, it's not painted yet," Armand continues, pushing open the door, "but it will be a five-pointed star, with c2mm inside and the remaining five groups spreading out around it, extending into the hallway."

Louis stares into the bedroom, Armand's new bedroom. The walls are white, freshly painted over in preparation, and covered in pencil, the ghostly grey traces of the future. Each delineation between the five regions is a small corridor, some partly filled in by lettering, some still bare.

The memory of a specific feeling returns to him, like it had been stored in his body all along: the specific sense of trying to get all the way into Armand, in Paris. Armand had been so open, in some ways; and in others he was a creature of barred iron doors. Some of those doors, of course, had held specific secrets. Betrayal. A quick kiss in a crowded pub, Louis' ankles bleeding onto the stage floor, Claudia a heap of ash. But he'd gotten used to it, afterwards, to Armand being a curated, polished thing. Allowing him into the rooms of himself that were ready for Louis, a guest on just-vacuumed furniture. So he'd tried to break out, to lay Armand low enough that he could see something real, but the rooms not ready for guests were shattered, bombs gone off, not navigable at all.

This is not that feeling. This is a room half-constructed, planned but not realized, and it is the first time that Armand has invited him into somewhere unfinished.

"Can I ask," he says, "What the writing says?"

"You can ask," says Armand. "Some you can read." And he realizes that the border closest to the door is actually Latin letters, albeit stylized: they spell out Eh bien, continuons.

"Sartre," says Louis, startled.

Armand drifts into the room, trailing a finger down the next border away from the door, which Louis cannot decipher. "The one who recites the Qur'an skillfully will be in the company of noble angels," he translates. "But the one who recites clumsily with great difficulty will be doubly rewarded."

Louis stares at it. The letters are light, eraser smudges spreading out like little clouds underneath. This-- the apartment, the visit, this entire life-- does not come naturally to Armand. It doesn't come naturally to Louis, either, for all that he'd demanded it for himself. And Armand has chosen to write on his wall that struggling at things that do not come naturally is not just permissable, it is superior.

Armand tilts his head. "Come now," he says. "You allowed Lestat to turn you on the altar. Surely a penciled hadith isn't going to put you off your plans for the evening?"

Louis laughs. It's funny, Armand misinterpreting him. Funny in a good way, a nice way, because that is a thing they can do now, existing outside of each other's heads. "Hell no," he says. "So I guess you're committed to this place, huh?" It's a decent enough apartment, but it doesn't seem like one that Armand had chosen all that deliberately.

"Not at all. Anyone with real expertise could see that this is an amateurish effort. When it's finished, or if I wish to leave, I'll simply paint over it."

Louis bites his tongue. Any landlord who knows how to advertise the place could charge a premium for what Armand's doing with it. Hell, it makes Louis wish he owned the building. But Armand has spent a lifetime with his paint, his features, his under-paintings, decorating walls he has no control over. Now he wants to create something beautiful and then destroy it. Louis will say nothing. It's Armand's to destroy.

He steps in closer, pushes the door closed. Not that there's anyone to keep out, but it feels good to do anyway. "Then it's a good thing you invited someone with no real expertise to be impressed with you, isn't it."

Armand's lips part slightly, and he glances quickly down Louis' body. He's not even sure if he's right about why, which is a little bit thrilling. It demands a conversational risk. He spreads his hands. "Nothing special, tonight. Just my hands." He steps forward again, and Armand gives ground until his back is against the wall, curls spread out against the faint outline of an intricate teardrop pattern. "And my dick," he continues, softer. "And my belt. And my fangs. That gonna be enough for you?"

There is something about hitting Armand with a belt. The first time he'd done it it was shocking, something that felt like it ought not to be allowed, even if Armand's mind was practically screaming permission. Over the years they'd gathered more implements, toys, items that have one purpose only and thus serve to set up some remove. Everything had felt far away, ritualized, by the time they came to Dubai. So, none of that for tonight. Hands, dick, belt, fangs. Simple and good like visiting home is supposed to be.

From the way Armand hasn't reacted at all, he might be embarking on a similar reverie. Louis grabs him by the chin. "Asked you a question," he says.

Armand's eyes burn into him. Louis can feel his tongue working, trying out possible responses, through the bottom of his jaw. "Answer it yourself," he hisses finally, and jerks out of Louis' grip.

He could be out of the room before Louis even notices, if he wanted to be. Louis just barely catches him, tight grip around one wrist to reel him in, a mad kind of glee creeping up on him. Armand isn't doing it on purpose, Louis is almost certain that he doesn't know anything about his plans for the next week and isn't trying to find out. It's just who he is. And who he is is giving Louis the one thing that Lestat absolutely does not want to give him, at least not right now, not for a very long time: a struggle.

He throws Armand down onto the bed. It's a big bed, the same size as the one they'd once shared, and it is pleasing to imagine the both of them, on opposite sides of the city, spreading their limbs out to sleep the way you can't in a coffin, the way you can't beside another body. Armand scrambles up and is pushing at him as Louis tries to pin him. Bony little fists against his thighs, his stomach. He manages to get a knee on Armand's chest and digs in hard, driving the breath out of him while Louis unbuckles and slides his belt out of the loops. A sharp snap of it to the tender curve between Armand's belly and hip is sufficient shock to convince him to flip over when pushed, then Louis grabs his flailing wrists and is able to get the belt around them and pull it tight.

He's breathing hard. He is having fun. Armand is squirming, feet still kicking half-heartedly. It's kind of adorable. It makes this better, that Armand isn't allowing his mind to broadcast anything that would contradict his body. It means Louis can actually pay attention to his body, let his own respond. He leans down, knee moving to pin down Armand's thighs, and mutters in his ear, "You used to be better at pretending to be scared."

Armand turns his face to the side. The point of a fang is visible in his grin. A tiny bit of pink tongue that darts out to touch his lips. "Maybe you used to be more gullible."

He's exposed enough of his cheek for it to get slapped, so Louis slaps it. Armand turns back into the pillow, his shoulders shaking with what is probably laughter.

Louis sits back on his legs, trying to remember the last time Armand had laughed during sex. Or whatever it is they do. It feels too achingly familiar to have never happened before.

They're still both wearing clothes, for crying out loud. Louis manages to undress without really getting off him. Armand's shirt is stuck on him unless they're going to rip it, since his hands are tied behind his back, but he stops wriggling for long enough to let Louis yank his pants and underwear down his legs.

If he'd thought about it at all, he'd planned implicitly on fucking Armand. It's easy that way between them, comforting, guaranteed. But that little bit of tongue hangs in his mind, enticing. He hasn't had Armand's mouth in so long. And it would be easy, too, to have him suck his cock, but even more than that--

He stays down by Armand's feet, holding his ankles together lightly. "We'll deal with what you deserve later," he says. "Now. Do I need to tie your feet, too? Because you're about to eat me out, and it's not going to be easy all trussed up."

Armand takes a moment to think about it. When the moment gets too long, Louis slices a sharp nail down the sole of one foot, and he shivers. "I'll be good," he decides, rolling a little bit for Louis to see his face. Enormous doe eyes, pleading like an innocent. "Oh, please. I want to be good for you."

Louis slices down the other foot, for symmetry, Armand always liked symmetry even before he got it in his head to surround himself with every type of symmetry possible in two dimensions. Then he flops down onto his back beside Armand and draws his knees up. "Go on," he says. "Tongue. God, been missing your little tongue in me."

Armand couldn't do this badly if he tried. It had been a new act for him, the first time Louis had alluded to it, something never demanded in brothels or carried out on his confused teenage body. Something filthy and degenerate, which for Armand is almost shining with purity. Which is partly why Louis loves to have him do this: something of the purity feels like it rubs off on him. Like he's an angel, immaculate, just for letting Armand lick his asshole.

Armand can't use his hands so he just pushes his face in, his nose pressing underneath Louis' balls, licking a broad stripe over his hole before starting to wriggle his tongue in. Louis writhes. His cock is straining against his belly. It's so good, partly because he can't possibly come from it. He can let it go on and on, and somehow only ever get more wound up.

If Armand were in charge, maybe it could go on for hours. But he's not, and it feels like a delirious eternity but was probably only a few minutes before Louis can't stop himself from yanking on Armand's hair to pull him up towards his cock. "Enough," he gasps. "Make me come."

And Armand fucking pouts. He lays his chin on Louis' stomach, not doing as he's told even a little bit, and says, "But I wanted to get fucked. Expressly declined to ask for it, if you recall."

And that-- that is new. Absolutely, deliciously unprecedented.

Also pretty irritating, because he really, really did want his cock sucked right fucking now. "Holy shit, you have gotten so fucking cheeky," he gasps, sitting up, giving in.

"Naturally," says Armand, "I haven't been--" and then he stops because he is being exactly what he hasn't been, belted hard across the thighs right where it hurts most.

Armand is so good to hurt, like anything is allowed, everything is going right, there is nothing Louis could possibly do that is not perfect and desired. He takes it well for a little while, just whimpers and lets it happen, skin getting darker and mottled with bruises and welts. Louis wants to break him, make him do something else, and eventually succeeds: Armand balls his fists up and then finally tries to cover his legs with his hands, the muscles in his arms jumping with aborted little attempts to pull them away, like they're doing it independently of his mind.

Louis stops. It is very quiet without the background hum of their minds. And apparently Armand isn't the only one losing control of bits of himself, because "You sure you want your hands right there, Arun?" comes out of Louis' mouth before he's aware of his own words.

He can't see Armand's face. He is very still. Maybe they should--

"Yes," says Armand.

"Palms up, then."

Armand does it, slowly unfurling his fingers, turning them to expose the tender flesh of his pretty, long-fingered hands.

He gets maybe ten hard hits to each palm before Armand's whimpers tip over into real, full-throated sobs, and Armand would take more, he's past the point of protesting, but the sobs are really not helping with the never-did-get-that-blowjob situation. Louis drops the belt, rubs gentle hands over Armand's legs because he knows it's worse like that than a firm touch, then slices horizontally across the dip his lower back for blood.

More than anything else, using Armand's blood to fuck him feels blasphemous. He's not the oldest or most powerful vampire in the world, probably, Louis is pretty sure. But there still isn't much to compare it to, this stuff that flows through his veins that Louis has been permitted to drink, and sometimes forced to drink, or something halfway in between the two, for the past eight decades. It had brought him back to life at least twice. And now he gathers it with his fingers and Armand spreads his legs, makes room for Louis, sighs like relief when Louis uses it to ease the way as he pushes into him.

"That's it," says Louis, "getting what you needed," and Armand just moans and nods, pushing himself back into it. Cocks are a dime a dozen, nobody knows that better than Armand, and the dime can even go the other way around if you know how to play it, but Armand makes him feel like his body is something irreplaceable. And maybe it is; willing holes are a dime a dozen, too, but there's a reason he's here, of course, slick with blood and gripping welt-hot thighs under the ghostly outline of a cleverly domed-looking ceiling that doesn't exist yet. This is different.

They work for it together, Armand meeting him with equal force at each thrust, Louis' orgasm a joint project. It doesn't take long, can't after Armand's tongue on his hole and Armand's thighs and palms under his blows, and as it approaches Armand arches back, asking for one more thing.

It had slipped out of him, unnoticed, just a thing you say. Like it's no big deal, that they haven't shared the blood since they called each other companion. Louis had given him a tiny smear of it, after that night out of time where Armand had carried him across the Creek. But what he'd promised now is the real thing. Hands, dick, belt, fangs.

He means to grab Armand's neck gently, but there's too much momentum between them, too much enthusiasm and want, and he ends up tearing into his skin like a hungry fledgling. Blood everywhere, wasteful, but not wasteful because it makes Armand wail and come, blood electric against Louis' tongue with his pleasure. He spills inside Armand as he swallows it, giving back that little bit of blood that costs him nothing.

Stains on the white sheets. Why had Armand bought white sheets? Same as the white walls, maybe. Just so they can be painted.

Armand's face to his chest, smearing tears on him, letting Louis close the wound on Armand's neck with his tongue. A hand travelling down Armand's body to his smarting thighs, and he shuffles up higher to get more of it. Face to face, now. Silence. No thoughts. Being in Armand's presence now is like the strange absence of the airplane roar the moment you get off a transatlantic flight.

Armand runs a hand over Louis' arm, shoulder, ear, up to his cheek. "Are you all right?" Armand asks, gentle.

It's nice, to be asked. "Yeah," he says, turning his face into Armand's red, swollen palm, a tiny kiss. "Missed this. You?"

"Exquisite." Armand skims his hand over the hair above Louis' ear, down the back of his head, the very slight texture of eternal stubble under his jaw.

He could just not mention it. Armand clearly isn't going to. But with so much mind-silence between them, it feels too heavy to add unspoken words, too. "Sorry about the-- name," he says. "Should've asked."

"Oh." Armand pulls his hand away, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. "I don't mind."

"Don't mind, or you like it?"

Armand rolls onto his belly, chin on one hand. Louis' hand still stroking his legs, but he seems to be thinking about it seriously. "When you first-- it was incredible," he says. "I had simply never considered it. That part of me being wanted like that, and wanting it. But the truth is, all of the real memories I have of being called by that name are of you. I like it because it is a name Louis calls me. Any other would do as well."

His eyes flick up to Louis'. "And--"

Armand could have taken it as permission, but he hadn't. That in itself makes Louis want to reward him by giving it-- and yet. Armand had thought about his question, given him a real answer, even if not a prescriptive one. And perhaps if Louis' only memories of the name Maître were of Armand, he could answer similarly. But they aren't. The word echoes from Claudia's mouth. From Santiago's. Daniel's, trying to figure out what Armand meant by it and coming up short.

Armand snuggles into him, blood sticky between their groins. "It's all right," he says.

Louis puts a finger under his chin to force him to turn up his face, which doesn't quite look all right. But also not tragic, not like he's trying to win sympathy. "It's not nothing to me," Armand says, voice steady, "but it is very little. I'll get over it."

It feels like a weight coming off him. "All right," he says. And then, because Armand can work magic with his eyes even if he isn't trying, "If you don't get over it, bring it up again in a while." He doesn't specify what a while is, can't. Armand just nods.

They lie still for a while, recovering. Louis tries to cast his mind around for something lighter, and ends up saying, "You taste thick. Delicious, but hungry. You should eat more."

Armand pushes him away and honest-to-god rolls his eyes. "Louis," he says, louder, irritated, "you can't reject the title and then complain about my eating. Or are you angling for maman, instead?"

Louis backhands him lightly across the face for that, then mimes zipping his lips shut. Armand giggles, just a tiny bit, then lasts all of thirty seconds before he says, "Fine. I'll hunt tonight, after night-Asr. There's a conference on ethical AI on at the World Trade Centre."

"Yum," says Louis. He wonders if he should offer Armand the use of the donors. Damek would be all too happy to spend some time with him, and Louis knows he'd always found Eva appetizing, which is why he'd brought cups of her for their last meeting. Armand has had his way of eating for a long time, but sometimes things change. They seem to change more often for Louis than for Armand, or at least they used to. Now, nothing is certain.

If he does, though, he'll need to mention why they have a free slot on their schedules next week. Which he will. Soon. Or perhaps he ought to ask them first, Eva had always seemed rather frightened of him. Firm hand on Armand's thigh. "Better get moving, then," he says.

They shower together in Armand's little bathroom, bumping up against each other's bodies under the spray. Armand is trying his very hardest to maintain the bruises on his legs, but then Louis brushes a kiss to the side of his mouth just to see what will happen, and he loses his iron grip on his own body's healing. By the time they step out, he has only the few nearly imperceptible scars where his thighs meet his ass.

"Going out of town for a week," Louis blurts finally as he towels himself off. "Just so you know, when I'm not coming round, it's not cause you're not a treat."

"Oh," says Armand, perfectly neutral. "Have a nice time."

He says nothing further until they're dry and dressed, Armand having noticed the paint stain on his slacks for the first time in the process and swapped them out. Louis is back in the living room, staring up at what there is of the paintings. The chalkboards in the kitchen have notes on them, locations, sketches. Each pattern inspired by a different carpet, mosque, tomb, cathedral. It is astounding.

"If you gave Lestat my phone number," Armand says, "I would like that." Not a request. Just a statement.

Louis looks down from the ceiling. "Sure," he says slowly. "He won't use it if he thinks I know he has it. I'll leave my phone out somewhere where he can see." Because Armand will be texting him, of course. Armand looks pleased.

What Lestat and Armand will talk about, he truly has no idea. He's not even sure if he hopes it's him or not. Lestat seems more likely to tell him after the fact, but then, Armand has been surprising him.

Shoes on, one last glance around. And then, a sudden thought.

"Do you want me to get rid of the Romanus for you?" He asks.

Armand looks momentarily alarmed. "No," he says, "I don't actually want it destroyed, just..."

"Doesn't have to be. I can keep it in storage however long you want. Forever."

He cannot promise Armand forever about anything else. Not even what they're doing right now, no matter how good it feels at the moment. But that-- yes, he can promise to keep an ugly old painting in storage for whatever fraction of eternity he's got, if it's what Armand wants.

Armand pulls it out of the closet, and they carry it down to Louis' car together. It just fits in the back with the seats folded down.

Armand leans in and kisses him goodbye. The air is warmer than Paris, and the light pollution brighter, and Louis' feet ache with the ever-present small pain of trapped gravel. The only similarity, he thinks, is that he is kissing a strange man that he would like to get to know better. Other than that, it is not like Paris at all.

Notes