furnishings

Chapter 1

Armand figures out where to put his new belongings. The chair goes in the living room, the prayer rug in the southwest corner, the blender on the kitchen counter, the mop in the closet.

During the time in which Louis does not come back to the bar, while Armand sits alone or with his mouth talking to people who want to fuck him or get fucked, he thinks about what else he ought to put in his apartment. There had seemed to be principles, once, to deciding what to surround yourself with. Things should match each other, in colour or texture or method of usage, or disagree in ways that are interesting or pleasing. He had known how to judge these qualities when the space was one he shared with Louis, or the stage of the old theatre, or even the gloom of the crypt under Les Innocents. He had most certainly known it in Marius' house, the look of a piece where every brushstroke was in its right place and the look of one that was sloppy or unfinished.

Every principle that had once seemed sound now leads only to more tangled questions. The presence of a chair seems to suggest a table, but then what to put on the table? If he owned curtains, would he fall asleep more easily during the daylight hours he lies on his back and waits? If he fell asleep during the day, would it be any different from lying still and allowing five adhans to pass by indifferently? Should you sweep before you mop, aren't you just pushing the dirt around otherwise? If matter can be neither created nor destroyed, isn't everything just pushing dirt around? What on earth had he been planning on doing with a blender?

There is only one object he can think of that surely would allow him to resolve it all. If he could just have it, the entire room, the apartment and what to do in it, would fall into place. He would know what was needed to go with it and against it.

Louis comes back exactly a week after the first time. Armand knows it is a week only by accident, because it is a Friday. On Fridays, a half-day of work leaves plenty of time even for those attending Jummah prayer to shift gears in time for the evening, and there is an extra bartender who doesn't work any other day of the week, a retired white American schoolteacher with a head of close-cropped grey curls and a loud laugh. Armand avoids her for reasons he has chosen not to interrogate. But he realizes suddenly that if it weren't for her presence on both of the Louis nights he would not have known that it had been a week-- or two? three?-- and thinks, calendar. I should have a calendar.

Despite having been waiting for this moment for a week, or perhaps some whole number of weeks, he had not managed to decide what to do. What he wants to do is climb into Louis' lap and bury his face in his shoulder. Louis likely does not want him to do that. He also wants to do what Louis wants him to do. Louis wants him to not be thinking enough about Louis to know what Louis wants him to do. Louis wants Armand to have some independent means of knowing what Armand wants. Armand can't even figure out whether he wants to buy curtains.

He is saved by, of all people, the Friday bartender, who flags Louis down with a cheerful "Evening, boss!" the moment he walks in. Which Louis would know is a perfectly standard form of respectful address if he ever got out in Dubai, but Armand can see him running it through the standard battery of mental calculus to figure out whether or not he's being insulted. And Armand can't even really blame him for it, because-- well, whose fault is it that Louis never used to get out much in Dubai.

"What can I get for you?" she asks. "Because it's gonna be something, if you're staying here. And your friend over there is a good customer, but if you're going to be doing anything with him besides talking, it'll be a hotel room for you this time."

And then she's looking right at Armand, they're both looking right at Armand, caught trying not to look like he was looking.

And then Louis laughs. "Fair enough," he says to her, "it'll be whisky, then." And then "Armand--"

He stops. Armand can practically hear it, the come here that was about to follow. An order. Not a fair thing to say at all, if he doesn't want Armand collapsing at his feet and begging. Instead he says, "would you like to join me?"

He is almost out of his seat in an instant. It is just the little hesitation, the mistake, the reality that Louis, too, does not quite know how to do this and is for some reason doing it anyway, that keeps him in place for long enough to try something else.

If Louis will not order him, Armand will not react as if he had. If it feels false and awkward, well, so does everything these days.

Armand is in a small booth, alone tonight. He crosses his legs, leans back in his seat. Eyes up. Wait a beat, and then a beat longer than you think you should-- how many times had he given that stage direction? "I'm comfortable here," he says. And then, a small smile.

He barely has time to be terrified of the outcome before Louis smirks, and then he is sliding in across from him. The bartender slides a drink in front of him. "Been out here breaking hearts, then?" Louis says.

A version of Armand who has a calendar, and knows whether or not he wants curtains, and isn't prevented from mopping the floor by not having a broom and from getting a broom by not having a garbage can, would be able to answer with a coy smile. Armand is certain this version has existed. But the one who had just made Louis smirk is brittle. He can't keep it up.

"No," he says, staring at the table between them. "I haven't. With anyone else." He wants to add an apology after it, since Louis clearly wants him to have been. But that would only make him feel better for a moment, and worse for the rest of the night. Unwelcome apologies are like that.

Louis picks up his drink, swirls it around. He usually prefers sweet things, when it comes to mortal foods. He puts the spirit down without sipping it. "Neither have I," he says quietly.

Armand is pretty good at staying still and not reacting to things. But Louis had purchased his flight to New Orleans on their joint credit card, five minutes after leaving the penthouse. The confirmation email had pinged on Armand's iPad while Daniel Molloy was still a human being. Which must mean that either he didn't find Lestat, or he didn't like what he found.

"I'm sorry," says Armand, insincerely.

Louis laughs. "Don't be," he says. "I found him. It was good. Just not ready to jump into anything, that's all."

Armand stares at him. He wants, very much, to break down the walls of Louis' mind and find the truth of this. This cannot be true: that Louis had found Lestat, his maker, his companion, Lestat who had saved his life and let Armand take the credit like a mute doll standing by helplessly, Lestat who has occupied the background of every thought Louis has had for the past eight decades. And then he had-- what? Given him a peck on the cheek and hopped on a plane back to Dubai? He doesn't, because he thinks Louis would know. Louis, maybe, had always known. He'd just put up with it.

"You love Lestat," he says. A stupid thing to say. Obvious. But still.

"Yes," says Louis. "And I love him enough to want to do something different from last time. Maybe hope for a different outcome, too. And he loves me. So, we're giving each other space."

Armand cannot say anything to that. It shouldn't mean anything to him. It's nothing to do with him. But it feels like something shifting in him, tectonic plates scraping against each other.

He must say something else. There was something else he very badly wanted to ask Louis. "Can I have the painting?" tumbles out of him.

Louis looks confused for only a moment. Then he knows which painting, of course he does. Louis hates that painting. "Yeah, of course," he says. "If you give me your address, I'll have it sent over in the morning." And he pulls out a smartphone and hands it to Armand, screen open to a new contact page.

Louis has a cell phone. Louis wants his address. Even if it's just to give to some delivery guys, Louis will be able to know where Armand lives if he cares to look. He types it in. "I don't have a phone," he says. His voice comes out sounding shocked. A cell phone. A cell phone, of course, that is what he should have, not a calendar.

"I can send your iPad, too," says Louis. "And anything else you want. You really high-tailed it out of there, huh."

Armand chews on his lip. Stares intently at the oddly oily-looking liquid in Louis' glass. "Yes," he says.

They teeter on a precipice, then fall over. Louis was always good at the final push. "He's doing fine," he says, "if you wanted to know."

"Yes," says Armand, almost gasping with the relief of it. That it's said. That Daniel is-- Daniel is--

"If he was supposed to be a gift for me, I appreciate it. I do. It's a hell of a thing, to do, Armand."

Armand genuinely has no idea what Daniel was supposed to be. He could take the thanks, perhaps, say it was a gift, just like he had stood by and accepted the designation of Louis' saviour from the trial. But somehow, he can't. "I don't know. It would have been-- yes, it's better for him to hate me than you. But I don't think I was thinking of it, all I thought was, he couldn't die."

He's just admitted that Daniel wasn't a gift, which should mean something, but Louis just nods. "He doesn't hate you," he says. "He's pissed off at you. There's a difference. And you could fix it by calling him. On your phone, once you have one."

Of course he doesn't hate Armand now. He is still basking in the giddy realization that he's not about to die. But it will wear off, and he'll bury his children, and he'll realize that what he'd so dreaded, the palliative care ward with its warm sheets and strong drugs, is a death a thousand times more desirable than any end available to him now. A vampire dies in agony, or not at all. And then he will hate Armand, but at least he will still have Louis left to him.

"I know I don't have any right to ask this," he says, "and you should say to him what you think best. But my preference would be that you don't speak to him of me."

Louis frowns. He rests his chin on his hands and looks at Armand, like he needs to be deciphered. He's not in Armand's mind, because apparently they don't do that now. It's strange, to be observed in every way but the one that would actually show whatever Louis is looking for.

"You can always ask," he says finally. "Won't always say yes, but you can ask. All right. If it's what you want, I'll tell Daniel I haven't heard from you. Blood he's got, he could probably crack my mind in a second if he found the knack for it, but I'll try my best."

Armand breathes out slowly. The terrible sadness washing over him is a kind of relief. "Thank you." A thought occurs to him. "Does Lestat...?"

A sudden bark of laughter. "Oh, Lestat knows about him," Louis says. "You'll be shocked to learn that Lestat thinks being interviewed sounds like the most fun it's possible to have with your pants on."

And now they're back to Lestat. Which he hadn't meant to, the last thing Armand wants to do with the time he's allowed to spend with Louis is waste even more of it on Lestat. But there is still something his mind can't stop worrying at. And maybe it's not really about Lestat at all.

"Would you participate? If he were do an interview?" The prospect of Daniel hearing what Lestat would have to say about Armand is a different matter entirely, one he doesn't want to think on too much until it happens.

"Mmm. Not in the room, I don't think. I got my chance, told my side." Louis shrugs. "He also thinks being in a rock band sounds like the ideal career for this century, so. Hell, maybe I'll go on tour."

He saw Lestat, and didn't fuck Lestat, and came back to Dubai, but he would go on tour with Lestat, and let Lestat spew whatever little fairy tale he pleases to Daniel with no supervision.

Louis is looking at him like that again, the way that means he's trying to figure out how to read him when he can't just push gently at the edge of Armand's mind and be shown what he wants to see. Or rather, be shown what Armand wants him to see, which is probably why he doesn't trust that way any more. "I don't know," he says, "If I can explain what's going on with me and Lestat in a way that'll make sense to you, Armand. Not that I need to."

"I think I understand," Armand says. He's almost as surprised to hear himself say it as Louis is. But it's obvious, really, obvious in the way that things you have to look away from in order to keep moving and breathing are, in retrospect, obvious. "You're offering him what you offered me."

Louis looks skeptical, but he just says, "Oh?"

"At first. You said you were there if I wanted you, but you'd be out, finding yourself. You said there was room for me anyway. And there was, but... just a little bit. Not the kind I needed. So I grabbed the edges of it and tore, and you resisted for a while but eventually--" he feels a little nauseous, he shouldn't have had so much wine, mortal food doesn't agree with him on so little blood-- "I know, when someone tears into you long enough, you start wanting to help just to get it over with. So you made room for me and nothing but me for almost eighty years, but it was never what you had meant to offer. So now, you're offering it to Lestat. Giving him a little room and seeing if he rips it open."

It has been a very, very long time since Armand has said or done anything that surprised Louis. Even at the table with Daniel, leafing through the trial script with Armand's handwriting on it, he had not really been surprised.

Louis is surprised now. He leans back in his seat, finally takes a minuscule sip of his drink. He looks like what he should really have is a cigarette, but Armand gathers that smoking indoors has gone out of fashion in recent decades.

"Yeah," Louis says eventually. "That's not all of it, but it's... you're right."

Then he grins, the sharp seductive one that Armand knows he knows the effect of and does it on purpose, and adds, "Could have done without the thing being wrapped up in a hole metaphor, but yes."

"Oh," says Armand lightly, "a prude." He has the sudden giddy image of Louis, if he did have a cigarette right now, leaning across the table and putting it out on Armand's wrist. It's not real. Just a silly fantasy. But that he can imagine it, superimpose that Louis on this one and have them fit together, is--

--the same old thing, isn't it? Just tearing, tearing his way out of any boundaries he's given. Isn't he? But then, Louis had come here, Louis had come to see him on purpose--

"Well," Louis says, "if I had to go with the metaphor, so as to exonerate myself from charges of prudishness, I would say... that is what you did to me. And some of those rips, they don't close. But you... I thought, because I couldn't find the breaks in you, that you were whole. I couldn't see the shape, and I didn't realize it was because there wasn't one. That you were made of tatters."

Armand's mouth might be hanging open. He might be making sounds, or he may never speak again. Louis has said cruel things to him before. But this is like being stripped naked and whipped in the space of an instant.

And the thing is, Armand likes being stripped naked and whipped. Or at least he thinks he does, craves it before, runs his mind over it obsessively after. But that doesn't change the fact that there is always a moment, the moment itself, when it just hurts. When the world narrows to be made up of nothing but shock and hurt and shock that it can possibly hurt so much.

Louis is looking alarmed. He may be saying something else. Armand is aware that he had not intended it to hurt like this, because that is not how Louis looks when he hurts Armand on purpose.

Which is worse, of course. Because Louis is right. Louis could feel the fractures in himself, knew how much room he could make for Armand without making them worse. Armand has never even considered such a thing. It would make no sense. He is all negative space and no subject. Tatters, and the best he can do is pour the scraps that surround the void of himself into something or someone else.

"Hey," Louis is saying. "Armand. Armand." He does not use any other name. But he does grab Armand's hand, squeeze hard at the wrist until Armand meets his eyes.

There is nothing in particular to say, nothing to apologize for or take back. Louis drops his gaze to Armand's hand. Armand resigns himself to being let go of, but Louis just turns it over, holding it loosely. Slowly, giving Armand time to see his intentions, he makes a tiny nick with his thumbnail on the inside of Armand's wrist, just under his thumb. Then he digs carefully with the nail, catching as few layers of cells as possible, and peels back a strip of skin that detaches in a slow agonizing drag from Armand's arm, halfway up to his elbow before it thins and breaks off.

Armand is, he recognizes, rather easy to please. Knowing the trick of it doesn't make it any less effective. His mute panic has cleared, leaving behind a heaviness laced with nerves, like stage fright. The line of raw new skin on his arm is easier to focus on. Besides the initial nick, there isn't enough damage to the tissue to draw blood. So it will stay there, healing slowly as a mortal's skin.

He presses two fingers of his other hand to it, and it burns. "How do you know?" he asks. "How much room there is, what needs rebuilding?"

"Shit, I don't know. Do I look like I've ever succeeded?" He lets go of Armand's hand, and then his face softens. "But hey, getting out of the house and out to a place you can meet some other people seems like a good start."

"I haven't met anyone here but you."

"You haven't fucked anyone here but me. You've met other people, I've seen you."

Which is true. It doesn't feel like it really counts, but maybe it just counts towards something different.

Louis fiddles with his glass. He looks at Armand, then around the bar, and back again. He is nervous, which makes Armand nervous. Surely the worst has already happened. If life were fair, that would be so. But one thing Armand has learned is that there is no upper limit on the number of worst things that can happen in a night.

"Armand," Louis says. "The first offer's still on the table. If it's... something you can do. Want to do."

The first offer. A little bit of room. You want me, I'm here. Louis. He can have Louis again. Right now, a hotel room, like the bartender said.

And then the heaviness, pressing him down into his seat, filling his mouth before he can answer yes on instinct. He can feel, now, the tatters of himself. The black hole that he is tilting, precariously, wanting to pour itself into Louis again. And he doesn't want it to. He may be a patchwork of tatters held together by void, but even that is something. He could hold it carefully, not let it spill. At least try to get a look at it.

"I don't know," he whispers.

"Oh," says Louis. He seems surprised, but not displeased. "Well, that's-- you have my number, if you figure it out. Do you? Are you going to get a phone?"

"I will," says Armand. "A new one. Just send the painting, I don't want anything else. You can get rid of anything you don't want."

"All right. Hold on a second." Louis gets up, goes to the bar, then comes back holding a pen. "Can I write it on your arm?"

"Could have asked before you got the pen," says Armand, which is true, but he's also teasing. He holds out the arm with the raw skin and Louis writes a phone number just below it, not painful but lovely and sensitive.

"Probably be weird if I ran into you here again, huh," says Louis, and Armand's heart sinks, because it's true, and he had offered to leave the first time, hadn't he. He should offer this place to Louis. "It's yours," says Louis, "you were here first," and the relief Armand feels is too much to argue with.

"Thank you," he says. "There's that place above the game shop on Al Faheedi. And one closer, an alley off Al Ahmadiya, the music was too loud there, I didn't like it." Underground places, more downmarket than this. Louis used to like that sort of thing. Maybe he doesn't any more. Armand gestures at the bartender. "I'm sure she knows better than me."

"Alright. I'll ask her." Louis smirks at him again. "Still, I'm impressed. You know your way around. Take care, Armand."

"You too," Armand echoes, and watches him walk away. He talks with the bartender for a few minutes, types notes into his phone. Then he leaves without glancing back at Armand.

Orpheus from the Underworld, Edith from Sodom-- Louis spends too much time reading to repeat that mistake. He knows not to look back. Armand had asked for this.

Now what? He will have the painting, in the morning. That's something. He will buy a phone, and put Louis' phone number in it. That does nothing to help the feeling he is now. Completely hollowed out. Which he has been for a long time, of course, but he doesn't usually have to feel it.

The bartender comes over, takes Louis' empty glass from the table. Then she looks at Armand, pauses. "You okay?" she says. "Seemed like a tough conversation."

If a customer asks you for a list of other gay-friendly bars besides the one you're working in right now, it's probably not a far leap to come to that particular conclusion. Still. He kind of wants to drain her. But then he would need to find another bar, and he'd just told Louis to do that.

She puts down the glass. "You need a hug?"

Armand recoils, mostly from surprise. Some mortal woman is asking to hug him. The last person to touch him had been Louis. He doesn't want to erase the ghost of Louis' fingers from his skin. Why on earth would she do that?

It takes him a moment to realize she's waiting for an answer, like it was a real question. "No?" he says, but it comes out sounding unsure.

"Okay," she says, picks the glass back up, and goes back to the bar.

He is breathing hard, the kind of erratic gulps that presage tears. He thinks about the painting instead. Louis had probably put it in storage the moment he'd gotten back to Dubai. He's probably glad to be rid of it. He'd hated that painting, had refused when Armand had initially asked to put it in the bedroom. A fight, cruel things said for the sake of cruelty. Easy to come back from, because they were so well-known by that point. Then Louis had hung it in the dining room, where anyone could see, staff, mortals coming through just to be fed on. Worse than not owning it at all. But he was the one who had asked for the thing, so Armand didn't object.

He can put it anywhere he likes, now. The thought is terrifying, sprung from the same seed that has been preventing him from doing anything at all with the apartment, but now there is a little sprout of satisfaction growing in it. Anywhere.

It's almost three; the bar will be closing soon. He doesn't want to be caught in the strange frantic shuffle of getting everyone out. His legs hold him when he stands up. Odd, that he should be able to walk out of here looking just like he had when he walked in.

In front of the bar, he stops. The bartender who really, if he's honest, does not bear all that much of a resemblance to Daniel Molloy, puts down a cloth and looks at him.

"I..." he tries. He can't say it. he doesn't want to pour the mess of void and tatters that is himself into Louis just after he's discovered them, but does that mean he can't lean it against something, set it down even for a moment?

She doesn't make him say it. He had thought only Louis knew that trick, that it was specific to being able to see his mind, but apparently humans can do it too, just by looking. She steps around the edge of the bar and opens her arms, and he falls into them awkwardly.

Being held by a human is almost like draining one, but they stay warm the whole time. She brings a blood-hot hand to the back of his head and rubs fingers through his hair, and he leans his forehead on her shoulder. The tears that he thought he'd avoided earlier spill over, and he remembers that he is pretending to only be unnatural in the natural ways, here, and pulls back, trying to wipe at his eyes before she sees. It too late. "Sorry," he mutters, "I have a... medical..."

"Oh," she says. "That's all right. Hell, do you know how many identical grey t-shirts I own? No great loss." And she pulls him back in, blood smearing on her shoulder. He is shaking with it, sobs coming up from deeper than he'd known he had. She pats him like a cat, like a sweet thing that's easy to love. "It'll be okay," she's saying in his ear absently, "you'll be all right." How could she possibly know that.

"I don't know how to furnish my apartment," is what comes out of him.

"Oh," she says. "That's normal, it's hard the first time. What do you have so far?"

He tells her.

A chuckle that he feels against his belly. "Okay, that's a good start," she says, even though it isn't, "if you want my advice, you should get a good big bed. One you can spread out on and marvel at all the places you have room to put your limbs. And a bookshelf. And then you go to the used bookstore and fill it, and once it's half-full you buy another one, so you never have to worry if you have room for something you think you might like before you get it, and if you turn out not to like it, it's fine."

It's not the worst advice. He's not sure if it's really advice that can apply to him.

"Do you need help moving, or shopping?" she says. "My ex has a big van, always happy to help out for things like this."

The idea that a five hundred year old vampire is going to go furniture shopping with the ex-girlfriend of a bartender is ludicrous. Not possible. This is not what he does. Or at least, it is nothing like he's ever done before.

She misinterprets his shock. Or maybe interprets it completely right. "I know," she says, "feels like you're the first one in the universe who's ever had a thing like this. I promise you're not."

She pulls back, keeping a bracing hand on his shoulder. "Come on," she says, "I'll give you her number."

"I don't have a phone," he says in a small voice. "I'm going to get one today."

So he ends up with a second phone number written on his arm under the first, labelled Pritha. "I'll tell her you might text," she says. "I'm Rory, by the way."

"Armand." He thinks he had been planning on giving some other name, if anyone here asked, but now he can't think of one.

"You going to get home okay, Armand?"

Of course he is going to get home okay. He is the reason that other people don't get home okay.

She writes a third number on his arm. "That's me," she says. "Never hurts to have more numbers."

Notes

"Boss" is the English version of the Persian loanword "arbab," and a standard informal respectful address. Putting this out there for Daniel reasons btw

Chapter 2

The painting arrives at nine in the morning sharp, carried up to Armand's apartment by two delivery guys who ask if he would like help unpacking and mounting it. He refuses, and they leave it leaning in its box against the wall in the front hallway.

He had thought he would unpack it right away, find a place for it, and have everything else somehow fall into place. But he has three phone numbers written on his arm that would be at risk of rubbing off in the process, and while Pritha and Rory he could get again simply by going to the bar again next Friday, the only way to get Louis' number again would be to show up at his mind or his penthouse, places he is not invited.

It feels oddly like he is procrastinating on something, when he steps out into the sunlight to go buy a phone instead. But you procrastinate on things you don't want to do. And he wants the painting.

The shop he finds has only one person in front of him, an elderly woman to whom the kid at the counter is trying to sell a phone she doesn't want. She keeps repeating "but my son said that the apple will be easier for me," which is no match for his monologue about the power and customizability of what he's trying to sell her. Armand slips into his mind and knocks down his rightious enthusiasm, and he sells her what she wants.

Armand buys the phone he had been trying to sell her. The screen folds in half, somehow, and he enjoys peering in to the thing while it's almost closed to watch it warp in and out of shape. If it's difficult to set up for old people, well, he's got nothing but time.

Two hours later, he has dozens of tabs open on the thing, a bread crumb trail of tantalizing details on things he hadn't known existed, and has no particular reason to care about. It is entrancing. He needs a computer in order to use his phone in ways that the phone manufacturer doesn't want him to, which he suddenly feels that he must. Back out for one of those, then.

Back with the computer, he realizes he needs wifi. Back to the phone. The installation guys from du show up in under an hour and upsell him into something called the "gaming package."

Three hours later: you can, apparently, install operating systems on computers. Like scooping out their brains and replacing them with other brains that work completely differently. He needs a USB stick. Back out.

Another three hours pass. The sun sets. He is formatting the partitions for the file system of an operating system that he had chosen primarily on the basis of how many jokes he had read about it being difficult to install. I am the world's oldest Arch Linux user, AMA! he imagines posting.

Sunset. That means Louis is just waking. The thought punches through the obsessive haze of... whatever it is he'd done with the daylight hours. He grabs the phone and goes to his contacts. There are three of them. He taps on Louis, and sends him a text message that says, Thank you for sending the painting.

Louis responds right away. You're very welcome.

Armand stares at the words until they start to blur in front of his eyes. Particularly the word very, without which the message would carry almost exactly the same meaning, and yet it changes the entire tone. Maybe. Or perhaps Louis hadn't thought about it that hard. Armand thinks about it until it starts reminding him of the Latin exercises Marius made the boys do. Person number tense voice and mood, gender number case. There simply isn't enough information available.

The bar will be just opening. He means to go, at some point, but by the time sunrise rolls around again he has instead installed an operating system on his computer, something called a custom ROM on his phone, and cannot feel his legs at all, which he hadn't realized could actually happen. It occurs to him that in the time he has been sitting motionless on the floor with his laptop on his thighs, three or four artists could have traipsed through and completed an underdrawing of his motionless form without him even noticing. Not exactly a traditional subject. Titian could have made it work, perhaps. Vampyre with computer.

So this is what he would use a table for, if he had one.

He sets the laptop aside. The long, thin strip of raw skin on his arm is inflamed, weeping a clear liquid. Mortal healing. He rubs gently around it. It feels strange and new, so many cells recruited into the effort to rebuild from such a small hurt. The painting. Surely it's time now to put it up. But now that the idea of the table has occurred to him, he wants it. Someplace to put his laptop. He can do the painting after.

He could simply order one. It would be easier, it could be here within a day, and then he could do the painting right now while he waits for it to arrive.

Instead, he grabs his phone and chooses a contact.

Hello. This is Armand. Your ex Rory said you might be willing to help me on a furniture shopping trip. That seems very unlikely to have actually happened so if I got it wrong please just ignore me.

It's not exactly an elegant missive, but he can't think of anything better, so he sends it.

His phone lights up again with a message from Pritha less than an hour later. Likelier than you think! I've got nothing on today. Send me time and place and I'll pick you up.

It is ridiculous to feel nervous about a rendezvous with a mortal. He does this all the time. He enjoys getting to know them a little bit, before the chase. But there will be no chase this time, unless he wants to have to find a new place to go, when he isn't here. He sends back his address and ready when you are, and Pritha says she'll be there in about an hour.

In the shower, he comes up with a backstory. Born in London, father an engineer from New Delhi who moved the family to Dubai when Armand was thirteen, the height of the oil boom from the second Gulf war. Dubai is like a vampire that way: a child that grows strong on blood. Then he chooses childhood homes for himself from both periods on google maps, a quiet street in Sutton and then a tall apartment in Al Nahda. Going from one to the other, he thinks, was probably something like emerging from the crypt into post-revolutionary France, a widening of the world so sudden it could scarcely be comprehended. Or perhaps nothing like that at all.

He gets stuck when it comes to what he's supposed to have had of an adult life. Everyone goes to university these days, don't they? And he could have gone to university, a very long time ago, like the other boys, the most talented sent off to Padua or Bologna, and Armand was certainly that, talented, loved, special, so he didn't, he stayed, and what does he know about anything that wasn't forced on him by circumstance, what job could he claim to be doing besides just existing, what--

His phone dings. Here! says the text message.

Too late. He slams his laptop closed and hurries down to meet her, stomach churning with nerves.

Pritha is a plump woman perhaps in her early sixties, with a toothy smile and a long braid greying around the edges. She leans over to push open the passenger seat door of an old white van of the kind that American television programs teach children they are going to get murdered in, calling "come on in!" like it's the front door of a house.

"Thank you for coming," he says, buckling himself into the seat, which sinks down farther than it is probably supposed to.

"Of course!" she says. "Always happy to help a kid out. Where to, then, Ikea?"

He hadn't had time to think about that part. He had certainly never purchased anything from Ikea for his and Louis' spaces. "Sure," he says.

"Festival city it is," she says, pulling out. "I kind of like a good commercial mall, don't you? Something relaxing about just giving in and being part of the consumerist herd. Not all the time, you know. Just when you have a good excuse."

Armand does, actually, like going to the mall. He'd liked it ever since the first day the older boys had taken him out to the shops in Venice, an exuberance of art, books, clothes, jewlery, so excessive and unnecessary that it was impossible not to be swept up by it. "Yes," he says. "Sometimes I used to go sit outside the aquarium tank downtown, when I lived on that side of the Creek, and just watch what people were buying."

"You from England?" she asks.

"Yes," he says quickly, "Sutton," because he at least wants to make use of what backstory he does have.

"Armand. That French?"

"Yes," he says, mind racing. Shit. He hadn't thought of that.

Pritha laughs. "That's the most British thing I've ever heard. You like Dubai?"

He stares out the window, the palm trees, ferry terminal, Bur Dubai slightly hazy across the water. "I suppose I must," he admits. "If I were going to leave, now would be a good time for it. And I'm going to Ikea instead."

"Nothing for sale at Ikea that can't be temporary."

By the time they pull into the parking lot of the Ikea at Festival City, Armand has gotten to use some of the details of his imaginary street in Sutton, and Pritha has regaled him with more stories of misbehaviour on Emirates flights than he could ever use even if he were going to pose as a flight attendant himself. Not all of it on the part of customers: she and Rory, apparently, had met when Rory said what an employee couldn't to an entitled seatmate, and they were passing notes back and forth by halfway across the Atlantic.

The questions he wants to ask about that are not polite ones. And then what? You got together, you broke up, and then--?

Once inside, though, she's all business. "Okay," she says. "You need a bed, some bookshelves, a table. What else? More chairs for the table? Do you have a nice cozy one for yourself? And a desk?"

How many chairs can he possibly need, when surely nobody is going to come over to sit in them? What's the difference between a table and a desk, if all he has to put on either is a laptop? The questions feel slightly less imposing now that he is surrounded by such an overabundance of furniture that it seems silly not to have something, if he might possibly want it. And Pritha was right: it's only Ikea. He does not have the feeling, now, like he had when they first came to Dubai, of furnishing a life once and for all, which must hold indefinitely. So he just nods, and picks out the first of everything that jumps out at him. Table, chairs, bookshelves, bed, linens, duvet, closet organizer, a rack of little pegs that hang on the wall. Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors which Pritha insists on placing in the cart.

She finds him, finally, standing in front of a display of window covers. Heavy blackout curtains, which would be treacherous for Louis but certainly sufficient for Armand.

"Yeah?" she says, reaching for a package of them.

"I haven't decided if I need curtains," he says in a small voice. He remembers this to be the case.

Pritha throws them in the cart. "The nice thing about curtains," she says, "is you can always just open them."

It's true. Armand has to admit, staring out his window at the sunset, that curtains do not obviate or resolve any questions of how he is supposed to conduct this new life.

Pritha had stayed to help him set up his new furniture, ordering food delivered from one of the many Indian restaurants in the neighbourhood. Armand has lived exclusively among vampires for centuries; human food is not a strong point. The part of him that cannot help it considered texting Louis, perhaps a picture with a question like is this what a lentil looks like? Instead he just choked as much of it down as he could, thanked her for the leftovers she said he looks like he needs.

She seemed satisfied, as they finished. Armand was staring at the bed, much too large for one person, when she asked "How do you feel?" A difficult question, of the type she'd mostly avoided the entire day.

He decided to be truthful. "I'm thinking about having my ex come fuck me in it," he said.

"Holy shit, do not do that," she said, and dissolved into laughter.

"You and Rory... you seem, friendly?" Not quite what he wanted to ask, but close enough.

"Sweetheart, Rory and I were over each other before you were born," she said, and if that made him smile, she didn't need to know why. "Give it some time, at least."

Then she hugged him, briefly, and left, and he spat up undigested mortal food into the toilet, and now he is standing beside his empty bookshelves, looking out at the twilight, listening to the competing sounds of five different minarets telling him that it is time to pray.

Pritha had moved the box with the painting in it into the living room. They needed the space in the hallway to get the furniture boxes in. He'd just said "I'll take care of that later," and she left it alone.

Now is definitely later. He has a phone. He has a computer, and internet. He has a bed, a table, shelves, curtains. He'd thought all of those things would fall into place around the painting, but instead, they were the easy part. He itches absently at his arm. The patch of skin Louis had taken is scabbed now, blood cells finally recruited to help. Soon it will be gone.

What does it mean, if you only pray when you feel you have something to be thankful for? Is that better or worse than only praying when you want something? So far a he can remember, Armand has not made supplications of any sort of divinity since 1520. Ritual prayers, yes, but no special requests. And that one-- more a scream than a prayer, a dua of the unendurable body, save me in every and no language at all-- had been granted. Or at least, he had thought so for a little while.

He is covered in particleboard dust. He might as well wash. And even with that gone, something of the strange light decisiveness of pulling Ikea furniture off the shelves remains, a pleasant residue: there is nothing here that can't be temporary. No curtains that cannot be opened. If he prays, and the prayer is rejected, even cast back down on him like a curse, what can it do to him that hasn't already been done?

And perhaps it is accepted. Because when he stands again, and turns back towards the room and all of the things newly his that are in it, he is able to walk to the other side, take the painting out of the box, and look at it.

It's not like he doesn't know what it looks like. The moment can only ever be underwhelming; it hasn't even been that long. When he had first found it, and convinced Louis to acquire it, it was like having all his breath stolen every time he caught sight of it. Now it is just a painting.

He steps back, looks at it leaning against the wall of the living room. Louis had eventually decided to hang it in a relatively public part of the penthouse. Armand is fairly sure it's because he was annoyed at Armand for wanting it in the bedroom, and his annoyance stung. It stung because it wasn't that Louis didn't like what the painting represented for Armand; he just didn't like it as a painting. The fact that a work by a man a millennium and a half old can be classified as mediocre juvenilia is one of the most depressing statements I've ever seen on vampire nature, he'd said.

Neither Armand nor Louis could be said to have been looking on it with an objective eye. But Louis has a good eye whether or not his heart is involved, or his spleen for that matter, and he is probably right.

Somewhere more private, then. The bedroom, where he can finally put it, unilaterally, no consultation needed. He carries it in, the room taken up almost entirely by the large bed Rory had apparently instructed Pritha to insist on. It feels good to put it down there, beside the bed. More texts he is not going to sent Louis: would he find it funny if Armand sent a picture of it over his pillow?

From the canvas Jesus strains towards the heavens. Armand does not remember the creation of this particular work. It was, likely, unimportant. A rote subject, an adequate treatment. A vehicle for light and perspective, a proof of achievement. The canvas has nothing to do with its subject.

The heaven the prophet reaches towards: if he were to reach it, what would he find? Does it have shape, substance, any reality at all besides a colour contrast with the demons dragging him down? The painting cannot know, because in the philosophy of its creator, the worship of the prophet exists in the service of the paintings, not the other way around.

Early on, when Armand was still reeling from his abrupt change in station, Marius had taken him to the San Marco basilica, by special permission. Out of kindness, yes: look at all this beauty that is now yours. But out of mischievousness, too, Armand now realizes, a desire to shock, which he did so love to do. Gremlin, some might say, he comes by honestly. And what an unmatched opportunity: a wide-eyed little boy from lands where the sacred depiction of human figures is forbidden.

Marius must have disappointed in his reaction. He was not shocked, did not swoon onto the stone floor. What could these golden images of luxuriously robed gentlemen possibly have to do with whatever power had saved him from the brothel? It was a pretty game, nothing more.

Not the bedroom, then, for that is not the place for games. Certainly, Armand had never considered anything that took place in his and Louis' bedroom to be a game.

The kitchen is otherwise underused. He leans it against the wall next to a cupboard. There is a blender on the counter, takeout containers in the refrigerator. It could go here. For mortals, the kitchen is the beating heart of a home. For vampires it is like a withered limb.

Daily prayer is easier than special supplication. It requires only the words you have been taught, as long as you can remember them. Marius had loved his prayers, in the same way that he loved the saints of the basilica, in the same way he loved the ancient pagan powers and myths: with a philosopher's fascination. Amadeo could offer no philosophy, no discourse on the divine that satisfied his master, that did not cause his own tenuous sense of awe to feel rotted and warped. And so one day Marius asked to hear a recitation to the glorification of God, and he said I'm sorry, Master, I cannot remember it, and for a time it became true.

There is an acrid smell in his kitchen.

It has been a very long time since Armand has lost control of he powers of his mind. For a moment he isn't sure what is happening, and then the smoke alarm that Pritha had propped on the mantel of the doorway to the kitchen blares to life.

He could let it burn. The thought is searing, all-consuming for a moment. A pile of ash. But then the smoke alarm in the bedroom joins in, and he has neighbours who probably have alarms too, can probably smell the smoke through the vents by now. His mind is whited out, he cannot remember how to remove fire from existence through the air. He turns on the sink and throws sloppy handfuls of water on the painting instead, and it splutters out. He manages to regain his hold on the physical world sufficiently to levitate to where the alarms are mounted, grab them, and mash buttons at random until the sound stops.

He is shaking. Another sound: a knock on his front door. He opens it to find an elderly man. "Peace. All is well?" he asks.

"And on you. I'm sorry for the disturbance. All is well." The smell of scorched linseed oil wafts out from behind him. He checks over his words, afraid suddenly they had come out in Venetian. His neighbour is serene, so they must have been Arabic. The smell had clung to his clothes for days, on the way from Venice to Rome, as Santino waited for him to become hungry enough to eat what was put in front of him.

The man gestures at the two smoke alarms in his hand. "Wonderful invention," he says. "We didn't have these, when I was a boy. The whole house could burn down with a family asleep in it."

He cannot explain to the man the extent to which he is aware of this. "Yes," he agrees. "We're very lucky. Thank you for checking on me."

He closes the door, opens all of the windows in the apartment. The bottom of the painting is eaten away by fire, and the damage from the water extends most of the way up Jesus' torso, but his face is intact. Armand slides it back into the padded box it came in. Then he shoves it into the hall closet, behind the mop.

Chapter 3

Armand owns a large upholstered armchair now, which sinks when he falls into it like it's swallowing him. He curls up in it, knees to chest. The sun is down. The ruined painting is in the closet. He would like to cry. He would like Louis to be here to give him something to cry about.

Louis would, if he asked. He touches his arm; the skin is smooth again, having healed rapidly once the scab formed. That was always part of the offer, even when they were merely brushing against each other in glances and indistinct desire. The one piece of them that fit together so naturally, it seemed like a betrayal for everything else to not be as easy.

He flips open his phone, the odd bendy screen snapping to life. And the thing is, it isn't even hard. He doesn't agonize over the message. He taps on Louis' name and writes, I miss you. Would you like to go for a walk with me?

Not more than thirty seconds elapse. Yes. Where?

Meet me on the Old Baladiya side of the gold souk?

Half an hour. Which means that Louis is jumping in a car now, right away.

If he thinks that Armand is asking him to come all the way to Deira to do exactly what Pritha had warned him against, then they will. Armand knows that if Louis looks at him with that little smirk, and says you gonna let me see your new place? then Armand is going to say yes. He will let Louis up to see his cheap furniture and his bare walls, and beg to have anything at all done to him until he is sobbing. And if Armand thinks about that option too hard he is likely to lose track of the spark of impulse that had set his fingers in motion, forget that it is not why he is asking Louis to come to his side of the Creek.

Armand waits at the appointed intersection, where there are chairs set out opposite the gate entrance to the souk. He sits back in the wooden seat, crosses one leg over the other, tries to look comfortable.

Louis' car must pull up behind him. If he were less determined to give Louis' mind a wide berth, he might have noticed. As it is, he feels a hand swipe over the back of this shoulders, and startles violently, nearly knocking the two paper takeout cups Louis is holding stacked on top of each other out of his other hand.

"Sorry," says Louis. He doesn't look sorry. He looks pleased to have gotten a reaction.

Armand isn't sorry either. "What's that?"

"I know it's not your preference, but." Louis shrugs. "Thought you might be hungry."

He takes the cup. It's still warm, and he recognizes the blood as one of the regular donors. He is hungry. It's still a little bit irritating. "I am feeding myself adequately."

Louis spreads his hands, conciliatory. "Didn't say you weren't." It's an old argument. Strange, how easy it would be to have it again.

He decides not to. "Thank you." He starts walking, vaguely towards Al Rigga, and away from where Louis knows his building to be. Louis falls into step beside him, allowing him to lead the way.

He is waiting, of course, to be told what this is. If it's a decision, something Armand is not particularly good at.

"I burned the painting," Armand says.

It may be that he has surprised Louis more in the last few weeks than in the previous eighty years. Louis almost shrieks at that, a laugh with too much air put through it, and gasps "You what?"

"Not all the way," Armand amends. "But it's-- well, I could restore it. If I had access to a workshop with the right materials. Some of it is water damage. But I don't think I'm going to. I would like to purchase some new pieces, perhaps."

Louis' shock is a good look on him. Sparkling eyes, big disbelieving grin. "Well then. Anything you've got your eye on?" Another easy conversation for them, the collections. Managing the collections is about art only in the sense that the Romanus workshop was about the Divine; only extremely tangentially.

"No," he says, "Nothing. I was thinking of going to Alserkal Avenue, choosing... whatever draws me in."

Louis raises his eyebrows. Armand waits for him to say something completely fair and reasonable, like you couldn't even deal with abstract expressionism, but if he's thinking it, he keeps it to himself. Apparently the version of Armand who lights a Romanus on fire is also a version who might make acquisitions of contemporary art. Which is reassuring; if Louis thinks it, it could be true.

"Okay," he says. "Any other big news?"

"I bought a phone, as you know, and a laptop, and furniture," says Armand. "I've been told that I ought not to inaugurate the bed by asking you to fuck me on it."

No shock at that statement, except for-- "And who gave you that advice?"

"The ex-girlfriend of the bartender who looks like my fledgling."

The resemblance had not, apparently, occurred to Louis. Perhaps Armand is just a little sensitive on that count. They've reached a square, still a little busy despite the late hour. He crosses the street to turn towards the water.

"So," says Louis. "Does that mean we aren't fucking in it, or that you want it done without asking?"

Which is the question, isn't it, that Armand should have been able to answer before now, before he ever picked up the phone. To answer the latter would, of course, be a kind of asking. More asking than they've done for a long time. And there is something careful in Louis' voice when he says it. He needs to be asked. To know that the new shape Armand is arranging the pieces of himself into still fits in the old well-loved ways.

Armand owes him at least that. Owes more than that, but this is one of the things he can give. "I want it done without asking," he says, repeating Louis' exact words, no room for error, "on any other night. I would like to ask you something else, tonight."

He finishes the cup of blood, throws it in a trash bin outside a restaurant. Louis looks at him briefly, waiting for the ask, but Armand just smiles, so he takes the hint and turns his attention back to the other part of the statement. "Any other night," he says.

"Yes. I'm not saying I'll be home waiting beside the phone. But I cannot pretend, Louis, that I do not value your company. I am not indifferent."

Louis is silent for a long time. They reach the main road following the curve of the creek, and cross it towards the water.

"It's not indifference I'm after," Louis says finally.

They cross the street towards the water. It's a utilitarian stretch of waterfront, not a recreational one, not really a place for a romantic nighttime stroll, but Louis follows him.

"You were right," Armand says, "About me, in tatters. Are right."

"Armand, I didn't mean it like--"

"Perhaps not. But it is true nonetheless. What you meant, I think, was that you would have been gentler, had you known how little structure there was behind the facade. Or at least gotten out of the way of the collapse when I broke at the slightest pressure."

Louis doesn't deny it.

"And yet," Armand murmurs, "even so blind. You knit back together edges of me that I didn't know could be mended." He ghosts a finger to the inside of the arm Louis had stripped skin off of. "Some wounds heal better with a little blood in them."

They have reached the water's edge. Armand stops in a gap between two ferries. The fresh blood feels hot inside him. If Louis says no, it will be fine. Louis has said no to him before; sometimes he would say no just for the pleasure of Armand's surprise when it turned out to be a yes. But if he doesn't understand. If he doesn't know what Armand is trying to offer, to repay in kind. Armand does not have a plan for that.

"Would you allow me to fly you back to your side of the Creek, Louis?"

Louis frowns. For a moment he clearly literally doesn't understand, the actual meaning of the words resolving themselves into different shapes in his mind. Then he opens his mouth, and closes it.

Armand forces himself not to fill the silence. A trick of Daniel's, a trick of the theatre. Difficult to pull of when you don't even have each others' minds to make the void less terrifying.

"I don't know..." says Louis finally. "Last time I was flown like that, it was..."

"Lestat," Armand says plainly. "I know."

Armand cannot heal the tears he made in Louis. Louis must do that, or someone else, or nobody at all. But this one-- this has nothing to do with him.

Louis gives a tiny, shaky laugh. "I don't even like airplanes," he says, "and that's when you've got a floor under your feet." It isn't a no.

"I'll stay right above the water," Armand promises. "It will be over quickly. A few minutes at the most." He could make it across in less than a minute, probably, if he tried.

Louis stares across the water. Seagulls dot the stone turrets of the old village, beaks tucked into their wings to sleep, close enough to see when one rustles or takes off. "This," he says, shaky-sounding, "I'm... terrified." Which is a yes.

"Yes," says Armand. That's how it's supposed to be.

He waits. Lets Louis come to him, step into his space and then closer until he's got his arms locked around Armand's torso. His face buried in Armand's shoulder, eyes shut tightly. Armand almost forgets what he's supposed to be doing, being held like that.

"Go," Louis whispers. "Go, don't make me wait for it, please."

Armand takes off as gently as he can, so smoothly that when Louis cracks his eyes open just after they've cleared the ferries, he might be surprised to find they've moved at all. Armand can feel Louis' heart beating frantically, the second-most panicked he has ever been in Armand's company. He shuts them again quickly. A tiny whimper, as if of pain.

Armand slows a little. It takes time, for the shock to dissipate and the pain to feel good. And it makes the wind less sharp, the feeling of unnatural movement less acute. Louis' whimpers slow and turn more regular, gusts of air with too much voice to be breaths, not quite enough to be sobs.

Halfway across, Louis' head moves. Tentatively, he props his chin on Armand's shoulder, staring down at the water passing underneath them.

Armand holds him tighter, mirroring his position, chin on Louis' shoulder, cheek against the side of his head. They're hardly a cubit above the water, more walking on it than soaring. The small miracle of it feels new again, like this.

It's over too soon. He's not certain if Louis agrees, but he might. Armand lands near a small scrubby palm tree, giving Louis the chance to stand if he wants to, but his legs don't hold. Armand helps him down instead, until they're kneeling facing each other, Louis curled over himself. "Holy shit," he whispers. "Holy shit."

Armand knows Louis so many ways, but not this one. Perhaps even Louis does not know himself like this. Or he does, or Lestat does, and Armand was simply never before invited to see it. He puts gentle hands on Louis' shoulders, unsure of his welcome, but Louis leans into it immediately.

So he does what Louis did for him, sometimes, sits back against the tree trunk and pulls him in, his back to Armand's chest, held between Armand's knees, one of Armand's arms tight around his chest. Louis lets it happen, pliant and trembling a little. It is astounding.

He unwinds from it by degrees, or perhaps it is more of a re-winding. Armand runs his fingers through his hair, fingernails scraping gently on his scalp, and Louis sighs and leans back into him.

"S'this why you like this?" he asks.

"Flying? I have no particular feelings on it. It is a convenient mode of transportation that is, occasionally, discomfiting to the psyche."

Louis snorts softly. "You know that's not what I meant."

He does know. "Then I would have to say no," Armand answers after a moment. "I do like this part, of course, but even if it were possible to detach it from what comes before, I would not choose to."

"Hmm. Good." Coming back to himself. In a much more familiar voice, "Because you're gonna be in a worse state when I'm done with you. On another night."

Armand presses his mouth to the back of Louis' neck, the skin someplace to hide the smile that feels like it wants to escape the confines of his face.

Louis feels it, of course. "Think I'll take a car the rest of the way home. Not quite ready for the high-altitude trip," he says, and pulls his phone from his pocket. "Ahmad is the new night guy. Should be somewhere in the first few messages."

Armand nearly drops the phone being handed to him. He is still stuck on not quite ready. It's only a joke, it doesn't mean it's a commitment, doesn't mean Louis will ever let Armand deposit him safely home on the balcony of his penthouse, but. But.

He remembers he has been asked to do something, and manages to navigate to Louis' messages. He can see his own name in there, as well as Lestat. He's not sure whether or not to be surprised that Louis talks to Lestat at least partially by text. He opens the chat with Ahmad, not quite quickly enough to avoid reading that the last message sent between Louis and Lestat was an extraordinarily uninformative "sounds good."

He sends their location with a request for pick-up. The car shows up fifteen minutes later, a text message indicating that he is waiting for Louis on the other side of the little cluster of stone buildings by the waterfront.

Louis is silent, boneless, leaning into Armand with his eyes closed. "Your ride is here," Armand whispers in his ear. "Can you...?"

"I can walk," says Louis, and proves it, pushing himself up and dusting off the back of his trousers.

Armand stays down, looking up at him. "So you can," he says.

Louis stares at him a moment more, then presses his fingers to this own mouth in a kiss, which he then leans down to transfer to Armand's. Not Armand's favourite gesture, historically, except this time it is, because it comes with a tiny nick of Louis' blood smeared over the seam of his lips.

"See you soon," says Louis, and walks away.

Armand walks home, first skimming his feet along the surface of the water, then at regular speed through the streets in slightly wet shoes. He feels tired, as if he were the one who had been deliberately frightened tonight. It has been several days since he slept; he can feel it pulling at him, the sun making its way back. Like hunger, it always catches up eventually.

He has curtains now, he remembers as he arrives back. He can close them against the sun and sleep for the day. He feels disappointed at the idea.

A good sign of one's prayer having been accepted, it is said, is the desire to pray again. The night has felt like nothing if not an accepted prayer. He doesn't want to sleep the day away in response.

And yet if his prayers are accepted they are his, the vampire Armand. He can pretend to be a hapless twentysomething to mortals, neighbours and perhaps even friends, but he can pretend no such thing in prayer.

In no scripture are humans demanded to perform impossible tasks. He is a creature who rises when the sun sets, and sleeps when it rises. That is an issue that requires merely an adjustment of mathematics.

He grabs his laptop. There are apps for this. Well, not for this, but close enough. He had spent three hours the first night he owned a computer reading about the ethics of open-source computer programs. He could make an app. Perhaps nobody else would use his app, but then, perhaps they would. All that is required is the coordinates of the antipode of one's location on the earth, the time zone of that location, and the angular coordinates of the sun. All of the necessary calculations were well-known by the last time in his life Armand had been made to study mathematics; merely the computational power has advanced. One can find algorithms on the internet to solve equations that would have taken hours by hand in Renaissance Italy. The initial calculations are settled in time for Night-Asr.

It turns out computer programming is not, as some of his more carefully chosen victims of late would have any and all acquaintances believe, the kind of terribly difficult task that only specially appointed minds can manage. The hypothetical painting of his motionless form evolves: Devout Vampyre with Open-Source Software. Tiziano Vecellio, oil on canvas, 2023.

After the sun has risen, when humans have said the first prayer of the day and a single vampire the last of the night, Armand closes his curtains and slides between stiff new sheets. He can plug in his phone close enough to the bed to bring it in with him, the screen casting the otherwise dark room in an odd blue glow.

He opens his three contacts again. Louis is almost certainly already asleep. He taps on Rory instead.

Didn't fuck my ex tonight! 💪 I made an app instead. I might tomorrow, though. Don't worry about me, I'll see you on Friday.

He gets two messages back at almost exactly the same time, Rory and Pritha. They both say DO NOT FUCK YOUR EX.

He puts the phone screen down on the bedside table, smiling. He likes having something to disobey, sometimes. But not right now. On another night. :::

Notes

Reference for astronomical calculations of prayer times here, plus in this case an antipode calculator, such as this.