gifts

Louis puts the phone on the table, screen down. It lies there as Rory slides something sugary in front of him, which Armand had ordered for him before slipping out the back for a quick sip of a dopey junior formula racer, leaving Louis deliberately with his unlocked phone open to his message history with Lestat.

"Are you familiar," Louis asks her, "with the phrase 'don't stick your dick in crazy'?"

"Well," she says. "Not personally."

"Yeah," says Louis. "Me neither. My personal involvement with that advice is reaching an all-time low."

She pats his hand absently. Her allegiance, of course, is to the crazy. Half of it, at least. More than half? No, as comforting as it might be to believe otherwise, it's a pretty even split.

Armand practically floats into the chair across from him. Rests his chin on his fist. His snack is blinking woozily at a table at the back of the room, feeling a sudden urge for a large order of fries and someone to call daddy later, but otherwise unharmed. Louis knows Armand only hunts in front of him to make Louis happy, or more accurately in an attempt to convince him that he's got enough blood to afford to lose some of it. Still, it does work. And it's nice to be invited here, Armand's place, where people know him, smirk at Louis if Armand slips out quickly with someone else.

Louis waits for Rory to be out of the line of sight before he holds up the phone. "You never send me pictures like this."

"You never ask for them," Armand answers reasonably.

Which is true. The entire conversation is a series of photographic demands from Lestat. The first one almost polite: Hello. Would you send me a picture of this mural that our love is so taken with? Then, show me where you live, and show me what you are wearing, and show me those pretty little scars of yours, and show me what you do when you think about Louis, and-- more. A lot more.

The drink Armand got him is pretty good, actually, almost tastes like something. "You never ask him for anything back," Louis observes.

A long, slow, pretty blink. "What do you imagine he would send?"

Louis doesn't have to imagine. Lestat started taking pictures of him like Louis was about to disappear off the face of the Earth the moment he got to New Orleans, and-- well, that's fair. He's been behind a camera enough, he might as well put in some time at the business end. So of course Lestat got bolder, started hoarding pictures of Louis in positions that would be either a great cruelty or the exact opposite of that to send to Armand.

For the first time, Louis has the very strange sensation that Armand doesn't need to read his mind to read his mind. "Oh," he says.

Photos are so cheap, these days. You can accumulate thousands of them with no effort at all. Good ones, of course, are still rare and valuable, but Louis had never taken many of those anyway. With the challenge gone out of getting the mediocre ones, he feels no particular need to return to the hobby. Still. "I'm glad you two are," he waves his hand. Whatever the fuck they're doing. Maybe it's just the alcohol, but he feels happy enough to leave it to Armand to decide whether or not to ask for something from Lestat, and Lestat to decide whether or not to give it.

It takes a lot to really, genuinely scandalize Armand. Usually it takes planning, intention. But now Armand sits back in his chair, eyes wide, lips parted, either faking it very well-- entirely possible-- or actually stunned.

After that first one on the banks of the Seine, Louis had taken pictures of Armand again just once. Mid-Eighties sometime, after seeing a collection of Ansel Adams' test photographs for the Polaroid corporation. Polaroids have a particular character. Specifically, the character of needing neither a darkroom, nor a commercial development facility. So he'd bought one, brought it home and told Arun that he could cry as much as he liked. He doesn't know what happened to the resulting photos; either they'd been destroyed later that night, or they're still in a box somewhere in the penthouse.

So, Armand is sensitive about the dissemination of his image. He likes to be touched where he's sensitive. That he could prod Louis in the same spot and get no reaction is what has shocked him.

Louis shrugs. "You can ask him," he says, in case that's what Armand needs to hear. "If you don't mind, I don't mind."

Armand leans back towards him. His long, beautiful fingers fold up, one brushing his bottom lip. Louis wants to bite it. "Would you like to help me paint, Louis?" Armand asks.

"Paint?"

Armand is smirking a little. Knows he got him. Louis had shocked him, so he has come up with something that will shock him back. "I was thinking of completing the living room in the next few days," he says. "But it could be done tonight, if I had an apprentice."

An apprentice. A careful choice of words; the class of worker that Amadeo and his peers had been. He is being offered something shocking, but also delicate. "Don't know anything about painting," he says. "Wouldn't want to mess it up."

"You need only be able to follow directions, and there are few mistakes that cannot be corrected." Armand shrugs. "Only if you'd like to, of course. I am enthusiastically at your disposal for any activity you'd prefer."

"Bet you are," says Louis. "All right. Show me how it's done, padrone."

Armand flinches, then grins. In that order. Always in that order.

The mural has progressed, since the last time Louis saw it. The main design on the ceiling is now radiant with colour, a glow of turquoise, gold and soft red that somehow look brighter together than any of the hues individually. Eight of the ten radial designs are finished, the colour palette of each pair of patterns opposite each other in the living room being combined into a single pattern for each of the five radial patterns in the bedroom. Louis tries not to get to stuck staring into the bedroom, its single swathe of white wall standing out almost eerie among the riot of colour. Armand would let him, happily. For all that has changed, Armand would still let him do just about anything. The difference is it makes him nervous now in a way it never did before.

But though he is allowed anything, he has been asked for something, tonight. He has been asked to help paint the living room. To apprentice. He shuts the bedroom door, and returns to the work site.

The colours will be reused for the bedroom and would be difficult to match precisely a second time, Armand explains, he needs to make enough of the exact shades he's planned to last for both. He does it sitting on the floor, in a bucket between his straddled legs, so Louis sits on the floor too, back up against an unpainted section of wall, and watches him.

Angelic. Cherubic. He doesn't actually look that young, is the thing. He died only a few years younger than Louis did. He plays it up on purpose, and sometimes not on purpose.

"Did you like this stuff?" Louis asks. "Back then?"

"Mixing paint?" says Armand. "No. That and the brushes, the glue, the gesso, all awful tasks. But I wasn't subjected to them for long. I was in charge of pigment procurement, entirely so by the time I fell ill. I don't know why my master first set me to it, merchants tried to swindle me for years when I started. But I enjoyed that work. I became very good at it."

Louis is glad they're not listening in on each other's minds. Most generous interpretation, it simply hadn't occurred to Marius that his exotic little pet might be mistreated by others for any reason other than the ones he had. Less generous, it had occurred to him, and he figured he ought to learn to deal with it, without letting him in on the purpose of the lesson. Or else it just pleased him to send the boy out to be put in his place.

Armand is stirring the mixture with a kind of wistful fascination. "These are so easy, though," he says. "And safe."

"Lead?"

"Among other things that turned out not to matter. But the real worry was fire. Linseed oil has a tendency to spontaneously combust. There were fires, sometimes, in the workshop. One bad one, a boy injured before my master got to the room and put it out-- well, I couldn't understand how, at the time. I didn't see it start, of course."

Of course, he had been elsewhere.

"They got words, now," says Louis, "for what he did to you."

"They had words then, too. Bianca said them to both of us."

Louis had, on one now very memorable night in San Francisco, stated exactly what Marius had done to Armand, in the most modern and unambiguous words possible. He is not sure whether or not it was kind of Armand not to respond with a reminder of that occasion. Perhaps neither kind nor cruel; he doesn't seem angry about it. Just stating a fact. And Louis hadn't considered that there might have been someone there, calling it like they saw it with all the bluntest, most hurtful words. It just hadn't made any difference to either of them.

Fair enough. If Daniel Molloy had been a gentleman of New Orleans of the early 20th century, heckling from the sidelines, all the right words about power and exploitation and cyclicity, what difference would it have made? It wasn't like he didn't know. You always know, even when you can't say it. Especially then.

So he backs down, mostly. "You carry him," he says. "That's fine. S'always been fine. Maybe I just want to know what's what, that's all."

"When I tried to buy pieces of art," says Armand, "I learned it was impossible. I could have bought the objects, but not the art. Pleasures, too, are gifts, not acquisitions. Some of my pleasures are gifts from him."

Which is exactly the issue, isn't it, what's been nagging at him ever since he'd come back to Dubai and invited back in the familiar excitement of seeing Armand again. "Okay," says Louis, "but you got rid of his art."

Armand shrugs. "It was ugly," he says. "I didn't enjoy it."

That simple. Sure.

Armand gazes at him. A slight push to his mind, a knock instead of an invasion, would you like me to see? Louis doesn't. He wants him to understand.

"And you worry that I will decide the pleasures of the past are ugly after all," says Armand quietly.

"No, Armand," Louis says. "I worry that you'll decide that and then not tell me."

Armand looks sweetly surprised, because he is infuriating. Tilts his head like a strange bird. The last pot of paint lies forgotten between his knees. "You must think me a much better actor than I am, to worry about such a thing."

Oh, so innocent. Like he hadn't spent months planning a betrayal and decades covering up a single passive lie. Like Louis is supposed to believe that this one thing, he had always only been honest about. Bullshit.

"Or maybe I am just gullible. You can fool me if you try, Armand." Voice as calm as he can make it.

Armand can absorb anger, or he can reflect it. He doesn't have an in-between setting. Now, he absorbs. Eyes down, docile.

Same old shit. Louis feels vaguely nauseous. Maybe this was a mistake. This whole goddamn thing with Armand, letting it drag on like this. He should go. It would be better for both of them.

And then Armand says, "Since that is true, you have little reason to trust any promise I might make. But I will try to make it. Yes, Louis. That seems very unlikely. But I will tell you if I decide that. Will you promise me the same?"

Louis' mind goes blank for a moment. "The same?"

"Yes," Armand says quietly. "If ever you feel that you are humouring me."

It's certainly an interesting thought. In a sense, Armand has always been easy to humour; order him to pour a bag of rice on the floor and kneel on it, and it will keep him occupied for hours. But in another sense, it would be impossible to do what Armand seems to be afraid of. Lots of stuff was shit between them, lots of stuff will probably always be shit, but they wouldn't be here if they could look at each other without wanting to--

He summons a serious face, plasters it on over whatever he had been wearing before. "I promise."

Armand's face breaks into a smile like the sun rising.

There is no such sun, but if lack of sun were a kind of sun, the antimatter of dark shadows is now twice the length of the objects casting them. Armand's phone lights up with a polite ding.

He pushes the paint away. "Excuse me a moment."

"Yeah," says Louis, feeling somewhat disoriented. "You want me to step out?"

"Not unless you want to," says Armand, affecting disinterest. It's just that, affected. Louis takes the armchair, listens to running water from the next room, watches him return and lay out a carpet. A new one, not the one Louis had sent out with the rest of his stuff to the second-hand store.

To the best of Louis' knowledge, Armand had started praying in Cairo, not long after the beginning of their companionship. Armand has always been susceptible to influence, fond of ritual. Give him a master, and he will obey; make him the master, and he will enforce; put a muezzin outside his window, and he will pray. Regular old human religion, Louis figured at the time, is a damn sight better than fanatical attachment to the laws of a defunct vampire cult.

To the best of Louis' knowledge, Armand had also started hurting himself in Cario. Sure, it took them a while to settle into each other. An easy, obvious convention: if Louis would not hurt him, Armand would do it himself. The two activities were not unrelated. How else could a vampire come to be aware of his own availability for five prayers timed by the sun's travel overhead, if he had not tried often enough to stick limbs into the light, hoping for the excruciating sizzle of skin?

So if Louis had not greeted the shift in the object of his companion's piety with congratulations-- well, he had other shit going on. And for the most part, it simply didn't concern him. It was daytime. He was asleep. If Armand wanted to play pretend, put on the costume of a meek human with blunt teeth praising his benevolent God, fine. It had nothing to do with what he really was.

This is different. It is not daytime. Armand's teeth are sharp. He allows Louis to watch him kneel towards the qibla like he has as much right to do so as any creature that eats to survive.

The closest Louis has come to entering a church: the year 2000, his final human kill. A romantic notion, but laughable in practice. Walk into a confession booth and say I've killed, Lord have I killed, but I'm not gonna do it any more, and have it all wiped away like it never existed. Perhaps this is more realistic. Human or vampire, there is no state of purity that can survive the body's contact with the world.

So Armand comes back to the floor beside Louis, one prayer more denting not at all the infinite pile of future ones. He pushes the buckets of paints together into two little collections, one for the pattern Louis will paint, one for his own. Runs fingertips over the palms of his hands in a way that distinctly recalls the conversation they'd been engaged with before the prayer.

"You liked the hand thing, huh?"

Armand ducks his head. "I imagined I could still feel it, the next night, painting. I couldn't really."

Louis nudges a nearby box with his toe, full of the tools of precise hand-drawn geometry: protractor, compass, ruler. "Could feel it now."

Armand passes him the ruler, and Louis comes back down to the floor. They sit cross-legged facing each other, like children playing a favourite game. Armand's hands held out until he can't stand it any more, and then Louis gives him a paintbrush, which he promptly drops.

Louis grins. "Now we'll be equally clumsy," he says.

They work in silence for a while, Louis following the blueprint of a single instance of his pattern which Armand had filled in for him. He's been given an easy one, perhaps the simplest in the whole room, which makes him wonder how long Armand had been planning to ask him to do this: a spiral and a floral which alternate in a lattice, each spiral reaching four arms over to seed the rotation of the ones diagonal to it. The one Armand is working on is an intricate red and gold floral pattern on a green background, the fundamental unit of repetition not quite resolving to Louis' eye from what's been painted.

It's not exactly interesting work, but it's not unpleasant. It can't be rushed, by human or vampiric means; even Armand is going slowly, whether by habit or from the small handicap of his hands, Louis doesn't know. He asks at one point whether Louis is hungry, and he says no. Which isn't quite true, but he'd rather keep going until it's done.

Armand is done slightly before him, and settles down to watch like Louis tottering on a wooden chair to reach the ceiling is a particularly interesting movie. He steps down carefully once the final section is filled in. "If you were planning this," he says, "could have bought a ladder for the flight-challenged."

"Are you?" says Armand.

Not much to say to that besides a look. A I know you aren't that stupid look.

Armand shrugs. His gaze is planted determinedly downwards, inspecting his hands, no chance of eye contact at all. "Before Paris," he says, "you didn't know you had any aptitude for fire."

Louis' entire body feels cold. It's a good thing he's no longer standing on the chair; he might fall off of it. "I'm still shit with fire," he says.

"Compared to me, yes."

He wants to grab Armand and shake him. He starts forward to do just that, then stops. Tries to grab at the wall, remembers it's wet paint, and sits back down on the floor instead. "What the hell are you saying."

"Nothing," Armand says quietly. "Nothing for certain. I have no special knowledge of your abilities. I only know that your maker had the cloud gift. Were you the child of a coven, that would have meant an attempt at your instruction in it as a matter of course."

"If I could fucking fly," Louis says, his voice much too loud for a relatively thin-walled apartment block in the middle of the night, "don't you think I'd have found that out when I fell from the sky?"

"All human bodies are born with the potential to swim," says Armand, "but one who has not claimed the gift through practice will still drown when thrown in the water."

"Lestat wouldn't"-- it's a stupid thing to say, comes out of him in a shaky voice, still feels true. Lestat concealed his own power, yes, but to conceal Louis from himself? That had never been anything like what he wanted, never.

"Lestat was, and still is, an ignorant child." Armand's voice is, suddenly, sharp enough to cut through his panic. He is much closer to Louis now. His hands are very warm on Louis' face. Fresh blood and a little punishment will do that. "I'm sure he would not have concealed anything like that from you intentionally."

It's a nice thing of Armand to say, even if it's clear he's lying through his teeth: he very much does think Lestat would do that. But then, Lestat thinks that Armand is just winding him up, manipulating him into position for some grander and more brutal betrayal than ever before. Louis is mostly sure that both of them are wrong.

"I'm sorry," Armand says. "It's unlikely, for such a gift to be discovered this late. I shouldn't have-- I won't speak of it again."

Louis lets out a breath. Ending the conversation is better than continuing it, but it doesn't do anything to soothe the way it feels like Armand has just reached inside of him and reordered his organs.

Armand maneuvers them both until they're lying on the floor, Louis' head on Armand's belly, staring up at the ceiling. It is astounding enough to push out almost all other thought. You could get lost looking at any pattern individually, and together they seem to form some argument greater than the sum of their parts, speaking to each other in stochastic syllables.

There is no need to fly, under a firmament such as this. The floor is the best seat in the house. His racing heart slows.

Armand taps him on the nose with a finger. "I think you lied," he says lightly. "You are hungry."

Louis can't really argue with that. And he does know Armand had eaten tonight specifically with hopes of this, so he grabs the offered wrist and sucks at it, Armand's little sighs reverberating through his chest and into the back of Louis' neck.

They're interrupted by Armand's phone. Vampire Maghrib means Louis needs to be sealed up at home in a little over an hour, and Louis likes to play it safe, these days. For one thing, there's nobody with enough power over him to do it for him. Also, most of the time it actually feels worthwhile, this whole avoiding-the-sun project.

"Before you go," says Armand, "may I take a picture of you?"

"'Course," he says, and then before he can ask how Armand wants him it's done. Louis, the back of his head slightly flattened-looking from hair being pushed into Armand's front, little residues of blood in the corners of his mouth, halfway in between sitting and standing, the section of Armand's wall that he'd painted framed behind him. A bit blurry.

He laughs. "You want a better one?" he asks, but of course Armand got exactly the one he wanted.

He drives home alone, peers carefully out over the Creek as he crosses the Infinity bridge. There's no way. There simply isn't any way.

He makes it with forty-five minutes to spare. He could go to bed early. He could eat a bit more, probably should. He could, certainly, masturbate. Holy hell, could he ever do that.

He doesn't do any of it. Instead he takes off his shoes and socks, steps onto the bed of gravel, and then steps up onto the large stone in the corner.

Paul stares at him from the wall. His feet are not higher up than his own knees, yet the space in between here and the floor seems to open into a terrifying chasm. The only thing that is going to happen, realistically, is that he is going to step off the rock and land on the floor. It won't even hurt.

He steps off the rock, and--

Notes

A minor borrowing from Joseph Conrad: The artist appeals to that part of our being…which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring.