he had not been that ancient fearful fiend

"You're spoiling me," Armand smiles. First into Louis' neck, then he's turned gently around and pushed down. "Why are you spoiling me?"

First a text, a picture and choose one. Then Louis at his door with the flogger he'd chosen and a bag of rope, now his wrists and ankles being pulled tight so he's spread-eagled face down on his bed, helpless. "Buttering you up," says Louis. "Gonna ask you for something after."

"Your chances are good," says Armand, and then he forgets to wonder what it is for a while.

Louis is nervous afterwards, though, fidgety in a way he usually isn't, the hand running over Armand's back not quite soothing. Armand drags himself up from colours and textures into speech. "What do you want, then?" he murmurs.

"S'okay," says Louis, "relax for a bit."

"I will. Tell me."

"I tried it," Louis says, in a rush, "I couldn't stop thinking about it. The cloud gift. I couldn't do it but I kept-- felt like the earth was turning sideways, somehow, when I kept trying, like I didn't know even how to walk any more, my feet coming down in all the wrong places. I think I could, if I knew how to practice it, if I had someone to teach me."

Armand should have waited, maybe, until he had his wits about him. His mouth is hanging open, apparently, which he only realizes when Louis inserts a finger into it and presses down on his tongue.

Temporarily unable to speak, he just thinks. Thinks about the first glimpse he'd ever caught of Louis, how very small and vulnerable he seemed. Slow, poorly fed, mind open like a theatre, no flight, no mastery of fire, of objects, of anything at all other than his own too-human self. And yet somehow that was enough, almost made up for all the rest. He acted like didn't need it, like his vampire nature offered him nothing that his human nature didn't, and it made Armand want to believe with him.

But always, of course, underneath, the understanding that it wasn't so. That Armand could crush him, could do what Lestat did but infinitely worse. He had gotten used to his Louis being helpless underneath all his confidence. It made it easier for Armand to put on helplessness like a warm blanket, overtop. Now this Louis is no longer his, and does not want to be helpless. And Armand had asked for this.

Louis gives him back his tongue once he's settled, heartbeat slow, eyes almost closed. "Of course," he says. "Of course, Louis. You didn't need to butter me up for that."

"Flimsy excuse," Louis agrees, "I just wanted to. Come back here, I'm not doing any flying tonight, I'm not psychologically prepared. Still freaking out a bit about having committed to it out loud."

"Are you going to New Orleans soon?" Armand asks. He thinks he sounds neutral.

"Yes," says Louis. He doesn't sound caught, exactly, but he squeezes Armand tighter. "This wasn't-- about that. Been thinking about a present for you, something that'll last while I'm gone."

There is no injury Louis can do him that will last that long, but he isn't about to put him off the attempt. He lets Louis retain the little mystery of it, for now. He is still jittery. Louis, freaking out. Armand curls back up against him.

"What do you say, Arun?" Louis asks, reaching for an old comfort.

"Thank you..." Armand trails off. He can hardly be blamed for the missing honorific sounding like the loudest word in the sentence. "Padrone," he finishes. It's been in his mind, ever since Louis said it to him. The word is a strange shiver on his tongue.

The only trouble he catches is a fingernail flicking the tip of his nose. "That makes me sound like a mob boss," says Louis.

Armand rests his chin on Louis' chest. Trembles. Tries to imagine flying with this man, one day. Says please with his eyes.

He feels more than sees Louis' shrug. "Suits me if it suits you."

He buries his face in Louis' neck and whispers "thank you, padrone" again, doubling the number of times he has said it in the last four centuries. Just twice, and it feels like the word belongs so thoroughly to Louis that they might have invented it just now, in this room. Taking things for his own is one of Louis' gifts, the human kind. The kind that seems like it ought not to matter, until it turns out to matter most of all.

Armand sleeps almost through the day, most days, now.

It's strange: he'd thought it a gift, a privilege, when he'd started being able to wake earlier and sleep later. It's a tactical advantage over other vampires, certainly, which mattered quite a bit in Paris. It kept mattering after Paris: time to hunt in his own fashion, to arrange things the way they ought to be, to pray, to watch Louis sleep. To be there for him when he fell asleep and woke up, ready for anything.

Now, he has nothing to arrange. Other vampires do not seem to care about him, which either means Daniel hasn't published his book yet or the Talamasca edits were extensive. He hunts and prays at night. Louis sleeps across the city, unwatched. It feels nice, to slip into bed when the sun comes up. He doesn't need to, but he likes to.

Sometimes, he dreams. Louis had seemed to think the ability to dream was desirable. Armand is not certain.

The day before he and Louis have agreed to meet for Louis' first lesson, he dreams that he is sitting with Marius in the catwalks above the Théâtre des Vampires. Their legs dangle over the edge of the narrow wooden walkway. Down below on the stage, one of Armand's least favourite of the early skits is playing itself out, a nanny strangling her ward in an attempt to perform an exorcism. Armand feels embarrassed by it. In the inexorable anti-logic of dream space, Marius is wearing the uniform of a flight attendant, including a knee-length skirt and dark red heels, and the catwalk has the strip lighting of an airplane aisle, and the play is both present and some kind of mandatory in-flight entertainment.

"I'm sorry, padrone," Armand says, "I hate this play. I wish you didn't have to see it."

"Silly thing," says Marius, "you never called me that," and tweaks his nose, except instead of a small sting it is excruciating and explodes with blood, gushing down his front, dripping onto the stage. Santiago looks up at him when a drop of it splashes onto his cheek and mouths, "how could you have forgotten that it was always maestro?"

He wakes up disoriented, the dream coating him like oil. He cannot rinse it from the webbing between his fingers, his mouth, his nostrils, the hair of his arms and head, his ears, the soles of his feet. It cannot be true. Marius had paid good money for him. But it could be, of course. He cannot remember. He can hear Riccardo saying Il padrone si prenderà cura di te soothingly into his ear, but then, he had heard Riccardo say many things he never actually said, in the years following the other boy's death.

He tries to force it out of his mind. It has nothing to do with Louis, and tonight has everything to do with Louis.

Louis had asked to meet at a neutral location, and agreed to Armand's suggestion. It is not exactly neutral, in the sense that Armand loves this place, has spent entire days editing the perception of passers-by and employees so that he can sit and watch in peace. But Louis makes things his own so easily: it is only fair that Armand have a slight head start.

Louis is dropped off outside just after vampire Dhuhr and the mall's closing time. Armand meets him at the door, and they walk in together. A pair of security guards immediately start shouting and running towards them, and Armand turns to Louis. "You ought to learn this next," he says.

"One thing at a time," says Louis, smiling, and one of the guards hears and switches to English just in time to shout "How did you..." before they both lose interest and wander off.

Armand leads him through the gold souk and into the main floor. The slick sinking feeling of the dream is almost dissipated. He wishes he could touch Louis, but if he does Louis will think he is asking for a kind of comfort that he cannot accept while remaining capable of giving him orders.

The aquarium tank rises up in front of them, spanning two full floors of the mall vertically, a tunnel winding through it on this level. Armand loves this tunnel, the way being inside of it feels like being in the water, but with the clarity of mere air bringing all his fellow creatures into focus. He wants Louis to love it.

Louis smiles, but nervously. Clearly, the ambience of the environment isn't top of his mind. That is fine. Armand leads him into the tunnel. "All right," he says. "Show me what you have achieved so far."

"Well," says Louis, "haven't really achieved anything."

How is he supposed to do this if Louis won't even try? "Well," he says, "do your best."

Louis stares uncomfortably at his feet, moves one forward and then back, Squints his eyes. Armand can feel a small disturbance in the air around him. It's not nothing. There is something of a vampire there, trying hard to do something. But it's not nearly enough to lift him off the ground.

"I feel like an idiot," Louis mutters.

It is a strange thing to watch. Armand could usher the currents of air underneath him so easily. If Louis can move them, why can he not merely step onto them?

"Go on," he says. He points to a larger current, a stream of moving air being pulled through the tunnel. "That one, let it lift you."

Louis looks where he's pointing "That-- what?"

"Air."

"Oh." He frowns towards the stream of it.

"You can see it, can you not?"

"Yeah," Louis says. "I guess, if I focus on it. Never really thought about it before. I guess, when I first-- with Lestat-- it seemed insane, to be able to see the air moving around like that. So I just tuned it out."

"Well, don't." Armand nods. That must have been the problem, and he had helped Louis with it.

Louis stares around him, looking lost. Nothing else happens. "How do I step onto it, once I see it?"

You just do, same as you step onto anything. He wishes he could just go into Louis' mind, figure out what the problem even is. But he is not invited, and that knowledge stings too much for him to consider begging for permission to enter. "Or float onto it," he says, "you don't need to step."

"Yeah, but how?" Louis' voice is loud enough that it echoes down the tunnel.

Armand has never considered such a question. A vise of anxiety tightens around his throat. "You just-- you can do it, I can see you making it partway there. You're not incapable."

Louis blows a breath out from between pursed lips. He nods tightly, then refocuses on the air around his feet, and tries again. Armand backs away, like the scene is a painting that requires some distance to see properly.

Nearly three hours later, they are no further along. Louis is sweating, dark rivulets of blood dripping from his temples, and Armand is pacing across the short width of the tunnel. He tries to give corrections, point out the opportunities, how easy it would be to catch a ride on this or that little current of air, but it's no use. It's like Louis doesn't want to.

"I can't do this," Louis mutters.

Which isn't true. Armand can see it, he is generating a little bit of lift, but then he just... stops. This is miserable. It's like he's wasting time on purpose. "You're not truly seeing the eddies," he grinds out, "if you can see where the air is going you can step out onto it--"

Louis stomps his foot like a petulant child. "I am so seeing them, that's not the problem--"

"You're not, because if you were--"

"Are you in my mind, Arun?" Louis snarls.

"No!" From a distance, Armand is aware that the noise has attracted another set of security guards and he has to split his mind, one part making them forget they're hearing anything, the other part trained on Louis. "I'm not, because you don't want me to see what's actually going on with you, to help you--"

"Oh, I wonder why that is. So fucking unreasonable of me to not want you in my mind for my own good--"

"You're the one who asked for my help! I can't help you if you won't do what I say!" Armand shouts.

"I'm trying--"

They're interrupted by Armand's phone announcing Asr, a quiet chime from his pocket. Armand couldn't care less what time it is. Everything in him is focused on trying to make Louis feel as awful as he feels right now, or worse. He opens his mouth for another retort, but Louis' posture is all wrong. He's not combative or mocking any more. He's leaning back against the glass and he looks tired.

"Okay," Louis says. And then he laughs, a tiny bit, which makes no sense. "I think that right there is a personal message direct from God that we need to take a fucking break, here."

Oh.

It hurts deeper, the second time, but he is also more prepared for it. He'd known, after all, that all this was borrowed. Every moment with Louis something extra. A debt that would have to be paid back, one day. Louis had trusted him to do this. He'd asked him for something. And Armand had failed.

He lets out a long, slow breath, preparing his voice to speak. "I understand," he says. "I'm sorry."

"Jesus Christ," Louis says. "A fucking-- a ten minute break, Armand. To calm down."

"Oh," says Armand. The energy of the fight is still crackling around the edges of them. Their fights don't just stop. They take root, grow tendrils, fractalize. Or they shift into something else. He had missed his cue for that, he realizes with shock.

Louis slides his back down the glass wall to sit. Armand wants to go lay his head in his lap. But that is not what they do now. He turns and walks out of the tunnel, and if he could watch himself doing it, he thinks it would look like someone else's body.

From the outside of the tank, he can just barely see the shadow of Louis sitting against the side of the tunnel on the other side. He stands there and watches him for a few minutes. Louis does not get up and walk away the moment Armand is out of sight. He just sits there, waiting. Even so, as he walks slowly to the downstairs prayer room, he is preparing himself for the possibility that Louis will not be there when he returns.

Another direct message from the divine, perhaps: Armand does not have the room to himself. A janitor is here, and only the extra effort and questionable akhlaq of sending the man away brainwashed in the middle of his tahajjud prevents Armand from lying down on the soft carpet and crying.

Instead, he does pray. Perhaps not the most concentrated, the most fluent, the most reverent prayer. But when have they ever been?

He stays sitting, afterwards. He is already prepared for the possibility that Louis will be gone when he gets back. He needs to prepare, as well, for the possibility that he will still be there.

For all that peaceful reverence and unquestioning faith have never come easily to Armand, there are things that have. It is difficult to take note of things that require no effort. The cloud gift had been one of those things: precisely a gift, something that appeared in him for no reason other than the strong blood he'd been given. And now he has shouted at Louis for nothing but having received a weaker gift. All are lost except those that advised each other to truth, advised each other to patience.

When he returns, Louis is there. He is standing in the centre of the tunnel, lit by the odd blue glow of the tank.

"I shouldn't have said it," says Louis the moment he comes into view. "I don't ever wanna resolve stuff between us like that."

The Arun that he'd barrelled right through. Strange, that he hadn't even considered folding, when once he would done anything to ensure it retained its magic.

"Thank you," Armand says. He draws closer. A stingray casts a shadow overhead, then moves on. "You were right. I didn't know whether you were trying or not. Even if I were in your mind, I would not be able to truly understand why this is difficult for you. It is something that came easily to me. I never worked for it. That makes me, I think, the worst possible teacher of it."

Louis furrows his brow, nods. "Maybe," he says. "Don't really have anyone who can teach it better, though."

"There were a few children of the coven who would have been ideal, yes," says Armand, "all dead now, between our joint efforts. But there is someone, I think."

Silence, for a moment, except for the soothing sounds of splashing from the top of the tank. Then Louis chuckles disbelievingly. "Are you serious?"

"Lestat didn't know that his own gifts were possible, when we first met. It seemed to me that they simply appeared in him, manifested by my presence. Hubris, yes. I now see that he understood I could not teach him. I was merely an example of the end goal; the methods, he figured out on his own."

"I guess," Louis says, "this felt safe enough, doing this with you. Lestat's a different story. But maybe that's..." he runs a hand through his hard, grabs and pulls it a little, anxious. "part of the difficulty."

Armand would much rather not involve Lestat in this. That Louis agrees, to an extent, makes him want to pull back. Well, just an idea, never mind, let's head home! But as much as he wants to keep this aspect of Louis all to himself, he wants more for Louis to be able to succeed at this, no matter who helps him do it. It's a strange feeling.

"I would like to consult him," Armand says, "with your permission. But I can do it privately, if you like."

"No," says Louis. "I think I need... you weren't entirely wrong. I was having trouble concentrating. Sometimes it's better to look your fear in the face."

The sun is just setting in New Orleans. Armand pulls out his phone and dials Lestat on a video call. At the same time he reaches out with his mind and prods him from sleep.

The call connects. The screen is dark, the inside of a coffin, then Lestat's face appears lit only by the reflected blue glow of his phone. '"Armand?" he says, sounding disoriented. This is the first time they've spoken like this, both the phone link and the mind one. It's odd, given how, well, intimate their texts are.

"I'm sorry to wake you," Armand says, and through the vague open connection of their minds he feels Lestat's alarm grow. Armand sends feelings through their minds, but no words, Louis ought to hear all of those. Reassurance, trepidation, a little deference.

"Is Louis--"

"Louis is fine," says Louis, pushing in close to Armand's shoulder to get his face in the frame. "Hello, love."

Lestat blinks at them. Then The screen shakes a little, a view of the underside of his jaw, then a light flicks on. A good view of bare chest and tangled blonde hair. He lies back against a cushion, one hand propped behind his head, elbow just hanging out of the propped-open lid of his coffin. Lestat did always love the theatrics of being a vampire. "What an unexpected pleasure," he says.

"Lestat," says Armand, "your fledgling has the cloud gift. Not in great abundance, but he has it. I believe he could learn to use it, with effort."

Lestat is alarmed. "Louis," he says quickly, "je le savais pas, je te le jure--"

"Louis en est conscient," Armand interrupts. Lestat's panic is both disappointing and satisfying. On one hand, he truly didn't know. On the other hand, he was an idiot not to even wonder.

"I know," Louis echoes. "I know, Lestat, it's okay. I don't even know if it's gonna do anything. Maybe it's just not strong enough."

"It is," says Armand confidently. "I can see it in him, when he tries, I am merely a poor teacher. I was fortunate in many ways, when I received the blood. Many things did not require teaching, and those that did are far enough in the past that I hardly remember learning them. You are younger, and acquired more of your powers through your own effort."

Lestat stares into the phone. To Armand, Lestat's emotions are a blunt, undifferentiated force that are nearly suffocating to experience vicariously. He is pleased at the implied compliment to his abilities, embarrassed at the implied insult to his blood, teetering on the edge of a chasm of guilt and pain at the entire subject of flight. It seems impossible for him to have lived this long, and still be this unpracticed in experiencing complex emotions. It's part of his charm, Armand can admit, his simplicity.

"Louis," Lestat says finally, "would you permit me to see the situation through his perception?"

Louis nods, and Armand opens it to Lestat; the frustrating almost-there-ness of Louis' attempts to step out into the air, how he seems to just barely miss every way to make it easy for himself. Their entire fight-- it's not like Lestat won't hear it from Louis later, anyway. The trip across the Creek, Louis trembling in his arms. That part's just context. And maybe a little bit spiteful, but not too much.

"Armand," says Lestat. A corner of his mouth is turned up, serious about the situation, but amused at Armand. "He is afraid, tout simplement."

Which isn't helpful at all, and after all whose fault is that. In his mind Lestat acknowledges the point. Yes, mine. but we want a solution, n'est-ce pas.

"Perhaps," he says out loud, "it is like playing the piano. A difficult passage can produce incapability merely in the anticipation of it. So you do not launch in tout de suite at full speed. You practice small sections, slowly, piecing it together until it begins to seem easy." He brings the phone up closer to his face. "Was that a shark?"

Armand pans the phone around. "We're at the aquarium."

"That's romantic." Armand is not sure if Lestat is serious or not. Lestat does not seem sure either. "Put the phone down somewhere where I can see you standing. Armand, kneel and put one of your hands on the ground, palm up."

Armand wonders whether he should bristle at the order for a moment, but Lestat's mind is entirely focused on the task at hand. He does it, leaning the phone against one wall of the tunnel and kneeling down as far away as he can get while still being in the frame.

"Louis," says Lestat, "stand with one of your feet on his hand, with your full weight. Don't be afraid of hurting him, he likes it."

Louis snorts. "Figured that one out myself, actually." He does it.

"Good. Now Armand, put your other hand slightly off the ground. Less than that. Not more than a centimeter up, and prepare to take his entire weight. Louis, step onto it. Comme ça. Now, you will lift up the foot on the ground, and Armand will place that hand very slightly higher, and you will step onto it-- only, very slightly lighter. Go slowly, chéri, he can hold your entire weight easily. Every time you step, let the air take the tiniest bit more of your weight."

Lestat may, Armand can admit, have learned something useful from all that piano practice after all. At first it seems like nothing is happening; Louis is just stepping on his hands, which is nice in its own way, but he cannot perceive much reduction in his weight. By the time he gets to knee height, though, at least two dozen tiny hand-steps, he does feel lighter, and he's stepping more confidently every time. Like it doesn't particularly matter whether Armand's hand is there or not.

Armand is upright on his knees, hands out comfortably in front of his own torso, when Louis says softly, "you can take them away now."

Armand doesn't ask if he's sure, tries not to do anything that would project less than complete confidence. Slowly, he sits back on his heels and rests his hands on his thighs. Louis stays where he is, hovering.

Inside of Armand's mind, Lestat is like a child screaming with triumph. Armand suspects he might not be coming off as all that dignified himself. On the screen, very quietly and calmly, Lestat says, "Like the sharks, you may find it easier to remain in motion."

Louis takes another step into the air, as if he were walking. Three steps, and then he tries to bring his feet together to glide, and then he stumbles as if something in the air had tripped him, and drops back down to the floor. It's not the most graceful landing, but he doesn't fall. He grabs on to the wall for support, panting like he'd just been sprinting instead of hovering, an incredulous grin slowly taking over his face.

"I did it," he says, voice shaking. "Holy shit, I did it." He grabs the phone and holds it up, then grabs Armand around the shoulders and holds him tight as he says, "Did you see that? I fucking-- okay, I need to try again--"

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is skill," Armand agrees, taking the phone Louis passes him. "Do you need my hands again?"

"No," says Louis, "the walking was okay, I think I can do that, it was just the gliding that got me in my head," and sure enough, he takes tiny steps forward and up, lifting himself off the ground like an invisible set of stairs. Objectively, it probably looks pretty silly, but because it is Louis doing it, it looks masterful. He does it three times, as instructed, and the last time his feet are almost at waist height, high enough for him to reach up and brush a hand against the highest point of the rounded tunnel. Armand watches, and holds Lestat up to watch with him.

Louis tries rising off the ground, but can't quite get it without the mental image of the steps. "You've accomplished a lot," Armand suggests. "Something to leave for next time, perhaps."

Louis shakes his head. "I'm almost there. It's just my head."

In Armand's mind Lestat is past screaming. When Armand glances at the screen, he sees him quickly wipe a trail of blood from his cheek. Then he says, "you said you are in an aquarium, no?"

"Yeah."

Lestat shrugs. "You have always been a good swimmer. It's the same motion, in many ways. Merely a different substance to move one's body through. Perhaps you could start in the water, and rise out of it."

Louis looks at Armand. There's nothing in the water dangerous to a human, let alone a vampire. Lestat's first idea worked. No reason not to try the second.

They take the escalator up to the next floor, Louis walking just above each step of it, laughing delightedly. It makes Armand want to do the same, so he does. It's nothing special to him, except that tonight it is. It has been a very long time since he last felt delighted by flight.

There is a platform, from where scuba divers can enter the tank. Armand sits down on it, phone still following Louis.

Louis looks down into the water, then hesitates. "No reason to be damp for the rest of the night," he mutters, then quickly strips off his clothes. He is in front of two men who have both seen him naked rather extensively, but he still seems a bit bashful, standing on the platform in the middle of the mall. "You'll, uh..."

Armand smiles. "Any passing employees will see nothing more interesting than the usual creatures."

He looks beautiful. A majestic, wild thing, potential unknown.

He swims a bit, first. Passes a hand over the back of an intricately patterned eagle ray, disrupts the eternal circling pattern of a school of fish undulating up and down. Then he pushes himself from the floor of the tank, swims upwards, and keeps going once the water ends. Still some extraneous movements, like this time he cannot shake off the swimming pattern, instead of the stepping one. A little bit wobbly. But flying, He circles over the top of the tank, getting braver and higher, where if he falls he will hit only water. It happens once, and he merely lifts himself back out again. He only lands hard when he tries to place himself back next to Armand, his legs collapsing underneath him at the unaccustomed weight.

Armand catches him and pulls him into his arms. It means Armand is the one whose clothes will be soaking wet, but he doesn't care.

Lestat gives them a long time, relatively, considering. Louis' nose is tucked into Armand's neck and his breathing is beginning to slow when Lestat says pick your damn phone back up and let me see him in his mind.

Armand picks up his phone from the floor next to him, where Lestat had been left with an admittedly quite nice view of the gold-speckled blue ceiling. Louis wipes a wet hand off on the back of Armand's shirt, and grabs it. "Thank you," he says to Lestat. Just that. Anything more that he has to say, clearly, will come later.

He props the phone up against a railing so that Lestat is there with both of them as Louis dresses. He leaves his shoes and socks off, and Armand removes his own so they're dangling their legs in the water together. It's an odd gathering. Armand is not quite sure what to say.

He had imagined, many times over the last few decades, what it would be like to see Lestat again. None of the scenarios had looked like this. None of them, of course, had involved him and Louis living separately; it would have seemed a calamity. And yet, he would never have dared imagine anything as wonderful as this.

Perhaps that, then, is what he should say. It feels as awkward in his mouth as an unfamiliar surah. He says it anyway, carefully, deliberately.

Louis, dressed again, no longer shaking, radiantly beautiful, is looking at him oddly. He pulls Armand towards him and kisses him, gentle. In his mind Lestat says nothing, just settles himself in a little before slipping away. Like claiming a favourite armchair at someone else's house. A statement that I will be back, and I will stay here in comfort.

"You could try that again, from the Mississippi, when you are here," says Lestat contentedly.

"Could," says Louis. "Might be able to float out right over it, soon. Speaking of." He turns to Armand. "Brought something for you. You want your present now?"

Armand blinks. It's an easy setup. He glances shyly at where Lestat is staring at them intently from the phone screen, his face a little too close to the camera, and murmurs, "In front of..."

Lestat is watching very intently. "Don't you want to show him?" Louis says, low enough that Lestat probably can't hear. As if Armand might pass up an opportunity to have Louis do whatever he's going to do in front of him.

Louis reaches into his pocket and pulls out-- nothing very dramatic. Just a little square of cardboard. It's holding in place a single diamond earring. Oh.

The vampire body is immutable. It returns to the state it was was in at the last moment of humanity, unless prevented from doing so. Sever a limb, and it can be reattached merely by holding it in place for a while. But create a hole and prevent it from closing...

"If it's like-- you get used to it, but it's always there, your body trying to get rid of something it can't," Louis says. His gravel-rough ankles making slow whirpools dangled in the water beneath them. "You can take it out if you don't like it, I won't be upset."

That is very unlikely. Armand tilts his head a little, presenting his left ear.

Louis shakes his head, makes a little circle with his finger. "Other one."

Armand stares into the tank. The school of fish rotating vertically dive back down again. Very slowly, he pulls his feet out of the water and turns himself around.

Marius had told him once that the Turks weave imperfections into rugs deliberately, so as to acknowledge that only God is perfect. That the little cleft in Amadeo's right earlobe, then, must be interpreted as a deliberate imperfection made by God himself, so as to prevent some other creature from outshining him. He had meant it as reassurance, and perhaps it would have been reassuring, had he ever conceived before that moment of requiring reassurance on that count. Before Marius' house, he had not spent any time looking in expensive polished mirrors, or having anyone pay much attention to the bits of him with no immediate utility. He had not understood what his master meant until after his first sitting, the first time he saw a canvas with his own eyes staring back at him from a pale, symmetrical face.

He gasps as Louis' mouth closes around his ear. Not just the lobe, the entire thing: his blood-hot tongue diving behind the shell of it, then laving around and right in, a wet smacking sound that feels like it's coming from inside his head.

"Oh, that's filthy, mon cher," Lestat says admiringly from the screen. "Are you going to bite right through his little earlobe?"

"I sure fucking am," says Louis, not to Lestat, so close he might as well be all the way inside Armand's head.

Armand tries to tilt his head at the right angle to let Louis position his fangs on either side of the lobe and ends up just climbing into his lap to do it. Louis holds his chin in place for a second, positioning his teeth carefully, and then searing pain as he bites down and his top and bottom fangs meet in the centre of Armand's flesh.

He keens, the kind of sound only Louis knows how to produce from his body, and Louis sucks hard on the blood from the little wound. It feels bizarrely, unfairly good.

Louis pulls his lips off with a little wet popping sound. "Perfect," he pants, "now just--" and he pushes the earring into the hole, sliding the back on to keep it in place. It's a tiny wound, and within mere seconds Armand can feel it trying to close, then a cold little sting when it can't. The feeling fades gently but doesn't disappear, hovering at the back of his mind ready to be called to the front whenever he wants it.

Louis rests his chin on Armand's shoulder as he comes down from it. "Liked that, huh," Louis says, a little colder and more playful that he usually does with Armand boneless against him.

He's not talking to Armand. When Armand peers around he sees Lestat on the phone, the picture jerking around, plush mouth hanging open, panting. "Your gremlin is pretty when he suffers for you," he says.

Armand doesn't hear what Louis says after that, doesn't notice when Lestat finishes. He's still hearing your gremlin, yours.

They're even, then, afterwards: all three recovering from a pleasant shock. It's getting close to Maghrib, and sunrise after that, and Louis' exhaustion pours off him in waves. He texts his driver to come pick him up, and they walk back through the gold souk with Lestat still on the line. Lestat, predictably, adores it, and insists on being held up to every shop window. "You should visit," Armand tells him. "Dubai would suit you. Some parts, at least."

"Are you inviting my lover to my bed for me, Arun?" Louis says, laughing.

"I'm inviting my ex-lover to my bed, padrone," Armand replies primly. Lestat's evident confusion makes Armand unable to resist leaning in and brushing his lips over Louis' one more time before he climbs into his car.

Then Louis is gone, and Armand is left with Lestat on a video call. He is about to hang up when Lestat says, "Armand. Your fledgling."

Nerves hit him like a punch to the gut. "Yes."

Lestat is all business; an odd, new side of him. "I don't presume to tell you what to do with him. Certainly my advice on that count is worth very little. I am merely informing you, as a courtesy, that he has contacted me, and I have agreed to speak with him."

Agreed. Begged, probably, according to Louis, but the end result is the same. Armand nods slowly. "Thank you for letting me know."

Lestat pauses, then smiles. "You are not so bad a teacher," he says gently. "Réfléchis-y. Goodbye, Armand."

Armand puts the phone back in his pocket. He looks out into the night, its warm currents of air both familiar and utterly new. He rises into the sky, marveling.

Notes

Il padrone si prenderà cura di te: the master will take care of you
akhlaq: ethics, good conduct
tahajjud: optional prayer offered during the night
All are lost except those that advised each other to truth, advised each other to patience: from Surah Al-Asr
je le savais pas, je te le jure: I didn't know, I swear
Louis en est conscient: Louis is aware of that
Réfléchis-y: think about it