I don't know why, I just do

The angel descends from the heavens looking tired and hungry. No, not angel, Lestat is not allowed to call him that, not even in thought, too perilous. Perhaps he would be allowed, if he said it in exactly the right tone of voice, the right thoroughly pan-Romantic accent whose approach to staccato Germanic syllables is more distaste than discomfort, but no, if he did that then even if Armand wished to permit it from the bottom of his soul and his groin then he would be forced to refuse it to maintain the terms of his challenge. And oh, how ironic it would be if it were Lestat who causes them to fail in this task. Louis would laugh, he thinks, perhaps it would please him. But it would not please Armand, who enjoys disobedience, but not failure.

Lestat is afraid. So he strides towards him confidently, the confidence of the stage which is bone-shaking terror at its core, and greets him with Bienvenu, mon cher ptit diablotin, which surely is allowed? It's not like that, his names for Armand, not like what Louis calls him.

"Hello, Lestat," Armand answers in English, because he is an infuriating sack of contradictions. Only one being, alive or dead, would happily speak French in Dubai and then insist on English the moment he lands at Charles de Gaulle.

Fine. Whatever, as his makeup assistant always says. "How was your flight?"

"Awful." Armand kneads at his forehead. "It was bumpy. I vomited."

Oh. Surely this is not a test, this sweetness, how he is leaning forwards like he would like to be taken in Lestat's arms. If it is, it is not a fair one, and he is destined to fail it at some point, so he might as well get it over with. He pulls the sweet treacherous devil in and lets his fingers tangle in his silky hair. He does smell a little bit of sour blood. The ability to fly on one's own, Lestat had himself learned the hard way, does not necessarily translate to being comfortable on an airplane. Lestat himself is used to them by now. Still. "You must be hungry, then," he murmurs. He has at the hotel bagged blood Armand will drink— procured according to Louis' specifications, not Armand's, since according to Armand himself he has no interest in blood other than right from the skin. According to Louis, however, he certainly does, if you put a warm mug of a suitable victim in his hand when he's hungry and pretend you don't notice him drinking it. He wishes now he'd brought a thermos to the airport.

"I would like some water," says Armand. "Would you buy me a bottle of cold water? I have no francs."

Lestat splutters for a moment. Where to even start with that statement— surely Armand has a— yes, Lestat has seen him using a credit card. Had he misspoken, or actually failed to take note of the creation of the European Union? And—

"Water?"

"Yes," Armand pouts into his shoulder, "I like it."

"You are being naughty already," Lestat mutters, pushing him away. Armand straightens up indignantly.

"I am not!" he insists, and trails after Lestat, his suitcase making a rattling sound on the ground from a slightly misshapen wheel. Why would he not simply buy a new one? Lestat buys him a plastic bottle of cold plain water, with his credit card, in euros, from a kiosk near the airport exit, and stands still to watch him take a sip of it. He drinks nearly half the bottle, then says, "You've never had it?"

Why on earth would he have drank water as a vampire when blood is right there? It wasn't like he had avoided the human staple on purpose. It had simply never occurred to him. "Why have you?"

"My friends like it," says Armand, "they make me have it if I've had alcohol. It feels nice. Would you like to try it?"

Lestat accepts the bottle and takes a careful sip. It feels like there ought to be something there, some sense-memory of the stuff from an entire human lifetime, but there isn't; it's just the stuff of swimming pools and rain flowing into his mouth instead of any of the more usual places. Humans perceive it as a nothingness, a lack of flavour, he knows, but it has an odd sharp sweetness, an almost painful tingle, when he swallows it down. He can see how it would feel good, after you'd vomited up stale blood, or if you are an incorrigible masochist.

"You are a strange little creature," he tells Armand, handing it back. "And you have an eating disorder." Eating disorders are a wonderful new invention: all of his best assistants have them. Armand, despite his denials, has always been destined for the avant-garde.

Armand guzzles the rest of his nothing-juice and they set off towards the exit. "Will you kiss me," he says, "While we're in the car?"

Lestat is not confident about any of the rest of this encounter. But kissing in the backseat of a car— yes, that he can do.

This encounter started with Louis. Of course it did; everything begins and ends with Louis. Even the two of them, who were here so much earlier than him, were just preparing his way. Perhaps Armand does not feel so, but then, he has Louis call him by a name that was given to him so long ago that he does not know whether it came from the parents who sold him or the slavers who bought him. Lestat is not stupid, he's aware it's a perverted sex thing. It's also so tender that it makes him want to weep and rend his clothes and write a melody that Puccini has probably already written every time he's permitted to witness it.

Since the disastrous first attempt, Louis had not permitted Lestat and Armand to be alone together during Lestat's visits to the Emirates— which have been, he can admit, more numerous than the local demand for his music really warrants. Or rather, Louis had not arranged for them to be alone together, which was in practice the same as forbidding it. Instead they spent time together, the three of them, as if each were acting as chaperone for the other two. In Armand's human gay bar, or at the empty night-time city-sized mall, or at Ras Al Khor, flying a few Louis-safe feet above the water, frightening flamingoes. Sometimes they just sat on the street near Armand's apartment, Louis helping them blend in marginally better by indulging in his revolting particular habit, drinking tea and nibbling some kind of oily vegetable pastry from a street vendor. And sometimes Armand invited them in, and they— well, once Louis had Lestat suck him off on Armand's couch while Armand sat on the floor and watched like a giant insect. And once Louis asked Armand to wash his feet— just that, except not just, not the way Armand did it.

And then once, the most recent time before now in Paris, Armand lent Lestat a pair of noise-cancelling headphones plugged into a walkman, of all things, and Louis took his damn time theatrically choosing a knife from the block of them on Armand's kichen counter. Then they disappeared into Armand's bedroom together for a while while Lestat sat in the living room wondering whether Armand likes Gojira or if he assumes Lestat likes Gojira, until Louis opened the door and beckoned him in to where Armand was laid out, bloody ribbons cut down the length of him, and said go on, clean him up.

Armand's blood was different like that, much different from the time before, when they had both been drunk, and more different still from the time before that, when— well. This time Lestat was permitted to lick his wounds, and Armand's blood was full of the kind of quiet power that Lestat could hardly wrap his mind around firmly enough to taste. Armand had power beyond his years; a daywalker of only five hundred was unheard-of. And, unless Marius was keeping something very significant secret from Lestat, it wasn't a hereditary gift. It was part of the power that was all Armand, both his blessing and his curse; an unimaginable strength inextricable, somehow, from his submission to someone or something outside of himself. It was, Lestat thought, exactly the kind of cruel joke that God likes to play. Though Armand would probably call it transcendence, not a joke. And to be fair, as Lestat tasted of it and gently tongued closed what Armand had asked to be made to endure, he wasn't laughing.

Armand was sweet and light afterwards, effervescent laughter bubbling up from him, a version of him that Lestat found almost more frightening than all the others, but that Louis clearly knew well. His presence pulled the two of them together, allowed them to dissolve enough to mix.

And he clearly knew it, too, because Louis matched Armand's mood, playful, and then he said "I can't believe I thought you two would be okay on your own. What would you do without me, hmm?"

And Lestat was willing to play along, sure, he does need Louis and it would be a little sexy, wouldn't it, and a bit true, to say yes, Saint Louis, so silly of us to dare anything without your divine presence. But it was Armand who smiled wide and mischevious, and turned around a little to cuddle himself more closely into Lestat's chest, and said "Oh, we would do wonderfully. We would have penetrative sex in the missionary position, in the dark, just like Lestat likes. I could do it. You don't believe in me, Padrone?"

Well, Lestat used to be an improvisationalist. Such things were less in fashion in today's theatres, on today's stages where every movement must be blocked out in advance lest the unlucky performer inadvertently stumble into the pyrotechnic display, but he still enjoyed the game. And while he couldn't exactly counter Armand's accusation, he could change its character. "Bien sûr," he said, "that would do very well. On a bed strewn with roses, the gloom lessened only by fragrant candles, murmuring sweet nothings in each others' ears."

"Uh-huh," said Louis doubtfully, and Lestat saw something solidify in Armand's expression, just at the moment that they caught each others' eyes, and Armand perhaps saw the same thing in him.

"They call that sort of sex vanilla now," Armand giggled. "Did you know that? Imagine!"

"Étrange et merveilleux," Lestat sighed, "to be a mortal in a world where exotic spices are so common as to stand in for normalcy… faites la vanille avec moi, Armand. Come to Paris, in the springtime when I have finished recording, and we will taste gentle delights of the flesh together."

Louis, not quite in view of the determined, contrary expression on Armand's face, snorted. "Paris, Les? Really?"

So that's what they're doing.

Well, trying to, anyway.

Lestat has booked the Bernstein suite at the Crillon. Armand, as predicted, had accepted a warm mug and drank it without even asking after its origins— but for all Lestat knows, perhaps the gremlin can taste a human's sins on their blood. So that was one point for Lestat. So far, the only one, because then Armand had walked into the bedroom, with purpose, and sat down on the edge of the bed, waiting. and now Lestat is—

Lestat is afraid. He had decided sitting down beside him was the safest choice, but now he is regretting it. The bed is, indeed, strewn rith rose petals, which looked very pretty, but now that the weight of two bodies denting the edge of the bed is just causing the petals to accumulate around their hips. Candles! He should get up and do the candles. Before he has the chance, Armand does them with his mind. There is a window open. Place de la Concorde seems very quiet, considering, or at least there is nobody currently being executed there, which gives it a somewhat eerie feeling.

"Did you know," says Lestat's stupid mouth, "That Gore Vidal once hospitably hired a prostitute for Leonard Bernstein, only to find that he stayed up all night talking to the boy about music, and had forgotten to have sex with him?"

Armand cocks his head a little. "Okay," he says.

Lestat swallows. It's a good thing this is pretty much guaranteed to end in a sexual encounter, he thinks, as he is rather— what's the term from that website Louis banned him from?— ah yes. Fumbling Armand.

"Yes," says Armand, who is suddenly very close, and who is skimming off his mind, putain, and the horrible creature sighs dramatically, long eyelashes fluttering, "but I suppose that's never stopped me before."

Lestat should protest that, he is not the one who— but his heart is beating so fast, the throb of it in the back of his throat, and Armand hears the pounding or just smells all that blood, and is in his lap, knees on either side of Lestat's hips, bellies pressed together, a head taller than Lestat, an unfathomable distance above him, and he says "T'as peur de quoi, gamin? You never said. What is it of me that strikes you with such terror?"

And what is he afraid of? It's not the monster lurking in the crypt, no, because he knows too well that monster's weakness. Or rather, not what the monster can do to him.

It is easier, to say these things to Armand, than it would be to Louis or, god forbid, Daniel. And yet he doesn't, for they are so very close, his face in Armand's sweet-perfumed shirt, their bodies pressed together after so long seeing only the flat image of him, so why should Armand not hear it from his thoughts, that what he has always been afraid of has been not his power or even his insanity but that perhaps he is right, this unwilling elder, in his melancholy. Perhaps it's all true, and he was right about Nicki, about Claudia, about all of them, that they are doomed.

"Oh," says Armand quietly, his hands on Lestat's face. "Oh, you poor thing. The world is not so very terrible, selon moi. If it's true, you would still learn to take pleasure in it. I do."

Lestat's face is wet. He doesn't mean to do it, these hysterics, it's too much, but it just happens to him, the tears, the sobs hitching in his throat. He is going to ruin Armand's shirt. Armand, who was habituated to the cruelty of the world before Lestat's mortal body was even formed-- surely he has never broken down over it like this, not for centuries, never soaked a shirt with ugly pink tears. "Truly?" He hears himself say, and can't stop himself thinking surely not when--

"Truly," murmurs Armand. "Perhaps not then— but people change— vampires—"

Lestat looks up, shocked. Armand blinks down at him, perhaps with the same expression. A little bashful. Armand, the heathen Marius' prodigal zealot, Santino's heir and apogee, terrorizer of the Children of Darkness, had been about to say that vampires change.

Lestat wants to hear him say it, but Armand just presses his lips together, a tiny smile, cups Lestat's jaw and says "Continuons, mon cher, let's— as you said, touchons-nous doucement. I can be gentle with you, as you have always been gentle with me."

Lestat nearly laughs. "That's a filthy lie."

"It's a beautiful lie," Armand corrects, and is pushing him down with a light hand, more of a suggestion, allowing him to shuffle backwards until they are properly on the bed. And oh, oh, there is the Armand who haunts the better sort of Armand-dream, curls hanging loosely around his face, his little fangs that never seem to stay in his gums properly, looking at him with eyes that seem a little less frightening, now. But no less beautiful.

"Armand," he says, and suddenly, the rose petals and candles don't seem out of place at all.

"Lestat," Armand says, breathlessly. "Je t'aime à la folie. May I have your body, petit prince, roi soleil de la nuit? Say I can have you."

They hadn't talked about this. Lestat had assumed-- of course he'd assumed. And the idea of Armand having him, that's terrifying, but—

"If you say it," he whispers. "Say, vampires change, and I will beg you to ravish me."

"Vampires change," Armand says. Immediately, easily, like he had been preparing for that price. His slim, nimble fingers on their buttons immediately, stripping shirts off, the clink of buckles. Fresh-fed skin revealed to the air. "I have changed. I will not harm you. Though I have, auparavant."

Lestat believes him. He would like to say it back, but the words don't come. It's all right, whispers in the shared part of them, there's time. Lestat finishes stripping his clothes off instead, and Armand presses his body down, limb to limb, belly to belly, chest to chest. Rubbing them together, languidly, artlessly except for how well it works, the haphazard slide of their thighs and groins and hardening cocks.

Armand's tongue, when he pushes it into Lestat's mouth, tastes like blood. "You said you would beg," Armand murmurs into his mouth. "Now, please."

"Beau diable, je suis à vous," he says, which address would not be allowed if Armand said it to him, but what is it from Lestat if not la vanille, the most basic flavour of him, the one that Armand had agreed to come here and sample, for him to say "maître des ténèbres, lumière de mon âme, ravissez-moi, anéantissez-moi, je vous en prie, mon corps est entièrement destiné à votre plaisir—"

Armand, it turns out, actually knows what lube is. Lestat had not been certain if maybe fucking with any fluids other than blood was against his morals, or something, which wouldn't have been so bad, but this is better: how soft his hands are, pushing Lestat's thighs apart and slipping a finger in between his cheeks, like he might startle and bolt. Hesitant, not for Armand's sake, but for Lestat's. Like he is very breakable.

Which he is. He would not wish for the world to know, to be treated like the fragile blown glass he sometimes thinks he is. But it is all right, for Armand to know. Probably he always did.

"There," Armand coaxes, the tip of his slick cock lining up, pressing in so slowly. "Let me in. It's all right."

Is is all right. It always hurts a little, at first, some deep ache that has nothing to do with any physical damage, the ache of the soul's renewed acknowledgement that invasion, penetration is a fact of life, a function of existence. C'est pareil pour moi, Armand offers, and doesn't stop, rocks him slowly through the pain and into the pleasure and then through the sea of it. Slowly, gently, like they'd agreed, until it becomes maddening, metronomic. He might as well beg again; he pulls Armand's head down a little and whispers "harder, harder," in his ear.

"No," says Armand. There's no erotic intent behind it, it is merely a statement of fact. Lestat thrashes and moans and it makes no difference. Louis loves to get carried away, and Lestat and Armand both love for him to carry them with him in their different ways. But Armand is the one carrying this encounter, not Louis, and what Armand carries with him always is his capacity for enduring, his genius the implacable drive of the zealot. Lestat gives up, lies back and takes it as the pleasure grows slower and more agonizing than he thought possible, and lets himself be driven. Zealously.

His orgasm is barely distinguishable from what came before, it all runs together, clutching at Armand's shoulders and tears leaking out of this eyes and his body spasming around the weight and glide inside him. He knows only that at a certain point his greedy body stops wanting more and starts protesting at too much.

Armand must know, he pulls out, and before Lestat can even offer— what do you offer such a creature, besides the obvious?— he takes what he wants for himself, slides his cock right back in to the space between Lestat's thighs slick with stray lube. Takes his pleasure from him, firmly, determinedly, and leaves them slick with the fragrant blood of his pleasure as well.

Then he sits back on his haunches, nearly sitting on Lestat's knees if he let his weight go a bit more, flips the curls out of his face, and says "There," in an extremely self-satisfied tone of voice, before flopping down on his side next to Lestat.

Lestat bursts out laughing. It comes out shaky, almost frail, his body still tingling with the shock of what they had done together, too soon for any strenuous effort. Only Armand could rouse him to it, because really.

"Ça y est," he says, "tetelestai, sound the trumpets, The Vampire Armand has made love à la vanille…"

Armand grabs around his chest, tightly, face tucked in close. Beseeching. "Don't tease me," he says. "I have, before, just…"

"All right." Lestat holds on to him, breathing. They are both breathing, loudly, deeply, as if to show each other how.

Car horns outside. The hum of tourists. The ghost of Louis, standing beneath the obelisk. Interesting; Lestat was not supposed to see that. "Sorry," Armand whispers. Lestat doesn't mind Louis in their bed— far from it— but he does not want him to drag the past with him, his velvet cloak of melancholy.

"May I slap your face?" he asks.

Armand sits up abruptly, affronted. "Certainly not!" he exclaims, and his charming outrage banishes the wraith intoning let's go see Egypt on the street below.

And oh, he is beautiful. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes. And Lestat wants to now, wants to take all the power of the slow coming-together they've just completed and compress it, put it all into a single moment of hot contact. Oh. That would not be anything like—

"But we've finished now," he argues. "We wouldn't be doing anything wrong."

"That wasn't the intention," Armand frowns, but he seems a bit uncertain. "We're still in Paris, we ought to…"

Lestat reaches out to cup his cheek, rub fingers into his scalp. "And I'll take you out to be a tourist soon," he promises, "we'll go to the Catacombs and say hello to your old friends from Les Innocents, or whatever you like. But let me slap you first. I want to try it very much."

Armand bites his lip. "Louis…."

"Oh, Louis," says Lestat. "I see what this is— you are not playing à la vanille at all. Your perversion is for doing as you're told. Deny it, cher diablotin, disobey your orders…"

"Did my maker teach you to argue so unfairly?" Armand says, a tiny smile fighting its way onto his face, and Lestat knows he has him. "All right, if you— don't tell Louis. And do both sides, I don't like being asymmetric."

Lestat most certainly is going to tell Louis, but then, Armand is going to tell Louis as well, so he doesn't feel too guilty about it. He sits up, squaring off. Armand smirks at him, then lifts his chin a little, presenting his face. Lestat feels like he ought to be nervous, perhaps would have been some other time, but all the nerves have been transcendently fucked from his body. He feels hungry for it, curious.

The first slap rings out much louder then he expected. Hotter, too, on his hand, and Armand's head spins to the side a little before he turns it back. Turning the other cheek. Lestat does it with his other hand, a little less coordinated, but Armand doesn't complain. He lets that one settle, eyes closed, a long breath out, then he leans forward and presses his lips to Lestat's softly.

Gentle kisses, Armand's mouth tasting a little bit of his blood, but not enough to truly drink from. They lie back down, nuzzling. No urgency to it, the last of the tension released in those two moments of sharp contact. And Armand does not look hurt, not in the least.

"Did you like it?" Armand asks into his mouth, and Lestat just nods. Yes, he liked it. There are so many different kinds of pleasure, in this world. He twines one hand with Armand's, so Armand can feel his still-heated palm, and curls the fingers of the other against the side of his flushed face. Armand sighs, and does a strange little pleased wriggle that Lestat remembers, suddenly, so clearly he can hardly breathe.

"Do you think you enjoy being hit because of Marius?" He asks, because he has been wondering. If Marius had done to him what he'd done to Armand, who knows how he'd have ended up?

"Yes." Armand nuzzles into Lestat's shoulder. "Do you think you are so very desperate for tenderness because of Gabrielle?"

"Yes," says Lestat. "You ought to have told Daniel. What happened in New Orleans would have made a good deal more sense."

Armand shakes his head. "I was busy playing trade."

"Trade?"

"Rent boy. Saf'un. Pute. Really, Lestat."

It is really not very fair for the ancient who lived in a crypt for two hundred years to accuse platinum-certified twenty-first century rock musician The Vampire Lestat of insufficiently current sexual language. "If these are your terms for yourself, I shudder to think what you call me."

Armand smiles sweetly, little fangs poking out the sides of his mouth. "Oh, Lestat," he says, "You know what everyone calls you already. Slut."

Which feels, perhaps, better than it should. And maybe Armand's less wholesome tastes are not so very incomprehensible.

There are a few more hours before dawn, but not so many that there's truly any need to fill them with anything other than what they're doing right now. Apparently Armand has other ideas; he sits up after only a few minutes of lying in each others' arms, finds a towel, looks to be preparing for a shower. "Yes, let's go to the catacombs," he says. "I would like to see them. My old friends."

Lestat follows him into the shower. It is not a bath, no, but— perhaps later. It's charming enough, to watch Armand go through the regular motions of cleaning himself. He would like a video of it, he thinks. He will ask for one once Armand gets home.

"Are you in contact with Marius?" Armand asks, off-handedly, once they are dressed, and have blow-dried each others' hair, and Armand has kohled his own eyes and Lestat's, and Lestat has brought out his jewellery box and fitted rings to Armand's fingers until he is happy with the effect.

"No," says Lestat, the nerves suddenly returned. What is there to be nervous of? "I could find him, if you wished to speak with him."

"I don't," says Armand. "But you may tell him, if you like, that I would be willing to receive a gift from him."

Lestat blinks. "A gift?" That is not what he was expecting. Perhaps it should have been. "Is there some particular type of gift you'd like to receive?"

"Perhaps," says Armand, "I'd like to know what he thinks it would please me to receive. Will you tell him, or not?" An unconcerned wave of the hand. His rings sparkle; his hands are more demonstrative with them on, like they were just waiting for the appropriate costumes before taking their place on the stage of emotion. A small fire opal on his left pinky, alexandrite on the left pointer, and a construction of tiny diamonds with a section that spins in the middle of it on his right, which as Lestat has expected, he has taken immediately to fiddling with. Whatever Marius decides to give Armand, Lestat decides he will give him that ring.

Armand had specifically said that Lestat could tell him if he liked, but it doesn't seem like the right moment to point that out. "I'll tell him," he says.

Armand nods happily. "We should bring blankets," he says, "and sleep underground for the day."

It is just like Armand to refuse to buy a new suitcase because the old one works well enough despite a ruined wheel, yet completely ignore that Lestat has paid six thousand euros for their time in this very beautiful hotel suite and instead use those big pleading eyes in the service of convincing him to sleep in some creepy forgotten tunnel full of human skulls.

Which he is going to do. "Of course," he says, "anything." Why not. He grabs the duvet off the bed and rolls it up under his arm. Why not? Because he is afraid, is why not, he doesn't like graveyards and crypts and secret towers and other such places. But he was afraid before, he is always afraid. And perhaps, if Armand is there, it won't be so bad.

      <p>End Notes</p>
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