knock and knock and knock until I fall down dead

  <p dir="auto">"You never answered my question."</p><p dir="auto">Armand had discarded his jacket and gone to the window as soon as they entered the apartment, like he needs to affirm that the spot on the sidewalk where he had just walked up to Louis and kissed him is still there, has survived the shift in perspective. That he had chosen to enter is, perhaps, proof enough that Armand is not planning on killing him. Louis thinks that Armand would kiss a man before killing him, yes, but he would not then be so vulgar as to accept an invitation under false pretences. </p><p dir="auto">Now, he turns. His every movement is so careful. And yet, and yet. The tug of a smirk at one corner of his lips. "I thought perhaps you could suggest some alternative activity."</p><p dir="auto">Soft footsteps on the carpet. Armand drifts towards him. He is always so deliberate with his eyes. He looks at Louis' eyes, and then his mouth, and then his chest. "Think I could do that," Louis says, "yeah," and kisses him again, to even the score. </p><p dir="auto">Armand seems surprised. Like he hadn't actually expected Louis to fall into this with him, to invite in the creature who had almost murdered him and then close his eyes as their lips touch. He should have, considering what they'd both just admitted to. </p><p dir="auto">"What would you like to do to me?" Armand murmurs against his lips, and Louis can feel the tiniest bit of the coven master unraveling. He has been keeping those words inside of him for a long time. </p><p dir="auto">He almost laughs. What a question. For a while now, he has been having the kinds of encounters where there is nothing to discuss or decide. Roles decided by a silent glance, a gesture, an item of clothing, an approach or a holding back. There is nothing to discuss with quick fucks in the park because they are nothing. You don't need to ask one if he is broken; he most certainly is, but it does not matter. </p><p dir="auto">Come to think of it, had Armand meant that psychologically, or <em>physically</em>? Surely not, except for that <em>dominated my mind</em>, the way he hesitates deliberately before every move towards Louis that he makes, as if he is thinking— or hoping— that his will might be superseded. Yeah, Louis is feeling pretty un-broken right now. </p><p dir="auto">"Think I'd better start with getting you naked," Louis says, walking Armand back towards the bed, and— all right, maybe there's not so much for <em>him</em> to do, because Armand is shedding his pants like it was an order. Pants and underwear, first thing, leaving him naked from the waist down. Who the hell takes off their underwear before their shirt? </p><p dir="auto">This strange creature, apparently, who sits down on Louis' bed with his bare ass and looks up at him softly. Still consciously alluring. Louis cannot help but look at what's been revealed, of course, he's only a man. </p><p dir="auto">He walks forward, removing his shirt first, because he does things in the proper order, and Armand shuffles back. And Louis gets the strange feeling, in the rearrangement of bodies, that they are not moving along all the available planes. Armand holds himself carefully, even as he spreads his knees and lets Louis crawl in between. His shoulders exactly square, the front of his chest pointing exactly at the front of Louis' no matter what. As if he cannot bear the thought of turning his back on him even by the smallest increment of angle. </p><p dir="auto">Which is odd. Surely, Louis ought to be the cautious one. But he had turned his back, in the catacombs, had walked in front of Armand and stared straight ahead and waited for death to come. So what can Armand possibly have to fear?</p><p dir="auto">Armand is lying back, shirt rucked up past his stomach now, but on. But his legs are there, skin that until a few moments ago was so unknown as to constitute a different world, an impossibility. Louis puts his hands on Armand's ankles and drags them up, up, feeling the soft texture of his hair, the curve of his muscles. His cock is hard. His cock is circumcised, which it would be impolite to stare at if Armand hadn't literally just taken off his pants and thrust it into the air for Louis to see, so he stares, brings his hands up to the join of Armand's hip and then around, under his buttocks. Armand smiles, shifts a bit to let him grab. </p><p dir="auto">At the bottom of his ass, the top of his thigh, unexpected texture. Louis freezes, pulling his hands away like he's been burned. </p><p dir="auto">Armand stills, too. For a moment, and then, very slowly, he pulls his knees up, baring the backs of his legs. </p><p dir="auto">Long, thin scars ladder up and down his ass and upper thigh. It feels more sinister, to stare at this than at his cock. But even more than before, Armand is showing him. He holds on to his knees, displaying himself, head tilted to peer around his legs at Louis with a soft smile. "You can touch," he says. "I like it." </p><p dir="auto">Claudia had taken Armand's leadership of the coven as proof that they were safe here. And perhaps it is, but that does not mean that Armand is safe, or has always been. Louis runs his fingers down the scars, ass to thighs and even overtop of the delicate tendons of the backs of his knees, onto his calves. He doesn't need to know the circumstances; he can feel it through his fingers, as if the skin could speak. This isn't a child's correction, it's a slave's beating. </p><p dir="auto">"Did I ruin the mood?" asks Armand quietly, but he sounds amused. As well he might, shit, it's a good thing he's a vampire and obviously queer in every possible sense because Louis is more turned on now, not less. It's not the scars themselves— he's pretty sure— but the way Armand is <em>looking</em> at him, like he really does like it, would prefer to have them there over any alternative, solely for the pleasure of Louis stroking them. </p><p dir="auto">So, shit, okay, if he likes it like that. Louis strips the rest of the way. He lies down on top of Armand, groins pressed together, Louis' cock fitting into the vee of Armand's pelvis, squeezes a last rough handful of the back of Armand's thigh and then slips his hands underneath the fabric of his shirt. </p><p dir="auto">Armand lets him. Armand arches and lets out a tiny little moan when Louis touches his nipples, pinches them. Then Louis slides his hands around to the back, and Armand squirms in a very different way. Away.</p><p dir="auto">But not before Louis feels <em>something</em>, and Armand's reaction, evident fear, is like a bucket of cold water. Louis scrambles back, sits up. "Sorry," he gasps. </p><p dir="auto">What the hell was he thinking? Yeah, Armand showed him the ones on his legs. But he'd hidden the ones on his back, obviously, intentionally. And Louis couldn't leave well enough alone. And now— </p><p dir="auto">Armand is scrambling up too. "It's all right," he's saying, though his voice sounds frantic, not all right at all. "You— you just startled me, is all, silly, I forgot to take my shirt off…" he pulls it off quickly, throws it off the side of the bed. Eyes wide. Utterly unconvincing. </p><p dir="auto">"We can," says Louis, and he meant to say <em>stop</em>, but Armand is looking like he might sob if he says that. Why should he be punished for Louis' stupidity? he swallows. "Sorry," he says again, and crawls in close.</p><p dir="auto">"It's not a problem," says Armand.</p><p dir="auto">It very clearly is. And it pisses him off a little that Armand is pretending it isn't, pushing into him like he wants it. Was that what the thighs were too, an act? Louis doesn't think so, but this is the first time he and Armand have gone to bed together, it would be insane to assume he knows what's real and what's not. </p><p dir="auto">Fine. If Armand wants to play that game, he'll play along. Louis hugs him, starts his hands in the dips of his waist, then brings them up. A long smooth slide up his spine, spreading out beneath his shoulder blades. </p><p dir="auto">There is something there. He can feel Armand's anxiety about it, and more than that, he can feel that Armand is hoping he won't notice. It would be easy not to, maybe, because it isn't a sensation in his fingers, not really. It's somewhere else, some deep perturbation, something impossible, bizarrely localized <em>right here</em>.   </p><p dir="auto">(<em>You're acting like your idiot brother,</em> his mama had told him disdainfully the one time he'd tried saying things like that about the world out loud, because you go to church on Sundays but you don't bring that stuff too far, there's a difference between respectability and fanaticism. And from then on he'd stuck to the real things, the practical, provable things, like money, like— at least until none of that turned out to matter at all.)</p><p dir="auto">There's really only one explanation, though. He's satisfied his curiosity, taken Armand up on his insincerely meant offer just to prove the point that he would. "You like your thigh scars touched," he says, "and not your back. Got it." Forces out a cheeky grin, pushes Armand to lie back down, and it starts feeling a little realer once it settles into his face. "I'll learn you, you'll see."</p><p dir="auto">"No," says Armand. "It's not— I have never been whipped there." </p><p dir="auto">Louis frowns. Despite himself, he slips his fingers under one shoulder and traces the unreal ridges on Armand's upper back. They are <em>there</em>, he is sure of it, but the moment he tries to actually trace them, they seem to not be. "There's something there," he says. </p><p dir="auto">Armand blinks up at him. He looks <em>surprised</em>, is the thing. Feels it, too, his mind cracked open a little with confusion. He'd been hiding it, and yet he hadn't expected what is happening. "You can feel it?" he asks quietly. </p><p dir="auto">"Yeah. 'Course. It feels like… what is it?"</p><p dir="auto">Armand opens his mouth, then closes it again. His eyes dart around Louis' face, quicker and less deliberate than Louis has ever seen. </p><p dir="auto">"I don't know…" he says, and trails off. </p><p dir="auto">It's possible to simultaneously know a thing, and be working very hard to continue not knowing it. Louis knows. "Bullshit," he says. Two hands under his shoulder blades now, pressing, wondering.</p><p dir="auto">"I had…" Armand frowns. "It was just something I believed, in my boyhood. I was in a difficult situation, before my maker found me. I took refuge in a fantasy…"</p><p dir="auto">Flickers. Louis can feel it. He can almost see it, the fantasy, the— whatever it is. What's in Armand's mind. What's in <em>Armand.</em> He presses again. Armand is trying to squirm away, but he is not trying very hard. He wants this, wants Louis to insist.</p><p dir="auto">"What was the fantasy?" Louis insists. </p><p dir="auto">Armand shakes his head. He makes a terrible little hiccuping sound, an attempt at a laugh forced out of a body that doesn't want to do it. "That I was one of the malaikah, that I had…"</p><p dir="auto">Louis pushes in, hard beneath Armand's shoulder blade, and feels a feather. </p><p dir="auto">Big lamplight eyes, staring up at him. Wings. That he had <em>wings</em>.</p><p dir="auto">"Armand," says Louis, "what <em>are</em> you?"</p><p dir="auto">"I don't know," says Armand miserably. "I don't remember. I don't know why I am here. I would have prostrated myself before Adam. I would have." </p><p dir="auto">There was a moment, on his first day of this new life, that Louis remembers as a much more prosaic kind of panic than it ought to have been. A feeling of being out of his depth, unprepared, as if he'd simply forgotten about an important item on his schedule and now needs to muddle his way through. Pouring milk on his sun-charred skin, feeling a stupid knot of panic that he is like this forever, life will never be the same, and he is not ready, as if there ever were a possibility of readiness.</p><p dir="auto">He is having it again. This is irreversable, what he is doing now and what he is doing it with, and he is not prepared. Maybe it's just the businessman in him, who wants to enter every meeting with  all the facts and figures, the clinching argument at the ready. He should have read the Good Book more closely. He should have read more of the books they said weren't Good. Idle and vain wishes, all of it, because the truth is that if books could save him, he'd be saved already.</p><p dir="auto">  Instead he is a vampire, pressing his naked dead body against that of an actual, bona fide angel, and he is going to have to make do with what he has, who he is.</p><p dir="auto">"Can I?" He whispers.</p><p dir="auto">"I don't know," says Armand. "I have not unfurled them fully in-- a very long time. I don't know if I can."</p><p dir="auto">Louis sits up, climbs off of Armand, who looks a little put out about it. "I felt them," he says. "Did it help, when I...?"</p><p dir="auto">Armand nods. Swallows. "I wouldn't want to impose. It may not be... pretty."</p><p dir="auto">"Armand," says Louis. "I figured out what I want to do to you. Want to touch your back until your wings come out. That okay with you?"</p><p dir="auto">Those eyes are back. The deliberate ones, which flick from Louis' face to his hands and back again. That little movement of his jaw that means— Louis isn't sure exactly what it means, but it's a lot of it. "It's okay with me," he says. </p><p dir="auto">Armand settles himself on his belly. Louis considers and then discards the idea of kneeling over him, and instead sits cross-legged on the side to which Armand's head is turned. He runs his hands down his legs first, which seems to relax him a little. A relic of his pre-maker difficult situation? It doesn't quite make sense: why would he be so eager to be touched there, if that were the case?</p><p dir="auto">Armand's bare back doesn't look like anything unusual, if you look at it directly. It is only when you glance away that something calls the mind back, something not quite right, just out of focus. Louis decides to start touching in the same way, casually, as if he weren't trying to do anything but touch; he gets up on his knees right beside Armand and presses his hands into the muscles, dragging his thumbs around the tight knots of it. Just a massage. </p><p dir="auto">Perhaps the attempt at casual touch works, or perhaps Armand has just stopped fighting it; his fingers catch, tingle, identify something that wants to open. If he's completely honest, it's a little bit like how he'd imagine sticking his hand into a Georgia O'Keeffe would feel. Except the feathers, yes, there they are, and Louis turns his hands and tries to find the edges of it. Rubs along the edges gently, trying to relax him, like he would with a guy nervous to take it for the first time. </p><p dir="auto">He feels stirrings next to his hand, and looks down at Armand's face. His eyes are shut tight, lips thin. "Does it hurt?" he asks, easing up with his hands. </p><p dir="auto">Armand nods. </p><p dir="auto">"You want to—"</p><p dir="auto">"Keep going," Armand says. "I want, if I can, I need to— it's helping."</p><p dir="auto">Louis keeps going. It's obscene, what he's doing to these new holes in Armand's body that he can barely even convince himself exist, but it's working. Armand pushes himself up on his elbows, hanging his head down, a position of undignified physical effort, and Louis feels feathers brush over the backs of his hands. </p><p dir="auto">And then Armand moans with pain and triumph, and Louis is knocked back onto his ass with the force of it. There they are. There he is. </p><p dir="auto">Armand's wings are— there's no word for it other than <em>mangled.</em> The wingtips do not curve to an elegant point, like in paintings; they're uneven, with visible chunks taken out of them, and the right one noticeably shorter than the left. They may, once, have been the same colour as his skin, which is visible as a slow fade from his upper back, but most of their length is grey with oil, feathers matted together. Towards the tips of them there is a different colour, a clumped dark brown that Louis can <em>smell</em>, yes, he knows what it is. </p><p dir="auto">Armand is panting, leaned forward over his knees, a little whimper of pain escaping on each breath, slowly fading softer and softer. Louis pushes himself back up, swallows. He wants to touch. He is no longer certain where he ought to, where he is allowed, but he wants it. </p><p dir="auto">He stretches out his hand very slowly, like you do it to a kicked dog. Here is the hand I am going to touch your soft parts with. Amand doesn't flinch away, but he also doesn't react in any other way. He just lets it happen. Louis touches one of the clumps of blood. It's gummy, a little warm from having been inside his body, but ancient, basically baked into the feathers it's attached to. </p><p dir="auto">What the <em>fuck</em>. </p><p dir="auto">"How 'bout," he says hesitantly, "I could run a bath?"</p><p dir="auto">Armand flinches violently. And like a burst of radiation, Louis gets something in the wake of the movement: water, fragrant soap, strong loving hands holding the knife, <em>let's get you cleaned up, little one, you'll feel better without all this mess.</em></p><p dir="auto">"No bath," says Louis, before Armand can agree, because he looks so oddly young like this, vulnerable, the little boy with his gentleman's attire stripped away, and Louis has the strangest feeling that he had been about to agree to it anyway. "Hold on."</p><p dir="auto">Claudia has a small perfume collection, mostly stolen from rich ladies she's eaten. There is one bottle in it with a good big atomizer bulb. Louis pours the perfume from it carefully into a mug, and fills the jar with water and a few drops of liquid soap instead. By the time he returns, with the spray bottle and a cloth in hand, Armand has stopped whimpering; he seems to no longer be in pain, merely a little lost. </p><p dir="auto">Louis holds them out. "OK if I clean you with these?"</p><p dir="auto">Armand blinks at them. "If you don't mind," he says, glancing back at the state of the wings. "That would be…"</p><p dir="auto"><em>Mind</em>. Isn't Louis supposed to fall to his knees, right about now? Isn't he supposed to shield his eyes from the glory, shower the messenger with precious gifts, pledge his devotion and obedience? Seeing as he isn't doing any of that, isn't cleaning the blood and muck off of Armand's mutilated wings kind of the least he can do?</p><p dir="auto">Louis sits on the edge of the bed, this time, and Armand perches sideways on his lap. It lets him wrap his arms around the back of Louis' shoulders and lean forwards slightly to bury his face in his chest. And that feels right, more right than any of what Louis is supposed to be doing. Working very slowly, he sprays Armand's wings with the soapy water, waits a few minutes for it to soak in and loosen the accumulated blood, dirt and God knows what else, then wipes it off as gently as he can. He goes back to refill the perfume bottle twice, and on the second trip lays down a towel underneath them for the filthy water dripping off his feathers. </p><p dir="auto">He tries to be so gentle, but there's so much crusted in, and sometimes Armand's hands tighten minutely on his shoulders. And then once, he accidentally plucks out a feather— well, it was loose, he could hardly have touched it without it falling out— and Armand squeaks, then shivers. </p><p dir="auto">Louis almost says "Sorry" again, except that the noise that Armand is making into his chest now is not wholly one of pain. </p><p dir="auto">Trusting his instincts had gotten him this far. </p><p dir="auto">"Liked that?" he says, mouth dry, and nearly sags with relief when Armand just nods. </p><p dir="auto">"Want me to do the rest?" he asks, because now that he's felt one loose one come out he can recognize others, feathers sticking out at odd angles, ripe for the plucking. </p><p dir="auto">And now Armand raises his head, and though there are dried tear-tracks on his cheeks, he's actually smiling a bit. Seems pretty pleased with what's going on, actually. "Yes, please."</p><p dir="auto">So Louis plucks out his loose feathers, and Armand hums and wriggles a little in his lap, and— shit, yeah, okay, that's working for him, which Armand can tell, because he's sitting in his lap and they're both still naked, for crissakes. But it seems to pretty much be working for Armand, too, not so  much for his cock but for his toes pointing and flexing just above the ground, and his hand scratching at the back of Louis' head, and the pleased rumbling in his chest— yeah, it's working for him. </p><p dir="auto">"Do you moult?" he asks, when the pile of feathers around them has grown sizeable.</p><p dir="auto">"Probably," says Armand. "I don't see why I wouldn't. I'm probably overdue by quite a bit."</p><p dir="auto">Louis plucks out another. "How long?" he asks. </p><p dir="auto">Armand is silent for long enough that Louis thinks he isn't going to answer. That's fine. No harm in trying. Until the memory arrives in his mind fully formed, as if it were his own, of tucking them away, bleeding. <em>Angel, ascending out of my house with widening, strengthening wings— oh, Amadeo, do you remember when in your innocence you thought my little name for you was real?</em></p><p dir="auto">Louis has no idea what it means. It makes him feel cold, like the months of drinking bad blood during the war. He doesn't ask for more. "Gonna have feathers all over the place," he says instead. </p><p dir="auto">Because Armand will be coming back. Because they will be doing this again. Please. <em>Please.</em></p><p dir="auto">Armand nods, agrees, and for just a moment, it is exactly like the Good Book says. Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength, forever and ever.</p><p dir="auto">They hold each other, a wreckage of bloody cloths and discarded feathers around them. Armand's wings are cleaner, but it is almost worse, to see the shape of them more clearly now that they are mostly all one colour. If they were clipped centuries ago, and are still like this today, will they ever heal? But then, any injury would fester if locked away like that. Perhaps, perhaps, with proper care, with exercise. He is foolish to think it. But he thinks it anyway. </p><p dir="auto">"I don't think I can return to my exalted state, if I ever had any," Armand whispers. "I have sinned too grievously."</p><p dir="auto">Just a few days ago, Louis had told him that all vampires were evil, definitionally, irredeemably. And he believed it, too. He believes it now, he thinks, as much as he would like not to. "Probably not," he admits. </p><p dir="auto">"Let me kneel to you," says the angel. "Just in case. Please."</p><p dir="auto">"Yeah," says Louis. "Yes. Whatever you want."</p><p dir="auto">Armand slides to his knees. His wings spread out behind him. He lets Louis pull him forward until his cheek is resting in Louis' lap. They wait for forgiveness. </p>