the divine colour red

He’s around again. He comes around like a cat, Armand does, hesitant at first and then more and more when he keeps on being fed every time he slinks through Louis’ door. Or struts, the little master on his recruitment mission, but he’s learning to drop that stuff when he comes here wanting. A cat responds to training, figures out what’s going to get him fed and what isn’t. People are like animals that way. Louis had thought, for a while, that perhaps vampires weren’t like people, but it turns out Louis’ first vampire was just an aberration of a test case. Armand trains up just fine.

A city truly of the new century, where inverts can stroll about cool as you please, yet Armand likes to play shy sometimes, once he’s stepped out of the city he rules with an iron fist and into the unceded territory of Louis’ apartment. Louis gets it, or gets some version of it, remembers that once he would have. You spend all day playing the big man, sometimes it’s better to not have to feel too responsible for what happens in your bed. But it’s not just that, with Armand. There’s something else about him that he holds just out of reach, a little looser every time they do this, like he wants Louis to pry his fingers open and take it.

Louis is lying on the bed when he hears the door open. He’d felt him coming and intentionally decided to stay where he was, let his lover come to him. He still has a book denting his stomach when Armand enters, peeling off his coat and hat.

“Hey,” he says. He wants to ask something about Claudia, she doing okay, is she having a decent time, well, not as nice a night as I’m about to have but an all right one, her play opens soon, doesn’t exactly sound like the role of a lifetime but it’s better than scrubbing blood off the floor, surely. But he doesn’t actually want the answer, or at least not the answer a coven question would invite: gossip, politics, more invitations that aren’t really invitations. Better to leave it.

“Good evening, Louis,” Armand says, sighs really, clasping his hands behind his back, a little smile on his face. Armand is a bit like getting a new toy as a kid. How much can you really discover about a bag of marbles or a tin soldier, one would think, but with a child’s mind, Louis thinks he may now be remembering, there were wonders to be discovered even inside inert objects. And Armand is far from inert.

Louis puts the book down, props the back of his head on his hand. “C’mere, then,” he says.

Armand’s glossy curls are a little larger tonight, looser. The underneath of his eye is lined with kohl too neat to have lasted through an entire performance. He must have reapplied it before he came. Touched himself up for Louis. Heat in his belly and the tips of his fingers. Sometimes Armand makes him feel obscene. Sometimes he feels like it’s a good thing to be.

Armand tilts his head, chin up. Pouty. “I am to come when called,” he says, “like a lapdog?”

It’s a shame, in a way, that Armand only ever looks down at the stage from his balcony. There are certain lines he says very well. Perhaps it’s not a full role, not yet, and not something that would work if presented to an audience. More like something out of a workshop, early days, the stuff read aloud at the salon after the night’s official purpose has passed.

Louis is getting pretty good at the salon thing. He rolls up on an elbow, shrugs. “Guess you could just go home to your coffin instead,” he says, but at that Armand’s pout threatens to take on an edge of something else, so he adds, “or, you could keep lookin’ like that, and get me so sweet on you I can’t resist.”

Yes, that one. Obviously. Armand meets him halfway across the room, steps into Louis’ arms just as their lips meet, and when Louis keeps pushing at him, Armand keeps retreating. Back, and back, his tongue tasting of blood. Too much to be incidental. “That’s sneaky,” says Louis, just as Armand’s back hits the balcony window. The lights are low but still on. Anyone could look up from the street and see what Louis has. “Did you bite your tongue? What’re you trying to do to me?”

Armand’s hips grind forward. They’re both hard. The blood is making him harder. “I couldn’t help it,” Armand whimpers.

“A likely story.” The problem with this is they’re nowhere near the bed. Louis loves the bed. A coffin is all right for some things, making love like a married couple on the strait and narrow, not a limb out of place. These days, it feels good to fuck with a whole lot of limbs out of place. He spins them around, pulls away just enough to get hands on his own shirt-buttons. Then he pushes Armand until he stumbles and lands on his back on the bed. The stumble looks so real. He is perfect at this. “Go on, then. Strip. You’ll get what you need.”

Armand does, quickly, efficiently. Louis drops his shirt to the floor, pulls off his belt as he knees his way onto the bed. Snaps just the tip of it against Armand’s calf, light. “So you do do as you’re told. Sometimes.”

It was such a little thing. No different from cornering him by the window, or pushing him onto the bed. And he’d obviously liked those, too, yeah, but there’s something else in the way Armand immediately stops, frozen on his way to reach for Louis and pull him down on top of him, a tiny gasp on his lips. Eyes huge, head back, exposing his neck. His pretty cock straining and twitching against his belly.

“Oh,” says Louis, looking down at him. A smirk forcing its way in from the corners of his mouth. Oh, indeed. Another piece of the puzzle slotting perfectly into place. Of course Armand likes that. Louis' cheeks feel hot. His hands seem like they should be shaking, but when he looks at them, they are steady and strong. He knows how to do this the way you know you need blood, the moment you become a vampire. Nobody needs to tell you it’s gonna feel good to bite down into tender flesh.

“You like that, huh,” he says as he hits the inside of Armand’s thigh with his hand, and Armand moans like he’s getting fucked. Like he’s getting drained. Another tap of the belt, light, a question. Armand flips himself over onto his belly, spreads his legs, and grabs onto a pillow with both arms.

Louis brings the belt down on his ass hard. Maybe a bit harder than he meant to, but not all that much. Yeah, you really want it, you sure? Armand cries out, toes pointing and flexing, arms pulling tighter around his pillow. Settling in for more. The smacking sound of leather on flesh is loud. Ass, thighs, the elegant curve of his back.

It feels good. Seems to feel good for Armand too, or whatever kind of bad he’s after. He quits hollering after a few, then he’s just breathing, or something halfway in between breathing and moaning, low and quiet. Skin glowing with blood drawn to the surface.

He keeps spreading his legs, and spreading them more, up on his knees, shaking like a leaf, like a human. He’s either asking for the belt right on his hole or for Louis’ cock so eventually Louis gives him both, a single sharp snap as square as he can aim it and then a soothing finger slicked with oil overtop. Armand takes it like he’s doing just that, taking it, reverently waiting for whatever Louis decides to do to him next.

It has occurred to Louis, occurs to him again as he slides home and presses his hips hard into the meat of Armand’s ass, that he was never like this. Yeah, he let himself be taken, he liked it, would like it again if and when he decides to, but the letting was the reaction, the necessary evil, not the pleasure itself.

Armand can come just from this, Louis holding his hips still and driving into him. But they’ve been doing this long enough to learn each other a little, more and more every time, and Louis has learned that something about Armand not having his cock touched leaves it curiously unaffected by his orgasm, like the rear plane of Armand’s body has failed to update the front on its status. It means that Louis can reach around, after, still softening inside him, and wring another orgasm out of him. Armand whimpers about it like it hurts worse than the belt.

Louis lies back, pulls Armand on top of him. Feels good to have him like this, his lithe elegant body surprisingly heavy. A comfort. A blanket of situationally meek vampire capo. It wouldn’t be as sweet if Louis didn’t know his power, didn’t know exactly how hard he works to draw it around himself like a suit of armour.

They don’t take blood, not more than the occasional nick. Not properly. Haven’t yet, at least, but usually this stage of the proceedings is where the absence of the act starts to feel like an act in itself. Close in to each others’ throats, the smell of bloody spend drying in the air, you need to either bite down or grab a cigarette. The cigarette is easier. But now, Armand pushes himself up too early, and his hands are shaking when he reaches for the box. Avoiding Louis’ eyes.

“You all right?”

Armand’s hands shake more. He’s having trouble sliding a cigarette out of the carton. Fuck. Louis sits up and grabs it from him. He’d been so certain— but then, he knows full well that it’s entirely possible to unravel over something you did very much want. “Armand,” he says. “You’re okay, honey, lie back down. Shouldn’t’ve done that?”

Armand follows him a little but not all the way down. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Louis, I ought not to have… I can only apologize.”

Apologize?

Armand lets himself be manhandled back into Louis’ arms, though seemingly mostly so he can hide his face in Louis’ chest. “I should not have made you do that,” he mutters into it.

“Armand,” says Louis. “You didn’t make me do shit. Unless you were—” now that he thinks about it, Armand probably could make his body act without his consent, but. “I really think I’d have noticed.”

“No, of course not,” says Armand, “but this— taste of mine. You don’t need to indulge it, Louis, it’s not your burden.”

Louis blinks. Stares up at the ceiling, past Armand’s shoulder. Tries to put together a sentence to follow that one. He can’t, really; anything you say in answer to a statement like that implies that you’ve actually accepted the previous one as having some sort of reality.

Because— this cannot be real. This is the creature who has taken Louis’ hand and led him into his own body. Who has seemingly not even an awareness that for some men, to lie down with another man takes courage.

Or perhaps he ought to have expected it. Is there anyone, who has walked through the world and remained a body, their own, fully? He sits up, Armand propped against him. It would not be the right move, now, to merely deny the accusation of burden. “This taste of yours,” he says carefully. “Can you describe it for me, sweetheart?”

He’d never wanted to call anyone these little names, before, but somehow Armand pulls them out of him.

Armand’s jaw works, the pink tip of his tongue just visible in his open mouth. He stares down into his lap. “It was something I… decided to enjoy, once,” he says. “A door which, once open, proved difficult to close.”

“Decided,” says Louis slowly. Decided to enjoy, because it was going to happen anyway.

Armand nods. “I did not realize,” he says, “that I was creating in myself a singularity. I don’t require it of you, Louis, it’s not…” he swallows.

It feels a bit like he shouldn’t be noticing these kinds of things right now but shit, Armand is pretty. He’s pretty like this especially, naked, eyes down, marks still faintly visible on his lower back.

“Singularity,” says Louis. “Well, hardly that.”

Armand frowns.

“I just mean,” Louis continues, “you’re hardly the only person in the world to like it. Would you get rid of it, if you could?”

Armand looks up. His lips are slightly parted, brow a little furrowed. “I don’t know what you— I suppose if it would— if I could reach back through time and remove the solace of enjoyment, I suppose— yes, perhaps that would be better. I suppose in that case, I wouldn’t miss it. But it’s difficult to imagine— Louis, what do you mean?”

He looks so bewildered. He’d answered the question, tried at least. “What do I mean, what? What do I mean, hardly the only person in the world to like it?”

Armand just looks at him.

Louis shrugs. “Well. Did you think you were?”

That little pink tongue again, darting out, wetting his lips.

Armand, at some point in his past, had taught himself to like being hurt because he didn’t have a choice about the hurt itself. And now he thinks he invented masochism. Well, to be fair, he did, but still.

This would be a very inappropriate time to laugh, but Louis can’t help the tiny smile trying to slide over his face. “You’ve been living in this city, selling tickets to those plays, and you thought you were the only one who likes it?” He says, but this time it’s a rhetorical question, teasing, and he reaches out to cup Armand’s cheek as he says it. Armand lets his eyes be raised up, and when he sees Louis’ smile, he matches it with a tiny, uncertain one of his own.

Armand had given him this, the knowledge that what he wants is natural. He can give it back, now. In fact, nobody can do it with more certainty than Louis. “I ran a bawdy-house for three decades,” he says, and he sees Armand’s eyes momentarily go wide. He hadn’t said it out loud before, not really, but how much has either of them really said? “So I can promise you, Armand, though I may not have been the worldliest man when we met— I know what people like to do with their clothes off. I know because I had it all written in a ledger, with prices attached. There is nothing— well.” He smiles. “You are entirely singular, sweetheart. But not because of this.”

His hand is still on Armand’s cheek. It feels good there. He can feel Armand’s mouth move. “You were a brothelkeeper?” he says.

There’s nothing accusatory in his tone, but it feels— but why should he be ashamed? “Did my best by myself and my girls,” he says, firm. “Need to make a living, when you’re a human with a belly.”

Armand nods slowly. Then he says, almost shy, “And you truly had…?”

“Johns who paid for a beating? Sure. Not a lot, but enough for a girl willing to keep a cane handy to profit from it.”

And the word cane has an effect, that’s for sure, he can feel the little shiver through Armand’s skull. He grins. The air has lightened enough for it, so he moves his hand down to grip Armand’s chin and says, “Cane, huh? I’ll keep it in mind.”

Armand’s eyes are so huge, so pretty, so hopeful. “And you… like it, as well?”

Shit. There was difference, of course, between an act in your ledger-book, and in your bedroom. Before Paris, Louis had thought himself deviant for wanting a man in his bed at all, let alone this. But it’s here now, and it’s his. “Yeah,” he says, “Armand, if you want to let it lie, then I’ll never bring it up again. But if you want it, I’m not here to cast judgement on why. I want to do this to you. Yeah.”

Armand kisses him like he thought he’d never get to again. Tongue, teeth, blood that might even be unintentional. Louis manages to pull him back down properly as it winds down, their limbs twined around each other. Cigarettes in easy reach. Everything perfect.

When he runs his hand over Armand’s ass, he cannot tell whether he is imaging that it is still slightly warm. Now that they’ve spoken it, the words still in the air like a perfume, he doesn’t want to stop. “You been getting it, before me?” He can’t stop himself from asking.

This time, Armand manages to pull out a cigarette without his hands shaking. He lights it with his mind as if it’s nothing, a trifle that he’s forgotten before he’s even done it. “Yes,” he says, “sometimes. From men who were not doing it for my pleasure. Most of them are,” he shrugs, “single-use.”

Louis remembers his first impression of Armand, in the park: he looked so fragile, so young and sweet, just a boy playing dressup. Apparently he wasn’t the only one to think so. Armand has been going out and getting himself… beaten and raped, would be one phrase, at least from the other guy’s perspective. In a way, it’s a public service; his meals are making the park safer for the rest. In another way, it’s just horrifying.

He plucks the cigarette from Armand’s mouth so that he can kiss him again. Can’t help it. And he has no right to demand exclusivity, of course, doesn’t want it, doesn’t mean it that way, but a part of him wants to beg don’t do that any more, not now that you have me, swear that you won’t. He contents himself with, “Whenever you want it, honey.”