the help

The thing with Louis and Armand, it starts—

It starts before he ever lands in Dubai. Starts when Rashid is not quite a kid and not quite a teen and his mom buys a used laptop computer that he sneaks into his room at night after she's asleep, and vampire shows lead to vampire forums and vampire forums lead to stranger places, lead to a degree in biology that explains nothing but at least helps rule out a few explanations, and that leads right back to the Talamasca who have moved from phpBB to Microsoft Teams but are otherwise unchanged, waiting on him to give up on legit work and accept that this is what he is for.

So the thing with Louis and Armand, yes, it starts with the urge that doomed him to be an agent instead of just an enthusiast, sitting on his bed, face lit by the glow of his mother's computer. Plenty of people want to get bitten by vampires, that's not so unusual. Enthusiasm alone isn't sufficient to lead to this sort of career, or to qualify for it. No, it's the other aspect of it, the protectiveness, the interest of the biologist in the unusual specimen and the love of the zookeeper for the deadly charge, that's—

Okay, realistically, it starts the first time he walks in on them. No, not in the heat of the moment— that's obvious enough to be avoided. Not even in the same room as each other.

Rashid walks into the living room and finds the door to the balcony open. He is about to go close it to preserve the air-conditioning— not that Louis and Armand give a shit about energy costs, but that doesn't mean Rashid has to be wasteful— when he realizes Louis is outside, sitting on the concrete, slumped with his head practically in between his knees. So he asks if Mr. du Lac needs anything, because it isn't his place to ask if he is all right, and expects a quick dismissal.

Instead, Louis looks up at him like he's surprised to see him there, like he actually sees him instead of just sweeping his eyes over him like a minor home appliance, and says, "Armand likes you. Could you check on him? He's in the bedroom."

And it's not like Rashid has never been in the bedroom before. He knows what's in there, and what one does with it. Theoretically. That still hasn't really prepared him for the experience of walking into the cavernous, caged-in bedroom to find the most powerful creature he has ever encountered curled under a blood-soaked sheet, whimpering.

His second instinct is to get the hell out.

As well it might be. This is, very possibly, the closest to death he has ever been. A wounded animal is rarely ever less dangerous as a result of its wounds. A crouched bloody thing is a vicious one, desperate, in pain and ready to lash out at the world indiscriminately, if it had ever had any discrimination to begin with. Armand is one of the most discriminating beasts Rashid has ever met; but he is still a beast, a creature, a wild animal whose actions cannot be fully predicted or controlled, and Rashid should run. Well, no, not run; that only provokes them, almost every carnivore knows exactly how to respond to a piece of prey running away, even from the depths of agony. Back away slowly, quietly, unthreateningly. That is what he should do.

But that is, yes, his second instinct. Because his first was to rush to the poor thing's side and cradle him in his arms, which is a stupid instinct even if it wasn't suicidal because the whole point is that Armand is covered in blood, that would just hurt him more, surely. But that was what his body and mind were briefly united in wanting, first thing, the moment he saw Armand weeping like his heart had been ripped out along with the skin flayed off of him. And then, after the second instinct subsides and he does not run away, does not do the smart thing, does the stupid thing and just stands there, staring, his first instinct comes back around and is also his third.

Perhaps the third thought in a series of three can no longer really be called an instinct. It's not instinctive. It's conscious. He can't disavow it as coming from some lizard-brain response outside of him. It's what he wants. He wants to comfort Armand.

He steps forward. Armand stays there. Rashid is not dead yet. He was, after all, told to check on Armand. Would Louis send him on a suicide mission? Well, probably he would, though not on purpose. He simply wouldn't care all that much. Still. Surely he had had something in mind besides Rashid's swift demise.

He makes it all the way across the room, down the steps towards the bed. Still alive. It must have been a whip, Rashid can see from the pattern of the blood on the sheets; long, thin lines of it. It's almost pretty, if you— well.

This is insanity. Rashid should run away.

"Are you all right, sir?" he says instead.

"Armand," says Armand.

Rashid blinks. He wonders for a moment if the creature is actually so out of it he cannot understand what is happening, but then he realizes he's being given an instruction. "Are you all right…. Armand?" he tries again.

Armand nods. For a moment Rashid thinks that's all he's going to get, then he says quietly, "Yes. It's always like this, after. But I liked it. I asked for it. I wouldn't want you to think otherwise."

"I know," he says. He does know, he's heard the begging.

Armand sighs, nuzzles his face further into the pink-stained pillow. Rashid has the absurd urge, again, to reach out and touch him. But how absurd is it, really? More absurd than anything else he's done with his life up to this point?

"May I see?" he says, hesitantly.

"It's all right," says Armand, "there's no need, truly, I'm all right," but he is making room on the bed, shuffling forward in a clear statement of permission for Rashid to sit down, peel back the sheet and inspect the damage. No, not just permission: invitation.

Rashid sits gingerly and grasps the sheet. It's positively soaked with blood, but when he pulls it away, he reveals Armand's body, naked, disturbingly beautiful and almost unmarked. There are some lines on him, yes, criss-crossing his back, skin that is perhaps a little bit pink-tinged and new. But he is, as far as Rashid can tell, basically healed. He was telling the truth; at least physically, he is all right.

Rashid is about to say something bracing to that effect. Then, he hesitates.

If anything, Armand's demeanour has become even more pathetic. He has this way of making himself seem small, when he wants to, and he is doing it now, a little pillbug thing retreated in on himself. He is— malingering is not the right word, of course, he had just been beaten to all hell, and has the perfect right to cry about it even if his body is healed. But there's something more to the woe tugging on Rashid's heart.

"You poor thing," he tries, hesitantly. And oh yes, that's it. It's just like with any animal; you can tell from the curve of the muscles, from the air in the room, if you're on the right track.

"You've been treated very roughly," he continues, and Armand gives a tiny nod, and a tiny wiggle back towards Rashid's hovering hand until it makes contact with his bare back. Rashid runs a fingertip down his spine before pulling it away, and Armand shivers. "This looks like it hurt very much. But you must have taken your beating very well, sir, I didn't hear a thing. A real trooper."

This time, Armand lets the title go. A tiny exhalation through his nose in place of a laugh, and Rashid almost phrases his next question as permission, but it's not just permission he wants, is it. "Would you like it if I—" Patted you? What, like an animal? Stroked? That sounds a bit too much like— "Touched your back some more?"

"Yes please," says Armand immediately, as if he'd been waiting for just that, like it's the only thing in the world that isn't complete misery. And just waits, turned away from Rashid, eyes closed. Which makes sense, Rashid reminds himself. He is the prey here. Armand has no need to maintain vigilence in his presence, no reason not to turn his back. He ought to interpret it as an insult, rather than a gesture of trust. Ought to.

His skin feels cold. It surely isn't really below room temperature, it's just Rashid's human mind reacting to the absence of body heat that every interacting with living beings has taught him to expect, but there it is; he still feels cold. He strokes his palm up and down Armand's back, as if he could smooth away the last remnants of hurt just with his hand; and Armand's body almost flatters him that he can, the marks becoming fainter and fainter until he is no longer certain that he is even still seeing them, instead of an impression of them left on his mind. Almost without thinking, he scratches at the base of Armand's neck a little, like he would with a kitten, and before he even realizes he did it Armand hums and says "yes," so okay, now he's scratching his deadly employer's back, with his short, blunt human nails.

Nothing he's done so far has landed him dead. And so far he'd followed his instincts. So he doesn't think too hard before following the next one. Armand clearly likes the pity, the feeling of someone being impressed by his suffering. So,"Would you like to tell me about it," he asks, "what he did?"

A couple little pathetic sniffles. "Made me stand against the grate," he says. "I would have gotten only twenty, had I been able to keep quiet and not cry, but I did cry. I like crying. It hurt so much." A slow inhale, shuddering exhale, and then Armand turns around to face Rashid, wiping under his eyes with the back of his hand. "I liked it," he insists again. "I said thank you, I always say thank you, but it upsets Louis to see me like this. When I… wallow. It makes him feel as though he's been cruel."

Rashid isn't sure what to do with his hand any more. Or his mouth, for that matter. Is this conversation based in reality or fantasy? Is there even a difference? "Hasn't he?" he tries, somewhat helplessly.

For the first time, Armand smiles. It's a beautiful smile, radiant really, all the more so for the tear-tracks staining his face, like the sun breaking out from behind clouds. "Oh, yes," he says.

So, for a while, the thing with Louis and Armand is mostly a thing with Armand. Rashid knows well enough when Armand is getting beaten, or cut, or tied up and used. He knows well enough too when it's finished, and Louis leaves, to nurse whatever less tangible wounds the act leaves on him. So it becomes a ritual, comforting Armand. He's a dramatic little thing, Armand in the aftermath of their games, draped over furniture or piled loose-limbed on the floor like he's seconds from death, and he likes for Rashid to play up his horror over it, sometimes.

It's not all that difficult. Sometimes, Rashid isn't sure whether he's playing it up at all. Not because of the injuries, which are usually relatively minor, and resolve themselves with frankly envy-enducing speed when they're not. But there is still something macabre about it, how the game bleeds into not-game in ways he cannot properly categorize, Armand's tears gradually clearing into dreamy smiles but Rashid's footing in the conversation getting only more and more uncertain. The pathetic wounded creature and the invincible predator bleed together.

Still, some things are clear enough. That Armand likes it, and that he likes Rashid's role in it, is obvious. Which is, Rashid can acknowledge, very bad. He is not supposed to get attached. But even if so much cannot be avoided, Armand is most certainly not supposed to get attached. Rashid is not stupid enough to think that Armand's attachment makes him safer.

But feels nice. He looks forwards to it, if he's honest. He wonders what it feels like for Armand, why he keeps asking for it, and sometimes he asks, in the liminal space between states, and Armand tries to answer. I feel loved. And aware of everything, of myself, almost as if I were alive. Once, he answers by dragging his hard, sharp nails hard down the back of Rashid's shoulder, and Rashid is so surprised that he nearly passes out with fright, hardly feels the pain in the panic of this is it, you knew this was going to happen, idiot, and Armand immediately draws away and apologizes, but. Well, he thinks about it, is all. He thinks about it rather a lot.

It becomes also a thing with Louis entirely on purpose. No plausible deniability at all. Rashid goes looking for him one night, after Armand is finished with whatever it is he's getting finished with under Rashid's care. Louis is out on the balcony, as seems to be his habit at these times, as close to leaving the apartment as the can get without actually doing it.

Maybe Rashid is feeling a bit over-confident. All the training in the world can't alter the effect it has on him, walking into the bedroom of a sobbing vampire and putting the thing to rights like it's a child. It's what he'd dreamed about as a kid, and dreamed about a bit more explicitly as a teen, being close with something that humanity ought not to be close with. There is something wrong with Rashid, always has been. Whatever it is, it's at its highest zenith at the moment he decides to poke his head around the corner and say, "And is there anything I can do for you, sir?" with just the tiniest emphasis on the you. The kind that says, well, the last problem I had to deal with is sorted, on to the next one.

Louis looks back at him. He's not crying, alhamdulillah, Rashid isn't sure he could deal with multiple crying vampires in a day, or that Louis wouldn't immediately kill any lowly domestic who walked in unannounced on him weeping. He just tilts his head, squints a little at him like a large bird evaluating a small fish, and makes a motion with his hand. Come closer.

Rashid goes closer. The voice in his head telling him he's about to die is quieter, now. Maybe stupidity is a learned skill.

Louis isn't crying, but he is smoking a cigarette. Suddenly, Rashid feels very bad about several occasions upon which he had gathered the staff for very stern whichever-of you-is-smoking-on-breaks-stop-it-immediately-I-can-smell-it-in-the-penthouse speeches.

Louis leans his elbows on the railing, blowing smoke out over the Palm. "Do you know," he says, almost as though talking to himself, "that every time I beat Armand half to death, I tell myself it's gotta be the last time. Every time. Do you know how many times that's been, Rashid?"

He waits. It seems to be an actual question. "Erm," says Rashid, "if I were to hazard a guess based on present conditions, I would say at least three times a week for the past seventy years, which— I'm not too good with arithmetic under pressure, sir."

"Ten thousand, nine hundred and twenty," says Louis after a slight pause. Shrugs. "Got good at multiples of fifty-two, once upon a time. Money math. Seems as good a guess as any."

Rashid is about to say something about how Armand is hardly halfway to death by the time Rashid gets to him, and he's no great shakes at other types of math either but is it really meaningful to say that someone is halfway to a state they can never reach, isn't that one of those infinity paradoxes. But he doesn't. Because— well, first of all, it's not like he really knows what Armand is like, at the moment he and Louis finish and part ways for their separate miserable comedowns. Given how fast Rashid has seen him heal, it could very well be quite dire indeed, and it's the scant few minutes before Rashid creeps in to attend to him that make all the difference.

But also, of course Louis isn't talking about halfway to some theoretical vampire death. He means it in the regular, human sense, what a human body can take. Because that's the thing about vampires, what had in retrospect attracted him from the very start, what they tell you in training but that only really sinks in once you meet one: they are so human. They cling to their own humanness as if it were the only thing they truly own. It's why— well, Rashid's thought about it. Of course. Nobody spends this long thinking about vampires without considering the question of whether they would like to be one. Not that it's all that relevent, of course; most vampires, despite the hysterical ravings of some of the Talamasca's more alarmist arms, have little desire to make new ones, and Louis and Armand least of all. But theoretically— even setting aside the issue of eternal damnation, which is easier to set aside some nights than others— there's something about being with vampires that makes you feel glad to be human. Like every one of your stupid mortal minutes is real, matters in a way that elicits almost palpable envy from the creatures. Hundreds of years of life, yet none can ever take the place of the central importance of the ones they spend human.

There is a reason, Rashid knows, that Armand at his most unguarded is sweet and cute, a lightness leavened by a little bit of fear and a little bit of rage. So there is a reason, too, that Louis who can easily multiply any weekly number by fifty-two to get a figure for the year, cannot help but measure the injury he has done to someone by how close they are to human death.

Louis looks him in the eye. Rashid is afraid to stare at him, yet afraid to look away. "What kind of man," he says, "swears off and goes back to a thing ten thousand, nine hundred and twenty times?"

Another real question. And Louis had even said it: man, not monster. So Rashid speaks to the man, not the monster.

"Perhaps," he says, "A man who is swearing off something which he is supposed to have. I don't think it would please Armand very much, sir, if I may say so, if you were to succeed, on the ten thousand nine hundred and twenty-first occasion."

"Do you have any siblings, Rashid?"

"A brother and two sisters," he says. Admits. It's true. There would be no point in lying, not with the truth hovering at the top of his mind, unobscurable. Shit. Fuck. This is not good.

Louis smirks, like he knows he's got something he can use. Which he does. Turns around a little, leans back against the railing and takes another drag on his cigarette. It's not hard to see how so many young men followed this creature to their deaths. "And how would you feel about it," he asks, "if someone were to treat your sisters the way I treat Armand?"

Rashid nearly chokes on his own spit. The idea of— well, how would he know, anyway? Fuck, he needs to stop thinking about— Louis is smirking at him obnoxiously. Keep it professional. Keep it general. "Well," he manages, "I think, if, hypothetically, my sister and her husband were to participate in perfectly permissable erotic activities that pleased them both and left her with no significant or lasting injury, ah, that would be. Fine. And none of my business. Sir."

He can tell he passed whatever bizarre kind of test that was because Louis deflates slightly, the edge of gleeful cruelty to his smile fading. Rashid takes a deep breath, becaquse that was the first part of the thought, the preamble, and the fact that it worked means he needs to say the second part, too. "So," he forces himself to go on, "I suppose if such a matter were, against my better judgement, made into my business, and I were certain that my, uh, sister were not being forced in any way, then I would want to know that the other party were also participating willingly and happily."

What does a shocked vampire actually look like? What does it take, to say something that's never been said before to a creature of such long experience? Rashid cannot be sure. But just for a moment, he thinks Louis looks shocked.

Then it disappears. "You're sweet," he pronounces, and stubs out his cigarette on the railing, drops it on the ground for Rashid to pick up later. Perhaps just because Rashid is here— he's never seen cigarette butts around the place, before. "And you really think, do you, that these permissable erotic activities please your s—

"Can we please stop talking about my sister," Rashid says, loudly. Louder than he intended. Actually, the intended volume had been not to say it at all.

Louis seems pleased by it, though. More than pleased. His smile is oddly soft, as he says, "Yes, all right. And you really think Armand isn't harmed? At all?" It is as if Rashid's outburst had soothed something in him, same as he soothes Armand.

And yes, of course. Of course it has. His outburst, his entire insane, semi-suicidal overconfidence. Rashid understands, in a rush, what he is doing. Louis is afraid, in these moments, that the mantle of the ravenous beast that he puts on so willingly cannot be taken off. That he is marked by it, unforgivable, obvious. That a soft little mortal will come up to him and talk back, make demands, talk too loudly without thinking of the consequences— of course Louis looks like he is receiving a gift from Rashid's hands.

So Rashid turns around himself, staring out at the twinkling lights of the night, turning his back on the predator. "I don't know," he says honestly. "I can't say that he doesn't frighten me, sometimes. But that's rather an occupational hazard. And it does make him happy. I think, sir, if I may speak freely, that the kindest thing to do is take him at his word when he says what he wants."

Louis' mouth twists a little, an ugly expression. "He sometimes makes that difficult," he says.

Rashid knows, of course, much more on that count than Louis knows he knows. Has been drilled mercilessly on keeping it locked up tight, thinking around it. He shrugs. "I didn't say it was the easiest thing to do, or even the smartest," he says. "Only the kindest."

So now he has a thing with both of them.

Armand: a kind of luxurious pity, soft touches over his healed wounds. Louis: secondhand smoke, backtalk, a gently cruel honesty that draws both of them out like a dare. Armand first, then Louis, because Louis likes to know that Armand is seen to. Likes Rashid to tell him about it. In increasing detail.

This is not what he's supposed to be doing here. He is supposed to be watching. He is supposed to be recording, and then passing on his records to be preserved. But either they were wrong about him, and Rashid was never really Talamasca material in the first place, or perhaps this is what it is to be one of them, to be destined for this; they are all compromised, probably, by too much interest. Too much desire to be a part of it. You wouldn't do it if you weren't. He was compromised from the start, and perhaps this is what he is meant to be doing, at least on some deeper level that doesn't involve his actual orders.

Which doesn't mean it isn't a little bit exhausting, if he's honest. He likes it, likes it way more than he should, there is something wrong with him, but that doesn't mean it isn't a little ridiculous. They're ancient creatures and they're also just men, who have been married for seventy years, and somehow haven't finished figuring out how to do this thing with each other that neither could imagine living without. They need Rashid, like children, and like a parent, Rashid is both reassured and exasperated by their need.

So he happens to be in the exasperation part of the cycle, one night, when Louis and Armand start making eyes at each other. They had never been particularly discreet in front of the staff, but they seem to almost play it up, now. Louis has his hand under Armand's shirt, somewhere, pinching or scratching probably, and Armand is determinedly not wriggling around with it, a stillness almost more telling than his movement would be, biting his lip appealingly as he leans into Louis' touch. They'll scurry off to the bedroom soon, and Rashid will hang around waiting for his role in the proceedings, and—

And here's the thing: they both like for him to be— there's really no word for it other than sassy. That's the special service he's providing, really, to both of them. He's gotten pretty good at it, being the the court jester, perhaps, permitted and even demanded to speak freely only in recognition of his fundamental ridiculousness. So it's hardly surprising, is it, that he steps over the line. It was bound to happen, sooner or later.

It happens when, gripped by a confidence born of too many times walking away unharmed, something maybe a little bit like drunkenness or insanity, Rashid sighs loudly, deliberately put-upon, and says, "Yes, my good sirs, of course, I'm available to attend to you. Thank you for asking."

Two pairs of lamp-bright eyes turn on him.

Unfortunately, or so it seems at the moment, Rashid is neither drunk nor, apparently, insane. Both of those states would surely at least do him the courtesy of sticking around to see him through the consequences of their dubious influence. The breezy confidence that he had momentarily felt at the surety of his position in this household, however, drains away in a single moment of white-hot clarity, pinned by the gazes of two killers.

It's not even fear of what they will do to him, so much as the realization rushing back in, making a mockery of the period in which he had almost forgotten it, that they can. That can do absolutely anythting they want with him. Rashid's mind, his body, his soul even, are not his own; what scraps of agency he perceives as remaining in his possession are there only because he has managed to arrange matters such that they have never taken an interest in taking them from him. That is the entire game he was playing, was supposed to be playing: being uninteresting enough to be not worth scrutinizing too closely. A fly that avoids being casually smushed through mere neglect. He is being scrutinized now.

Louis breaks the silence first. He looks delighted, which is never good news. “Are we an impediment to your lifestyle, Rashid?” he asks.

“No,” Rashid can hear his own voice shaking. He had forced himself to read every extant report on every death attributed to both Louis and Armand, even when he knew that pattern or the story well enough that he hardly needed to. Even when it made him feel sick, made him almost want to give up the assignment. He’d been trying to inoculate himself with reality. Because he knew himself, knew he would need it. Should have known it was hopeless. But he sure remembers those reports now.

“No?” says Louis. “You’re not a little tired of it, waiting on us hand and foot? You keep this place ticking along so smoothly. Wouldn’t it be easier if we weren’t here mucking it all up all the time?”

“Louis,” Armand admonishes quietly, and without taking his gaze off of Rashid, Louis lifts a hand and casually slaps him across the cheek. And that— Rashid is fucked in the head. Way more fucked even than the vampire shit indicates, he always knew that stuff about himself, but this is different, and worse, way worse, the way he can’t look away from Armand’s mouth slightly open in a little gasp, the way it hits him like electricity to the gut.

Louis taps the side of Armand’s face again with the tips of his fingers. “This is your fault,” he informs his companion. “You spoil this boy, let him get notions about himself.”

Now that is simply not fair. If anyone’s been giving Rashid notions, encouraging him to take more and more liberties, it is Louis. But Armand is nodding, agreeing. Cheeks flushed, eyes beseeching. “I’m sorry, Maître,” he says. “You’re right, of course the fault is mine. Punish me.”

Louis laughs, low and affectionate. "Oh, I will," he says. "But you're too much of a little pervert for the lesson to stick, hmm? No, We need to find something that will hurt you more than that. Which is why—" and now, counter-intuitively, he finally looks away from Rashid, smirking at Armand, leaning towards him, the two of them melting into each other in a way that makes the vise of fear in Rashid's chest loosen and warm, if not recede, because this is part of the same game as they were planning before, he can tell it is, just the rules changed, but perhaps he still has a chance to learn them— "it's Rashid who's going to get ten good hits from my belt. Since he's a big boy, and he's the one who's gotten so spoiled. I think that's fair. Don't you, Rashid?"

And back to Rashid. Who is standing as if rooted in place, like he can't move, feeling— something. Maybe it should be fear, that he's about to be beaten by a creature who likely has lost any notions he once had of what a human body can take. Or relief, that would also be a reasonable thing to feel, that the intent here is clear, and it doesn't involve his death. Instead he feels—

"Perhaps," says Louis, "You don't think that is fair, Rashid? It was a first offense, after all. And you've given us so many years of dedicated service. Perhaps you think you deserve clemency?"

Rashid's first four years with the Talamasca had been spent in the finance department. Which is the organization's largest and least ethical department, because it takes a hell of a lot of money to run an operation like this, and it's not the kind of thing that's easy to fundraise for through the usual channels. Then, he'd been promoted to field agent and spent a year and a half observing a supposedly haunted bog (it wasn't), been called to the Talamasca's version of jury duty for a disciplinary hearing that ended up dragging on for nearly six months, spent three years back out and working in a truck stop diner because that's what his virst vampiric assignment had done before he was turned and he apparently felt no need to change careers after, and then— this. Armand and Louis. Yes, he'd played his politics right to get this assignment, but he'd also payed his dues, worked his way up. Maybe he's not doing what he's being paid to do here, exactly, but he is most certainly doing what he has always wanted to do, what he's worked his whole weird misguided life for. Like hell is he going back down now.

"No," he says. "It's fair."

Armand looks stricken, but Rashid has seen enough of him him looking stricken to know that's not necessarily a bad thing. Louis pats the back of his head condescendingly. "How about you have to choose where, hmm," he says, "since it's your fault this is happening to him."

Rashid doesn't actually see Armand make his way over to him. It's possible he's feeling a little light- headed. From fear, or from something else. Armand is just here, in front of him, and he is touching him, running his hands up and down his torso, over his shoulders. Rashid has touched Armand plenty, stroked him, held him. But Armand has never really touched back, not with purpose. His hands are cold, Rashid can feel the chill of them even though fabric, which feels good, like his skin is feverish with what is happening and what's about to.

"His arms," Armand pronounces, palms sliding past his elbows, over his forearms, grasping his wrists gently and then sliding back up. Over the spot he's just chosen. Rashid hadn't gotten around to thinking about where before Louis pronounced it Armand's decision, but perhaps he'd just assumed, well, the tableau of ten good hits with my belt is clear enough, isn't it— the tremulous descent of trousers and pants, the bending over, the— well, so that's a relief, anyway. Or a disappointment. Or just terrifying, his arms which he had never thought about overmuch before suddenly feel very sensitive, very delicate underneath Armand's fingers. His whole self very delicate.

Armand hums soothingly. "You may leave your shirt on, if you like," he says. "It will hurt less, over your sleeves."

Rashid glances at Louis, who had not given permission for Armand to extend this permission, at least not audibly, but he looks placid. Sitting at the centre of the couch, a small smile, legs spread a little wider than his shoulders, elbows resting on the cushions behind him. Waiting. Belt, very prominently, still on his waist.

"I could roll them up," says Rashid. "So it will… so it will hurt more."

Louis' smile gets wider. Armand begins rolling up his sleeves for him, as if Rashid had just said something completely sane.

Long, nimble fingers pushing the fabric up past his elbows. It's a little bit soothing. All he has to do, all he can do, is whatever they force him to. Armand will help him through this, surely, it's only fair. Armand's arm around his shoulders, leading him over to Louis, a small push and a nudge to his feet to have him kneel. This makes sense, that Armand should guide him. A sort of Azrael denied death, a minor psychopomp of perversion.

Rashid is kneeling at Louis' feet, and Armand is kneeling behind him, his chin hooked over Rashid's shoulder, his chest pressing into his back. He brings his hands down and under Rashid's elbows, lifts them up gently to place them on Louis' knees, his forearms up. It occurs to him that maybe he would like to curl his fingers in over his palms, but Armand hasn't told him to, so he doesn't.

Louis reaches for his belt. Unbuckes, slides it through the loops slowly. Hiss of leather. It's obviously intended to create anticipation, to be frightening.

Is he frightened? Rashid tries to take stock, figure it out, in the last moments he has before it hurts. There's something like fear, yes. But more than that, he feels safe. A kind of safety that is, somehow, made possible only by the fear. The feeling of the strong hull of a boat, which means nothing without the inky depths that it floats on. "That's it," Armand murmurs in his ear, and Rashid had not been doing anything, nothing at all worth or praise or encouragement, but perhaps that's the point.

The crack of the belt on his forearm is much louder than he would have expected. The sound is louder than the pain, really, which is duller than the noise would seem to indicate. It hurts, yes, but it doesn't hurt in an inhuman way, nothing of supernatural strength in the force Louis is exerting on Rashid's body. It is immediately obvious that he can take nine more, and perhaps that was the point. Louis is, after all, rather good at this.

Louis hits the other arm. It hurts more, for some reason, with the foreknowledge of what it's going to be lke, without the shock of the first crack. Instinctively, his body jerks, arms retreating a few inches back. Armand pushes him back into place immediately, taking a firmer grip on the undersides of his elbows. "Be still," he says in Rashid's ear quietly. "You must endure this. You don't have another choice."|

He hadn't meant to get away, it's not like the movement was intentional, and perhaps a monster affirming his complete lack of agency shouldn't be soothing, but it is. He cannot fail at this. He will not be allowed to. The belt comes down, hard, for a third time. He makes a little noise, he must, because Louis says "it's all right, you can yell," casually, just as he hits him again.

The noise he makes is a little bit louder. It's not as easy as it seems, he realizes, to just let his body make what sounds it will; he's gotten too good at preventing it, shielding his mind, shielding his words and actions even more thoroughly. It could almost be false, as if he were putting on, when he lets out a soft cry after the fifth hit and a louder one after the sixth, but it's not really. Despite the effort it takes to do it, it feels good. He has lived with these men— these things, but men, yes, they are men— for years, become close to them, but never before been able to truly express himself in their presence. Now, he is. It may not be a particularly eloquent statement, the high, keening sob he lets out when Louis gives him seven and eight in quick succession, both of his arms burning insistently. But it is the truest thing he has ever said to them.

The last two are brutal, leave him nearly light-headed with the force of it, leaving his arms hot and tingling and swollen. He wants to scream, so he does scream. He's been struggling for a while, trying to pull away, and he doesn't stop even though on some level he's pretty sure it's over, that was it. He is safe and held and doesn't want to get away, he doesn't need to choose, it doesn't matter anyway.

Armand holds him tightly until he stops writhing, and then he holds him more gently. His arms are still on Louis' knees, he's apparently not allowed to move them, but Louis has set his belt to the side. And then Armand lets go of his elbows, and reaches around to scrape his sharp, deadly nails gently, so gently, over Rashid's abused skin.

Which feels incredible. Rashid gasps, his body jerking again, not trying to get away, just overwhelmed, confused. Nothing has ever felt so all-absorbing that wasn't either pain or sex, and here's this new feeling that is neither, well, both, maybe, to Armand, and this is what Rashid does to him, he recognizes distantly. Armand loves his nails, after. So now, that's what Rashid gets.

Louis looks amused. "Feels nice, does it?" he asks, and Rashid— he moans, yes, that's what that sound his. Armand's nails on his skin and Armand's breath hot on his neck, oh god, his breath, his mouth, his teeth underneath, he wants them so bad, there's no point not admitting it now. Just a regular old vampire fetishist, like so many thousands of others.

Well, not like so many thousands. An unusually successful vampire fetishist, perhaps. Who else has ever gotten this from them?

Armand stirs a little behind him, and when he hears or maybe feels the beginnings of a protest beginning to escape Rashid, he shushes him again. "On the couch," he whispers, and climbs up so he can lean his back against the arm of it, his legs and arms open wide. Inviting Rashid to climb in and be cuddled. Rashid doesn't think twice.

So he's looking directly at Louis, just in time to see a moment of confusion pass over his face, of indecision. Because this is the point in the proceedings, with Armand, where they can seemingly no longer stand the magnitude of what they are to each other. They have to retreat, miserable, defeated. But Rashid isn't Armand.

One more piece of insanity. Just one more. Why not. He holds out his arms again to Louis. "Would you…. do the nail thing, sir?" he asks. "It feels very nice."

Louis blinks. Then he shuffles in closer, takes Rashid's sore arms into his lap again, and does as he asked.

So the thing with Armand and Louis becomes a stranger thing with Armand and Louis. It can't last. Whether by Rashid's death or not, it is all going to come crashing to the ground in a pile of rubble one way or another.

But for now— sometimes Rashid is invited in after, and sometimes Rashid is invited in during, and sometimes Rashid is the event itself. And sometimes, now, he's not. Sometimes he's never invited in at all, and Armand and Louis stay in there, the door closed, the crying stopped, Rashid locked outside, listening. And that's all right, too.