The Makropulos case: reflections on the variety of mortality

They’re in bed, the three of them, which has, somehow, become usual. Rashid has Armand’s head in his lap, and is petting down his arm gently. Louis has a book in his hand, picked it up the moment he called Rashid in and let him take over, but he's here, still, sitting up a little apart from them, pretending to be uninterested. Rashid isn't sure why. He's not looking at the bulge in the front of his deadly employer's trousers, obviously, but it would be hard not to notice. Usually, if that's going to be a part of the proceedings, Rashid is invited in after.

And then, as if— not fucking as if, Rashid reminds himself, he's getting sloppy, fuck, Louis did hear that thought— Louis glances to the side. “Gonna fuck him,” he says casually, as if he’s announcing his intention to step out to the shop for milk. “You prefer to clear out, Rashid?”

Rashid stands up, a little wobbly. "Very well, sir," he says. They hadn’t don’t anything to him, really, but just being close to them makes him a little shaky, a bit overexcited.

"Woah, woah." Louis' voice is soft, appealing. "Didn't say you had to. Just asked if you'd prefer to."

Rashid turns back around, and Louis' piercing green eyes are on him like lamplights. He's gotten used to Armand, by now, though it helps that Armand rarely stares him right in the face, prefers soft glances and fluttering lashes. When Louis' attention is on him, he is staring, and Rashid is forced to lower his gaze like a courtier before the king.

It would be insane to say that everything he's done with these vampires has, thus far, been chaste. But by some standards, it's almost true. Armand is often nude, yes, but he's usually curled up in bed by the time Rashid finds him, not exactly displaying himself. An innocent kind of nakedness, like a child. Rashid has rolled up his sleeves and, on one memorable occasion, removed his trousers, but not his pants. He's seen Louis shirtless, once. But he has never touched any genitals— he imagines, even more insanely, trying to justify to his mother— nor seen any touched, nor had his own touched. Never even had fangs in his neck, despite the little thrill, the tiny hope, every time, that he might.

"There's no obligation," says Louis.

“But if you’d like to,” says Armand, “it’s all right.”

Rashid is not sure he remembers how to breathe.

There’s only so much weird one kid can be, you see. When you’re a teenager obsessed with vampires— well, it fills a lot of gaps. There’s an erotic aspect to it, yes, clearly, but when you’re a teenager obsessed with vampires actively being recruited by a real live secret society, they just don’t seem so important. Comfortably ignorable, and all the energy that normal people put into figuring out who to get into bed with and how is going instead to something far larger and more interesting. And then, well, the work, people always nod and say yes, of course, if you don't have time to attend to your personal life because of the work, even though regular people might secretly be thinking well everyone works, dumbass, and his mother thinks he works for the Omani environment authority, he sends her selfies from Jebel al Harim when he gets a day off, well, of course she’s hoping he’ll meet a girl and settle down and it’s not like that sounds bad exactly but who the fuck settles down with a supernatural secret agent, what kind of husband would he be, what kind of father, holy shit where did that thought even come from—

There is a particular feeling, to having a vampire in your head. Everyone gets it, apparently, though most people can’t do much about it, especially if they don’t know what the feeling means. Once you do, though, it’s not actually all that hard to fight it off; just like raising an arm or turning a shoulder to ward off a grabby hand. The hard part is doing it without the block being noticed. That’s the part that needs training, that Rashid is pretty damn good at, or so he’s been told. Though of course, you can’t ever really know until it’s too late.

Now, he feels it, and he knows. He’s pretty sure it’s Armand, and also pretty sure that he’s not exactly delving— he’s feeling Rashid’s panic, confirming the evidence of his eyes and ears with that of his mind instinctively, maybe even unintentionally.

“It’s all right,” says Armand again, soothingly. “Rashid, you are the possession of my right hand.”

What the fuck.

It takes a moment for that statement to even resolve into a coherent meaning. Then, regrettably, it does. That Armand is telling him it is permissible for Armand to have sex with him— and, by extension, for him to have sex with Armand— because Rashid is his slave.

For a moment, he’s just furious. You’d think it wouldn’t be possible to get all that angry at your vampire employers, not when you chose this, when you actively worked to spend your time in the company of creatures who see you as food. But the spike of shock, of anger, is not rational, has nothing to do with his choices or the reality of his situation. He just wants to shout, hey, fuck you, buddy!

And then the anger recedes, and everything else rushes back in. All the training. All the research, which had felt so distant when he was reading the files, the life stories of the creatures that was was charged with continuing the narrative of. He doesn’t feel guilty about reading them, that would be silly, but he doesn’t— he just doesn’t think on it, is all, during the time he spends with them. He doesn’t want what he knows that they don’t know he knows top of his mind, of course, but perhaps it also just feels better that way, in the moments that they seem so human. He has invaded their privacy, their histories in a way that would be unforgivable if they were not what they are, and they are that thing, but—

Armand is not trying to coerce him. He is trying to reassure him. Armand is offering him, Rashid realizes in a moment that feels like being kicked in the stomach, the thought that brought him comfort, when he was a slave. When he was a child being raped, and desperately sought any reassurance that he was not a defiled, lawless thing trapped in the lair of a monster. That he was safe in the home of a good man. That everything was all right.

Rashid breathes out slowly, trying to calm his racing heart. The gift Armand is offering him is very old, and strange, and fragile, and he would like to replace it with another, something more palatable and surely just as good— those guilty of zina must be uncoerced, sir, and you were coerced, you were, no matter how much you begged for it— but he cannot say that. And even if he could, he wouldn’t. This thought has kept Armand safe for five hundred years, and now he is offering it to Rashid. Rashid has no use for it and doesn’t particularly want to have to hold it, but he also won’t be the one to drop it.

“All right, then,” he says, as if that decides it. And maybe it does, in a way. Is he uncoerced, right now?

Fuck, if he’s going down that road, is Armand uncoerced right now? If He sees Rashid as his slave, what is he to Louis? Is Louis uncoerced, missing pieces of his own story? Both of them, about to open their bed to an infiltrator? Better to not go down that road. He stands there, the two of them watching him, each looking pleased in their own way. Then Armand holds out his hand, and draws Rashid back down to the bed. Stretching out a bit, pulling him in to cuddle up to him.

These creatures have hurt Rashid on purpose, for fun. The could kill in in a moment. And somehow this, this is the most terrified he has ever been in their presence. Armand runs his palm slowly down the side of Rashid’s face, over his neck. “You poor frightened thing,” he says softly, and he is not in Rashid’s mind, he’s almost certain, it’s just that obvious. And then Armand says, “Louis adores frightened boys,” and directs a charming smile over Rashid’s shoulder to where Louis is, now, looming very close.

Louis chuckles, and leans down close to— there is no other description for it, he is smelling Rashid’s fear. And that is— that’s something else, something transcendent, to have a vampire want that of him, but it doesn’t erase the fear. It just makes him a little more confident of a positive reception when he says, voice trembling, “Will you… go easy on me? Please?”

Louis straightens up. “‘Course,” he says. “Not gonna do anything you don’t want. We’ve got all the time in the world.” He grins a bit, point made that Rashid is the only one hypothetically on a deadline here. But there is something wistful in his voice, too, and Rashid, for the second time of this encounter, finds himself making unwilling connections with the Talamasca’s assigned reading. Louis du Pointe du Lac, entrepreneur, man about town, clinging to every scrap of respectability he was allowed to salvage for himself. Of course he likes frightened boys. He was one. He was never permitted to be one.

"Here," says Louis, and he's sliding himself over so that Armand's chest and head are now on his lap, "you like touching Armand, huh? Wanna touch more of him?"

"Yes," says Rashid, relieved. Funny that admitting to your employer that you like touching his husband can put you back on solid footing, but that part's easy, obvious and well-established. He touches Armand all the time; strokes him like a beloved pet, cleans the blood off of him with a washcloth like he is a child who fell down playing and is covered in dirt. He's never touched a human penis besides his own, but then, after this he still won't technically have touched a human penis.

"That all right, sweetheart?" Louis asks Armand, and Rashid is basically acclimated enough to the two of them that he's not particularly disturbed that Louis asked him before Armand. Armand stares up at him, eyes wide, lips parted. Vulnerable. He takes a moment longer than Rashid would have thought, a moment of seemingly genuine consideration, before he says, "Yes, Maître."

"All right," murmurs Louis. "Get that off of you, and spread your legs for him."

Armand has a light sheet draped over his legs— Rashid isn't actually sure why, except that perhaps he just likes the way blood looks on it, or enjoys creating more laundry for the staff— and is curled up a little, resting on his back but legs to the side. He carries out the instruction slowly, sensually, grinding the side of his head into Louis' lap a bit and making a soft humming noise, before rolling himself fully onto his back and opening his legs wide, knees played out to the sides. Then he pulls the sheet off.

Rashid has seen him naked, of course, plenty of times. But he hasn't, he realizes in the moment it happens for the first time, really seen Armand's penis before. He keeps it polite, usually, keeps it professional, as professional as it can be within the bounds of whatever bizarre game they have going on, and whatever it is simply hasn't involved penises, until now.

Armand's penis is small, circumcised, and currently soft, hanging down politely over his—

Rashid stares. Two pairs of glowing vampire eyes stare back at him. This was not in the reading material.

The reading material on Armand is… varied. After his takeover of the Paris coven, his activities are well-attested, Talamasca records of every member of the coven, who brought them into the blood, their dates of turning and, usually, death. Easy reading, easy to get lost in the adventure of.

Earlier, there are census records of Venice, a number of apprentices in the palazzo where he resided fluctuating between 25 and 50. There are documents relating to a court case prepared by the Avogadoria de Comùn with evidence against Amadeus Tatari, sclavus et servus Marii Romani, for the rape of a Christian woman, Bianca Solderini, for which no hearing or judgement of the Quarantia is recorded.

And before that, several bills of sale which had been identified as potentially recording the transfer of the child who would become the Vampire Armand. And so— well it's not like Rashid lied on his resume, he wrote that he can read Arabic and he can, sure, like you also put on your resume that you can operate Microsoft Excel, yeah, okay, that doesn't mean he was prepared for Raglan James to hand him a thumb drive of poorly scanned five-hundred-year-old notary sheets and say we'll need for you to re-translate these, we had a guy take a crack at it in the 70s but they're surely full of errors, and you won't want to go into your assignment not having read them. One of which claimed the child was a Christian, and one that the buyer was a Muslim, and yet another which whatever vampire-loving old-school Orientalist had previously taken a crack at these had scrawled in his notes informations contradictoires sur l'origine??? because, yes, at the end of the line black slave of Hindustani race was a blurry word which Rashid typed into Google, because it made no sense, that this bill of sale was claiming that the child was Khasi, of a people rather farther east than any previous suggestions, so he'd set the whole mess aside as a bad job. Surely, he'd reasoned, even if he could identify and translate the correct document, it wouldn't give him much information of real, practical use about the present-day vampire he was supposed to be observing.

So he stares, now, while Louis' expression gets more and more cruelly delighted. Mouth open, gawking like an idiot. Like he hadn't been told. Khasiy. Eunuch.

Louis' expression is delighted, yes, but Armand's isn't, exactly. "Are you quite finished," he snaps, and Rashid nearly jumps out of his skin. This is— horrible, it's a horrifying thing that happened to Armand, five hundred years ago, a frightened innocent child, and now here he is with a body that idiots like Rashid gawk at in shock and horror, like it's his fault, and Rashid is trying to put himself together enough to stammer an apology, prepare himself to be thrown out of the room in disgrace—

Louis is laughing. And Rashid realizes neither of them are even looking at him; Armand is glaring up at Louis, who runs a thumb down the bridge of his nose, then leans down to kiss him on the forehead.

"All right," he says, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, all finished."

Armand rolls his eyes. "Apologize to poor Rashid," he orders.

Louis flicks two fingers against Armand's cheek. "You're pushing it," he informs him, then looks up. "All right there, Rashid?"

Rashid just nods, hopelessly confused, stupidly aroused. "Good," says Louis, and oh, he's handing Rashid a jar of some kind of lubricant., okay they're really doing this. "He can orgasm," he says, matter-of fact, "he'll just make you work for it. Right, Armand?"

Armand nods. "Oh, yes," he says, "unlike Louis, who never has any difficulty—" Louis slaps his cheek a tiny bit harder than before. "Quiet," he says. Armand bites his lip, smiling, and obeys.

They're cute, Rashid realizes. It's not really a thought he's had about the pair of them, before. Beautiful, yes. Drenched in tragic pathos, sure. But cute— it makes it easier, possible at all, for Rashid to stick his fingers into the tub and coat them with mildly sweet-smelling grease which melts in contact with his body heat. (He understands, suddenly, the small hot plate unplugged on the bedside table.) Five hundred years ago, someone did something so monstrous to Armand that Rashid cannot hold the enormity of it in his mind. But now Armand is just here, smiling, teasing his husband about his vegetarianism-induced erectile dysfunction.

So Rashid steadies his left hand on Armand's thigh, and brings his slick right hand to cup his cock. It's not exactly an elegant movement, but once he has passed beyond the barrier of touching it, it is easy. Things with Armand usually are, once he gets started. He is curious how it feels, so he squeezes it gently, rubs his palm around the little rubbery length of it, and Armand sighs happily, closes his eyes, and spreads his legs a little wider. The scar beneath looms.

"Do you like it," Rashid asks, "to be touched there?"

Armand seems to briefly consider answering, then decide he can't be bothered, nestling his head down a little farther into Louis' lap. "Around the edges of the scar," Louis answers for him. "No point in touching the centre."

Armand's eyes open, indignant. "I never said that."

"You said it didn't feel like much," Louis says, a bit petulantly. "In nineteen forty seven."

"Mhm," Armand closes his eyes again. "Not that there was no point." His cock is a little firmer, now, and it feels different to handle. He can rub his thumb over just the tip of it, and watch Armand's thighs tense.

Louis sighs. "You see what I have to deal with, Rashid?" he asks, and Rashid can squeeze Armand harder now, he's nearly got what might be called an erection. He really likes either what Rashid is doing or what Louis is saying. Probably both.

"Yes, sir," Rashid says to Louis, "you're very put-upon. It's a wonder you take his opinion into consideration at all, when you could just hold him down and take what you want from him."

Armand actually whines at that. Louis lets out a punch of laughter. "Rashid!" he exclaims, as if shocked, but Rashid is warming to this now. He knows these men. He's good at them.

So he keeps talking, now to Armand, "Oh, he does, does he? You poor thing." And then, balancing on the edge of what he's about to say and then toppling over it: "Good thing you have a possession of your own then, isn't it, to service you as you please, when your master is so cruel to you—" and he slides his hand down and pushes, flattening his fingers against the breadth of the scarred tissue, a slow, deep rub against the texture of it. Armand moans and arches with it, and Rashid pushes harder, sliding his fingers around to explore the edges of it, like Louis said. He feels breathless. He feels powerful, for all that he had very much meant the characterisation of him servicing his master.

His master, sure, fine, if that's how Armand wants to think of it. He is not getting out of here alive, or if he does, surely only so changed that the Rashid who walked in cannot meaningfully be said to have survived. Because the Rashid who walked in, whatever his personal inclinations, was committed to the mission. Was committed to watching, collecting, recording. That man would, right now, be planning the report he would write on this crucial overlooked aspect of one of the most important known vampires, the important contribution he could make to the record, correcting the translation, adding an important piece of context to the Talamasca's understanding of the Vampire Armand.

This Rashid is not going to fucking do that. So, in what sense isn't Armand his master?

"He'll need a finger in him to come, tonight," pronounces Louis, authoritatively. "You want my help with that bit, Rashid?"

"No," says Rashid, "I can—"

— well, he's come this far, and really if you're going to do this for the first time, a vampire is rather the perfect partner, he thinks almost deliriously, slicking up his other hand, inhabiting as they do that strange liminality between cursed and blessed, a site of uncleanliness transformed into one of pleasure alone—

And Armand does seem to like it very much, when Rashid slips a finger into him. He's room temperature on the outside but the inside of him is very slightly warm— someone else's blood, someone else's life, that he's taken, his now— and soft. It feels nice on his hand, and yeah, he can imagine it would feel good on his— not that he's been invited to.

"Hasn't got as obvious a prostate as a normal man," says Louis, normal man, what the fuck, "but you can still feel around for where it feels best for him. Up, towards his belly button, Rashid. There you go. Right there."

Rashid really didn't Louis to tell him that because Armand is saying it loudly enough— in words, even, almost, little whines of yes— yes as he pushes himself into Rashid's hands. Writhing closer on the mattress, like he might get more if he can just get closer to Rashid, but this is it; he's caught between Rashid's two hands, now, and it's easy to do this to him, pump one hand on his little cock and stroke the other over his insides. And it keeps going, until Louis casually reaches down and pinches his nipples, quick and almost perfunctory, like flipping a switch, and Armand comes in a way that is entirely obvious despite there being no semen involved, which— okay, Rashid also doesn't hate that.

And he loves the way Armand looks exhausted, blissful. No pained tears, no shy boy playing up the pain for sympathy Rashid would give him any time he wanted, anyway, no need to— well, anyway. He just looks happy. Rashid likes it.

He likes it physically, it must be admitted, and as Armand's breath slows and finally stops— he only really needed it for the moaning, Rashid supposes— it is increasingly clear that the two vampires are both noticing. He's kneeling between Armand's legs, braced on his toes; fully dressed, more or less, though he'd been in his own room when he'd been called here, theoretically off duty, and is wearing his sleeping clothes. Fully covered, at least, which right now is only serving to accentuate his situation.

"Want something, Rashid?" says Louis, playfully, and Rashid realizes suddenly that Louis hasn't come, surely that needs to be a part of this, and what exactly is Louis going to want from him, if what he wants is his fear, his pain, Rashid knows his tastes and—

"Rashid," says Armand gently. 'Thank you for the very nice orgasm. You may have anything you like. What would you like?"

It cuts through his panic. Armand says he can have whatever he likes. And as much as he can pretend otherwise, that's never been a hard question to answer.

"I think," he says, and his voice comes out a little unsteady, because he's been waiting his whole life for this, and he's just been told he can have it, and he is suddenly terribly afraid that it's going to be snatched away from him, "I'm not ready for… everything…. yet. But I've always wanted to… be bitten by a vampire?"

For a moment, silence. Surely, this cannot possibly be a shocking request. And yet it opens a yawning chasm of horror in him, that it might be denied. That something about him might simply be not good enough, not nourishing, not desirable on a much more fundamental level than any other. Louis is looking thoughtful. Armand is looking at Louis.

"I'm afraid," says Louis, "that you don't meet Armand's particular dietary requirements…" he runs a proprietary hand through Armand's hair, half stroking, half pulling. "He eats the blood of the evildoer, as I'm sure you're aware. And I'm afraid you, sweet Rashid, don't make the cut."

"Maître, please," says Armand, and Rashid feels it like a kick to the groin. Everything feels heightened, brighter, realer. His cock aches. Armand is begging to drink his blood. And after all why not, surely, surely the rule has to do with killing, not just eating. Surely. Louis shakes his head, a mocking little smile on his face. Oh. All right. This is something else, then, Louis' concern for Armand's diet.

"Poor little thing," says Louis. "I don't know why you deprive yourself like this. Well, Rashid, you'll just have to be content with me." Armand whines a low desperate sound, and Louis just smacks the nearest part to his hand, a firm blow on Armand's exposed chest. "You got a problem with that?" he says. "You think you own something that doesn't belong to me?"

Holy shit. It hits Armand and Rashid at the same time, seemingly, the effect of that statement, the way Rashid can nearly feel the renewed arousal rolling off of him. And it's terrifying, yes, because Rashid trusts Armand not to hurt him in a way he doesn't quite trust Louis. But it's so good to be frightened, finally, finally, of course it should be Louis. Some sort of jus primæ noctis thing, Armand would probably like it if Rashid said something to that effect, but he can't, he's shaking like a leaf. He tries to shuffle forward, and his legs don't quite hold him, and he collapses into Louis's arms.

"There you go," murmurs Louis, as if that had been the intended action. "I've got you. You're not getting away." Oh. He's very warm, actually, and much softer than Armand in a way that has nothing to do with actual body composition and, Rashid assumes, everything to do with the fact that he eats more regularly than Armand does. It feels so good to lean into him, and somehow Rashid's legs end up splayed on either side of Louis', straddling him, and Louis says "There you go" one more time, and then shoves his fangs into the join between Rashid's neck and shoulder.

The moment of the bite hurts with a searing, incandescent pain that is like nothing else he's ever experienced. It's too much to scream through, too much to do anything with; he simply freezes, incapable of anything but feeling it. He'd thought he'd known what it felt like to be helpless, before. His entire state of existence is helplessness. But this is different. This is helplessness as a form of art, as a crowning achievement. It feels blasphemous, this helplessness. How can it be possible to be so helpless before a creature who is not a god?

And then Louis starts to suck, and the pain is gone, or it doesn't matter, because Rashid was right. He was right. It feels exactly like he'd always known it would. It feels worth it, everything he's given up, this huge life-defining secret that he can't ever tell anyone or they'll think he's crazy, but he's not, and here's the proof. It feels like being needed, being perfect for something exactly made for this.

It also feels like every inch of his body is alive with pleasure, like his actual veins are an erogenous zone. It should not be possible to feel the pulls Louis is making at his neck from the inside but he does, and he is moving with it before he is even aware, doing the only thing it is possible to do in response.

Louis pulls off. He has Rashid's blood smeared around his lips. No, Rashid thinks desperately, it can't be over, that can't be all— and Louis licks around his mouth, obscene, and says, "It's good manners to ask your master for permission to come, Rashid."

Oh. Rashid has been rutting against him, pushing his cock into Louis' stomach, and Louis has been letting him, pushing back, even, but now he is tilting his head significantly towards Armand, who is laid out on his side, radiantly beautiful, watching like the show is for his benefit. Waiting.

He doesn't even have to decide to. In the end, it's nothing at all. "Please Master, may I come," he rasps, and Armand smiles. For a split second Rashid actually thinks he's going to say no, and he's not sure what he would do, but he just murmurs "of course, sweet boy."

Louis lines back up, uses the same puncture wounds, and this time the pain is dull and diffuse, spreads over him just like the pleasure does. It builds and builds and his master gave him permission, everything is all right, so Rashid lets his body do as it needs to, and he comes with Louis' teeth in him, like he was always going to. Like his life always led to this moment.

It's funny, how the human mind works in the throes of achievement. Ask any Olympic champion, any famous rock star, and they'll tell you that there's a comedown to these things. You work your whole life for something, finally getting it feels like a death. You cannot go on living as you have been.

Perhaps that's why, in the aftermath of the most incredible moment of his life, Rashid finds himself curled up on Louis and Armand's bed, sobbing. There's no reason for it. He feels wonderful. He's thrilled. He feels wretched.

"There," Armand is saying. He slots himself in behind Rashid, wrapping an arm over his chest, hooking his chin over Rashid's shoulder. "You did wonderfully. You were very brave, sweet thing…" Rashid listens to the soft recitation. Reassurance, praise. Everything he does for Armand. And then, the wretchedness begins to feel almost good. Rashid feels the mattress dip. Louis, surely, leaving; he didn't sign up for this. That's all right. Armand, after all, is his—

What the everloving fuck was that, he thinks, but in truth, he doesn't really care.

Instead, he feels Louis tucking an extra blanket over him and Armand. He leans down, and Rashid hears him whisper I'm coming back for you later in the other vampire's ear. Then he goes back to his side of the bed, and picks up his book again.