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the morgue

Welcome to my junk drawer of dead fanfictions. If you like one feel free to take it. YOUR problem now.
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Table of Contents

windivorce marius rape flower

They are all here today. Not everyone he has ever loved but perhaps almost everyone who has ever loved him back, or tried to, and survived it. All colours are brighter and more obvious today. The spaces between them shimmer with nothingness so cavernous that Armand is afraid of falling into it. The others cannot see the spaces, they can’t even see all of the colours, they think that when humans slather sunscreen on themselves they stay the same colour as they were before. The petals of one the flower designs on Armand’s living room ceiling appear unpainted to them, all his loves gathered to hold him in this room, but they’re not, the paint merely reflects a wavelength too short for them. Armand had learned how to procure pigments for paint as a child, a little adult, depending on who is telling the story and hearing it. Titanium and zinc oxide for this, nobody around to give a second opinion on the results. The birds and the bees could. And perhaps one person more, who is coming here, to Armand’s place, to Armand’s place with Armand’s loves, today.

The birds and the bees means something different now. It means when a human child is told what is going to happen to it. Someone had told Armand that once, but had left out many important things. How far apart the colours get, that electric lighting flickers more slowly in Dubai than in San Francisco, how small the insides of the whorls of air currents and how large the outsides.

Daniel is behind him, holding the part of Armand that is his body to his chest. His body is all of him, that’s all of him, except sometimes it is none of him, and he does not know which one it is right now. Louis is holding one of his hands, and Lestat the other, but left and right are assigned based on frame of reference, aren’t they, so who’s to say which one is which? Two minds he can hear, and one he can’t. And another he can’t, won’t feel coming. All he will have is a body.

The two minds he can hear are full of Armand. They have an image of him inside of them, Louis and Lestat do, yet that image is not him. He does not control it. The birds and the bees do not know about this, either. Daniel has Armand’s blood forever. Lestat says to his image, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want, petit diablotin. Louis says You’re okay, Arun, we’ve got you. Daniel has both of his hands spread open on Armand’s sides.

Some things have been decided without Armand. For instance: that it is Lestat who opens the door, as if this were his apartment, at the knock. Lestat kisses him on both cheeks. Lestat is touching his body. Lestat leads him to sit down, a place for him to put his body inside of this place of Armand’s. Armand is allowed to get up. Armand is allowed to do anything he likes, this is his house, even the wavelengths of the colours, much smaller than the flickering of the lightbulbs, are on his side. He could run, which Daniel would like. Daniel does not like this, but Daniel is a child, and children do not often get to decide.

Armand steps in front of him. He reaches out and takes Marius’ chin in his fingers. Everything is moving much to quickly, flickering so rapidly that he is the only one who can even tell, certainly the only one who can hold it still.

Marius is good at staying still. He does it by moving at the same speed as the frame of reference. He wears blue jeans and a soft cotton button up. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hair is buzzed short, an easy thing to do every night. He is an American now, not just pretending to be one. He is an American in America in the way that Armand cannot, no matter how hard he tries, be an Indian in Dubai.

Armand turns his maker’s chin up, towards the ceiling. “The ultraviolet paint,” he says. “I made it. Can you see it?”

Marius looks. His eyes sweep over the section that, to Daniel and Louis and Lestat, seems to contain a figural element unpainted. “No,” he says.

Perhaps Armand can only see the flickering of everything around him because he is standing so very still.

“I hate you,” he says. “I will never forgive you.” Everyone is allowed to never forgive someone. Otherwise how could they all stand to be here together? Armand climbs onto the sofa on top of him. His knees on either side of Marius’ thighs, bellies pressed together. A paint vehicle requires both a binder and a solvent. He smashes their lips together. Not really a kiss; kissing is what he does with Louis, fangs and tears, and with Lestat, softly, and sometimes even with Daniel, feeling like he is stealing something even as it is freely given. This is something different, older.

”Amadeo,” says Marius, into his mouth. His hands pushing him away gently. “Armand. What shall I call you?”

“Nothing,” says Armand.

“Perhaps we should—”

“You will call me nothing,” says Armand, “and you will let me do anything.”

His body remembers. His body is all of him right now, and it had fed Daniel like this, like it ought to be done. Marius lets him do it: bite into his tongue and suck on it, blood filling his maker’s mouth until he has to either swallow it or allow Armand to do so. He allows it.

It tastes like he remembers. It tastes that he remembers, when he would have said for hundreds of years that he didn’t. It tastes like his own blood, but more himself than he could ever hope to be. It burns going down. He grinds his hips down with all his gangly, muscular weight. The too-slow Dubai lights flicker even through his eyelids. He feels Marius’ answering hardness and it’s better than the blood. Nothing can be wrong between them while they have this. He turns the lights off, plunging the room into darkness. Spits out a mouthful onto his own carpet. He doesn’t know what to do with his body any more, too much noise, a universe made up of almost nothing but meaningless random noise, and he is coming to rest, his forehead on Marius’ shoulder, pressed to him so tightly that he couldn’t breathe even if he wanted to.

second windivorce marius false start

It’s not so much an idea that anyone has, as one that everyone objects to in their own way, until somehow the objections cancel each other out, and it becomes inevitable. The only question is where.

For people who have forgiven, or at least agree to tactically ignore, so much, actual location is somehow the last sticking point. Daniel cannot imagine living somewhere where he can’t get a decent bagel, though he will never eat a bagel again. Armand can imagine all too well living somewhere with no public adhans, and doesn’t like it, though he sleeps entirely through them in favour of his own schedule. Lestat is— well, Lestat is a rock star, and Louis is Louis, a little too confident in some ways, a little too skittish in others, unwilling to claim or be claimed by anyone, by any place. In the end, it is Armand’s place.

Not even a choice, really, it’s as inevitable as all the rest of it. Because this, at least, is really about Armand. at least it is about Armand for Daniel and Louis, who had over-my-figurative-dead-body-ied about it for exactly as long as Armand, in his blood or in his mind, had seemed unsure, or like it was something he deserved in anything other than the best way. So it was years, between Lestat letting it slip and Lestat being asked to make the invitation.

For Lestat, of course, it was always only about Lestat. Which is probably why Lestat is the only one that Armand has ever said anything sto about it directly, first hesitant questions, then arousal- fuelled fantasies, then an anger so vehement Lestat found himself hours later being soothed from it in Louis’ arms, then a kind of melancholy longing combined with, finally, the direct request. Lestat, I would like to see him. I’d like you all to be there. Would you do that for me? Do you think they would, if I asked?

They’ve been waiting for it, petit diablotin. It’s basically true. Somehow, between Louis knowing his mind, Daniel knowing his blood, and Lestat knowing his speech, they manage to decide between them not only what to believe, but what to do.

Then, that it be Armand’s place is pretty much just logistics, even if logistics of an emotional variety. Armand is, it is emerging perhaps actually by nature, something of a homebody. He has moved twice since the fledging of Daniel Molloy and all that followed it, the first time to a small apartment in Deira and the second to a larger unit three blocks away from the first. He painted his walls in similar style, but more impressive detail, as the first place. He prays five times a night, swims once either at Al Mamzar or in the building’s pool, visits with Louis, Daniel or Lestat if they’re in town, rips through mathematics texts or contributes to arcane Linux utilities if they’re not. On Fridays he drinks alcohol in a bar with his human friends, like some sort of bizarre reversed congregational prayer. Which of his lovers is going to tell him he’s wrong?

Well. None of the current ones, anyway.

A windivorce false start that was going to involve Daniel, before It’s a Telenovela

Louis has invited me to his place.

Are you asking for my advice on that?

I guess so.

I thought whatever you two are doing together was going to crash and burn long before this. But it seems to make you happy. So I don’t know. What’s different about going to his place?

It used to be our place, for one thing.

Okay, that sounds bad.

I don’t think I mind that part. The last time I was there, though, I

Armand stares at the message. Deletes it. Types it again, gets stuck at the same word. He types raped someone. Deletes that too. People are very squeamish about that word. Then again, people would be pretty squeamish about what he’d done to Daniel Molloy, too, if he were to describe it any more precisely.

Ok, so just tell him you’d prefer to keep it at your place, if you’re uncomfortable, comes another message from Rory.

He is not going to do that.

It had broken a seal of some kind, apparently, his being dragged back to the penthouse with Lestat, soused, seeing not much more than the hallways between the guest bedroom and the front door. Now Armand has a text from Louis that says Want to come over? and he he kind of wants to ask Lestat about it, but Lestat is back in New Orleans, where the sun has just gone down. So he gets Rory instead, who is sometimes helpful with this stuff. She got to like Louis, once he started coming around to the bar again, which helps. But she can’t help with something she doesn’t understand.

Okay, you’re right. Thank you, he sends to her, and then proceeds to not take her advice in the slightest.

Daniel and Louis beating each other up in the alley, like Leatat didn’t let us see

Louis looks good. Really, really good, like something’s different about him from the last time he and Daniel were face to face. Maybe spending so much time with Lestat is rubbing off on Daniel, and he’s starting to see the man through his maker’s obsession-tinted glasses. Or maybe it’s just what a good divorce does to a guy. Not that it had worked that way for Daniel. Come to think of it, Louis is, as they say, glowing from the inside out in the exact way Daniel’s ex-wives probably did the moment they were rid of him.

Glowering, as well as glowing. He’s in the alley behind the venue, around the corner from the stage entrance, and he really is standing there like they’re about to have a brawl.

“You ready to go?” Louis says, and he’s got a little grin on his stupid smug face, like he knows Daniel isn’t. He was just fucking talking, man. And now he’s got Rashid and Raglan on his ass, and more pertinently, waiting right around the corner to burst in on this little rendezvous, and— well, they probably could not give less of a shit whether Daniel gets beat up or not. We observe, we record, but we never interfere— no, wait, that’s a line from TV. It’s hard not to mix up his own life with supernatural-themed nineties television schlock, these days. Lestat has that effect.

“Come on, man,” he tries, which never works, this tactic has a zero per cent success rate and he knows it, why’s he even bothering, “can’t we just—”

Louis’ fist collides with the side of his face so hard that he simply falls over, like dead weight, like the dead body he is.

armand offers to help louis learn to enjoy being penetrated

”It doesn’t hurt you too much, huh?” Louis says one night, snuggling up behind Armand, clothes still half-on, the night’s young, nowhere to be, for him at least. He doesn’t really give a shit about Armand’s curfew. Seems like more and more, Armand doesn’t give a shit about his curfew either.

It’s mostly idle speculation. They’ve established pretty solidly by now that Armand likes to be hurt, wouldn’t mind if Louis came up with new ways to do it. But he likes to be a little pathetic when he’s in pain, big eyes, little sobs. Louis likes it, it’s cute, but it’s not exactly subtle. So he’s pretty sure he’d notice if it hurt Armand to have Louis’ member pushed into him. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t.

“Hmm?” Armand is not really listening. He’s twisting himself around, twining their necks together in some strange contorted way that lets them feel each other pulse to pulse.

“Me fucking you. It doesn’t hurt at all?”

“No,” Armand says breathily. “You can try to make it hurt more, if you like?”

Louis snorts. “No,” he says. “Well— alright, but I was just thinking. The times I did that side of things. Always hurt, couldn’t do it without a bite to get me a bit out of it.”

Those big gaslamp eyes. ”If you consistently experience pain upon penetration,” Armand says seriously, “there are likely psychological factors at play.”

“Uh-huh,” says Louis. “Whereas you have no psychological factors. At all.”

“Yes,” says Armand. The tiniest corner of his lip twitches. Louis pulls at it with his thumb, tries to pry out the smile. He gets a half-hearted snap of fangs instead, too easily avoided. Pushes a finger inside Armand’s mouth, rough, feeling around the edges of his teeth. Armand closes his eyes and moans softly and lets him do it.

“If you would like me to… help you,” Armand says, when Louis pulls his fingers out. “If you’d like to try. I would be…”

A dull thud of fear, in the pit of Louis’ stomach. He glances around the room nervously, out of habit, but whatever ghost of Lestat lives in his mind hasn’t been showing up much lately. And he certainly wouldn’t have much to gloat about, if he were here right now. All he could do is call to mind again awkward nights of trying to breathe deep, trying to get through the first stabs of pain so it could feel good, like Lestat promised him it would. He did want it. And once he had the bite, some other pain more easily transmuted into pleasure, it came more easily. But never without it. An odd thing to feel a failure at. Part of him felt no shame at all, maybe even a little pride: not made for this, for submitting to an act like that. But the more he tried to hold on to that pride, the worse it all felt.

He pinches Armand’s cheek, runs a hand slowly down his side. He’s a little warm, probably had a few sips of whatever had been on the menu at the theatre that night, but nothing more. “Yeah?” he says, and tries to call up a bravado he doesn’t entirely feel. Yet. Armand has a way of pulling it out of him. “Little Arun’s gonna teach me how to take a cock?”

Armand presses his groin in. Louis can feel him, hard. He’s got a nice cock, Armand does, nice and clean and pretty, foreskin snipped off, smaller than Lestat’s by a good bit. “Little Arun learned from the best,” Armand breathes, “as should you, Maître.”

“Christ, Armand, you can’t say shit like that.” But he can, and does, Louis’ confused arousal seems to delight him, and Louis had started it. And he’s still hard, he’s gotten harder, which means this is already going better than any of his previous attempts at this act. So, sure.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay, you can— will you suck me first? Just…” Make me forget what’s going to happen for a bit, he means.

Armand scoffs, and finishes the job undressing them. “As if you could prevent me,” he says. And well, it is true in the narrowest technical sense that if Armand wanted to suck Louis’ cock Louis would not be physically capable of preventing him, but that’s not what he means, not the kind of thing they think about right now, what he really means is there is no possible chance that Louis would want to, because Armand is very good at this.

“Probably not,” Louis says, lifting his hips to let Armand finish undressing him.

“If a man understands my art, he becomes my slave; if he doesn’t, I become his,” Armand says as he settles in between Louis’ legs, obviously quoting something, Louis doesn’t really care what. He’s a bit too far to reach properly, but Louis manages to swat at the edge of Armand’s temple with his fingertips.

“I mean it,” he says, “cut that shit out,” and then Armand swallows his cock down, and he stops worrying about it.

Armand sucks Louis’ cock like it’s for his own pleasure, like he’s seeking every sensation he can possibly get from the contact of member and mouth. Down his throat, flicked around with his tongue, rubbed by the soft insides of his cheeks. As soon as it starts, Louis has to force himself not to change his mind and order Armand to keep doing this, only this. But he’s been trying new things, hasn’t he, and sometimes it even works out, Paris, being on the outside looking in, the photography, the salons— nothing ventured, nothing gained, and Louis feels a little feverish with it, the pace of things, the freedom, how easy it is to decide to be something and then go out and do it. He can decide on this. But god, Armand’s tongue. If getting fucked happened with a tongue instead of a cock, that’d be just—

Armand raises his head, spit-slick mouth hanging slightly open. And— shit. This vampire business, the coven, these pack creatures who are always brushing up against each others’ thoughts. It’s second nature to them, a whole hidden realm of tone and timbre that Louis is a novice in, but yes, he was thinking that rather loudly. He often does. If he hadn’t been able to keep it from Claudia’s hearing, how could he have a hope with Armand, Armand right here, between his thighs?

Armand looks stunned. And then he pushes Louis thighs farther apart and starts burrowing down, like he’s been ordered down there, which he pretty much has been. “Hey,” Louis pants, trying to sit up, trying to grab for a fistful of his hair and not quite catching it, “Armand, no, I didn’t mean— it was just a stray thought, it wasn’t real, you don’t need to do it—”

“I want to,” Armand says.

aww armand was going to whip louis nicely

“It doesn’t have to hurt.”

Louis laughs. “It’s a whip, Armand. Pretty sure it does.”

“You make it hurt for me because I like it that way.” Armand stares at him, eyes wide, like he’s missing something obvious.

this one will only make sense if you have seen both Talk Radio and Hotel Portofino

If you can’t spill your guts figuratively to the guy you spilled them to literally, who can you? “I mean,” says Barry, “I was always a regular kind of guy, you know? That was the whole thing. People called in to tell me all about how weird and fucked-up they were because I was kinda just neutral on the whole thing. I had everyone’s opinions, but more. I know about the world because most things that have happened to other people, have happened to me. And vice versa. A botched political assassination isn’t a thing that’s happened to most people.”

“Well,” says Dr. Sengupta placidly, “it happened to me.”

idk where this was going to go but Daniel is being weirdly nice to Armand

“You don’t pray any more.”

Armand looks over at him. He’s lying on his belly on the mattress, toes making vague shapes in the air. His hair falls in his eyes as he turns them on Daniel. It’s completely absurd.

“Stop– stop fucking looking at me like that. When I try to ask you something serious.”

“Looking at you like what?”

The idea that Armand is not aware of how ridiculously appealing he is is too stupid to contemplate, so Daniel just ignores it. “When we first met. This time. When you were pretending to be a servant named Rashid, I saw you praying, a single time. I asked you how Muhammad felt about vampires, which was rude as shit, but I can’t say you’ve exactly given a satisfactory answer since. Was it all part of the decoy? If it was, it was stupid to assume I can’t at least recognise Arabic when I hear it. Or don’t.”

Armand’s fingers tap on his crossed arms. He’s a shit liar, Daniel is aware of that much, but the charming thing about him is he has no idea he’s a shit liar, so sometimes his lies are almost convincing just because they’re so guileless. It’s gotten him pretty far, considering.

“It’s easy to pray in Dubai,” he says. “Five calls to prayer a day– you’d need better insulation than the penthouse had for even a day-sleeper to miss them. A sticker on the ceiling of every public room pointing to Mecca.”

“Okay,” says Daniel. He pushes himself up to sitting, so he can look down at him and because he enjoys that he can do things like sit cross-legged on a bed without his hips and knees and back reminding him of his closeness to death. “Hate to break it to you, but I don’t get the urge to drop to my knees just because there’s a sticker on the ceiling.”

One of Daniel’s feet is sticking out. Armand places his cheek on it, like a pillow, and closes his eyes, nuzzling. Weirdo. Daniel spread his hands in a gesture of defeat, even though Armand can’t see it, unless he can see through his eyelids, which is totally possible. “Okay. Fine. You don’t have to– I’m not recording, okay, I’m not taking notes, I’m not working on the next book because frankly I’m too busy having more sex than I ever remember having when I was alive to work on a book. I’m just asking because–”

We’re in this life together now. Or I want to know about you. Or, god forbid, Because I care. He isn’t sure if it’s Armand who wouldn’t want hear those things, or if he just can’t say them. The last time Daniel had made declarations like that, he hadn’t exactly knocked it out of the park with the follow-through.

No, that’s a lie. He knows. Armand wants to hear them. Armand is a black hole of wanting, like a child who has been kept on rations for so long he doesn’t know there’s such a feeling as eating to satiation.

some sort of danloumand thing

He leans against the back of the couch. Louis has an arm around his shoulders, and Armand is back to sitting on the floor, his head leaning gently against Daniel’s hip. He closes his eyes.

His eyes have been closed long enough that he’s lost track of time when Louis’ voice murmurs in his ear: “You good for a nap, baby boy?”

Daniel forces his eyes open, because he is not actually an old man any more, but baby boy is going a little far. Louis is smirking right in his face but Armand has stood up, and is peering down at him with his arms clasped behind his back. It’s barely even four in the morning; there’s no reason for him to be nodding off like this, except that perhaps Louis didn’t quite give him as much blood as the two of them managed to take together. He tries to shake it off. “‘mfine,” he says.

Louis pats a hand through his hair, pushing him back against the couch. “You sleep,” he says. “Armand and I are gonna take it to the bedroom to have our fun, okay?”

Daniel tries to snap awake. “Oh,” he says. “Do you want– I can–”

This time it’s Armand pushing him back down, lips on his forehead, his fingertips actually physically pushing Daniel’s eyelids closed, which is weird as hell. “Nothing you’ll be sorry to miss,” he says in Daniel’s ear. “Louis will wake you when you’re needed.”

Seems like it was going to be a follow-up to the post-auction loumand eyefucking fic, and also, it’s titled “hot peppers” so jot that down

Armand wakes as the sun slips below the horizon and, for the first time in a very long while, pauses before he rises from the bed.

He can be quiet. He’ll turn on the tap slowly, whisper almost silently in the short front entranceway of the hotel room. No, in the bathroom. He can be quiet so long as he doesn’t stumble, judges the distance between the bed and the bathroom door correctly, between his hands and the tap, which is no longer a guarantee. He swallows.

Slowly, he rolls over and picks up his phone. Opens the contacts, scrolls through. He’s not really going to text anyone, but it’s become a habit, looking at the numbers. Everyone wants to give you their phone number, when you come in. The situation under which you are supposed to use them is both unspecified and obvious. He is not sure if this is one of them. He had texted one, a thirty-years-sober woman named Jules who had given him her number by sending him a photograph of her dog humping a pillow, once. A friend of mine just died, he’d said, and when she asked if he wanted to share anything about the friend, all he could think of to say was, No. There is nothing he wants to share of Lestat with anyone; he has never had even enough for himself, let alone to share around. Still.

I slept with my ex, and now I’m afraid to get up and pray because he might hear and— and what? Make him stop? Laugh at him?

something scary titled “venice”

“And is he kind to you?”

“Yes,” says Amadeo. “Very kind.”

He has told the truth. He does not know why the other boy keeps looking at him, quizzically, as if trying to figure out a puzzle. Then the corner of his mouth pulls into a strange little smirk.

“Maybe a bit too kind, huh,” he says, and despite the strange bitter expression his voice his gentle. “Andrei is the favourite of our master. Andrei! Come meet our new friend Amadeo, He has come here to buys some [whatever the hell he’s buying]. He is the favourite of Marius, the Roman.”

…

  • tries to stand, dizzy
  • my master just… last night… the blood

“After so long? if he is gentle with you, and uses oil, there should be no blood…”

“Ah,” Amadeo sits back down, and the dizzy spell subsides. Six worried faces looking at him from around the table. “No, not— there is never any blood there, when he enters, but when he takes it…”

“Takes?” says Andrei.

Everyone is still looking at him. Waiting for an explanation.

There is a buzzing in between his ears as if of flies. The kind faces of his friends seem to recede in front of his eyes. Like he is on a ship, or they are, pulling insistently away from the shore, a vast impassable gulf opening where there was none before. He had thought— why had he thought it? Nobody had ever said. But then, nobody had ever said much of anything else that takes place in the master’s bed, either. Why would you need to? Everyone knows.

But they don’t know. Nobody knows this but Amadeo. Alone.

“Amadeo,” says Andrei. “What does he do to you?”

“Nothing,” says Amadeo, and the ship recedes over the horizon. They’re gone. He forces a laugh. “Well, maybe I bled a little. Nothing of it, it wasn’t so bad.”

Riccardo fiddles with his empty glass. Andrei clenches and unclenches a fist, then sighs and rubs at his eyes. Luca, whose master is cruel, looks like he is about to say something, then doesn’t.

“I should go,” says Amadeo. “I…. he’s back tonight, I should…”

Everyone nods.

He tries. He tries so, so hard not to go to him. He can’t. Marius will see it, peer into his soul and know,

AND ARMAND WHAT???? WHAT DID HE DO???

The first time Daniel Molloy was invited into a vampire’s lair he was twenty, and— well, anyway.

The second time was two weeks later, so he was still twenty, and he still doesn’t remember it. He does remember the lair, though, because it was for him, a last sorry-for-the-torture-try-not-to-die-too-soon gift, and he still lives in it. Hasn’t continuously, because Alice hadn’t thought a Lower East Side co-op an appropriate place to raise children. But something in Daniel, the part of him that thought he’d bought it but couldn’t quite figure out how, had rebelled at the idea of selling it, rented the place out while the kids were growing up, and moved right back in when the inevitable happened.

The third time he was sixty-nine, and it went better than the first time, mostly, depending on your definition of better.

The fourth time was three years later, and depending on your philosophical inclination, it could be argued that he was still sixty-nine, when his vampire maker decided to emerge from his haze of post-divorce masturbatory navel-gazing bullshit and actually communicate with his fledgling.

After that, he started getting invited to vampire lairs pretty often. Lestat, pleased enough with the outcome of the interview despite uncomfortable revelations, likes to fly him out to wherever the fuck just for the rumours it generates, which aren’t really rumours because yes, once he’s there, well, it would just be cruel not to, if Lestat doesn’t get fucked on a regular schedule he literally starts crying, which to be fair he also does about absolutely everything else, but still. Louis, who it turns out had been fucking Armand in an ex-husbands way the entire time, get remarkably friendlier once he no longer needs to keep his mind locked down whenever Daniel gets remotely near it. And Armand—

windivorce, a false start on the fic that ended up having Lestat sewing Armand into a tapestry instead

Armand is learning a lot about the power of neutral locations. Why they need one for this, he isn’t sure, but he had provided: a hookah lounge open 24 hours, close enough to Armand’s place that even Louis will be able to make it there quickly if they decide to make the location less neutral.

Louis is fiddling with the pipe obliviously. Lestat, beside him, is staring into Armand’s eyes, knocking around on the edges of his mind. “Your gremlin wants to know why we can’t just go to his place,” Lestat says.

“Because, Armand,” says Louis, “you are extremely powerful and, don’t take this the wrong way, completely off your rocker, and Lestat is frightened of you.”

Lestat pouts. A little bit angrily, if that’s a way one can pout. If anyone can pout angrily, it’s Lestat. “Mmm. That’s true,” he admits. “I see the intention. P’tit diablotin, I don’t suppose you ever kept dogs?”

“Dogs?” says Armand. “No.”

“One must tread carefully, if a new animal is to be added to the kennel,” says Lestat. “They must be introduced on territory neither owns, encouraged to ignore each other to be at ease. That is what Saint Louis is doing.”

“These dogs already took a chunk out of each other once,” Louis points out.

“Mm,” says Lestat, “and they’ll do it again.” The last photo Lestat had asked him to send before getting on a plane to Dubai: fingers in your hole, fangs in your arm. Armand owns a tripod, fortunately. Not for Lestat. Not only for Lestat. He’ll use it for something else, surely, someday. Lestat doesn’t exactly seem frightened, but then, perhaps Louis simply isn’t used to feeling an arousal from Lestat that is tinged with fear. And Armand cannot feel the fear in it for the same reason the fish, in the relevant parable, cannot identify water.

A LIMERICK??????

There once was a coven whose master
Is romantically drawn to disaster
Discreetly he tried to discretely lie
And ended up face down in plaster \

this is called “little rashid.” That seems highly unlikely to be ageplay but I don’t remember what it was going to be. he had an encounter with a vampire as a child? maybe this was something to do with the talamasca show

Daniel Molloy: Alright. We’re here in… oh, can’t say that, can I? Okay this interview is off to a great start. I’m in a super-secret vampire freak clubhouse, and I’m here with a low-ranking vampire freak employee— can you say your name for the recording, please?

Rashid: Rashid.

DM: Rashid…?

R: Yes.

DM: Not even sure I believe that much at this point, but you got a last name?

R: Yes.

DM: Alright, alright, I get it.

R: Mr. Molloy, you have further questions about the history and habits of the vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac and Armand Maurius. I have been dispatched to provide clarity on several points relevant to your research. It is a gesture of goodwill in reciprocation for the editorial concessions which you have graciously made. My employer is not averse to the public pursuit of truth. I am a conduit for the truth, not its subject. Much like yourself.

DM: Gracious concessions. Sure. Let’s go with that.

R: Let’s.

DM: Alright. First question: Armand Maurius. Who?

R: From the late fifties onwards, the vampire Armand signed his identity’s legal last name as the same as the vampire Louis, though that name was never de Pointe du Lac. The entities owning the real estate in which we last met were, legally speaking, brothers. I think it is reasonable to assume that, the vagaries of surveillance evasion aside, he would have identified himself with his husband’s name. That said, for the entire life of the Théâtre des Vampires, he was consistently credited as Maurius.

DM: So he, what, wanted a patronymic and didn’t know how to make it?

R: It’s not impossible. However, I am more inclined to believe the name was itself given by his… father.

DM: Marius Maurius? I thought it was de Romanus. Which isn’t that much less goofy, but at least it’s something.

R: The vampire Marius did, and still does, go by de Romanus, a name he gave himself. Though Romanus is an attested cognomen, and it is possible he was given it at birth, he of course added the preposition according to the fashion in the 13th century.Maurus, however, is also a Roman cognomen; it traditionally referenced a place of origin in Roman Mauretania, a province including present-day Algeria and Morocco, inhabited by Berbers. I believe it the name may have occurred to de Romanus as an appealingly familiar description for his exotic ward, as well as being easily alterable to resemble his own name.

DM: Charming. What’s with the I think all of a sudden? You just got done saying you’re nothing but a conduit for Talamasca institutional knowledge.

[Pause]

R: As with any knowledge institution, disagreements exist among the experts. I am presenting my own interpretation of the source materials.

DM: Trouble in paradise, huh? Why do you work for the Talamasca, anyway, Rashid? I mean, look. I’m a fuckup. I was always going to end up… like this. You seem like a reasonably together guy. How the hell did you end up like this?

R: I’m heartened by your confidence.

DM: Yeah, well, a vampire once told me I was a bright young reporter with a point of view, I’m just paying it forward.

[Pause. The sound of a chair scraping against the ground.]

DM: Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I get it, nothing about you. I mean it, though, for what it’s worth. You must have had other options.

[Chair sounds again. The recording device gets moved a few inches, loud scraping.]

R: No. I didn’t.

DM: Okay. All right. Next question. My maker’s eating habits; what’s with that?

R: What do you wish to know? A desire to eat ethically, within the bounds of health and inclination, is hardly an unusual trait. Do you never take the details of your meals’ family lives or social impacts into account, when you choose your victims?

DM: I mean, I’ll never turn down a childless cop, but come on.

R: Your’re referring to the ritualistic aspect.

DM: I’m referring to the part where you brought a victim right into their dining room so that he could let loose a bit of abuse and then get run down in the streets, yeah.

R: I think you’ll find, with Armand, that there are always two motivations, and they are very nearly always the same ones: his maker, and his faith. In this case,

three little bits of a Louis/Stack (Sinners) thing

The Vampire Lestat show in town. They say the force of the fans dancing can be recorded by seismic instruments up to six kilometers away, which is why Louis always insists on a hotel more than six kilometers from the venue. Won’t go near the concert itself, but he doesn’t mind the hotels. Doesn’t mind the way Lestat is when he gets back from a show.
…

“I look like a boy to you?”

Louis steps in close. Doesn’t let the warmth in his belly show on his face more than a little tug at the corner of his mouth, can’t tip his hand, same as the other vampire, who stands his ground and stares him down.

“Not from here,” he says. “But you pussy-licker types always look a bit smaller when I’ve got you alone.”

The vampire pulls a face. “I don’t trust a man who’s never licked a pussy,” he says, and he’s staring at Louis’ mouth appraisingly, like he’s about to tell him to open up to have his tongue inspected for defects.

Louis almost does it, is the thing. “Didn’t say I never have,” he shrugs. “Just been… a while.” He falters. He should not have said that. He should not have called it to mind, Lily is hardly the worst of the losses lestat had inflicted on him, just a blip in the grand scheme of his life, but even so, he has lost his appetite for playing the dutiful husband, waiting politely for Lestat to come home from work and regale him with tales of minor technical mishaps before they can get to anything interesting.

The other vampire sees it. Can probably feel it or hear it, too. He should press his advantage.
…
Stack lights two cigarettes and passes one to Louis. He accepts it in with a feeling like nostalgia; cigarettes were not a feature of either Leatat or Armand’s childhoods, so neither acquired the habit more than circumstantially, and both forgot about it as soon as smoking went out of fashion. It’s nice to sleep with someone of the right vintage to consider a post-fuck smoke to be a default ritual.

Some things, you just can’t say to people who care about you too much. “You ever think on how you’d go out?” Says Louis. “If you were going to.”

“Hell no,” says Stack. “Don’t need to think on it. I know I’d go down to the Delta, lie down on my brother’s grave, and wait for the sunrise. So that—“ he balances the cigarette between his teeth, raises his arms slowly, like he’s lying there right now, watching it— “last thing I see, is a sunrise. You?”

“Sounds nice,” says Louis. “Sunrises, though, not really my thing. Haven’t decided.”

before Malik

“I’d like to hunt tomorrow.”

Louis sets his book down. It’s not exactly a momentous pronouncement, but Armand sits down on the bed beside him as he says it and is glancing over, as if the sentence isn’t finished.

“During the day?” He asks. “With Daniel here?” It’s not exactly an objection. Louis had been thinking, even before Armand offered himself to put on a show, that it was unfortunate that his own relatively sanitized eating habits didn’t quite give the full picture of the horror of it. Damek had stumbled a little, sure, and maybe Louis had gone a bit harder on him than usual to produce the effect— but Daniel has never looked a human being in the eye, knowing they were about to be drained dry and their corpse cast aside like a husk. It would be good for him, to at least do that.

Armand nods, following along, an easy wordless thought they skim off the tops of each other. “I’ll have Rashid bring him into the room, then,” he says, “for him to get a good look.”

“Good,” says Louis, and Armand is still looking at him sweetly, wanting something else, and he adds, “I give you permission to hunt tomorrow then, Arun, since it’ll be useful for me as well.”

There it is, that’s what he wanted. Armand relaxes as if he’d been worried about being refused, then climbs over to straddle Louis’ knees, Sits back, ass resting on Louis’ thighs, sliding his arms around his neck. “Thank you, Maitre,” he breathes. It’s nice to hear it, at the end of a long session. They’ve been keeping it— well, not exactly professional, that would hardly suit the subject, but sedate, in front of Daniel, at least since Armand put away the gloves and contact lenses. No Maitre, no ordering Armand to his knees to carry out his part of the conversation from the floor, not even very much of pinching the skin of his back out of sight to see his effort to hold still.

was going to be a thing where Louis and Armand exactly recreate all of Louis’ Lestat-inflicted injuries on Lestat. also it’s a sex thing

They smear together sometimes, his boys, his ancient monsters. Not because they’re similar but because they aren’t, because they become something greater, or perhaps just weirder, than the sum of their parts. Louis says and does things to Lestat-and-Armand that he would never with either alone. Or maybe it’s just that they smear together literally, Christ, like they’re trying to preserve their modesty from each other by only fucking when covered head-to-toe in each others’ blood.

So maybe that’s it, they’re one thing, this entity whose pieces Louis had thought could never come together until it turned out the gravity well of himself not only drew together but also transformed them. He doesn’t remember, later, which one of them he even had his cock in when he said it, it would make sense if it were Lestat, wouldn’t it, or maybe he was doing something else to Lestat, or maybe Armand was, for sure at least the physical body of Lestat de Lioncourt must have been having something done, whatever it was, when Louis said knew you’d learn to take it, sweet little slut, you’d let me do anything to you, you’d let me cut you open, you’d let me do to you exactly what you did to me, you’d like that, you little monk, doing penance—

He was just talking. Fuck’s sake, he was actively thrusting into someone, or something, you don’t make important plans with your dick wet, you don’t need to be an expert in strategic planning or dickwetting or both to know that.

zamasian marimand roleplay

“Is this,” says Assad.

He’s hovering around the door of the bathroom. Eric is kneeling, a slightly awkward position, one knee on the ground and his face slightly sweaty from effort or steam as he leans over to check the temperature of the water. “What?” he half-yells over the sound of the tap.

Is this what? Normal? Definitely not. Okay? Eric claims it’s more than. Going to make it weird between us? Ha. If nothing up to this point has, then this doesn’t seem likely to be the line. Still. Eric is still waiting for him to finish the sentence, his head turned, eyebrow raised.

“Stupid,” Assad mutters. “Maybe this was a stupid idea.”

Eric turns off the water. Steam rises from the bathtub, a faint sheen of bubbles from something he’s poured in there coating the surface. That doesn’t seem very authentic. Smells nice, though. “In you get, little boy,” he says.

Assad just stares. What, just— undress and clamber in, right now, with Eric watching him? This was stupid. He can’t do this. He shouldn’t be doing any of this, isn’t the kind of person this shit can happen to without blowing up spectacularly, he—

Eric is beckoning to him. Eric is right in front of him when he doesn’t go, shaking his head like he’s not mad, just disappointed. “Yes,” he says, as if Assad had said no. “It’s for your own good.”