you are most welcome

Perhaps he's just getting old. That's what happens, isn't it, supposedly, to people who live long enough to experience old age— you lose the drive for excitement, for the illicit and dangerous, if you ever had them. Louis wanders down the pedestrian walk spread out beneath the Jumeirah Beach Residences complexes, the pristine stone streets that he had watched people scuttle around on like ants as the movers set up their new apartment according to the plans he and Armand had drawn up weeks ago, and wonders if he ever really did. He'd never chosen that life, not really. If he'd been born into a family in proper industry, where the eldest son could put on his good clothes as the sun rose, do his business under its light and be home in time for dinner, well, things would have been different. He would have been suited to that life, probably, reading by the fire in the evening and setting the book aside regretfully as the hour gets late, getting a good night's sleep. Closing the shutters against the howls and shivers of the night. Not his affair.

But instead he got the life he got, and suited himself to it. He made the best of it, of course, because the night has always been the time that a man with his tastes can find them met. Seedy bars, blood laced with something different every night. Fights with the missus, well, Armand was just obliging the inevitable; that's a part of the life, isn't it, pre-ordained for men like him no matter who fills their bed. But he never really liked it, did he? He didn't do it because he was enjoying himself. It was simply the only option.

So here they are, now, in Dubai, and Louis is out, taking a walk by himself while Armand waits patiently for him at home, just like always. Except it feels different. Perhaps it can be different now that he's old enough, perhaps the mind gets old even if the body doesn't, or perhaps they are just finally in the right place.

Because here is a night that is not seedy, at least not within the narrow confines of this glittering bubble. Here is a night fit for habitation by that other eldest son, the one who donned his suit by day. The air is warm and gentle, and the walk is full of people, upstanding respectable people, and the shops are open until two in the morning, and they are the same shops respectable men buy clothes and food and trinkets from by day. It seems incredible that they are here they are, lights on, doors open, for him.

He has no particular desire to buy any of the things for sale here, and even less use for them. He has never gotten into the habit of buying ill-fitting clothing from racks in stores. Still, it feels suddenly imperative that he buy something. He had been skeptical, when Armand suggested Dubai, but Armand had sworn that Louis would like it, as if that were a thing he could swear and simply make it true by his own doing. Well, he had been right. They're usually right about each other, is the thing. Sometimes that only makes it worse, to know someone so completely and be still so unable to reach them. But right now, it's good. He feels as though he's been reached. He does like it.

He weaves into the shops, no clear delineation between street and mall. A grand painted staircase leading to the upper levels of a hotel. He wishes that he could eat food. It would feel right to stop at a restaurant, sit and be served and let something of this place pass right through him. Perhaps he ought to try it, though not tonight. A skilled chef could work with him to find something edible to make him, surely. There are square white booths distributed on the road side of the walkway, as well, and he wavers and nearly allows a man from one of them to attempt to sell him cologne. Once he starts holding out samples for him to smell, though, Louis demurs. For all that he could simply throw the stuff away if he didn't like it, it feels like too big a decision, to simply choose something from the side of the road for himself. Scent means more than taste. To choose one scent over another is to make a statement about one's self, and he hadn't meant to do that tonight. Only to go for a walk.

He finds himself inside, in front of a more frivolous store. Not a single object in it seems to have any discernible use, and perhaps that is what draws him in; that these things are not just useless for vampires, but for everyone. That makes them easy. Many of the displays are of small figurines or stuffed toys. He stops in front of one of them.

He'd owned something like this once, he remembers suddenly. The face of the servant girl who made it swims in front of his eyes, but he can't quite remember her name. He remembers her as eternally around seventeen, probably, and she had mostly been responsible for keeping him out of the way before he started school, so she must have been not more than twelve when he was born, and had made him a cat when he was small, the very popular kind that came as a kit to be sewn and stuffed. He realises now that she must surely have bought it herself, for Florence would not have purchased such a thing for her son to have. But once he had it he had been allowed to keep it, and the girl who made it had been called upon dozens of time to repair ripped seams in the the thing as he dragged it around the house.

He doesn't remember when that girl had left the household, or what had happened to the cat. He does remember seeing the kits for sale, once, after Claudia. By then they'd expanded the line to lots of animals; a dog, a monkey, a rabbit. He'd hovered his hand over them, then left it. They'd had no domestics but the charwoman, by that point; who would he have to make it? And he had never really known Claudia's mind, what would please her or send her into a rage. What if she didn't want it?

He is staring a large rabbit in the face. It is nothing like the old Arnold dolls. The material is not scratchy painted cloth, but a synthetic fur of some kind. It has long floppy ears and a rounded little belly, dainty pads sewn onto its paws. It has impossibly large, beseeching eyes.

He reaches out to touch it, hesitantly. Nobody comes running up and tells him he ought not to, so he picks it up. It's surprisingly heavy. It makes you want to hold it close to you. The material is impossibly soft, softer than a real animal could ever be, nearly uncanny.

He puts it back. Yes, he had come here to purchase something useless, but not something degrading. He'd had his time for soft dolls, very long ago. He cannot rewind, unbecome the man he became after the cat was lost and forgotten, after he was suited, after he left the house in the evening with his dagger sheathed, lies and flattery light on his tongue.

But—

Arriving home always feels like arriving home, even if you have just moved there. The penthouse apartment still smells a little odd; perhaps it's the plaster, or just the fact of no vampires having ever lived there before. But he feels Armand, knows he is sitting on the sofa in the living room. He is not pretending to do something else, no pretence to doing anything other than waiting for Louis.

It irritates him, some nights. Sometimes it makes him want to hurt Armand, convince him to want something other than this through sheer force of brutality. Which never works, of course, it only makes Armand place him ever more centrally in his personal universe. Tonight, he just takes off his shoes, like Armand prefers, and pads in slippers into the living room.

"How was your evening?" asks Armand.

"Was good," says Louis. "I like it here."

As if his entire existence were riding on that binary verdict, Armand relaxes. He seems to melt into the couch, turning his head to smile at Louis, watch him walk around to settle next to him.

Louis slings an arm over his shoulder, and Armand leans into him. It is so good to know someone. Sometimes he hates what he knows of Armand, but he does know him. He pulls the bag up from the floor, and swallows.

"I…" he'd thought it would be obvious, what to say, how to tell him. That he had to buy it, and could not buy it for himself, not with who he is, how he is. But. "I saw— I just thought. I had one like it, when I was a kid, and I just thought maybe you…"

I was deprived of nothing, Armand had told him once, fiercely. Nothing. Don't you dare.

Armand stares at the rabbit. He holds it loosely at first, then his long fingers dig in to the silky fur, as if just registering its texture, rubbing at it with the same kind of disbelief Louis had felt. Then he pulls it close to him, and presses its little face to the side of his neck, hooking his chin over the thing's shoulder. "Thank you," he says. "I like it."

Louis pulls him in, his back to Louis' chest, his chin over Armand's shoulder like Armand is to him what the toy is to Armand. He wraps his arms around Armand's waist and holds him. Outside, the welcoming night is still alive. He stares out the window. They will be all right, here. They will be happy.

End Notes

There is in fact a mumuso open until two in the freaking morning at Jumeirah Beach Residence.

Louis' cat... he's too old to have had the rabbit but here one is...