Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Armand groans as their destination comes into view– he should have guessed as they walked, but he'd held out hope that there was some other place on this street Khayman was interested in tonight, rather than the same bar they'd been to three times this month. "You are doing this on purpose," Armand hisses into Khayman's ear. His tone is only mock-betrayed; he is fully capable of interacting with Louis, these days, and it isn't as if Louis has even approached the past three times they've been here.

He's still nervous, perhaps. Armand knows how he and Khayman look together. They aren't lovers in any formal sense, but their casual affection, the way they stand practically piled atop each other, the way their heads tilt towards each other when they share thoughts. And it isn't as if they haven’t been still more intimate together, though it feels to them like play between friends– Armand isn’t sure that Louis would appreciate the semantic difference. If he cares to notice their presence at all.

"I cannot confirm or deny," Khayman says primly. He takes Armand's arm and tugs him closer. “It's simply a good bar.”

Dracula’s Daughter is a strange combination of refined– Louis’s tastes evident in every flourish– and raw, with the obvious fledgling bent of the clientele. Armand thinks that even if he were here without Khayman he would be the oldest of anyone here by two or three times. Together, in a room with no humans to speak of, they stand out dramatically, a small void opening around them as they walk.

Louis is here, too; the distant brush of his mind familiar as anything to Armand, but he does not reach out. Neither does he close his mind firmly. Let Louis come to see him if he wishes.

He and Khayman forgo the blood on offer at the bar and Khayman leads Armand onto the dance floor by the hand with a little bow as if they are about to start a ballroom dance. It is not the first time he and Khayman have danced together, and it's always a delightful blend of anachronisms. Khayman usually leads, if either of them does, and he pulls out any move that comes to his mind, as scattered and yet compelling as a conversation with him tends to be. But Armand can hardly focus on his usually grounding touch, occupied with whether or not Louis has noticed their repeated patronage, whether he will.

“Hmm,” Khayman says, stopping them mid-dance, the fledglings continuing to part around them. He looks Armand in the eye and a wordless conversation shimmers between them, visual and textural impressions: Khayman's perception of Armand's tension, his reassurance, Armand's decision that no, he doesn't want to leave, but he doesn't want to dance yet either, is not yet ready tonight to be looked at. They come to agreement nearly simultaneously: they will get drinks, Armand will light a cigarette, they will sit in one of the darker corners and Khayman has thought of a story he'd like to share. The ease of it relaxes Armand a fraction before they've even left the floor.

He takes his cigarette case from his pocket as they walk. There may have been people sitting at the far corner of the bar before they walked up, but they disperse before Armand really bothers to register them. When Khayman sits on a barstool and Armand leans on the bar beside him, they are nearly the same height.

“You had a story?” Armand prompts, letting himself relax a touch into Khayman's side.

“Yes! Thank you, kianga.” Khayman opens his mind, the contours of it already familiar to Armand after only a year of friendship. Armand accepts the invitation and immediately he is surrounded with humid, salty air, wood worn to the softness of velvet from repeated human touch beneath his hand. A language that Armand, here and now, does not recognize, but that the Khayman of memory does, flows around him. There are twenty or so people in the large canoe that carries them. Khayman's skin is beginning to itch uncomfortably in the sun. He has only discovered perhaps 200 years ago or so that it can no longer destroy him, but it is still not quite comfortable.

When night falls it is a relief, and Khayman gently nudges away the mind of the human on watch as he slips over the side of the canoe to swim. The ocean is filled with the strange electric impulses and nebulous minds of its creatures, most as simple as any small mammal or lizard but many with bursts of surprising intelligence. The sharks are in the former category, placid and single-minded and content. Khayman likes them for this reason. Somewhere around his thousandth year and continents away from his former human life, he sometimes finds his own mind a tense and scattered place. A shark thinks only of efficiency: bursts of activity to consume energy, periods of calm to conserve it. Their blood is cold and metallic-tasting, but the consciousness it carries is a balm. Khayman drains one nearly as big as himself before releasing it to the scavengers. He digs his nails into the bottom of the canoe alongside the marks of the previous nights and dozes there for a while, the cool blood of the shark and the gentle slide of the water over his skin restoring him for a few hours until he emerges to dry off before sunrise.

Time and place shift, and Khayman is on land, alone except for the blanketing chorus of birds and frogs and insects. Khayman transmits the scent-memory strongly: a complex haze of earth and damp and the pleasant decomposition of a rainforest floor, distant whiff of hearth smoke from the new settlement a few miles away, the notes of blood that hung in the background of every vampire's mind. The blood-smells are subtly different than any Armand has ever experienced. Some are clearly identifiable as pre-industrial humans, some as animals Armand is familiar with– birds, lizards, an alligator– but the closest mammalian scent is unidentifiable to him completely. It is unfamiliar to the Khayman of memory, too, and he is patiently waiting for it to approach.

When it finally emerges from the trees, Armand laughs out loud in delight, half-dissolving the memory around them both.

“No,” he says, the Khayman of now coming into focus as the bar filters back in. “No, you are lying to me.”

“Of course I am not,” Khayman says, grinning. His violet eyes are crinkled up and sparkling.

“That big? A sloth?” Armand pushes his own impression of a sloth at Khayman, from the last time he saw one in a zoo, a slow monkey-sized creature hanging three-legged from a tree branch.

“It was so,” Khayman insists. “I looked it up recently, when I recalled this moment. They grew even bigger than that in earlier years on the main continent– the size of elephants. I never encountered one that large, but look, a museum in Florida keeps their bones. You see?”

“Let's go to Florida,” Armand says, wide-eyed, leaning unconsciously closer as Khayman shows him the image of the giant ground sloth model. “I want to see.”

“Of course, whenever you like.” Armand has forgotten his nervousness, almost forgotten where they are to begin with, so when Louis approaches it is only through long practice that Armand doesn't give an undignified jump.

Armand has seen Louis since Daniel ended things for them, of course; difficult to avoid when there are a limited number of other immortals one can stand. It's still difficult every time to push down the impulse to take his hand, leave a kiss on his cheek. He thinks he can be forgiven for staring a little– thinks it would be impossible for anyone to avoid. Louis has leaned into club wear, tight pants and a cropped mesh top that leaves little to the imagination. Armand has to look away when Khayman gives him a knowing little mental nudge, hoping that Louis hasn't noticed.

***
Louis has properties in a dozen countries across the globe. He has clubs that cater to a certain nighttime clientele in six of them—nine vamp bars in the United States alone. But of all his scattered properties, it’s Dracula’s Daughter, the smallest and least impressive, that he spends the most time in.

Located just north of Mission, not quite in the Castro but not far, in a dilapidated strip that used to house a fill up station and a one hour photo, Dracula’s Daughter reminds Louis of his Storyville days. Only the good parts. Some of his other properties are more exclusive, harder to find, better situated to turn a profit. But this place has charm, and Louis is coming to realize that the longer he lives, the harder that quality is to find in the world.

He’s sitting in the back office, a windowless closet of a room with a large industrial-looking metal desk occupying most of the space, when the door bangs open, revealing his floor manager, Isis.

“He’s back,” she says slyly, leaning on the door frame. She looks all of 25, but was turned two decades ago in a chance encounter with a passing vamp. She’s been working for Louis for nearly three years, and she runs a tight ship.

But she also loves to gossip.

“Oh,” Louis says, noncommittally, pretending to check something on the ancient iMac he inherited when he bought the building.

“With the boytoy.”

Louis snorts. If one of them is a boytoy, it’s definitely Armand—even if he didn’t know his ex-lover’s tastes down to the marrow of his bones, the raw power rolling off the other vampire—Khayman—he’d been hanging off of the other night at the bar would have told him that.

“You weren’t laughing the other night,” Isis says, “when they were practically licking each other in the VIP booth. Leonard said he saw you break a bottle in your bare hand.”

“Leonard exaggerates.”

“Oh, so that wasn’t shards of glass I had to sweep out from under the ice machine earlier?”

Louis opens the top drawer of the desk to avoid looking in her eyes, then shuts it again a moment later. “Just drop it.”

“Drop it like that bottle you broke by the ice machine because your honey has a new bear, got it.”

Surreptitiously, Louis glances over at the tv monitor on the far side of the room, which shows the security feed for several locations around the bar. His eyes immediately find Armand, his dark head bent towards his new companion, a lit cigarette dangling from his long and elegant fingers. A moment later a flash of white teeth as he throws his head back in a laugh, exposing the long line of his throat.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” Louis tells Isis. “Maybe you can go find some more glass to clean up.”

She gives him a shrewd look but doesn’t press, and a few seconds later the door clicks behind her.

Louis takes a breath and counts to one hundred. He’s not nervous—he doesn’t need to be. He’s been successfully socializing with Armand for more than a year, and yeah, there’s sometimes those moments—the thoughtless urge to push a strand of his hair out of his eyes, or the occasional pull to take his hand in a crowded room—but for the most part they’re just cordial acquaintances. Immortal life doesn’t lend itself to holding grudges. Armand, actually, was the one to teach him that. So he’s not nervous, now. That’s not what this is.

The last few times Armand has brought his new man to Dracula’s Daughter, Louis hasn’t bothered to interact with them. He doesn’t want to be that ex—the one that can’t seem to let it go. But, he supposes, he can only ignore them for so long before it starts to look like the opposite, like he’s staying away on purpose out of bitterness or spite. So he stands, hits the power button on the screen of his computer, and makes his way to the floor.

He emerges from the back room into the dim lighting of the bar area, walking slowly but purposefully towards the corner of the bar where Armand and his date are sitting. Armand has always had a kind of flâneur’s languor about him, like he has all the time in the world to sit back and watch the world go by. But not with Khayman. There’s nothing languid about him now. He’s leaning in, his face lit up with avid attention, completely oblivious to Louis’s approach.

“Y’all are gonna drink me out of my supply of O-neg the way you’re carrying on,” Louis says as he arrives, adopting the smooth, proprietor’s smile he perfected a hundred years ago at the Azalea.

Armand turns his head, eyebrows held high above his electric eyes, humor still playing at his lips. Their eyes catch and there’s something—there’s a definite something—that sparks between them. There’s always gonna be something.

“Louis,” he says brightly. “Do you know about the giant sloths?”

Louis looks between Armand and Khayman, their matching enthusiastic expressions.

“I do not.”

Armand nods encouragingly at Khayman. “Tell him, go on.”

Khayman smiles bashfully. “He doesn’t want to hear about the sloths, beloved. He is a busy man with many important concerns.”

Louis frowns slightly at the endearment. And also because he can’t figure out if Khayman is being condescending or not.

“Most of the North American megafauna died out by the late Pleistocene, but ground sloths endured for thousands of years.” Armand delivers this in his teacher voice—a specific cadence he adopts that makes him sound like a cross between an NPR reporter and David Attenborough, adopted whenever he’s explaining something he’s enthusiastic about but trying to pretend he isn’t.

“I might have missed them,” Khayman says, “had I not boarded a boat that managed to wreck off the coast of Hispaniola.” He frowns. “No, that is not its name.”

“They change them on you,” Louis says. “Countries, rivers, mountains—I still can’t get over Czechoslovakia.”

“Who hasn’t gone by many names,” Khayman says, smiling benignly. He looks only about forty or so years old, but he radiates grandfather energy. “I certainly have.”

Louis’s eyes swing to Armand. He’s been waiting, maybe since Paris, maybe since before, for Armand to change names. He’s never understood why of all his names he stuck with this one, Armand, the one forced on him by the cult. The one he used when he betrayed the coven. The one he used when he lost everything in Dubai.

But Armand’s face is impassive. He could be a river or a mountain, some force of nature that exists without reference to whatever names humans choose to call them.

“Their blood is sweet,” Khayman says to Louis. “They dream about avocado trees and the feeling of warm sun drying wet fur.”

Armand beams at Khayman, as though he’s charmed by the eccentricity of it all, and Louis has to admit that in this way Khayman is squarely Armand’s type. He likes oddity, people who aren’t constrained by rules and conventions. Louis had been like that, when they met. It’s not clear to him if he is anymore—he’s had too many uncertainties thrust upon him to be truly free, anymore. He likes the stability he’s built here, the rhythm of running a business, building a brand. Maybe it makes him a little less cool than a six thousand year old vagabond who dresses like Leather Night at the Twin Peaks Tavern, but it’s what Louis needs.

He opens his mouth to make his excuses—he can’t stand by their barstools all night, after all, he’s got a club to run and besides it’s kind of pathetic—when the thumping music that’s been a backdrop to their conversation shifts into a new beat. It’s an old song Louis recognizes from the eighties. Gloria. One of Armand’s favorites, back then. The synthesizers blare, and Armand looks up brightly towards the small, crowded dance floor.

“I love this song!”

He cuts his eyes to Khayman, who immediately rises from their booth, his movements graceful and smooth for someone so thickly muscled.

“I’ll dance with you, beloved.” He holds out his hand and Armand practically wriggles into his arms.

This is not the kind of club where skill at dancing matters much. People mostly rub up against one another and then take themselves to the bathrooms to finish off or get high or both. But Armand takes to the floor with purpose, his tall, willowy frame swaying to the beat while Khayman mostly watches, standing just close enough for Armand to trail his hands across his chest.

It’s stupid to be possessive. He wasn’t even possessive when Armand called him Maître and slept at the foot of his bed every night. But watching them dance all he can think is that should be me.

Memory is a monster. Daniel’s words. Louis, too, is a monster. Does that mean he is constituted out of the aggregate of his recollections? Is he only the sum of these echoes? Strobe lights bounce across the sharp lines of Armand’s face and Louis thinks of a thousand moments with him. Moments of passion or anger, boredom and breathless anticipation. Memory is a river that can drag Louis under without warning, right here and right now. It takes so little for him to get lost in its depths.

He feels a hand on his shoulder and he turns to see Isis, looking at him with some mix of pity and concern.

“They’re not lovers,” she tells him. “You know that, right?”

Technicalities. Semantics. Louis doesn’t really believe her, but even if their relationship is as chaste as ice and as pure as snow, he knows it’s only a matter of what they call it. The feelings are there. Anyone can see that. Louis can see that. Clear as day.

“It’s not my business,” is what he says out loud, turning himself with some effort away from the dance floor. “You let me know if I’m needed.”

He heads back to his office.

***
It’s crowded enough that when Armand first walks through the doors of Dracula’s Daughter the following evening he considers leaving immediately. It isn’t that he minds a crowd, but he came specifically to speak with Louis and that seems inadvisable given how noisy it is, how busily the staff rush about behind the bar filling orders for thirsty customers. He hovers indecisively by the door until the momentum of the crowd carries him forward and then he stands indecisively by the end of the bar.

Probably he should go home.

He’s been pushing the limits of Louis’s tolerance, coming here so frequently. It’s one thing to enter into a period of extended detente with a former lover. It’s another thing entirely to make such frequent excursions to Louis’s territory.

It’s only that last night, when he’d been dancing with Khayman, he’d caught Louis watching them, and he’d seen something on his face—fleeting, glimmering—that had given him… hope? For what, he couldn’t say. And then as soon as he glimpsed it, Louis turned away. Stomped off to the back of the house somewhere and never reemerged.

Who are we going to be to each other? This is the question Armand has wanted to ask every day for the last two years. But of course he hasn’t, because in his heart of hearts he despairs that the answer will be nothing.

The music throbs around him and he glances at the door that leads to the back of the venue. He could just walk back there and find Louis, he thinks, if Louis is even here tonight. He might not be. He isn’t always. He tenses, trying to force his muscles into motion, but is stopped by a hand at his elbow.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon,” Louis says, and Armand has to blink down where the fingers of Louis’ hand are pressed so lightly against his arm. “The drinks ain’t that good.”

Armand gives him a small, compact smile. “Fledglings don’t know the difference,” he tells him. “And anyway, business seems good enough.”

“I don’t see your boyfriend.” Louis retracts his hand and stuffs it into his pocket.

Armand furrows and then unfurrows his brow. The terminology is wrong, but he isn’t sure what he should say to correct it. Khayman is certainly his someone. Not his companion, not his paramour. Some other term not invented yet. Or perhaps a term no one uses anymore. His sweetheart. His comrade. His confidant.

“He isn’t here,” Armand says. “I came to speak with you.”

Louis looks off into the crowd, a practiced aloofness that Armand recognizes because he cultivated it himself, once upon a time. When he had a coven and a theater to run.

“I guess we do that now.”

This is a moment where Armand can suddenly feel how good their separation has been for them. A decade ago, if Louis had said something in that tone of voice, like he was spoiling for an argument, Armand would have given him one. But now, he merely notices the shift in his posture, the stiffness of his neck, and he thinks maybe he can just explain.

“I came to say thank you,” Armand says, impulsively. “For opening your business to me, and to Khayman. Especially Khayman. He’s been alone a long time. He very much enjoys the company of other vampires without the… risks that usually accompany it.”

But Louis doesn’t take it the way he intends. If anything, his posture becomes more rigid.

“Dracula’s Daughter caters to all,” he mumbles, still looking out into the crowd and not at Armand at all. “He’s been good for you, I guess.”

He says it as a statement, not a question. Armand brightens.

“Oh Louis, he’s been marvelous!”

Louis finally turns to him, his eyes reflecting the light of the bar around them. It’s intoxicating, as it always has been, to be underneath that gaze. He feels the familiar prick of desire, not necessarily lust, but a deeper desire to lose himself fully in another.

Maybe it’s the feeling, or maybe it’s the time he’s spent lately with Khayman, mind brushing against mind, but impulsively he steps forward towards Louis and touches his chest.

“Let me show you—let me—“ He doesn’t wait for Louis to answer. He opens his mind and pulls him in.

***

Armand did not want to be at The Vampire Lestat concert, standing still as stone while sweaty young bodies thrashed and screeched around him. He had no need or desire to watch the eponymous vampire writhing about half-naked on stage, glittering with blood sweat and-- well, glitter. Armand was not here for any misplaced love or nostalgia for this man whose disposing of Armand was perhaps the least important of the line of times he'd endured it, if he was to rank them.

Why Armand was here was a question he did not feel the need to ask himself.

Armand tucked himself deeper into the swallowing long coat he wore. He missed the sense of presence that came from standing beside one who knew you better than anyone else in the room, the safety of it that was somehow warm even while all such companions of his had always been cold and dead. Armand had stood alone in his life more often than he hadn't, but every year of it made continuing that way harder, not easier. It was part of why Louis had been such a light to him in Paris, why Armand had bruised his wings so insistently against the lampglass of his withholding. Armand had proven time and time again that he could stand on his own, but how his bones ached with the effort.

There was no relief to be found here, that much was certain. Lestat was less of a light and more an immolating flame, but his fire would not be directed at Armand even if he climbed up on stage now and begged for it-- his songs, his errant thoughts were all for Louis. Well, Armand could understand that. There was a gasping chasm in Armand's mind that he had carved Louis out of, collected carefully the pieces and hid them away in a place that was out of sight but ached with their weight. Ironically, Armand thought this was something Lestat might understand well. But to speak to Lestat would be to violate that tomb and Armand understood now that he was standing here before him that he was not willing to do that.

There had been little point in coming here and there was less in staying. Armand began to shoulder his way between dancing humans, pressing for the exit.

—Won't you stay to the end, young one? I have been to quite a few of these now and he always ends with the most lovely melancholic acoustic piece.

Armand froze in place and instinctively brought time with him, halting the concert around him for a moment, but it started back up after only a stutter without his permission. The sensation was as if someone had gently taken time out of his fist and started it again, as unobtrusive and yet inexorable as the voice that had just spoken to him. Most vampires could not speak telepathically to Armand when he was as locked down as he was now, and never once past his fledglinghood had he met someone with the power to override his own. For a heart-stopping moment he wondered if it could be Santino, or even-- but no, even if he wouldn't have recognized them immediately, this presence was far older even than them.

Armand's fear turned to intrigue, and he scanned the crowd until he found him: standing as still as Armand himself. He was short, well-muscled, smiling, dressed-- well, like most of the other people here, like Lestat himself. Tight leather pants and a studded harness over his chest and heavy boots, red handkerchief tucked in one pocket, glitter scattered throughout. Even in the dim, inconstant lighting reflected from the stage, his eyes sparkled, as if he was so thrilled to see Armand– and he was, Armand realized, even though they'd never met. So far, the man had stood politely at the edge of Armand's mind; Armand now opened the door to him, cautiously. To someone else– someone less powerful in the Mind Gift, younger, more afraid– the man's presence would have been overwhelming. It still was, in a way, but only to draw Armand in further.

—I'm called Khayman, the man said. Stay for this song with me? And Armand did.

“And then what?” Louis says, blinking away the remains of the vision. “You had a romantic first kiss to the tones of The Vampire Lestat?” There is an edge of mockery in his voice, of a familiar flavor, the defensive kind that Louis deploys when he can't or won't examine whatever is underneath. Armand's momentary excitement to share dulls against it.

“No,” Armand says. “He took me to his home and read me poetry.”

Louis scoffs.

"Why are you telling me this, Armand?" Louis demands. He sounds-- not quite irritated, but tired. Armand's restless fingers twitch in frustration, tucked away in his pockets. It's clear that Louis expects the answer to be somewhere on a spectrum of jealousy and spite, but Armand knows that is not it. But what is it? Is he trying to explain that the connection between himself and Khayman is not like what he'd had with Louis, to show that he is not tied to Khayman? Is he trying to do the opposite? Is it just that, for a human lifetime, Louis had been the one he told about his days, and for more than two years now that has no longer been true?

"I don't know," he says finally. "I don't mean it any particular way, Louis. I'm just telling you to tell you, I suppose."

“Fine. Now I know,” Louis says, and Armand feels anger flare.

“I am trying to tell you that he is a friend,” he says sharply. “We understand a lot about each other. He is a comfort. We do love each other– but he is not my love.” Louis looks like he is about to speak again, but Armand cuts him off. “And no, this is not supposed to mean anything to you. Only that I am not lonely. Only that– I hope you aren't either.” Louis doesn't appear to know what to say to that, which is fair– Armand had not realized what he was going to say until it was already out. He shrugs his cardigan closer in around him and looks down, the roll of its shawl neck making the movement feel like a retreat.

“I'll go,” he says. Lightning-quick, Louis's hand lands on his arm once again, just as light and fleeting as before.

“I'll see you later?” he says, the barest hint of a question in his voice.

Armand smiles hesitantly.

“Yes. I'll see you later.”

Chapter Text

Louis has always had very strict rules for himself about his personal needs mixing with his business, so his first instinct when he starts to feel an itch under his skin to get up to trouble is to make his way across town to a bar called Eclipse. The music is terrible, the drinks are basic, and the lighting is low—it’s the perfect place to hook up without thought or effort.

Louis breezes past the line, nodding at the bouncer and making his way inside. It’s the kind of place with mirrors on every wall, somehow creating an illusion that the place is smaller, instead of larger. He spends as little time as possible scanning the room before he zeroes in on a guy with floppy brown hair sitting alone at a table looking down at his phone.

If Louis were still a photographer, this is the kind of image he would capture: blur of the bar, a lone figure, face tilted down, light shining up illuminating his cheekbones making him look like a ghoul. He can imagine it perfectly, the framing, the colors, the way the image would emerge in the emulsion on the surface of the paper.

Another time—another Louis. He stalks forward, not bothering to keep the predatory look at bay. He finds it serves him well in places like this.

The guy looks up just as he approaches, looking surprised and then excited.

“This seat taken?” Louis asks, gesturing at one of the chairs. It’s a four top. He chooses the chair closest, instead of the one opposite, so when he sits they’ll be side by side.

“Oh, sorry. Of course—take it.” The guy blushes. “I, uh, really thought you were gonna ask to buy me a drink,” he mumbles.

Louis smiles, letting himself smirk a little. “I meant may I join you?” He doesn’t wait for the answer before sitting. “I can also buy you a drink. I can buy you a lot of drinks.”

He pulls out a money clip and peels off a fifty dollar bill, sets it out on the table between them. This place doesn’t really have table service, but all it takes is a little mental push to get the barback to wander over and ask if they need anything.

“Jack and coke for me and,” he trails off, making a gesture of invitation.”

“Same.”

The barback pockets the fifty and heads back to the bar. Louis takes a moment to observe his mark up close. He’s cute, very nervous, and young but not too young. Slight without being overly so. Pretty without being overly so. Average.

“Louis de Pointe du Lac,” he says. “I come here a lot but I’ve never seen you before.”

“Kevin.” His hand sort of twitches like he’s thinking about holding it out for Louis to shake. “So are you, like, the welcome committee?”

“Something like that.”

Kevin’s hand twitches again, this time towards his cell phone. A safety blanket for him, perhaps. He’s used to hiding behind it.

Stupidly, Louis finds that endearing, and it takes him a second to realize it’s because Armand could be the same way about his damn tablet. Like it had the keys to the universe downloaded on it and he could escape any difficult interaction by looking at it.

“I have been here before,” Kevin says. “My friend’s bachelor party, a few months ago. But it wasn’t like this.”

It’s a Tuesday, and it’s still early, so the place is pretty quiet.

“I like the slow nights,” Louis says, which is true. Crowded Fridays and Saturdays where you can barely make it through the door are good for business, but hell on his senses. After several decades in self-imposed isolation in the sensory deprivation chamber that their Dubai apartment became, the lights and sounds of the average gay bar are a bit much.

“I’m liking it a lot more now.” Kevin kind of stammers through this, like he’s forcing himself to flirt.

They’re briefly interrupted by the arrival of drinks. Louis takes a small, deliberate sip and forces his face to relax, even though the taste is like a shot of acetone, dry and sour on his tongue.

“So you’re here a lot?”

Louis has learned from experience that it pays to be direct. “Only when I’m looking for someone to take home with me,” he says. “You do that kind of thing?”

Kevin laughs nervously. “I mean, historically? No. Theoretically, though?”

Louis downs his terrible drink in one swallow, praying his vampire constitution doesn’t make it come right back up any time soon, sets his glass back on the table between them with a little clink. He leans forward and puts the tips of his fingers on the inside of Kevin’s knee.

“Not looking for theory. I’m a practitioner.”

There’s a moment where Louis thinks he picked wrong and this guy is gonna be too far on the side of shy to get him in bed without a lot more work that Louis frankly doesn’t have the energy to expend. But then Kevin places his hand over Louis’, deliberately dragging it closer to his inner thigh.

“Going home with you sounds so much better than getting drunk and giving some asshole a sloppy blowjob in the bathroom three hours from now.”

Weirdly charmed, Louis lets himself laugh. “I’m glad I cleared that very high bar. Shall we?”

The apartment he keeps is a short walk away, four blocks or so, and he takes it slow and easy, letting Kevin relax as they stroll. He does a double take at the doorman—uncommon here, but Louis clings to old fashioned services—and looks suitably impressed by the lobby of the high rise building.

In the elevator, Louis hangs back. He doesn’t crowd him against the wall or even stand particularly close. He doesn’t need to. This close, enclosed together in the cab of the elevator, he can smell Kevin’s desire. Lust, hot and thick.

In this building, Louis doesn’t have a penthouse. Just something small, a single bedroom, a living room with a kitchen overlooking it, and a balcony off a breakfast nook. It’s charming, but not grand. Quiet luxury, or whatever they call it these days. The calacatta marble countertops and the warm wood cabinets, the antique furniture and the kilim rugs—it’s entirely different from the home he shared with Armand. Every piece was chosen to remind him of something else, deliberately selected to evoke other emotions, other times, other places. The few times and places Louis has left that don’t lead back to him.

And there isn’t any art on the walls.

So there’s that.

Kevin is looking around, hands in his pockets, and Louis should probably ease him into this, but there’s a familiar impatience growing in him. A now-or-never feeling like if he tries to engage in anything resembling small talk, he’ll end up eating the guy instead.

So he forgoes the pleasantries and grabs his face, reeling him in for a demanding kiss. Kevin makes a startled sound, a lamb bleating in distress, and then sort of melts into it, his tongue pushing against Louis’s tentatively.

“You’re ice cold,” he says when Louis breaks away and starts making his way down Kevin’s neck, scrabbling at the buttons of his shirt as he goes.

Louis doesn’t reply, but he gets the buttons loose and kisses his way across his chest. Kevin squirms against him in a way that could indicate pleasure or discomfort, and Louis could certainly reach into his mind to find out which but he feels a slimy sense of distaste at the idea, and instead retreats farther into his own mind.

He sheds his own shirt and kicks off his shoes, regretting that Kevin’s mouth against his is uncoordinated and a little slack.

He isn’t hard yet, which is fine, but Kevin’s comment about his skin being cold has him preoccupied. He doesn’t feed from men he fucks. He’s learned his lesson there, a hundred times, that he lacks the control to pull back when he mixes pleasures of the flesh with the pleasures of the blood. Is he just not that into this? Is that why he’s flagging? Or is he insufficiently full?

He breaks away, growling, and lifts Kevin in his arms to carry him to the bedroom.

“Holy shit, you’re strong,” Kevin says, laughing—a little hysterically, like maybe some part of him is truly alarmed he’s alone with someone that much more powerful than him.

Louis doesn’t reply, but he tosses him on the bed and crawls over his body.

Kevin hastily undoes the fly of his jeans, shoving them off his legs. He looks better naked, small and strong, the dark patch of hair between his legs suitably enticing that Louis leans down to take his half-hard cock into his mouth. He closes his mouth and lets the taste of him flood his senses—it’s different, now, since being turned. It tastes, it smells, it feels, like blood. And blood is the one thing that can always, reliably, get Louis off.

He’s hungrier, these last few years. Since Armand. Since he stopped feeding from Armand. He had underestimated how steady it kept him, how strong, to have Armand’s blood constantly in his veins. Nowadays he’s never really full.

Just the thought of Armand makes his fangs itch to descend, his cock harden between his legs. He pulls off of Kevin’s cock and shoulders his legs apart, feels between his cheeks until he finds his hole.

“More hopeless optimist than boyscout,” Kevin says when his fingers slide in easily. “But I did come prepared.”

Louis fingers him for a moment before crawling up the bed to retrieve a condom and lube from the nightstand. Surprisingly, Kevin places a hand over the condom before he can unwrap it.

“It’s ok if you don’t want to use it,” he says. “I, like, never do this. And I trust you.”

Louis looks at the condom, and then back to his face. Practically speaking, there’s absolutely no reason for Louis to wear a condom except to make a human feel comfortable. His body harbors no bacteria, no viruses, no disease, nor can it contract any from his liaisons. But the idea of entering this person bare is suddenly repugnant.

Again, he considers reading Kevin’s mind. Is he sincere that he never does this? Is he lying to flatter Louis’s ego? Is he chasing death himself, embracing recklessness with a perfect stranger?

It’s a wholly unwanted intimacy, his trust—especially because Louis can’t return it. His only trust is to breach his psyche, wrench the honesty from his conscious mind. That isn’t trust, it’s assault.

For the second time, he thinks of Armand, but this time it sends a wave of agony through his system. He thinks of how Armand communicated with Khayman—mind to mind, perfect honesty—and he’s ashamed to admit that it’s Louis that was opposed to that kind of intimacy when they were together. He’d never wanted to share more than he held back, and he’d been disappointed at the gap between what he shared and what Armand understood.

He looks at the condom, and then at Kevin’s face, and he wonders if Armand ever felt this way with him. If he ever contemplated violation because it was the only way to understand. The only way to trust.

Wordlessly, he unwraps the condom and rolls it down his length, watching his hands to avoid Kevin’s eyes. He arranges Kevin’s legs, lines himself up, and then pushes inside.

It feels fine. Good even. If he closes his eyes he can focus just on the sensation, the warm channel tight around his cock and the friction that is not quite enough. It feels good.

After a few minutes, Kevin rolls over and they switch positions: ass in the air, head down. It’s a better angle for both of them and, guiltily, Louis is happy he can’t see his face anymore. Just the dark brown of his hair, a little long and slightly curling against his neck. He could almost be… someone else. But his back is too pale, his torso too short. And the noises he makes are all the wrong ones.

He fucks him steadily, if a bit mechanically. At this point he just wants to come and move on from this entire night. But his orgasm proves to be elusive. After a while Louis realizes why: he’s too warm.

Frustrated, Louis reaches down and gathers Kevin’s wrists in one hand, wrenching them back so his arms pull his torso up. He fucks him harder, closing his eyes against whatever he’s seeing and thinking and feeling.

He doesn’t want to, but in his mind he reaches for an image of Armand, pulled back in this same position. He thinks about how Armand’s long arms would look arching away from his body. He thinks about how it felt to control someone so powerful, so easily. He thinks about Armand calling his name.

He thinks about Armand saying he loves him, and it’s that thought that pushes him over the cliff. He comes explosively, barely holding himself back from ripping Kevin’s arms clean out of the socket.

The aftermath is so painfully awkward, Louis regrets his decision to refrain from killing his hook ups. It would be easier, less messy, to drain Kevin and dump his body than suffer through the stammering small talk as he ushers him out the door. Shy and lonely was absolutely the wrong flavor for the evening, and Louis watches the door close on Kevin’s retreating form with nothing but regret.

He wants to believe he’s only feeling lonely himself, because vampiric life is long, and even surrounded by more of his kind than he ever could have imagined, he still feels it in his bones that he’s alone.

But he knows it’s more than that. He misses Armand. Seeing him is a punch to the gut, any time, but seeing him happy and settled with someone new is unexpectedly hard to swallow. Maybe because it seems so easy for him and Khayman. No baggage, no skeletons in their shared closet. Louis never got that chance, with him. And fuck if he’s not jealous right through to the core about it.

He thinks about calling Daniel but it feels too maudlin, complaining about his ex to the guy his ex screwed over. Instead he crawls into his coffin. He rarely sleeps in one, anymore, but tonight he’s feeling nostalgic, remembering the years he spent with Armand sharing that narrow, dark space, holding each other tight. He waits for the sun, the lid closed above him, and tries to remember that embrace. It doesn’t make him feel less lonely—but it’s something.

***

Armand feels restless and too small for his skin– a familiar and hated feeling, that he is falling into himself where the world would no longer be able to reach him. It tends to make him irritable, make him reach and grasp and needle until someone holds him down and puts him back to himself. His last interaction with Louis at Dracula's Daughter lingers, a mental splinter he is unsure if he wants to pull out or drive further in. Louis had liked this mood on him, at times even encouraged it, taunting him with small jabs until he could provoke him into a scene together. He misses it, how well Louis understood his needs.

Still, there is Khayman, and they have their own intimacies, their own understanding. Khayman always kisses him before they start, a bold and friendly thing directly on the lips, his hands usually holding Armand's face between them. It's always pleasantly jarring to Armand, a reminder that no matter what is to come, Khayman is first and foremost his friend. This time, after their opening kiss, Khayman knots his hand in Armand's hair and pulls until Armand sinks to his knees.

He leans his head against the hollow of Khayman's hip. Khayman's shorts have hardly any length to them; Armand's cheek rests directly against his strong cool thigh, dusting of soft hair stirring with his breath. Khayman sits, in the same motion hooking a leg over Armand's shoulder to keep him in place as Khayman moves. The change of position opens Khayman's legs to Armand and he burrows into the space as deep as he can, pressing his face into the junction of thigh and groin. Khayman's hand, still in Armand's hair, presses him gently closer, until he can no longer breathe, which he only mourns because it cuts him off from the rich and heady smell of Khayman's blood.

“Shh, little one,” Khayman says, strong fingers scratching against Armand's scalp. “You can bite.”

—Skin?

—Yes, you can tear the shorts, beloved, go on. Khayman's grip lightens just enough for Armand to eagerly follow the instruction, and he dives back into the apex of Khayman's hip joint once bared. He brings one hand up to rest on Khayman's belly, a grounding presence for both of them, as the blood sings between them.

Intimacy with Khayman is unlike any other intimacy Armand has experienced. Physically, Khayman is the only lover he's had in most of his vampiric life actually capable of overpowering Armand, and this is exhilarating– the idea that he could have kept Armand's head there, suffocating in the leather of his shorts, as long as he pleased, through physical strength alone and Armand would have had no recourse at all. Yet he never feels small under Khayman's hand, and that is unique to them.

Armand only takes a few drops– Khayman's blood, as ancient as it gets, is too intense for more than that at a time. Khayman's cock is half-hard where it sits against Armand's cheek, so easy to turn his head and nose along the shaft, mouth at the soft sac beneath. Khayman hooks his other leg over Armand's shoulder and holds him close between his thighs. His mind, shimmering above Armand's needy and yearning consciousness, is full of craving and satisfaction. Khayman was very, very lonely before they met, Armand knows this from the fragments of Khayman's past that he has and from the intense undercurrent of it beneath Khayman's every thought. Armand knows what it is like to go over two hundred years without a soft touch. Khayman knows what it is like to exist that way for over two thousand. A few months of Armand is barely a breath against loneliness that vast, but he does his best to make it count. What he has discovered is that, adrift in that void, Khayman likes his touch hard and close and intense.

Armand shifts on his knees, using his shoulders to lever Khayman's thighs up and open. He licks down and in, tracking Khayman's responses primarily through the connection in their minds. Where Armand often experienced sensation in waves of color, Khayman's mind translates itself as a cacophony, his reactions discernible by whether the sound was harmonious or dissonant, metallic or organic, rising or falling in volume or pitch. Armand is not yet fluent in every nuance, but he gets by. He knows, for instance, that the sharp gasp when he rolls one of Khayman's testes into his mouth is good from the frenetic clanging of bells that sounds in his mind, knows the stringed thrum of excitement when he lets his fangs scrape very gently at the skin of Khayman's scrotum. Armand takes the smallest of drinks from the capillaries there, feeling the swoon, multiplied by the vulnerability of the position, roll through Khayman like thunder.

Armand carefully unlatches himself and Khayman slides down his chair to join him on the floor, the pair of them a messy tangle of limbs. Khayman threads his fingers firmly back into Armand's hair and holds it.

“You miss him,” Khayman says, and tugs lightly at Armand's hair when he tenses. “You do. You love him still. It's good, beloved.” Khayman transmits an image of Louis walking over to them at the bar, from Armand's point of view. He's lined in red light, catching on his curls and turning his mesh top iridescent. He looks beautiful without context, of course, but Armand's memory also shines with love and desire that makes him even more so. The intensity of it is nearly embarrassing, and denial of Khayman's statement is impossible.

“It doesn't matter,” Armand says instead. “We had our time, and now–” Now it's over. I destroyed it nearly from the start. Now I can only be grateful to be on friendly terms at all, given– Armand's thoughts dissolve into a morass of loss and muted shame.

“You are very young, both of you,” Khayman says, then laughs at Armand's obvious disbelief. “Yes, you are too.”

“I don't feel young,” Armand says. His voice comes out smaller than he anticipated. Khayman rubs at his scalp soothingly.

“I know. Nevertheless, you are, at least among those of us who will live millennia more. Yes, of course, you will. If I know nothing else about you– and I feel that's not quite true– I know that you will live as long as any of us can. Love is important, in life that drags on so long. And I would not count all hope lost yet, in this particular love.”
Armand's eyes flick up in surprise. “Why do you say that?”

Khayman hums noncommittally. “Just a feeling, little one.”

Chapter Text

The next time Louis sees Khayman, he’s alone. He arrives at Dracula’s Daughter right when it opens at sunset, sits at the far end of the bar, and asks if Louis is available.

It’s bold, Louis will give him that. But maybe it’s easier to be that when you have a few thousand years on every other vampire in existence. It’s not really posturing, is it, when you can clear the decks with a look, Louis thinks as he rounds the corner behind the bar, seeing how there’s a space between Khayman and the rest of the bar’s patrons, even though it’s reasonably crowded. Khayman is happily sipping something in a short glass, looking pleasant and unperturbed. But people can feel his power, and so they avoid him.

Armand could have that effect at times too.

Louis taps the bar, getting Khayman’s attention. He looks up, still wearing that affable face. Louis even thinks maybe it’s genuine. His eyes are violet, the color of jacaranda blossoms, so bright they’re almost neon.

“What can I do for you?” Louis asks, resting his hands on the bar top so he has something to do with them.

Khayman smiles at him. “I thought it might be worthwhile to speak.”

Louis glances over his shoulder. “Armand…”

“Elsewhere.”

Louis gives him a pointed look. “You think this is a good idea?”

Khayman’s smile gets broader, infinitesimally. He has a Cheshire cat smile—no matter how widely he grins, he can always manage to smile a bit wider. He doesn’t answer, but he leans forward conspiratorially, eyebrows raised.

So Louis leans forward too, just slightly, deliberately blocking out the noise of the bar and focusing in on the man in front of him.

“What is it exactly that’s worthwhile for us to speak about?”

“Eternity,” Khayman says. The word unfolds from his tongue like it has a dozen meanings, and it’s up to Louis to figure out which one is operative.

“Not much use in talking about that,” Louis says. “Not when we’re out here living it.”

“It’s possible to live without being alive,” Khayman says enigmatically. “To survive without enduring.”

To endure. A simple word that, for Louis, has become a vessel, infinitely capacious, for his most conflicted emotions. Armand endured. Louis tried his best not to—fought, futilely, to do anything other than endure. To endure was to accept certain systems of oppression that his vampire self could no longer abide. To endure was to embrace life even in the teeth of depthless despair. To endure was to admit subservience, in a way that Louis could never quite articulate.

But Armand endured. No matter what it cost him. Something Louis grew to admire, and also despise.

“You’re a little late for this speech. By about fifty years. I’m over the doom and gloom part of my immortality.”

“It comes and goes in cycles,” Khayman tells him, and Louis finds himself frowning.

“Depression?”

“Everything.” Khayman turns his body slightly, so that he’s looking out over the room around them. His eyes are bright and lively, darting from face to face. “Tragedy, happiness, hunger, danger, the sun, the moon, the tendency of humans to raise up for adulation some cruel despot who promises to punish them for their sins, and the popularity of little balls of dough stuffed with meat. It all comes and goes.”

His eyes are fixed on a couple in a booth, a man and a woman. They could be a portrait of a first date, her looking anxious in her red velvet short dress, him leaning back with a slouch, the picture of relaxation.

“You mean dumplings?” Louis asks.

Khayman nods, his head whipping around. “Yes! We had them when I was a child! But we called them something different then. In the market, they sold them wrapped in fig leaves for transport.”

The expression on Khayman’s face sours, suddenly, as though he has a bad taste in his mouth.

“I didn’t think,” Louis says, gently, “when I was turned that I would miss the taste of food so much. I think, living this long, it would all be different anyway. Nothing on earth could bring back the gumbo of my youth. But I wish I could try.”

“They don’t exist anymore,” Khayman says. “The grains of my human life. They’ve all been changed by time, while I remain the same.”

“You don’t think you’ve changed?” Louis asks him. “I mean, beyond appearance. Inside. You think we aren’t capable of that?”

Khayman shakes his head. “It comes and goes in cycles,” he says, nonsensically. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre.”

Louis ignores the Yeats, frowning deeper. He doesn’t really understand why Armand hangs out with Khayman, if he’s honest. The guy scares the shit out of Louis. For one thing, the raw power rolling off of him makes his teeth itch. And then for another, he talks like he’s drifting off into another reality at any given minute. It’s impossible to speak with him and not wonder if that’s where Louis is headed too.

He hasn’t exactly seen many examples of vampires who survive eternity with their faculties intact. Time is coming for all of them, one way or the other.

“I thought you wanted to talk to me about Armand,” Louis says after a moment. He doesn’t want to keep thinking about eternity and how depressing it all is.

Khayman swivels back around on his barstool. “I thought you wanted to talk to me about Armand.”

“I try not to talk about Armand at all,” Louis replies easily. But what he means is that he tries not to even think about Armand. It’s been a few years, yes—their paths have crossed. Inevitably. But Louis doesn’t have to think about it. He can let go.

“He’s a princeling, and also a slave,” Khayman says, as though Louis hasn’t spoken at all. “I have some experience with that uncomfortable dichotomy.”

Louis knows what Khayman is talking about, sadly, because he has a bit of it himself. Born into a family of wealth and privilege, but a society that increasingly classed him as a perpetual servant. What he was taught to deserve always butting up against what he was allowed to be.

Louis supposes Armand’s life moved in the opposite direction. Born a slave, made a king by time, even if only a king of sewers and death and blood.

“I already spent a lifetime exploring his traumas,” Louis says, “I don’t need you to tell me about him. I know him.”

In his mind, unbidden, there is a fissure—a chunk of memory separates from the frozen glacier that is Armand, and everything associated with him, like an ice floe drifting in the ocean. A memory. It’s Paris, maybe a year in. They were at some bar on the east side of the Seine, a rickety table with too many chairs crammed around it. Their friends—well, Louis’s friends—were loud and drunk, and Armand was a little drunk too. He told a story about a brothel and a pair of English lords, the kind of bawdy, crowd pleasing story that had everyone braying like donkeys.

It’s the first time Louis has ever seen him like this. One of the crowd, not outside it or above it. Later, when they lay in bed together, and Louis was holding him, he asked him if the story was true.

“It’s Boccaccio,” Armand said.

“Why lie?” Louis had asked him, and Armand brushed it off. His own brothel experiences were not so entertaining, lacking the color of a good tale.

Louis, who knew a thing or two about brothels, hadn’t pushed him to say more. He doesn’t remember what happened next. Maybe they had sex again. Maybe they went to sleep. Maybe Armand rose from the bed, declaring it curfew. Maybe this isn’t a single memory, but a composite made up of all the times Armand shrugged Louis off and Louis let him do it.

Khayman is looking at him like he can read his mind—he can, of course. He probably is. He reaches out across the bar and puts his hand on Louis’s arm.

“You know him very well. But do you know yourself, fledgling?”

***

Lestat’s lawyer is annoying as fuck. She’s neither competent nor incompetent, as far as lawyers go, and her specialty seems to be lurking outside his places of business when he least wants to speak to her. But she has a great rack, which is more than likely the reason Lestat hired her.

She shows up about five minutes after the bar opens for the night, a manila folder tucked under one arm and a Starbucks coffee cup in the other hand. Louis considers being petty and forbidding her from bringing an outside drink into the bar with her, but he lets it go. This is the new Louis. Everything slides right off.

She sits primly at the bar while he pours her a glass of water, because he was raised to always offer something, and she ignores it.

“What is it this time?” he asks, glancing at the conspicuous folder.

She smiles, the kind of tight lipped smile that isn’t an expression of happiness so much as it is a grimace that quirks in the wrong direction. “I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up an affidavit for you about the Tureaud property. We can sign and notarize it right now, or at your earliest convenience.”

She twists in her chair and pulls a little leather case out of her purse, hanging on the back of the bar stool. She lays it on the bar and opens it to reveal a notarial stamp.

“No pen,” Louis says. It’s not that he wants to encourage more of these visits, but he’s also not signing any kind of statement written for him by someone else.

“There appears to be one,” she points behind his head. “Just there. Several actually.”

Louis turns and sees a coffee mug with about a dozen ball point pens sticking up out of it.

“They’re all out of ink.”

She gives him a look, and he gives it right back.

“If you have a concerning interest in the Tureaud property, I would be happy to discuss it with Mr. Lioncourt.”

Louis shrugs. “I don’t give a fuck about it. Let it rot.”

The bell over the front door jingles, and Louis looks up in time to see Armand in the doorway. He pauses there, chatting animatedly with the bouncer, Arlo. Louis watches his easy posture, feeling an unaccountable urge to shoulder Arlo out of the way and take his place so Armand will talk to him instead.

“This just became a bad time,” Louis says. “Maybe we can argue about Lestat’s history of bad real estate investments tomorrow.”

Christine’s face fully sours. “It has not escaped my notice that in spite of your claim that you do not wish to own or occupy the property, you still refuse to participate in any legal proceedings designed to clarify its present ownership.”

Armand laughs at something Arlo has said, and then walks away from the door towards the bar, one hand in his pocket and the other fiddling with the collar of his shirt.

Louis is watching his face so closely for some clue to his feelings that he must be frowning, because the happy expression turns to confusion when Armand sits in the stool next to Christine and says, “Is something wrong? Is it alright I came alone?”

Louis smiles, trying to soften his expression, but it’s as though he’s forgotten how to do so a normal amount. He probably looks like a lunatic, grinning like that for no reason. He frowns, then schools himself back to something more neutral.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says. “Christine was just leaving.”

Christine extends a hand—her fingernails have a French manicure, the tips bright white in the dim light of the bar.

“I’m Mr. Lioncourt’s lawyer,” she clarifies.

Armand’s eyebrows raise. “Oh. I didn’t realize you and Lestat had business that required lawyers,” he says to Louis, ignoring her hand.

It is a bit galling, Louis admits, that his legal separation from Armand, his companion and business partner of nearly eighty years, took less than six months, while somehow Lestat has found a way to invent new shit to litigate after a lifetime apart.

“Turns out Lestat had a romantic habit of buying property in my name and never telling me about it,” Louis says. “Back in the old days. I guess he wants it all back now.”

“Oh that,” Armand says, relaxing back in his stool. He turns to Christine. “He bought me a theater, you know, but he was smart enough to put it into a trust.”

“His investments in New Orleans have been less considered,” she tells him.

Armand launches into a story about real estate investment, without missing a beat, shifting into a charming persona that Louis misses so much it aches, and so deeply that it takes him several minutes to realize the story is completely fabricated: they never bought property in Lisbon, and they certainly never hosted a party during carnival at that property where they were visited by the Portuguese Prime Minister.

—I don’t think she’s planning to leave, he hears Armand say in his mind.

Something in Louis melts, just a little, at this. He doesn’t even register the words at first. But it’s been years since Armand has spoken to him, mind to mind, and there’s something so intimate about it, and also so mundane. How many times have they done this? Whispered to one another across the expanse of their psyches while some human blathered on unaware? How often have they carried on a conversation underneath the conversation, made room for their own thoughts even when in a crowd of so many people?

—Well, someone sure is making her feel welcome, Louis says, after a beat. Where the hell did you get that Portugal story from?

—The New Yorker, naturally. Changed the country, though.

Now Louis is grinning without any ability to stop.

—Can’t be too obvious in your plagiarism, I guess.

This whole time, Armand’s attention has been solely focused on Christine. But now he turns his head, his eyes locking with Louis’s. Intimacy, hope, and heat, coursing through Louis’s body.

—I believe you have an office, Armand says. Take me there.

***

Armand watches the back of Louis’s neck the entire way to his office, so closely it barely registers what hallways and doors they pass before they come to a little room that is barely more than a closet. He’s pleasantly surprised when Louis reaches past him, close enough to feel his breath against his jaw, to close the door.

“Khayman’s already been here to see me,” Louis tells him.

Armand almost groans in frustration. “I’ve already told you, he’s not my companion.”

Louis smirks. “Okay, I’m getting that. But you got someone, don’t you?”

Armand blinks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So it's not Khayman.” Louis is smiling now, just a little. Armand wants to drag out the corners of it, wants to be the cause of its unfurling.

“No. Not like that, anyway.”

“And it's not Daniel.” Armand wrinkles his nose despite himself. Louis's smile grows, and Armand feels his mouth follow.

“No. He's my firstborn. He is very special to me. But he's also– well. Daniel Molloy.”

“All right, fair enough,” Louis laughs. His hand is very close to Armand's on the desk top. Armand inches his hand closer, tries to hide the movement under a shifting of shoulders.

“If it’s anyone, it’s you, Louis,” he says. It comes out more quietly than Armand intended, but exactly as serious. “I suspect it is always going to be you.”

“More than anything in the world, huh?” Louis is quiet now too. When their hands wrap around each other Armand isn't sure which of them has moved first, but there they are, and it feels like a healing somewhere deep in his bones.

“I did wonder,” Louis admits. “When you turned Daniel, I mean. If there was something between you.”

“Well, don't wonder,” Armand says. Eyes on Louis's the whole time, looking for any indication this is going the wrong direction, Armand sidles between Louis and the desk until he is sitting on it with Louis before him. Louis barely moves to make room, eyes locked back on Armand's, slowly building heat. “I don't want to talk about Daniel Molloy.”

“You telling me what to do?” Louis murmurs. It's a tease, curling around the edge of his growing smirk as he crowds Armand even further, a hand settling on his lower back.

“Not yet,” Armand says. His chest is tight and bursting with hope, joy, the utter rightness of his body pressed to Louis's this way again. “Kiss me.” At Louis's raised eyebrow, Armand immediately relents, melting into Louis's chest with his arms fallen over his shoulders. “Kiss me, please, Louis.”

If Armand thought being held by Louis again was euphoric, being kissed by him again is transcendent. Tension that Armand didn’t know his body was capable of losing leaves him all at once; he sinks into Louis’s embrace like a stone, the touch of their lips and tongues his only lifeline. He hooks his legs greedily around Louis’s hips as the kiss deepens, tightens his arms over Louis’s shoulders. One hand comes to cradle the back of his head as Armand’s whole upper body yearns forward for Louis.

Louis huffs out a sigh as they separate only by millimeters. Their noses brush together, that familiar tic, and Armand follows with his own giddy sigh.

“Here? Can we, Louis?” The pleading look Armand hits Louis with is practiced, yes, but entirely genuine, and he knows from experience that when Louis has the secret little smile he has on now, this look often gets Armand pretty far.

“Fuck it, why not,” Louis says. He barely has to tilt his head to kiss Armand again, just as deep as the last but dirty now, invading tongue and a tantalizing flash of teeth. Armand bites back, enough to nick the inside of Louis's lip and get just a drop of him. He's quick to bite his own tongue for Louis in turn, much deeper. Louis groans at the taste, hands digging into Armand where he's got him gripped at the hips.

Louis gets Armand turned around, bent over the desk, bare-assed in record time, Armand giddily allowing himself to be moved. There's spit, then the smell of blood– Louis has gashed his palm and is smearing it over his dick and between Armand's legs.

“Wait,” Armand gasps, reaching a stilling hand back to Louis's hip that Louis takes in his own immediately.

“Yeah? What is it baby, do you need something?”

“No,” Armand says in a breathy giggle, “no, just wait.” The slick head of Louis's dick is rubbing against Armand's hole, just shy of pressing in, Louis's hips twitching as he holds himself back. “I want to savor it.”

“Savor it!?” Louis smothers something between a groan and a growl into the back of Armand's neck.

“Wait,” Armand says again. His smile is splitting his face, he's euphoric with it, the writhe of Louis's body against his own, their skin against skin again. It does not feel like it has been nearly three years; it feels like it has been a thousand. “Wait.”

“Armand,” Louis growls properly this time, mouth smeared against Armand's neck like he wants to bite. “Come on.” His hips are grinding into Armand's ass now; he's practically shaking. It's intoxicating, and Armand wonders if he teases just a little more– “Please.”

There it is, and without even having to pull out another trick. Armand shoves his hips back immediately with the word please and takes Louis nearly all at once, causing both of them to shout. Armand spares a single thought for the employees that might hear them and throws it out again immediately. Louis's hand falls heavy on the back of his neck, digging into his hair. Armand is probably bruising his own hips just as much as Louis is against the edge of the desk as he rocks freely back and forth to meet Louis's movements. After a few moments of thrusting, the office full of the sound of slapping skin and gasping breaths, Louis shoves in deep and grinds into Armand's prostate and stays there.

“I missed you,” Louis confesses, and Armand immediately clamps down on his own whimpers and whines to hear him. “Don't get me wrong, we needed out of that fucked up cage we were in.” Louis gets a hand around to tease at Armand's cock, roll his balls, and Armand clenches his fists to keep silent. “And I did learn that I don't need you. Don't need anyone. I lost that knowledge somewhere. I've gotten back to it now, but it's sweeter. Do you know why?” Armand wasn't going to answer, strung up as he was between the relentless pressure on his prostate and the teasing hand on his sex, but it becomes clear that Louis is not going to move again unless he answers.

“Why is it sweeter–” Armand gets out, then stops short when he realizes he does not know what to call Louis in this new iteration of themselves. He nearly spirals about it, but Louis's nails pierce the skin of his neck and bring him blessedly back.

“I just want you,” Louis says, and it's shockingly quiet for the buildup he's given it. “I want you, Armand. Strange as it is. I want you and I miss you being mine.”

Armand is so thunderstruck he almost forgets the sensations of his body entirely. He needs to see Louis, and he pushes this desire messily towards Louis's mind, can't hold back the way it's twined up with his mind singing my love, my love, my love. Louis pulls away and flips him around immediately, Armand scrambling to get him back inside without taking his eyes off Louis' face.

“I would like to be yours, Louis,” he says. His voice shakes a little with how much he means it. His hands flutter, unsure where on Louis's body they want to land, so Louis captures them for him and holds them to his chest. Armand tries to interpret his expression with the clearest head he can manage, cutting off the rabbit holes he could go down before they can open. Louis looks a little shy, a little nervous, a little embarrassed, yes. But he also looks very serious, and very sure.

There is going to be more to this, Armand thinks, not all of it comfortable, but none of that needs to be in this room with them right now. Right now, he can just lean in and let Louis take him again, chest to chest this time, where he can re-memorize the exact seaglass shade of Louis's eyes when they're half-lidded with lust and the precise sweet curve of his nose.

***

“But it’s my favorite song,” Armand wheedles, pulling at Louis’s arm as he stands from the booth. “You have to.”

Louis shakes his head, grinning. “You said that about the last three songs.”

“You have an excellent DJ, and while the sound system is sub par at best the atmosphere demands conviviality.” Armand practically stamps his foot. “Dance with me, Louis.”

“Did you just disparage my sound system?” Louis asks, but he’s already starting to rise.

Armand grins impishly and tugs at his hand until they’re both on the dance floor. They’ve danced together a hundred times over the years, but nothing could prepare Louis for the flourish Armand does, swiveling his hips and arranging his arms like a flamenco dancer.

“You learn a few things while we were apart?” Louis teases, grabbing his hips and pulling him close. “Because I didn’t sign up for all that.”

“Khayman likes my flamenco,” Armand breathes into his ear, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Then ask him to join us,” Louis says. “I think we got room for one more on the dance floor.”