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Lestat’s throat pulsed with the thrill of the little drink. It was a fleeting, hollow pleasure, but enjoyable nonetheless: each night, he would invite a fan onstage and bite their (usually, her) neck. Few believed their tales of the real-life blood-drinker, while others clamored to be next. They liked it, anyway. Humans could never resist a vampire when caught in the swoon of the bite. Lestat was struck with a pang of nostalgia for his first intimate night with Louis, the way Louis gasped with arousal as Lestat sunk his fangs into his neck —
He pulled away. He grinned, licking blood from his lips. The girl in his arms giggled manically, but the chaos of drums and guitar behind them drowned her out. Lestat threw back his head and laughed with her. The crowd cheered.
His favorite part was always the encore. Thousands of voices chanted his name, their desire pinned entirely on Lestat, and he loved to fulfill it. He often gave two or three encores a night.
Afterword, when he’d drank from admirers and sang himself voiceless, when he’d emptied himself out to a husk of glitter and ash, he felt purged clean, yet oddly lonely. Indulging in drink and drug with his bandmates sometimes helped. Otherwise, he could tolerate Daniel’s company; the young vampire was always ready for a good time, at least, but his harsh questioning often brought Lestat to tears, and he didn’t want to cry tonight. He was debating whether to linger with company or go hunting when he walked into his dressing room, only to be faced with a jolt to his senses.
“Armand!”
“Lestat.” The older vampire leaned against Lestat’s vanity table, which was littered with toppled makeup bottles, feather boas, and cigarette butts.
Lestat looked him up and down. Armand looked pale and thin. He was covered from the chin down with dark layers of clothing, contrasting with Lestat’s tight leather pants and shirtless torso. His eyes were sunken. He surely hadn’t eaten recently. His arms were crossed faux-casually, but Lestat knew his moods too well to buy it. “You look horrible.”
Armand scoffed. “Ever the charmer.”
“What are you doing in my dressing room? I thought you avoided the five-kilometer radius around your fledgling.” Lestat growled the last word particularly hard. Abandoning one’s fledgling — one’s lover — in their hour of need was an unimaginable sin to him. Armand himself had not been treated so callously after his turning. Where did he get the right?
Armand’s nose twitched. He fished out two cigarettes from his coat pocket, lit one, then handed the other to Lestat. Lestat, narrowing his eyes, touched the tip of his cigarette to Armand’s to light it. He breathed in the relief of nicotine, then spat in Armand’s face.
The older vampire hardly flinched. He flicked Lestat’s spit off his cheek with disinterest. “No need to be rude.”
“I should call Daniel to us right now.”
“Don’t.” A flicker of panic flashed in his orange eyes.
“And why shouldn’t I?”
“Lestat, just… just don’t.” Armand looked away, taking a shaky drag of his cigarette. “How is he?”
“Not good.”
He nodded, as if hearing a disappointing yet inevitable truth, and Lestat felt the familiar rush of irritation that only Armand’s learned passivity could provoke in him. “And Louis?”
“Don’t ask about Louis.” Lestat took a step closer, head pounding. “Don’t say his name.”
“You two are doing that badly, hm?”
Lestat’s throat hurt. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to feed. This game Louis was playing with him, teasing him with affection and then snatching it away, Lestat didn’t want to play it anymore. He just wanted his companion back. And every time Armand’s name left Louis’s lips, Lestat’s blood boiled. “You are no longer entitled to ask about Louis, not after he left you! Murderer!”
Armand met his eyes. Lestat realized that his voice had gotten quite loud. In the sudden silence, his skin itched. The room smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes.
“I suppose that’s true,” Armand at last responded placidly. He dropped his half-finished cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his boot-clad toe.
Lestat towered over Armand, but only because the older vampire was playing his usual game, slumping himself and drawing his shoulders inward where he sat to appear smaller. Useless ruse.
Lestat took another drag, not bothering to blow the smoke away from Armand’s face. “So that’s what you came to do? Ask questions you have no right getting answered?”
Armand shrugged. “I also wanted to see your show.”
“Well, you missed it. This generally isn’t the best seat.”
Armand’s lips curled upward. He blinked at Lestat through his long lashes.
Such a familiar smile. It never changed, not really. This deceptively demure little attitude, this false shyness, was the same costume that Armand had always worn. He’d given Lestat the same smile during their first exchange of blood deep in the catacombs.
It thawed the mismatched, uncomfortable swirl of feelings that he associated with Armand. Rage. Grief. Fondness. Disgust. Desire. Envy.
Love.
Lestat never really fell out of love with anyone. It was perhaps his greatest weakness.
The air between them felt thick and still. Lestat took Armand’s hand in his. He shook back his coat sleeve to expose his slender, brown wrist. Meeting Armand’s intense stare with his own, he slowly lowered his lit cigarette to his wrist and put it out on his skin.
Armand hissed in pain as his eyes rolled back in his head. As Lestat twisted the cigarette back and forth into the skin, he watched Armand’s lids flutter. “Thank you,” Armand whispered.
Lestat huffed and tossed the cigarette away. Sluggish blood oozed from the wound. “You owe me yet another favor.”
No half-shy smiles now, only two corpse-like, deadened eyes that lit with twin sparks of interest. Armand reached out and cupped Lestat’s bulge through his pants. To Lestat’s dismay, he found that he was half-hard already.
“Diable,” Lestat whispered even as he rocked into Armand’s cold touch. “Only ever one thing on your mind, hm? You just take and take until you are kicked out.”
“You haven’t kicked me yet.”
Lestat grabbed the back of his neck. He squinted into Armand’s eyes. So sad, those eyes, as if he had been befallen by tragedies rather than orchestrated them. “You miss Louis that badly?”
“Yes.”
The answer was so honest, so simple, that Lestat couldn’t help but crumble in tenderness. He pulled Armand close to him, stroking his hair, breathing in his familiar smell. “What to do with you?” he sighed.
Armand mouthed up his neck, nipping at his veins. “You miss him, too.”
“Yes.” As long as they were being honest with each other, yes. Yes, he missed Louis. It was torture, this having him near again, but not as his lover or his confidant. Louis was so much more removed now. He was all grown up. Lestat had thought that once Louis left Armand, he would run readily back to his arms. But Louis didn’t need Lestat anymore. Not like he used to.
Before he could think about it too hard, he pulled Armand into a searing kiss.
His lips were cold against Lestat, who had just fed. Lestat bit his own tongue, then let his blood flow into Armand’s mouth. Armand sucked it eagerly, pressing his slender body against Lestat’s firm torso, tugging at his pants. Armand’s woody, citrusy scent overwhelmed him with memories of centuries past, time before Louis, time when Armand had known Lestat’s childish dreams and dark depths. Armand had loved him and liberated him and destroyed him.
And now he was undoing the strings of Lestat’s pants and pulling out his aching cock, already throbbing with need. Lestat pawed at Armand’s clothing in turn, ripping off his stupid coat and turtleneck, exposing the trim muscles of his chest.
Lestat bent and bit hard into Armand’s pectoral. Armand cried out as Lestat drank, taking his fill of the old, warmed blood. He tore off Armand’s pants, flicking his tongue over his nipple as he drank.
He pulled away only to grasp Armand’s dick and tug it to full hardness, which wasn’t particularly difficult. Armand, as he had always done, gasped and squeezed his eyes shut as his cock was played with. Lestat could never tell if it was for show or not, but it sparked some animalistic desire in him all the same. “Bend over,” he said, and Armand complied, turning around and leaning his elbows on the vanity.
Lestat kneeled and buried his head between Armand’s cheeks, tonguing hurriedly at his hole while stroking himself. He shut his eyes, at once savoring and resenting the easy obedience. Louis had rarely let Lestat do this, even at the peaks of their marriage. This ain’t right, he’d protest through his moans and convulsions of pleasure.
But Armand let him do it. Armand would let him do anything.
Lestat stood again, spit on two fingers, and shoved them into Armand’s hole. Armand sighed and slumped onto the table, resting his cheek on the wood. “That’s it,” Lestat found himself muttering. “You still take it like a whore, don’t you?”
Armand nodded and let out a soft, “Yes, Maître.”
Lestat laughed. He couldn’t help it. It really wasn’t funny. Yet Armand’s longing amused him, even as his twin knife of pain twisted in his heart. “I still can’t believe you made Louis play along with your depraved fantasies. Louis, your master?"
Armand glared while pushing himself back onto Lestat’s fingers. He was sinfully tight — tighter than he really should have been able to be, given his history. “It wasn’t only my fantasies, I assure you. I took care of him.”
“Liar. Serpent venimeux.” Lestat smacked his face and yanked hard on his hair, and Armand only moaned. That was the infuriating thing about Armand: you couldn’t hurt him. If you tried, he would just absorb it, taking in punishment like the sea takes in rain.
So what was Lestat being patient for? He yanked his pants lower to properly free himself, then plunged his cock into Armand’s hole.
He groaned immediately at the tight, enveloping warmth. Some unknown tension unraveled in his gut as he felt the vice around his cock. Gripping Armand’s hips, he thrust into him, chasing the friction shamelessly.
When he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend. Armand was colder, harder, and more pliant than Louis had ever been. But with the sensation, memories came flooding back to him of Louis at Rue Royale, spread open and beaming up at him, flushed with the pleasure that Lestat had given him. So good, Les. Come on, baby. That’s it.
Lestat bent down and bit Armand’s shoulder. For the blood, but also for the simple comfort of having his fangs in something.
His opened his mind to Armand, sharing vision after vision of Louis as he remembered him, the real Louis. Sweet, innocent Louis, who, though possessed with passionate anger, could never truly enjoy harming another. Saint Louis with his back arched, throat bared, lost in throes of ecstasy as he opened for Lestat.
And Armand sent back images in turn. He showed Lestat a Louis that stood above his kneeling form, cracking a whip with a cold smile on his face. You ran your mouth today, Arun. Children should be seen and not heard.
Yes, Maître. I’m sorry, Maître. Please set me right.
Louis striking, Louis kicking, Louis pounding into Armand at a pace more relentless than Lestat was now.
Lestat growled in frustration, biting harder into Armand’s flesh. It was all lies, surely. Yet as he fucked into Armand, imagining his hole as Louis’s, he felt Armand in turn imagining his cock as his former companion’s. The two visions conflicted and melted together, Louis fucking Louis.
Lestat’s eyes snapped open. He met Armand’s gaze in the mirror, piercing orange and monstrous. He came, thrusting into Armand at a brutal pace, Louis’s name exploding from his lips.
He panted as he came down from the high of orgasm. Armand’s cock, still hard against the wood of the vanity, twitched. His face was blotchy. In their shared reflection, Lestat could see his own pale stomach heaving.
He didn’t want to move anymore, but he didn’t want to draw out yet. And he didn’t want to give Armand’s cock the effort he probably needed. His gut clenched in need of relief.
And then the perfect solution came to him. It would shatter any illusion of Louis, as Louis would never tolerate it, but using Armand in this way could be satisfaction enough.
Lestat threw back his head, let out a deep sigh, relaxed his muscles, and let his piss flow into Armand’s hole.
A soft cry of shock. Armand’s hole clenched down hard at the intrusion, but soon gave in, accepting Lestat’s claim to his body. He trembled, then cried out, and Lestat realized that Armand was cumming from this.
God.
He saw white for a minute, his own shock overtaking Armand’s, his whole world consumed by wet heat.
He pulled out at last, letting piss and cum leak out of Armand’s ass. He stared. A rush of shame suddenly lodged itself in Lestat’s chest, mingled with the furious burn of possession.
Armand turned back to him again, eyes wide, then sank to the floor. He touched his forehead to Lestat’s knee.
Lestat sat down with him. He was tired. He took Armand in his arms once more. He let himself enjoy the embrace just for a moment. Armand was sniffling and clinging to him.
“I don’t know what you need,” Lestat murmured into his night-black hair. “I don’t know what Louis would do.”
“Just don’t let me go yet,” Armand whispered in response. “I’ll leave soon. Just not yet.”
“That’s all right.” Surprising himself, Lestat kissed his head. He pet his hair as he might a frightened dog. “I’ll keep you close.”