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If Lestat closes his eyes, Armand’s voices becomes little more than a dull, irritating buzz over the sound of the shower.
“You could at least have the decency to look at me,” Armand says.
Lestat laughs to himself. The words “decency” and “Armand” do not belong in the same sentence. They don’t even belong in the same genre.
Does the gremlin think breaking into Lestat’s tour bus and standing over his coffin while he sleeps is a decent thing to do?
Come to think of it, he probably does.
Lestat should really just let him read his little notes app apology and be on his way. But it's been a long week, and Sofia still hasn't shown herself, and he’s in desperate need for a distraction.
Lestat puts on his most winning smile, putting a little extra sway in his hips as he opens his eyes.
“You look tense, mon ami. Would you like to join me? The water is lovely.”
The paper in Armand’s hand crinkles in his fist.
“You said you would let me read it," Armand says in a clipped tone. "If you could just—
“You know, I’m a little disappointed,” Lestat interrupts, shutting off the shower. “I’d have expected you to have your lines memorized by now. How many times have you practiced this little monologue of yours in front of a mirror, hm? It’s a good performance; I can admit that.”
Armand clenches his jaw, blinking rapidly as he always does when he’s trying to calm himself.
Lestat doesn’t want him calm. He saunters closer to the gremlin who has ruined his life.
“Poor, pretty thing,” he coos, lifting his Armand’s chin with his fingers, stroking his jawline in a facsimile of affection.
Of course the touch-starved gremlin leans into it, breath stuttering. He closes his eyes, his face a picture of beautiful anguish. Self hatred. Anger. Guilt. Longing.
“Oh, but you do wear desperation well. Then again, I suppose you’ve had plenty of practice, haven’t you?”
“Please,” Armand breathes.
“What was that?”
“Please. Let me finish reading.”
Lestat tsks and leans in closer to Armand’s ear, running his free hand through his hair. “You’ll never be off book with that attitude. What will the director say? I hear he's quite strict."
He soaks in Armand’s shaky exhale with delight.
“Here, why don’t I help?”
Lestat faces no resistance as he plucks the paper out Armand’s hand.
“Blah, blah, blah, oh, you think I’m well endowed, do you?”
"Lestat—"
He lightly slaps Armand’s face, not nearly enough to hurt. He hasn't earned that relief.
The sound Armand lets out is more of a whimper than a moan. He opens his eyes and blinks up at him blearily, as always, intoxicated by his own degradation.
Lestat hovers a hand over Armand’s cheek, letting him feel the chill of his skin, cold from lack of feeding.
When was the last time Lestat fed? He can’t remember. The days have all started to blur together.
“Are you going to be good for me, boy?” Lestat asks quietly. Armand goes still for a few seconds, imploring eyes searching Lestat’s for a mercy he knows he will not find.
The gremlin nods, because of course he does.
Lestat curls his fingers ever so slightly and drags four sharp nails down the gremlin’s soft skin. Then, holding Armand’s chin tightly, he licks over the red lines, one at a time.
Ah. Armand may be the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, but his blood is absolutely decadent. Lestat can already feel the power surging inside him and he wonders: what else would he let Lestat do to him?
The gremlin sways on his feet, drunk on Lestat’s cruelty
“Was it only two centuries ago," Lestat muses, roughly stroking a hand over the gremlin's red-lined cheek, relishing his wince, "that you handed me a whip and begged for me to grant you the deliverance your dear Satan never could?”
“Yes, maître.”
Lestat slaps him again, this time hard enough to knock him off his feet and send him sprawling to the ground.
Armand makes no move to get up and Lestat smiles wanly.
“I think I'd like to see you on your knees. Viens a moi.”
The words feel dirty on his tongue somehow, and a sinking sense of betrayal sits in his stomach like a rock. A boulder. A mountain. A planet.
Ridiculous. Mr. du Lac has no ownership of these words. He may own 45% of Lestat’s merch, but he would not own his words.
“What now, maître?”
Lestat lets out a sharp exhale, forcing himself to return to the present. He cocks his head to the side and observes the mess of a man below him.
So easy. If only Lestat had played his cards differently back in Paris. If only—
Useless thoughts.
“Lower,” Lestat tells him. Armand obeys without hesitation, prostrating himself on his knees with his face to the ground.
Lestat rests a foot on his neck, leaning on it just hard enough to hear him straining for breath.
He wonders, if he presses down hard enough, could he separate that big head from the useless body carrying it around?
Do it, Armand says in his head. Please.
Making a noise of disgust, Lestat kicks him full in the stomach, watching the gremlin wheezing and coughing on the floor.
“Do you really think you deserve for me to grant you such a mercy? When you’re already digging your claws into my mind again? Some people never learn.”
“Then teach me,”Armand rasps out, looking utterly wrecked on the floor. "Please."
Lestat hums, examining his nails.
“And what will I get for it?”
“Anything.”
“Anything, he says. And what if I told you to stop stalking our tour, to fly back to your hole in Dubai and leave Daniel in my tender, loving care?”
Armand has no answer.
“Not anything, then,” Lestat says, bored. “Another lie, to add to the ever growing mountain of lies.”
“Could you do it?” Armand challenges. “If it were your fledgling?”
Lestat stiffens, eyes darkening. “We’re not talking about my fledgling."
“He thinks of you often. He wonders—
Lestat grabs the gremlin by the throat and throws him across the tour bus hard enough to dent the metal and shatter a window.
He feels Christine’s panic at the sound, already calculating the costs of repairing the tour bus, the delays, the press coverage—
Everything is fine, lover, he assures her in her mind. Cosmetic damage. After a moment of consideration, glancing at the broken man leaning against the wall, he adds, Please ensure I am undisturbed for the next hour.
He shuts his mind before hearing her response and walks over to the shower area to pick up his belt. The expensive leather is of far too high of quality to deserve being soaked in gremlin blood, but needs must.
He can feel Armand’s eyes on him, hear his rapidly beating heart, smell his arousal, and it occurs to him that he’s playing right into the gremlin’s hands.
Lestat snaps the belt in the air, humming at the music it makes.
“Is this what you want?” he asks Armand, tilting his head in a show of curiosity.
Armand stills, then slowly nods.
“Well, then.” Lestat raises the belt in the air, looks at it consideringly, and drops it with a smile.
Then he does the cruelest thing he can possibly imagine. He picks Armand up and lays him carefully on the couch, giving him a tender, loving kiss to the forehead.
Lestat straddles him, letting his ass brush over the gremlin's hardness. Armand gasps and arches into it shamelessly. Lestat allows it, even grinds down a little to encourage it.
“Have you missed me, mon cher?”
This time, Lestat welcomes the pit forming in his stomach in the shape of another Pitt.
Fuck that. If Thomas Pitt wants to own these words, too, then let him rip them out of Lestat's mouth. Let him twist them, crush them into a ball, and throw it for Lestat to fetch.
Armand is nodding hazily, brow slightly furrowed at the endearment, but much too delirious to comment on it.
“You must be in terrible pain,” Lestat says, running his hands over Armand's torso, making note of the areas that would make any other man wince, but makes him shudder with pleasure.
"Let's get a better look, shall we?" He uses a nail to slice down the front of Armand's wrinkled shirt, pressing down just hard enough to bleed.
He opens the shirt to reveal the bruised torso. "You poor thing," Lestat says, lacing his words with all the sympathy he can muster. "Who did this to you?
The gremlin breathes heavily but doesn't answer.
"Not to worry, mon amour. I'll kiss it better."
And he does. He lays down the softest, sweetest kisses over Armand's bruises, pausing only to lick up the blood from where his nail dug in.
Armand lets out a pained noise, his fists clenched at his sides. He seems to be trying very hard to steady his breathing.
He'll have to try harder.
“Oh, you have no idea how I've missed you, Armand” Lestat says in a hushed, pining voice.
"Why are you doing this?" Armand asks hoarsely, finally opening his eyes to look at him, guarded, but fragile.
Lestat bites his lip and smiles shyly, sinking into the performance.
"Would you believe me, if I said I love you?" he asks, letting his eyes flicker down to Armand's lips.
"No," Armand answers, letting out a long breath. "No, I would not."
"That's a clever boy," Lestat praises, shifting position to caress Armand's delicate face in his hands. Armand leans into the touch, as expected.
“But you’re going to believe me, tonight,” he whispers in his ear. “Aren't you?"
Armand deflates, his whole body going limp as he accepts his fate. "You’ve grown cruel, over the past century," he observes.
Lestat scoffs. As if Armand is not the one who taught him everything he knows about cruelty. Was it not Armand who wrote in the script, It's their turn to hurt?
“You can leave any time you want," he says, gesturing dismissively at the stairway. "Fly out the way you came, go back to stalking the shadows.”
Armand slowly follows his gaze, eyes catching on the belt on the floor.
Lestat laughs. “Perhaps, after. If you’re good.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Of course," Lestat says with a sharp smile. "Would I lie to you?”
Armand closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them, all trace of bitterness has melted.
“Of course not, maître.”
“Good boy.”
Lestat captures his mouth in a kiss, keeping it gentle, sensual in spite of Armand's writhing beneath him and attempts to turn it into a clashing of teeth. Lestat holds him still with a hand in his hair and another on his neck.
"You're going to take what I give you," he says, smiling. "Aren't you?"
Lestat nods for him, using the grip he has on his hair, and Armand's eyes start to glaze over.
Lestat is both gratified and disappointed to find all traces of Armand’s arousal have vanished, along with his dignity. He wasn't really in the mood to fuck, though it would have been a delicious humiliation.
“You’re so perfect,” Lestat says, his voice full of all the reverence Armand used to show him. “A work of art. A masterpiece of flesh.”
Unlike Armand, Lestat needs no script for this particular performance. In fact, it’s a little disconcerting how easily the words come to him, but then, Armand has always had a way about him.
At some point, Armand closes his eyes.
Now, that won't do at all.
“Won’t you look at me, mon amour? You want to be good for me, don’t you?"
Armand obeys, pink tinged-eyes brimming with blood tears.
“Oh, you poor, beautiful thing. Let it out." Lestat massages the hinge of Armand's clenched jaw, kissing the tears off his cheeks, until he relaxes.
"So much pain," Lestat says. "I know. I can feel the ache of your loneliness. But we don’t have to be alone anymore, do we? We’re together now. We’re all we need.”
Armand lets out a sob and clutches Lestat's hand, keeping it in place against his cheek.
Lestat hums with approval and he leans in to go for the kill. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Someone to tell you how loved you are. Someone who sees you for who you truly are, who doesn’t look away. I see you, Armand. I’ve always seen you, like a reflection in a mirror. I wasn't ready for it, before. I am now."
“It’s all..." Armand swallows, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's all I’ve ever wanted,” he whispers, so desperately earnest.
Lestat would feel guilty, if Armand did not so thoroughly destroy any chance of happiness he ever had.
“I know, mon amour,” Lestat says, imbuing his voice with all the regrets it can carry. He steals a presses a chaste kiss on Armand's lips that leaves chasing more. “I’m sorry for not seeing it sooner. All this time, all this pain could have been avoided, non? If only I’d stayed in Paris with you. If only I’d been a better student, and trusted your judgment.”
Armand shakes his head vehemently. “No, you were right, Lestat. The coven… it was no way to live. You liberated us." You liberated me. "I will always be grateful for it.”
Not grateful enough, it seems, based on what happened last time they were in Paris together.
“I was angry, then,” Armand says, casting his eyes down in shame. "I was desperate. I was wrong."
Lestat smiles placidly. "I thought we agreed you'd stay out of my head, mon amour. "
“I’m not in your head. But I know you, Lestat. I’ve known you longer than most.”
“Must we do this?" Lestat huffs, sitting up. "It's boring."
Amber eyes bore into him, unyielding in their sincerity.
“I was a monster, then. A starving dog, who would do anything for a scrap of your attention. It’s always been you about, Lestat. Louis was—”
Lestat’s hand is around his throat before he can utter the next syllable.
“You do not utter his name. You do not think it. You do not think about thinking it. Do you understand me?”
The gremlin nods as best as he can, and Lestat lets go as if he burned him. He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes, and returns to the scene he’s scripted.
He puts on a plastic smile.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to mention another man, when I’m the one on top of you, mon amour?"
“Yes, maître.”
“Non. Not maître. Not tonight. You’ll say my name ronight, won’t you? You’ll let me hear it on those lovely lips of yours?”
Armand hesitates for the first time since they started. Lestat raises an eyebrow.
“Lestat.” He says his name like it’s an admission of defeat. A shame. Lestat was enjoying the game.
“I forgive you for it, mon amour. I forgive you for all of it. I know I shouldn’t. What you’ve done is unforgiveable. And yet I find thought of you constantly occupies my mind. Your face. Your voice. Your very presence. It all lives rent free in my head.”
“I haven’t stopped thinking of you since the day I met you," Armand replies, each word seeming to pain him. Good, Lestat thinks to himself. "Haven’t stopped loving you.”
“I know,” Lestat says, and isn’t that the root of all their problems? Armand’s love is poison, a toxicity that remains in the bloodstream for centuries.
“I—”
“Shh.” Lestat leans down to kiss his forehead. He lets his lips linger for a while, until he feels the tension in Armand’s body start to drain.
“You’re cold," Armand says. “You should feed.”
“Are you offering, mon amour? You want my mouth on you?”
Armand nods. “It’s what I should have done back in—when you last asked. Consider it part of my amends.”
Lestat should want to rip out Armands’ heart for thinking that this paltry offer could even make a dent in the avalanche of wrongs he has inflicted. But looking down at his wide, imploring eyes, he feels a disturbing type of empathy.
Hadn’t Lestat committed crimes just as atrocious as Armand's, all in the name of his loneliness? As much as he might prefer to lie to himself, he didn't know Louis would survive the drop. It was impulsive. A crime of passion.
Are Armands actions worse because they were calculated? Hadn’t Lestat manipulated his way back into Louis’ life, into his bed, all the while keeping Antoinette on standby in case his true love didn’t meet his needs? Lied to him, cheated on him, betrayed him.
Lestat might not have thrown himself into the fire, but through his actions, he forced Louis to be alone. Abandoned, all the same.
And Louis forgave him. Louis forgave him for all of it. That was the worst part of all. Is the worst part of it all.
“Love makes monsters of us all," Lestat says, mostly to himself.
He doesn’t wait to hear Armand’s reply before diving into his neck.
Armand is not Louis. He’ll never be Louis. But he’ll never be nothing, either.
“Do you still want me to whip you?” Lestat asks afterward, sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette.
The gremlin is facing away from him, pulling on one of Lestat's black tank top. He thinks about it for a few seconds, before replying.
“No, thank you.”
“Mm. Next time, then.”
Armand looks over his shoulder, gears working overtime in that twisted mind of his. He stares at the floor next to the couch.
“I cannot tell if you are joking.”
Lestat smiles.
“Then you’ll have to come find out, won’t you?”