Chapter Text
Louis sat at the bar. He’d dressed nicely that day. Cleanly. In a light wash denim jacket, with a neat collared shirt underneath. He tapped his idle fingers against the rim of a short glass, filled with thick chunks of ice and an amber liquid he couldn’t stomach. A pathetic attempt to look, or maybe feel, like he could still play at personhood.
He’d taken to dressing nice, every night. Nearly a century had passed since his birth. He was too old to be dwelling on his loneliness, a loneliness inescapable for being such as him. Louis had to, at the very least, fill his empty walls with something.
So, he put on a nice shirt, a jacket cool enough for the times, and headed for the darling little gay bar a few streets down. He would find some company—for the night, maybe for a few nights. After that, perhaps a meal. He’d try to fill the deep-seated emptiness of his stomach, distract himself enough to sleep through another day. Distract himself enough to not think of blonde hair. To not think of little girls, who grew up to be their Uncle’s daughters. He tried, desperately, to not think of anything at all.
That was how he’d met Daniel Molloy.
A young boy, young enough to be in college, still. He was handsome enough, with a head of curly brown hair and piercing, curious blue eyes. He wore a leather jacket. He carried a satchel full of tapes and a recorder. They rattled when he sat down in the stool next to Louis, loud and clumsy. He was already drunk, already high. Something about that was attractive. The lack of care for the world, for himself, perhaps. When the boy’s hand, with its dry, cracked knuckles and pale skin stretched over bone, reached for his drink, he let him.
“Daniel Molloy,” the boy introduced himself. He took a swig from Louis old fashioned, modesty left at the door.
Louis was amused. He met the boy’s eyes. He forgot himself, forgot the boy, only thought about that beautiful blue. He put his card down, let him order whatever he wanted. A grasshopper, for both of them. The boy’s clever eyes left his, catching on his card.
“Louis de Pointe du Lac.” Daniel grinned knowingly. “That’s an interesting name.”
Louis smiled back. “Louis de Pointe du Lac plantation.” He leaned in closer, grasshopper pushed aside. Daniel leaned in, too. Kept him pinned under those beautiful blues. “My great great grandfather owned one.”
This interested Daniel. And perhaps that was nice—someone being interested in him. He let Daniel talk, and talk. Let him share what he did, day to day. Let him make it sound like it was something more than nothing. Let him share all his aspirations, as a writer with nothing to show for it. He let him talk himself into a trip out of the bar, a trip to Louis’s apartment.
I better keep this one alive, Louis thought. He was truly a shallow man. Perhaps he’d adopted that, from a certain lover in his past. He still craved the thrill that came with an eternity of promise. A thrill no mortal could ever match. He knew this, and still deluded himself. Still found comfort in the ephemeral. He was still too in love with the mortal world. Even while knowing that the closest a mortal could ever come was the promise of a night.
But was that so bad—a night? Was there any harm to a warm body to pass the time with? Louis couldn’t see it.
The odd pair stepped out, into the cool air of nighttime. A breeze carried down the street, ripping through the whole city, out from the Pacific. Daniel shivered next to him, despite the weight of leather over his shoulders. They stood there together, breathing the fresh air.
That was when Louis saw him.
He stood in the distance, at the end of the street. He had his back turned to them, flooded in the light of the lamp post he leant against. Dark, curly hair cut at his chin—broad shoulders, covered in a thin layer of green satin. His legs were long, made to look even longer by the dark denim clinging to his flesh. Smoke pooled in front of him, in the haze of yellow light. Past the orgy flyers, past the missing person posters and skate shop stickers, Louis could see him. Louis could see him, smell him, feel him.
He stood there, like a vision.
Armand, his damned ex-lover.
Armand, who Louis hadn’t heard from in decades. Armand, who haunted Louis in the dreams he didn’t have. Armand, who had ruined everything. Armand, who was dead.
Louis found his hand leaving the shoulder of his mortal lover for the night. He paced down the block, boots heavy against the cracked pavement. He weaved through the drunk crowd, shoving up against stray shoulders and elbows, earning a few curses and sour looks in his wake. He marched onwards, onwards, until he rose above the crowd. Until he reached the pool of yellow light he’d seen from afar. The rest of the world be damned, he had to see if this was real.
Armand stood there, just as tall and handsome as Louis had remembered him. It had all the hallmarks of a hallucination—induced by the weed, the cocaine, maybe something a little more exotic he’d picked up from the blood. Armand, leaning against the worn wood of a lamp post, a thin cigarette held up to his lips. It burned steady, coloring the skin of his hand a dark orange as the smoke blurred his face.
He looked thinner. A little younger, too. Maybe that was the power of distance—of time. The power of dark jeans and worn leather shoes, kicked up against the post. He looked out into the night, eyes tracing the slow stream of passing cars. Eyes searching for something. He had always been searching.
Armand, Louis called out.
Armand, Armand, Armand. Again, and again, loud enough that every vampire on the continent must have heard him.
And yet, no response.
This Armand stood there, unphased, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette.
Louis tried with his voice, then. Shouted over the street he still had to cross, over the distant hum of music and the late-night crowds. The name left his lips, like a siren in the night, so loud it had every passerby’s head turning.
Armand finally glanced at him, but not with any recognition. His eyes carried the same expression as the bleach-haired girl sitting on the curb below him. Mild confusion, nothing more. He looked at Louis just the same as anyone else. Like he was just another strange man, drunkenly yelling in the street. Louis kept chanting, chanting, chanting, until he reached the end of the black and white crossing. He was a foot away from the man now, and undeniable.
“ARMAND!” Louis shouted once more, right in his face.
The man did nothing more than frown. He perhaps flinched, but suppressed it just as quickly. His stub of a cigarette fell to the ground, where it slowly died out on the concrete. He looked down, watching it go out, before finally looking Louis in the eye.
“Sorry.” He stared, voice soft, hoarse. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
Louis took in the face he’d spent two and a half decades forgetting. Armand’s eyes were a dark brown now, wide and innocent as a doe’s. They were lined in black, a messy blur of pencil liner that faded into his thick eyelashes. His skin was rougher, marred with the marks of wear and tear along his lips and cheekbones. He was strong, angular, timeless. Still the same angel, taking his hand as he pulled him into damnation. Still his same Armand.
The face, the perfect, unforgettable face, frowned back at him. His expression was unreadable, leaving Louis to dig into his mind instead.
Louis dove in, like he’d done so often. He found Armand in the crowd of racing thoughts all around them, and—
Came up blank.
Well, not blank. There were flashes of color, of emotion, of feeling. There was a dull pain, unpinnable. There were violent, striking beams of light and shadow. Like the cities he’d seen from a distance during the war, lit by a steady downpour of falling stars. It was loud, bright, incomprehensible. It should have driven a mortal insane.
“No,” Louis breathed.
Armand, from outside in, was entirely illegible. But still, Louis could feel it. This was Armand.
“I know you very well.”
Armand offered a raise of his brow in response. He pushed himself up off the pole, coming to stand on two feet. He only spoke again then, once he could face Louis with the advantage of height.
“Do I look French?” He smiled lightly, head tilted. His dark curls, cut shorter in the front, traced the raised bridge of his nose.
Louis did not return his smile.
“French?”
“Armand,” the man replied.
“Armand, Armand, Armand,” he repeated, now in a mockery of Louis’s drawl. “A French name.”
Louis paused. In intonation, this Armand did sound rather different. His Armand had sounded centuries old. Each word had fallen from his lips like a song, smooth and heavy. This Armand didn’t carry the same weight. Even his accent, still something European in his voice, only had a hint of something vaguely British. It wasn’t the Armand he had known before.
“Amadeo?”
This suggestion amused the other man even further. He started laughing, actually laughing— not the joyless mimicry Louis had heard from his Armand. He leaned forward, raising a hand to cover his mouth. He was loud, a bit too loud. Louis vaguely wondered if he’d smoked more than the cigarette.
“Amadeo,” he stuttered out between gasps. “Well, I suppose I could be Sicilian.” The laughing lasted for an excruciating minute, until Armand caught his breath.
“God,” he mumbled once he’d calmed down. “Thank you for this.”
“I really wasn’t—”
“No,” the man interrupted. “Seriously, thank you. It’s been a shit day.” He straightened himself out, tugging the rather wide collar of his shirt back over his shoulders. Louis bit his tongue, trying not to stare at those collarbones, jointed to a long, fragile human neck. He kept his eyes on Armand’s, watched them drift towards something past Louis.
Louis scarcely had time to look behind him, before the man spoke again.
“Your little friend has caught up to you.” The amused smile stayed on his face. “Just a warning.”
Daniel Molloy stepped into their sphere, breathing heavily. Louis supposed it had been cruel of him to run off. And dense of Daniel, to follow him. Mortals lacked the fluidity and sense of vampires—couldn’t make sense of the heat of human bodies around them, the way his kind could. Still, Daniel had followed him. Curious, desperate, or perhaps both. Daniel was an addict, and Louis was his score. An interesting man, carrying the promise of a story and his precious white powder.
“Fuck, man,” Daniel panted out. He doubled over, hands resting atop his knees. “What the hell got you running off like that?”
Armand—or the stranger occupying his body—looked to Louis and raised a brow. He seemed to find it all funny, that bastard.
“Did you like me that much?” He asked, mirth hardly stifled.
Louis took half a step away from Daniel. There was a tinge of embarrassment, now. He stood before the likeness of Armand, a man who’s face had provoked nearly five centuries of corruption. He stood before him with a cute, hopeful druggie he’d picked up from a gay bar advertised on the back of the cheapest local paper.
Daniel didn’t know any of this, of course. He glowered at the man, who stood half a head taller than him. He was young, hot-blooded, and filled with undue confidence. That was why Louis had liked him, in the first place.
“You didn’t have to go running after the first whore you saw,” he remarked. His eyes didn’t leave the strange man. “If you want a piece of ass, you can have mine.”
The man regarded Daniel, then. Looked him up and down, like a piece of meat at the market. Like he had the right to judge. Like he was above Daniel, somehow. Like he was better than this other street boy, who could have easily stood at his side, smoking at this very street corner.
A moment passed between them. “You got money?”
Sweat had begun to trickle down Daniel’s brow. “Money?”
“Money,” the man answered. “Or rather, does your handsome man have any? Threesomes cost extra.”
Money.
Louis's eyes darted between the two of them. He listened, listened as God Himself laughed above. Of course, even this Armand—who’d never heard that name in his life, as he’d claimed—would live such a doomed life. This face, this body, cursed to only know this. Eyes blown out, brown skin mottled and mauve lips split down the middle. A cruel fate. He’d never live a life he’d own. And Louis, too, was no savior.
Should he have pitied him more, back then? Did his Armand deserve that? Want that? Louis wondered often, what had made Armand such a fundamentally desperate creature.
His Armand, two and a half decades ago, and this Armand, now.
This Armand, who looked at him with eyes like the moon. A mere reflection of life. His brown, mortal eyes held nothing.
“It’s fine if not,” he tried. “It's late, you’re both not bad looking. I just wanna spend the night somewhere warm.”
Daniel looked to Louis. His expression was a warning. His mortal senses had taught him to be apprehensive, distrusting. That was clear enough to Louis, no mindreading needed.
It was clear to Armand, too. He had always been quicker than Louis, at this sort of thing. It didn’t surprise him, then, when the reaction came immediately. His hands raised, coming down onto Louis’s hips in a firm betrayal of the false hesitance seeping into his voice. He licked his lips, practiced. Left them parted.
“I can go down on you right here, if you’d like.”
Daniel responded before Louis could. He pushed the man back, perhaps with a bit more aggression than was warranted.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He cried out, stepping forward.
Louis wondered, vaguely, if it was him that Daniel was so protective of, or the promise of his precious cocaine? In either case, his enthusiasm was attractive.
It made Armand, or whoever the fuck this was, took a step back. Or a stumble, really. He was thin, and an equal match for Daniel despite his height. The action was followed by another laugh.
“What’s wrong with me?,” He scoffed, wiping his hands off on his jeans. “I’m just a hooker try to spend one half-decent night.”
He looked down at Daniel as he spoke. Looked down at Louis. Like it was him, who was the prey. Even though he knew that wasn’t possible. Even among mortals, one of which this Armand most certainly was, he was the lowest of the low. He offered everything, undiscriminating. His dignity, his body, his life itself.
Louis took a step forward, making up for the lost proximity. He reached out, this time, placed his hands on top of the young man’s. They felt even thinner than they looked. Louis wondered whether he was even a man yet. His Armand had been turned young enough. What would he have looked like—five, seven years earlier?
“How old are you?” Louis asked.
“Eighteen,” the man answered immediately. “Every hooker will tell you they’re eighteen.”
Louis took a deep breath. This Armand was certainly younger, if only for the sheer nature of how damn annoying he was. The centuries old Armand had been prone to some brattiness—but nothing quite as aggravating.
Daniel commented, from beside him, “Assume 16.”
The man returned Daniel’s hostility, looking offended by the notion. “God, no. I’m Twenty.”
Twenty. Louis went silent.
What had his Armand been doing at twenty?
He slid one foot back, shifting his weight. An idle motion. The sole of his boot hit the curb. The girl who had been sitting there must have run off. Louis vaguely wondered if she was meant to stay there with fake Armand—provide some sort of deluded sense of safety for them both. In any case, he was alone now. Armand was alone, working a street corner that wouldn’t notice the loss of him.
If Louis dragged him into the alley, drained him, left his still-warm corpse—would anyone care? Or would it be like his first life again?
Louis rewarded the prolonged silence with another question.
“Where’s your pimp?”
This Armand’s eyes glared. They weren’t violent, but they glared. Glared wearily, defensively. A guarded expression. He kept himself frigid—as if the coldness in his eyes would lessen the bone-deep tremors racking his body. “I don’t know.”
He could see, out of the corner of his eye, how Daniel glanced between the two of them. He hoped his boy wouldn’t feel too forgotten, when he brought the third home with him.
Louis smiled at Armand, then at Daniel. “Perfect.”
He took Armand’s delicate hands in his. He tried to remember if they had been smaller than his own before. He thought they had been, but it felt unfamiliar, now. He had worn gloves, more often than not. Had that made them feel bigger? Or would Armand grow taller, in the years to come? Even taller than Louis?
He couldn’t remember.
Louis met Armand’s gaze. Dark eyes, sucking him in. Like a pit, bottomless, empty. Waiting for the right person to fall down it, to save him from his eternal solitude.
Louis had never entirely understood his Armand. His closed-off, elusive Armand. The Armand he had killed. It may have simply been his own pride—the insecurity that grew from his inability to read a mind—but something told him to put an end to things, all over again.
This Armand—the boy Armand—slowly returned his smile. He drew their hands out in front of them, swung lightly in Louis’s hold.
“How romantic,” he remarked. He leaned forward, pressed a chaste kiss to Louis’s cheek.
“Take me home, sir.”
—
Louis’s designated hook-up (murder) apartment was everything short of spectacular. It was a mundane place, just furnished enough to look inhabited. His eyes scanned the dull yellow walls, cheap wooden furniture. He’d never considered keeping anyone around long enough to be very self-conscious of it. Yet here he was, staring daggers into the side of Armand’s face, searching for any inkling of judgement.
Armand, to his surprise, or maybe his horror, seemed to quite like the place. He let him explore the place, while he got his drug stash out for Daniel. Louis could hear him, caught glimpses of him, running around the place, peering into the bathroom and Louis’s bedroom without so much as a questioning glance. Louis silently thanked his former self for thinking to tuck his coffin under the bed.
He vaguely wondered, as he watched Daniel cut his lines, whether Armand had the nerve to act like this with every man he brought home. Surely not. Louis had pimped before, after all, and knew a thing or two about sustainable business practices in that field. What was it about him, then, that made Armand feel confident enough to do this? Was Louis getting caught up in his web of lies, all over again? Or did this Armand, without knowing anything, somehow feel the same pull to Louis as Louis did to him?
Louis didn’t let himself dwell on that idea for too long. He desperately wished he could bring himself to feel any anger, any disdain towards this Armand. As it stood, he was doing a hell of a good job at playing the innocent, wide-eyed street kid.
Daniel did a line. Lit a joint. He slid the small tray over to Louis—a well-mannered boy. Armand returned to his dear patron, then, having had his fill of prying into Louis's personal life. His eyes caught on the tray, widening slightly at the neat lines of fine, white powder. He looked at Louis, asking.
Louis let him. He let him, and tried to remember what his Armand would have thought about the stash of cocaine. He wouldn’t have been nearly as appreciative, Louis thought.
They continued until they’d had their fill, exchanging the tray and the joint back and forth. This was what kept them civil, it seemed—a shared need to escape life’s grim monotony. Louis was pleased enough with this. He sat on the couch, watching them. Beckoned them to him, once they were done.
Daniel hesitated, unsure of what he was meant to do. Armand, who seemingly lacked any shame at all, immediately stumbled over to Louis, collapsing unceremoniously into his lap. He laid his head down on his thighs, gazing up at Louis like a lost child would at God. Perhaps he was God to him, in that moment. Perhaps that was all God was—patient orders, a warm embrace, and a short-lived high.
Daniel moved once Armand had, carving out a space for himself by Louis's side, between his body and the armrest. It was remarkable there was space left for him at all with Armand’s height. He was adept at making himself small, knees tucked neatly up into his chest. Louis could see, from this angle, where his eyeliner had smudged and cracked from moisture. He wondered if this attention was simply the monster that memory made out of him—whether Daniel saw him the same way.
Louis looked to his boy. Laughed at the tilt of his head. Nodded in permission. He watched his hand reach into the tangle of curls across Louis’s lap, and work their way across Armand’s scalp. The man let out a sigh at the sensation—a thin, breathy sound.
Louis joined in Daniel’s ministrations, gently brushing back the hair that had spilled across Armand’s forehead. “Found all your escape routes?” He asked.
Armand nodded. His eyes fluttered closed. “I found your bathtub,” he whispered, non-committal. “And your blender. And your record player. Do you have records?”
His voice was gently eager. He kept it quiet, diminishing his own enthusiasm. Louis thought it funny, coming from the kid who’d just rummaged through his entire apartment.
“Yes,” he answered, lowering his hand to rest it on the side of Armand’s knee. Daniel stayed at his head, clumsy fingers working through the knots formed by the Pacific breeze. Louis only smiled. “It would be awful strange to have a player with no records.”
Armand nodded, again. Or perhaps he’d still been nodding—Louis hadn’t noticed him stop.
“Do you want me to play something?”
Armand’s eyes opened again, impossibly wide at the suggestion. Yes, he thought. He thought it, but wouldn’t speak it.
Louis was terribly endeared. It all made him remember how he’d become so infatuated with Armand in the first place. It was his earnestness. These eyes, once a bright amber, now a deep brown, were enchanting him all over again. Laying curled up on his couch—throwing rocks at his windowsill.
That beauty was a curse.
Louis released the breath he’d kept held, letting his hand up Armand’s thigh. The boy didn’t so much as flinch. Not at Daniel, not at Louis. He only laid on his side, breathing slow and comfortable. He was either a rather horrible prostitute, or an absolute virtuoso. Louis couldn’t quite tell.
When his hand reached the sharp bone of his hip, he broke their comfortable silence again.
“What’s your name?” Louis asked. “I never got it.”
Armand’s eyes flickered between him and Daniel. A forced pause, as if the question were something worth consideration.
“Aaron,” he finally answered.
“Aaron,” Louis echoed. “That’s not your real name, I’m guessing.”
The man looked at him wearily. There was a brief flash, a moment of distrust. It was gone within a blink. Louis’s chest tightened, anyway.
“It’s the name I was given here.” Aaron took a shallow breath. “Is it strange?”
Louis shook his head. “Not strange.”
Aaron, Armand, Amadeo. Would the narrative ever swing in his favor?
“It’s not strange.”
Another silence passed over them. Aaron seemed to enjoy it. He looked calm. He looked tired. The smear of makeup he wore did little to hide the deep circles under his eyes. He melted under Louis’s cool touch, eyes fluttering as he rubbed circles into the thin denim stretched over his skin. He let his head fall lax, supported by Daniel’s rougher hands.
Twenty years old. Louis was nearing a hundred, now. Armand would have been in his mid-400s. What was twenty years, to an immortal? What had twenty years been to Armand? Had he been like this boy, lying before Louis? Twenty years old, with a mind fragmented into a state of total unreadability?
Had Louis ever found out who Armand truly was? Had Armand ever let him?
Armand. A name that meant soldier , if Louis’s weakening grasp of French was to be trusted. Had Armand told him where it had come from? Who had he gotten it from? Louis felt like he had known, at some point. Like he had heard it, over the screaming, shouting, laughing image of Lestat in his mind.
Armand. Armand, Amadeo, Aaron.
Armand, Amadeo, Aaron.
Armand, Amadeo.
Aaron?
“Arun.”