Or Daniel needs no instruction at all, and they are simply of a similar mind about their meals and wish to spare Louis by calling it a lesson.
There are other nights in which Louis might have sought to accompany them. Might have indulged the part of him that wishes for their company, despite all the strangeness of Lestat and Daniel occupying the same space.
But no. Not tonight.
The suite itself is lavish. Adjoining rooms. Plush carpeting. Floor to ceiling windows. A balcony, which must cost this place a fortune in insurance rates.
Left to his own devices, Louis lets himself out onto that balcony. Runs his palms along the wrought iron, lets the brush of leaves across his palm root him where he stands as he opens his mind to the flow and pulse of vampiric chatter. Frustration, anger, bloodlust, Louis sifts past all of this overlapping noise.
Speaks into it, voice like a drop of cool water, sending ripples through once familiar depths.
Blocks away, might as well be three states over with the scope of blocks in New York City, in modest accommodations. A secondary apartment owned by one of his bookkeepers who is graciously permitting an odd, vital client to use it for a few weeks. He is busy with something; ripples do not immediately bring his attention outside passive awareness.
Or they do, and he chooses not to respond right away. Louis will be used to this. Cold shoulders when he's feeling slighted, and a tendency to feel slighted around times when Louis has time-sensitive questions.
Armand continues with what he's doing, deciding he doesn't feel like being interrupted. On a roll with this part, observing a man from afar. He can't see this man, but he doesn't need to. He walks to the window and pushes it open, considers a cigarette. He'd stopped at the bodega around the corner, one he has stopped at before in decades past, and picked up a few things. Props to leave in the refrigerator. Toothpaste. Menthols. Shopping for Granny?, the young man had asked.
Finally:
Not a response. But a feeling. This, too, Louis will be used to. Armand simply turning his attention to him and waiting. Well? What is it?
An uneventful reconnecting after so many months, and so many inciting reveals. Armand leans against a desk, and starts peeling apart one of his cigarettes.
Before, Armand's mind was welcoming. He had made a place for Louis, and made the landscape comprehensible. Veiled parts of himself that were too warped to be engaged with, compacted everything down as to not make the concept of ancient so terrifying. Now, it is closed. Louis is received in a kind of psychic lobby, sterile and shuttered; deeper avenues into Armand's consciousness are unavailable. To press in is impossible— Louis will find nothing but impenetrable marble, no seam in sight, and his proverbial nails will chip before he does.
Anger, affection. Seventy-seven years is a long time. Armand beholds him, and for a long moment, says nothing. Perhaps turning Louis' presence over in his psychic hands, like his real ones are twisting a little paper tube. Contemplating.
Him. Mm. He smiles a little to himself, humorless.
'Your objection to my interpenetration is coming a bit late.'
True that he did technically touch the intrepid Mr Molloy, that evening. But the spirit of the order was very clearly about doing harm, and Louis' fascinating boy is just fine. Rules lawyering. With another part of his attention, Armand continues to monitor his project. Tells him to carry on; more gas cans. Go to the next station— no, a little further. Space them out. New Jersey isn't too far down the highway.
If Louis applies enough pressure, will he break through this cold marble? Is there a crack in the stone he could find, widen until he can slip through?
Yes, Louis agrees. I am late.
What's done cannot be undone. And Louis has permitted it to placate him. Has permitted Daniel to placate him. Delay this conversation.
You leave him to me now, a little coaxing, anger softening from flame to smolder. Held in check as he murmurs between their minds.
What give is left between them? What is left, after seventy-seven years built on a lie?
Like marble, like ice, like diamond; polished and without traction. Louis will slip off of it. Armand feels him—
Misses him, a realization that feels like electrocution. It turns to a bruise at once, and he dislikes it. The ache pools resentment. Armand gave everything to him. He gave up his coven, his identity, nearly a century of his life. He learned to make Louis happy and comfortable even when he raged against his own existence, he learned how to excel as a curator and art dealer to support his interests, he learned Arabic.
Because he was in love. Armand looks at the destroyed cigarette, all the tobacco dust and little slips of shredded paper. He digs a nail into the filter. His project falters, but not for long. Careful. Don't drive into a wall.
Mm. That, also. Late. Molloy has been a vampire for months now. Doing well, without help. Something in him bristles, but Louis won't feel it. Still removed. Still behind marble. Armand gave everything to him, and he wants this too? Now? Armand presses his nail down harder.
'Is he not still in your company?'
Dry. Did you misplace him already, Louis. Is Lestat so dazzling, still.
Louis made him a promise. But he's made Daniel a promise as well. Louis can limit himself.
At least, he can limit himself for the moment.
Though the urge to exert pressure on smooth marble is irresistible. To press and press and see what might crack beneath the pressure. To clean something more, some true emotion.
If he ever had access to Armand's true emotions. If anything was ever true.
The slightest of tells, barely noticeable: Armand flinches away from curiosity. If he has emotion there, if any of it is about Louis, it's not any of Louis' business anymore. Armand has a right to shield himself, and he does, shuttered tight and isolated.
What he leaves Molloy is also not any of Louis' business.
'I'm surprised he would ask you to champion him this way.'
Skeptical. If the fascinating boy wants Armand to stop, if he thinks it's enough, then he can say so. Not Louis. It has nothing to do with Louis. Armand watches more gas cans being filled. Hears the fumbling— a credit firm is calling to ask if he's making fraudulent purchases or not. It's quite a lot of gasoline. Explain, continue. Pick a different card. He has so many, it doesn't matter. Fill the bed of his expensive truck that he owns for vanity, can after can. The most that's ever been in there. More than beach chairs, his wife's expensive riding saddles. Go to the next station. Get a soda.
'You left him there with me and went where you did.' Because of course Armand knows. No mind-reading required, he simply looked at their bank statements and saw the flight. 'Was he a parting gift, or did you simply forget your boy as soon as the opportunity to reach out to Lestat became viable?'
It's enough, he's done enough. Has he. Very clever, his fledgling, very independent, he has thrived on his own without anyone's assistance, he has turned the world on its ear and presented what will someday be among the most important historical documents in history as highly contested pulp fiction. His fledgling. Enough. His.
Edited (i bet im still missing a glaringly obvious wrong word) 2024-08-17 22:44 (UTC)
These words heralded by smoke curls of anger. Accusation and grief. Regret.
The pressure steadily increasing in tandem with Louis' frustration, his anger. A shared room in Paris, the two of them stripped down and lazy with their shared exertions, Armand speaking of finding the flaw, Louis speaking of using his anger as fuel. It hovers behind this action, Louis' palm spread across cold, blank stone.
I made a mistake, trusting you to let him go.
Of course Armand knows where Louis had gone. Of course.
How long did you wait, Armand? How long did you wait to punish him in my place?
Yes. Punishment. Armand is asking Louis, Armand is asking himself. He has asked himself several times, the past few weeks. It started that way, he knows it did— he tells himself it did. He's told himself over and over. This is punishment. (Who is he punishing?)
His project will drive back. All the way back, past his home outside the city snarl, past three other luxury buildings he owns, to the one where Armand and Louis lived out their settled days here. He will wait in the basement parking garage and then begin the process of bringing each gas can several floors up. Sometimes in the elevator, sometimes through the stairs. He has a meeting with the current resident of the place they used to live. Armand had been content with the small family they transferred their shares in the building do, when they left; an affluent but progressive (for the time) couple, their small children who they were going to send to private, arts-based schools. These shares, the stake in this building, were eventually shuffled out of Louis' portfolio without a care.
It had bothered Armand a little. He can't put his finger on why. It was around the time he decided it was best if he only ate corrosive capitalists. That he did this around Louis' artful exploitation of money was not something they ever talked about. Probably, a therapist would have noticed.
Anyway.
'You were still in the building.'
A careless little knife twist. Armand isn't actually sure. He stopped paying attention as soon as Louis was in the elevator. But he hadn't wasted any time— Louis could have been in the lobby, waiting for a car to be brought up. Closer, even. Still practically within arm's reach as Armand has closed his own around an abandoned mortal Louis had wanted for himself.
Whatever he had promised Daniel, Louis had been angry before. Angry and guilty and filled with regret.
Seventy-seven years together. Does Armand need to be in Louis' head to know how the twist of this knife would land? How accurate the strike of it is, finding effortless purchase in Louis' chest as Armand offers this confirmation.
The pressure of a hand turns to hammering. A shock of pressure, a crack like a fist coming down.
You had no right.
Waste of breath, arguing over a thing that's been done. No reversing it. No way to change what Daniel has lived through, what Louis' mistake has wrought.
A demonstration of just how wrong he had been. Has been. If there has been any lingering thought that he knew Armand—
It had been awful. It had been beautiful. Armand thought he might cast the journalist out into the sun moments after. He remembered Louis' distress after the girl, and he wondered if he felt that way. If it was the same, or if it was something else; whatever it was, it rewired something in him. He has been contemplating it ever since. Often with resentment (self-fulfilling), but also—
Violence, even like this. Typical of Louis to slip into anger. Armand is glad they aren't doing this in person.
The little family they sold their shares to was priced out when the building was bought. They got an awful deal on it. They relocated to Delaware in a very nice house. Not ruined, not by far. But it irked Armand. They had chosen carefully. His project begins to move gas cans down a hallway, to the family-sized penthouse unit once occupied by two vampires.
'Didn't I?'
He had been there for the interview. He had been there in San Fransisco. Daniel, brilliant writer, terrible partner, drug addict. Daniel is his fledgling. Armand closes his hands around the idea, the brazen and true thought, and the silver thread* in his mind. Feels a strange thread of jealousy that begins to burn.
'You aren't entitled to that anymore.' A mental shrug, slipping away from ruthless hammering. 'Nor to these demands you're making of me. I have left you quite alone, Louis.'
If he knew he was going to be confronted (perhaps he should have anticipated this, in hindsight) he might have actually done something. Even if only to amuse himself. But he hasn't. He wants that part to just be done. He has kept is distance and minded his own business, and Louis is still angry at him? It shivers through him, burning a little deeper.
* armand doesnt know what weed and slightly expired speed feel like its fine
The word beats in his temples. Armand recedes, descending further beneath the icy shield of stone.
So easy for him to detach himself. Louis' resentment is an ugly thing, claws digging in around his heart. The hammering continues apace, a heartbeat, drumming beneath the patter of their conversation.
Seventy-seven years. Daniel's fears, his worry of what it would cost Louis to initiate contact. Maybe even this, words projected at a distance, costs something.
It sparks a very specific kind of pain. Something familiar, shattered apart.
Have you?
Louis had made only two requests, as he'd left. Armand had abided by one.
His fledgling is very clever. Maybe they could both do with listening to him a little more. Louis should not be doing this. Armand should try psilocybin.
The burning feeling stings something deep. Armand grips the windowsill. He wants to assert— Yes, he has, yes, he has only reached out to Molloy, who isn't harmed, who is better, and Louis should be grateful because he didn't have to take this on himself. But this train of thought jumbles together with Armand imagining Louis having done it, they way they discussed, and it fills him with a bizarre and awful anxiety.
He tries to say 'Fine, have it your way', tries to concede, even lie about it. Just end this conversation and move on, be more careful. But anger stirs, then stirs a little more, and he touches the severed thing in his head left by Marius, who he knows isn't dead, and he compares it to the connection with his fledgling, his fledgling, and he feels nauseous.
'Yes.'
One word, and his distance remains, but he sounds angry. Yes, he has left Louis alone. Yes, he is still contacting Daniel sometimes, yes, he will continue, yes, he did all of it, yes, he knew the whole time.
The hammering ebbs. A hand, flattening along unyielding ice. Not unlike Louis, folding bonelessly in against Armand. Turning his face in against Armand's throat, breathing there against skin.
Should he have understood this? That Armand is remote and unyielding?
They have been far from each other. But there had been enough. Just enough. Their love had been threadbare and fading, but it had held. Louis hadn't understood it was strung from a frame built upon a lie. It cannot stand without that fiction to keep it from unraveling.
A stretch of quiet. Not disconnection, only breathing. Louis' presence, pressed against stone.
Eventually, He wasn't yours to take.
And how much has been taken? Claudia. Seventy-seven years of Louis' life.
And Daniel. Daniel, who says he is fine. Who says he is happy.
For so many years, Armand held him. Helped him through anger, through trauma, putting Lestat behind him, putting Claudia behind him. Packing things away in his past where they could harm him no longer. Armand was happy for it— if he couldn't make his own pain go quiet, he could at least make Louis' disappear. And it was rewarding because it was Louis. Louis, who he loved. He loved him. He had to, at least for a while. Right?
A phantom impression of what once was. Louis, slumped against him. Armand, winding arms around shoulders, petting his hair, giving him shelter. He should tell him: I wanted it to be real. You used me as punishment, but I still wanted it to be real, and I tried. I failed. The broken part is me, it was never you.
Of course, this does not occur.
A funny little feeling, like laughter. Hysterical, sad. When did Armand decide Daniel was his? Recently? Years ago? Was it in San Francisco, using him like a doll? On a business trip in London, finding his face on a book staring out at him? Was it when he recognized the dialect of his prayers? Just now, because Louis is trying to deny him this possession?
Maybe Daniel would know. Armand finally lights a cigarette, instead of shredding it. The phantom impression fades away.
But even this, a true thing, twists like a knife in his chest.
No, nothing can be undone. True. But they know now, don't they, that Louis' responses are malleable? That Armand is capable of making Louis' reactions what he wishes?
It changes nothing.
Claudia is dead.
Daniel is a vampire.
And Armand lied. For seventy-seven years.
Louis, eyes closed, hands resting on the wrought iron of the balcony rails, feels the anger and grief of it all tearing through his chest all over again. Emotion too vast to contain. It spills through that yielding sense of his presence in Armand's mind, unchecked.
What is time to a vampire? Claudia would have gone mad in a year, or one hundred, so why not end it now; Louis was burdened by her, Louis made a fledgling when he didn't want to for her. Why not dispose of them. What was so wrong. He'd be mourning her with this same jaggedness when her mind inevitably broke and she flung herself into the sun. Time to a vampire was giving him this head start, this century, on healing.
Louis won't understand that. Armand knows it's not acceptable reasoning; he knows, too, that his reasoning was not his only motivation. He wanted her, them gone, even though he wanted Louis. Louis disrupted his life. Louis told him he was good at running things, that he'd fix it, and it fell apart. Perhaps Armand shouldn't have bet on him at the end— he could have stopped the fire. He could have turned on Louis.
But he did love him. He did. So he holds where he is and endures this tidal wave of emotion, lets it burn over him, choke him, threaten to drown him. His breath shudders when he draws it in, his vision blurs and clouds, soft pink with the stinging threat of tears. Love of his life. That's what he put in Louis' mouth, about himself. That's what they were. What he wanted. There is still a cowardly, desperate part of him that would reach for it.
'You changed my life,' comes, in time. A murmured mental tone. 'That will be true forever. When I said I wanted you more than anything in the world, I meant it.'
Now? After nearly eighty years of what they put each other through? Maybe the Armand then still does. The Louis then. Paris, when they were just a little awkward, just a little star-crossed.
'I wanted to spare you from your pain and your anger. That I caused much of it seemed a poor excuse not to.'
His project settles into their old penthouse, in the dark. Sits down on the sofa that belongs to the current resident, asleep in the primary bedroom. His alarm will go off in an hour, in the dead of night. Stocks to be traded. Money waits for no mortal. Louis will think this project is about him. Armand recognizes this, especially now, but that's no reason to call it off. Another poor excuse.
Is this what Daniel feared? The way something in Louis shudders to hear these things, the repetition of Armand's devotion passed between them on a park bench?
The thing inside Louis that is still capable of falling into him, falling back to Armand. Wavers in the space where Louis' rage ends and grief begins.
But Claudia. Claudia.
Is the admission enough? If this can be counted as an admission. If it matters that it came only after Daniel had forced his hand.
If it matters that it comes on the heels of something that might be honest.
You changed me.
An echo. Subtle difference in the choice of words.
It will be true forever. No matter where I go, how long I live.
Armand's fingerprints, the impressions of his hands, Louis will carry them all his life. How his life has been changed. How he has been shaped, cultivated. The worrisome suspicions that they would still fit together neatly, regardless of the way Louis feels shattered into something new in these past weeks.
The difference — my life versus me — unsettles Armand, though he isn't sure why. It wriggles in his awareness, strange, and he can't manage to pin it down. Something about it feels harming, and he finds himself unpleasantly disoriented over being unable to ascertain why.
(Is Armand changed? Is he capable? Is there enough of him that exists at all?)
He picks around the proverbial edges of an apology. He understand this is where he should present one, that it is probably what Louis wants to hear. But the shape of it is difficult, and unfamiliar. Why does he owe Louis such prostration? After all he's done to make up for it? All he's done, and it hasn't been good enough. What good would an apology do, especially on he wouldn't really mean?
'I regret hurting you.'
That much, he means. He had meant it back then. He might have even let Lestat kill him in that tower, he meant it so much. But Lestat gave Louis to him, looked straight at him and allowed him to keep his lie. And Armand did keep it. Kept it safe, held carefully in a cage.
'I can't give you what you want.'
Not shelter from anger. Not Claudia restored. Not Daniel reverted. And not Daniel left to Louis—
A word that falls between them, plummeting into empty space.
Louis, still a presence leaning against the barrier constructed between them, watching it go.
Won't, comes as a correction, harkening back to what they'd circled round and round on in those last days of the interview, all three of them trading back and forth Armand's explanation:
I could not prevent it.
Louis feels sick remembering how he had repeated those words, that justification. How long he had believed it.
The thread that had calmed itself in the lull of Louis' familiar moods itches up again, and Armand finds himself abruptly, incredibly, irritated.
'Can't and won't, is snapped, harder than he usually does, harder and sharper than he's been in years, in decades, a vicious edge to it. A sudden warning in preparation for the bite that comes too fast:
'If I could bring Claudia back I would just to shut you up about her.'
Can't.
'This thing now, this—' say something, what it is, say it, 'With Daniel', has Louis ever even heard Armand use his first name? How many times has Armand said it to his face? Once? Getting up from the floor where Louis left him, just then, I'm fine, Daniel, 'Is no longer your concern, and your requests and demands about him to me will be ignored.'
The force of it knocks Louis back off that marble.
An abrupt vanishing of emotion. Louis' presence winnowing down to something flat and colorless, a thin link threading between them. What's left of the bond, the thing Louis had once claimed to have been knitting anew. Stubbornly maintained, even as Louis' eyes open on the balcony.
Waits, one breath, then another, and another, until the knife twist of Claudia passes. The rail is bending under the grip of his palms, white-hot anger, agonizing grief, winding through Louis' body.
A moment where he considers walking out of this hotel room. Giving his answer in person.
It would horrify Daniel.
It would take too long.
There is no sense of proximity, even when Louis' voice returns. Remote. Dispassionate.
Marius De Romanus, who begat Armand. Armand, who begat Daniel Molloy.
Painful, to say this. Drawing the knife from his own belly to carry these words forward. This accusation.
I will not permit you this thing, Armand. Understand I am no longer making a request.
Armand wants to spare him pain, and anger. Armand regrets hurting him. Armand will still say that, and he has no real explanation for why. His patience, his grace, taken advantage of. He could always be this terrible, and he's never given any due for how hard he's worked to preserve their life, how calm he's remained, how many times he could have been hurtful but chose not to be.
It feels good to know it landed. It feels horrible to know it landed.
'You aren't entitled to that anymore, either.'
No longer maitre. It hasn't been convenient in decades, hasn't been hot in more. Louis doesn't get to make demands of him, and Armand doesn't have to pretend that his threats are viable.
It is incidental, unavoidable, that Louis will think his current project will be about him. Armand considers this— but opts not to embellish it further. He is content with his plan, with the moving parts of it, the delicate set-up and impending payoff. A satisfying end to an itch for himself. But he knows, as he begins to withdraw from this foolish exchange, that he will do something about Louis with deliberation.
Molloy isn't about Louis. It may have started that way, spite, revenge, punishment, a bitter testament to Armand keeping his promises even when Louis breaks his, but it isn't anymore. He made this choice and it horrified him, but now he looks at it, this immortal arrow shot through Marius, through Armand, through Daniel, and he wants to follow the line of it. His blood, their blood. His fledgling. Their connection. He touches that bond again, a flexing thread of strangeness, of comfort.
'I've had enough for tonight. Goodbye, Louis.'
As easy as the shrug from before, Armand closes his mind, and no matter how hard Louis tries or how loud he screams, he will not be able to find him again. Straight to voicemail. He turns the whole phone off.
Perhaps not unlike standing on cold stone, looking upwards at bookshelves dangling out of reach.
Louis' whole body is flushed hot, responding to anger even if Louis' mind is slow to parse the dimensions of it.
He had felt so little for so long. Years and years of serenity, of calm. He has stepped back from himself now, aware that he is shaking. That he has ruined the rail of the balcony.
That Armand has left him with nothing but this, anger and guilt, a scream of reaction that can go nowhere at all.
The stinging invocation of what Louis had kept so private, a veil drawn down between their intimacy as it had existed outside of Paris. What they had built it into. What had fractured so instantly upon contact with the truth.
Louis tries briefly, uselessly, to find Armand's mind. Knows it is of little use. His gifts are what Armand made of them. The holes have ever been left for Armand's beneft. Finally, defeated, Louis lifts aching hands from the rail, observing how the metal has bent and warped under his grip.
He stands for a long time, listening to the minds of other vampires, the chill of the night air lowering the temperature of his body little by little, until the sound of Lestat and Daniel's return draws him away from contemplation of the void Armand left behind.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ring, ring.
Or Daniel needs no instruction at all, and they are simply of a similar mind about their meals and wish to spare Louis by calling it a lesson.
There are other nights in which Louis might have sought to accompany them. Might have indulged the part of him that wishes for their company, despite all the strangeness of Lestat and Daniel occupying the same space.
But no. Not tonight.
The suite itself is lavish. Adjoining rooms. Plush carpeting. Floor to ceiling windows. A balcony, which must cost this place a fortune in insurance rates.
Left to his own devices, Louis lets himself out onto that balcony. Runs his palms along the wrought iron, lets the brush of leaves across his palm root him where he stands as he opens his mind to the flow and pulse of vampiric chatter. Frustration, anger, bloodlust, Louis sifts past all of this overlapping noise.
Speaks into it, voice like a drop of cool water, sending ripples through once familiar depths.
Armand.
no subject
Or they do, and he chooses not to respond right away. Louis will be used to this. Cold shoulders when he's feeling slighted, and a tendency to feel slighted around times when Louis has time-sensitive questions.
Armand continues with what he's doing, deciding he doesn't feel like being interrupted. On a roll with this part, observing a man from afar. He can't see this man, but he doesn't need to. He walks to the window and pushes it open, considers a cigarette. He'd stopped at the bodega around the corner, one he has stopped at before in decades past, and picked up a few things. Props to leave in the refrigerator. Toothpaste. Menthols. Shopping for Granny?, the young man had asked.
Finally:
Not a response. But a feeling. This, too, Louis will be used to. Armand simply turning his attention to him and waiting. Well? What is it?
An uneventful reconnecting after so many months, and so many inciting reveals. Armand leans against a desk, and starts peeling apart one of his cigarettes.
no subject
A little sharper. Needling in response to that wordless acknowledgement, even as he feels the attention like a fist squeezing around his chest.
Conflicting feeling. (Anger. Affection. The former burning hotter than the latter.)
What had Louis meant to say?
There is so much wreckage between them. At the end, Armand had been talking, talking, talking. Louis had been silent, right up until he'd exploded.
Now, with anger curling like smoke, Louis says, I said you weren't to touch him.
no subject
Anger, affection. Seventy-seven years is a long time. Armand beholds him, and for a long moment, says nothing. Perhaps turning Louis' presence over in his psychic hands, like his real ones are twisting a little paper tube. Contemplating.
Him. Mm. He smiles a little to himself, humorless.
'Your objection to my interpenetration is coming a bit late.'
True that he did technically touch the intrepid Mr Molloy, that evening. But the spirit of the order was very clearly about doing harm, and Louis' fascinating boy is just fine. Rules lawyering. With another part of his attention, Armand continues to monitor his project. Tells him to carry on; more gas cans. Go to the next station— no, a little further. Space them out. New Jersey isn't too far down the highway.
no subject
If Louis applies enough pressure, will he break through this cold marble? Is there a crack in the stone he could find, widen until he can slip through?
Yes, Louis agrees. I am late.
What's done cannot be undone. And Louis has permitted it to placate him. Has permitted Daniel to placate him. Delay this conversation.
You leave him to me now, a little coaxing, anger softening from flame to smolder. Held in check as he murmurs between their minds.
What give is left between them? What is left, after seventy-seven years built on a lie?
no subject
Misses him, a realization that feels like electrocution. It turns to a bruise at once, and he dislikes it. The ache pools resentment. Armand gave everything to him. He gave up his coven, his identity, nearly a century of his life. He learned to make Louis happy and comfortable even when he raged against his own existence, he learned how to excel as a curator and art dealer to support his interests, he learned Arabic.
Because he was in love. Armand looks at the destroyed cigarette, all the tobacco dust and little slips of shredded paper. He digs a nail into the filter. His project falters, but not for long. Careful. Don't drive into a wall.
Mm. That, also. Late. Molloy has been a vampire for months now. Doing well, without help. Something in him bristles, but Louis won't feel it. Still removed. Still behind marble. Armand gave everything to him, and he wants this too? Now? Armand presses his nail down harder.
'Is he not still in your company?'
Dry. Did you misplace him already, Louis. Is Lestat so dazzling, still.
no subject
A needling descriptor.
Are they gifts?
It's enough, Armand. You've done enough.
Louis made him a promise. But he's made Daniel a promise as well. Louis can limit himself.
At least, he can limit himself for the moment.
Though the urge to exert pressure on smooth marble is irresistible. To press and press and see what might crack beneath the pressure. To clean something more, some true emotion.
If he ever had access to Armand's true emotions. If anything was ever true.
no subject
What he leaves Molloy is also not any of Louis' business.
'I'm surprised he would ask you to champion him this way.'
Skeptical. If the fascinating boy wants Armand to stop, if he thinks it's enough, then he can say so. Not Louis. It has nothing to do with Louis. Armand watches more gas cans being filled. Hears the fumbling— a credit firm is calling to ask if he's making fraudulent purchases or not. It's quite a lot of gasoline. Explain, continue. Pick a different card. He has so many, it doesn't matter. Fill the bed of his expensive truck that he owns for vanity, can after can. The most that's ever been in there. More than beach chairs, his wife's expensive riding saddles. Go to the next station. Get a soda.
'You left him there with me and went where you did.' Because of course Armand knows. No mind-reading required, he simply looked at their bank statements and saw the flight. 'Was he a parting gift, or did you simply forget your boy as soon as the opportunity to reach out to Lestat became viable?'
It's enough, he's done enough. Has he. Very clever, his fledgling, very independent, he has thrived on his own without anyone's assistance, he has turned the world on its ear and presented what will someday be among the most important historical documents in history as highly contested pulp fiction. His fledgling. Enough. His.
no subject
These words heralded by smoke curls of anger. Accusation and grief. Regret.
The pressure steadily increasing in tandem with Louis' frustration, his anger. A shared room in Paris, the two of them stripped down and lazy with their shared exertions, Armand speaking of finding the flaw, Louis speaking of using his anger as fuel. It hovers behind this action, Louis' palm spread across cold, blank stone.
I made a mistake, trusting you to let him go.
Of course Armand knows where Louis had gone. Of course.
How long did you wait, Armand? How long did you wait to punish him in my place?
no subject
Yes. Punishment. Armand is asking Louis, Armand is asking himself. He has asked himself several times, the past few weeks. It started that way, he knows it did— he tells himself it did. He's told himself over and over. This is punishment. (Who is he punishing?)
His project will drive back. All the way back, past his home outside the city snarl, past three other luxury buildings he owns, to the one where Armand and Louis lived out their settled days here. He will wait in the basement parking garage and then begin the process of bringing each gas can several floors up. Sometimes in the elevator, sometimes through the stairs. He has a meeting with the current resident of the place they used to live. Armand had been content with the small family they transferred their shares in the building do, when they left; an affluent but progressive (for the time) couple, their small children who they were going to send to private, arts-based schools. These shares, the stake in this building, were eventually shuffled out of Louis' portfolio without a care.
It had bothered Armand a little. He can't put his finger on why. It was around the time he decided it was best if he only ate corrosive capitalists. That he did this around Louis' artful exploitation of money was not something they ever talked about. Probably, a therapist would have noticed.
Anyway.
'You were still in the building.'
A careless little knife twist. Armand isn't actually sure. He stopped paying attention as soon as Louis was in the elevator. But he hadn't wasted any time— Louis could have been in the lobby, waiting for a car to be brought up. Closer, even. Still practically within arm's reach as Armand has closed his own around an abandoned mortal Louis had wanted for himself.
no subject
Seventy-seven years together. Does Armand need to be in Louis' head to know how the twist of this knife would land? How accurate the strike of it is, finding effortless purchase in Louis' chest as Armand offers this confirmation.
The pressure of a hand turns to hammering. A shock of pressure, a crack like a fist coming down.
You had no right.
Waste of breath, arguing over a thing that's been done. No reversing it. No way to change what Daniel has lived through, what Louis' mistake has wrought.
A demonstration of just how wrong he had been. Has been. If there has been any lingering thought that he knew Armand—
Hammering. Knuckles against stone, over and over.
no subject
Violence, even like this. Typical of Louis to slip into anger. Armand is glad they aren't doing this in person.
The little family they sold their shares to was priced out when the building was bought. They got an awful deal on it. They relocated to Delaware in a very nice house. Not ruined, not by far. But it irked Armand. They had chosen carefully. His project begins to move gas cans down a hallway, to the family-sized penthouse unit once occupied by two vampires.
'Didn't I?'
He had been there for the interview. He had been there in San Fransisco. Daniel, brilliant writer, terrible partner, drug addict. Daniel is his fledgling. Armand closes his hands around the idea, the brazen and true thought, and the silver thread* in his mind. Feels a strange thread of jealousy that begins to burn.
'You aren't entitled to that anymore.' A mental shrug, slipping away from ruthless hammering. 'Nor to these demands you're making of me. I have left you quite alone, Louis.'
If he knew he was going to be confronted (perhaps he should have anticipated this, in hindsight) he might have actually done something. Even if only to amuse himself. But he hasn't. He wants that part to just be done. He has kept is distance and minded his own business, and Louis is still angry at him? It shivers through him, burning a little deeper.
* armand doesnt know what weed and slightly expired speed feel like its fine
no subject
The word beats in his temples. Armand recedes, descending further beneath the icy shield of stone.
So easy for him to detach himself. Louis' resentment is an ugly thing, claws digging in around his heart. The hammering continues apace, a heartbeat, drumming beneath the patter of their conversation.
Seventy-seven years. Daniel's fears, his worry of what it would cost Louis to initiate contact. Maybe even this, words projected at a distance, costs something.
It sparks a very specific kind of pain. Something familiar, shattered apart.
Have you?
Louis had made only two requests, as he'd left. Armand had abided by one.
no subject
The burning feeling stings something deep. Armand grips the windowsill. He wants to assert— Yes, he has, yes, he has only reached out to Molloy, who isn't harmed, who is better, and Louis should be grateful because he didn't have to take this on himself. But this train of thought jumbles together with Armand imagining Louis having done it, they way they discussed, and it fills him with a bizarre and awful anxiety.
He tries to say 'Fine, have it your way', tries to concede, even lie about it. Just end this conversation and move on, be more careful. But anger stirs, then stirs a little more, and he touches the severed thing in his head left by Marius, who he knows isn't dead, and he compares it to the connection with his fledgling, his fledgling, and he feels nauseous.
'Yes.'
One word, and his distance remains, but he sounds angry. Yes, he has left Louis alone. Yes, he is still contacting Daniel sometimes, yes, he will continue, yes, he did all of it, yes, he knew the whole time.
no subject
Should he have understood this? That Armand is remote and unyielding?
They have been far from each other. But there had been enough. Just enough. Their love had been threadbare and fading, but it had held. Louis hadn't understood it was strung from a frame built upon a lie. It cannot stand without that fiction to keep it from unraveling.
A stretch of quiet. Not disconnection, only breathing. Louis' presence, pressed against stone.
Eventually, He wasn't yours to take.
And how much has been taken? Claudia. Seventy-seven years of Louis' life.
And Daniel. Daniel, who says he is fine. Who says he is happy.
no subject
A phantom impression of what once was. Louis, slumped against him. Armand, winding arms around shoulders, petting his hair, giving him shelter. He should tell him: I wanted it to be real. You used me as punishment, but I still wanted it to be real, and I tried. I failed. The broken part is me, it was never you.
Of course, this does not occur.
A funny little feeling, like laughter. Hysterical, sad. When did Armand decide Daniel was his? Recently? Years ago? Was it in San Francisco, using him like a doll? On a business trip in London, finding his face on a book staring out at him? Was it when he recognized the dialect of his prayers? Just now, because Louis is trying to deny him this possession?
Maybe Daniel would know. Armand finally lights a cigarette, instead of shredding it. The phantom impression fades away.
'It can't be undone.'
no subject
But even this, a true thing, twists like a knife in his chest.
No, nothing can be undone. True. But they know now, don't they, that Louis' responses are malleable? That Armand is capable of making Louis' reactions what he wishes?
It changes nothing.
Claudia is dead.
Daniel is a vampire.
And Armand lied. For seventy-seven years.
Louis, eyes closed, hands resting on the wrought iron of the balcony rails, feels the anger and grief of it all tearing through his chest all over again. Emotion too vast to contain. It spills through that yielding sense of his presence in Armand's mind, unchecked.
no subject
Louis won't understand that. Armand knows it's not acceptable reasoning; he knows, too, that his reasoning was not his only motivation. He wanted her, them gone, even though he wanted Louis. Louis disrupted his life. Louis told him he was good at running things, that he'd fix it, and it fell apart. Perhaps Armand shouldn't have bet on him at the end— he could have stopped the fire. He could have turned on Louis.
But he did love him. He did. So he holds where he is and endures this tidal wave of emotion, lets it burn over him, choke him, threaten to drown him. His breath shudders when he draws it in, his vision blurs and clouds, soft pink with the stinging threat of tears. Love of his life. That's what he put in Louis' mouth, about himself. That's what they were. What he wanted. There is still a cowardly, desperate part of him that would reach for it.
'You changed my life,' comes, in time. A murmured mental tone. 'That will be true forever. When I said I wanted you more than anything in the world, I meant it.'
Now? After nearly eighty years of what they put each other through? Maybe the Armand then still does. The Louis then. Paris, when they were just a little awkward, just a little star-crossed.
'I wanted to spare you from your pain and your anger. That I caused much of it seemed a poor excuse not to.'
His project settles into their old penthouse, in the dark. Sits down on the sofa that belongs to the current resident, asleep in the primary bedroom. His alarm will go off in an hour, in the dead of night. Stocks to be traded. Money waits for no mortal. Louis will think this project is about him. Armand recognizes this, especially now, but that's no reason to call it off. Another poor excuse.
no subject
The thing inside Louis that is still capable of falling into him, falling back to Armand. Wavers in the space where Louis' rage ends and grief begins.
But Claudia. Claudia.
Is the admission enough? If this can be counted as an admission. If it matters that it came only after Daniel had forced his hand.
If it matters that it comes on the heels of something that might be honest.
You changed me.
An echo. Subtle difference in the choice of words.
It will be true forever. No matter where I go, how long I live.
Armand's fingerprints, the impressions of his hands, Louis will carry them all his life. How his life has been changed. How he has been shaped, cultivated. The worrisome suspicions that they would still fit together neatly, regardless of the way Louis feels shattered into something new in these past weeks.
You took from me. You have taken from me, Armand.
Claudia. Lestat.
And in some tangled, complicated way, Daniel.
no subject
(Is Armand changed? Is he capable? Is there enough of him that exists at all?)
He picks around the proverbial edges of an apology. He understand this is where he should present one, that it is probably what Louis wants to hear. But the shape of it is difficult, and unfamiliar. Why does he owe Louis such prostration? After all he's done to make up for it? All he's done, and it hasn't been good enough. What good would an apology do, especially on he wouldn't really mean?
'I regret hurting you.'
That much, he means. He had meant it back then. He might have even let Lestat kill him in that tower, he meant it so much. But Lestat gave Louis to him, looked straight at him and allowed him to keep his lie. And Armand did keep it. Kept it safe, held carefully in a cage.
'I can't give you what you want.'
Not shelter from anger. Not Claudia restored. Not Daniel reverted. And not Daniel left to Louis—
His fledgling.
no subject
A word that falls between them, plummeting into empty space.
Louis, still a presence leaning against the barrier constructed between them, watching it go.
Won't, comes as a correction, harkening back to what they'd circled round and round on in those last days of the interview, all three of them trading back and forth Armand's explanation:
I could not prevent it.
Louis feels sick remembering how he had repeated those words, that justification. How long he had believed it.
no subject
'Can't and won't, is snapped, harder than he usually does, harder and sharper than he's been in years, in decades, a vicious edge to it. A sudden warning in preparation for the bite that comes too fast:
'If I could bring Claudia back I would just to shut you up about her.'
Can't.
'This thing now, this—' say something, what it is, say it, 'With Daniel', has Louis ever even heard Armand use his first name? How many times has Armand said it to his face? Once? Getting up from the floor where Louis left him, just then, I'm fine, Daniel, 'Is no longer your concern, and your requests and demands about him to me will be ignored.'
Won't.
no subject
An abrupt vanishing of emotion. Louis' presence winnowing down to something flat and colorless, a thin link threading between them. What's left of the bond, the thing Louis had once claimed to have been knitting anew. Stubbornly maintained, even as Louis' eyes open on the balcony.
Waits, one breath, then another, and another, until the knife twist of Claudia passes. The rail is bending under the grip of his palms, white-hot anger, agonizing grief, winding through Louis' body.
A moment where he considers walking out of this hotel room. Giving his answer in person.
It would horrify Daniel.
It would take too long.
There is no sense of proximity, even when Louis' voice returns. Remote. Dispassionate.
Marius De Romanus, who begat Armand. Armand, who begat Daniel Molloy.
Painful, to say this. Drawing the knife from his own belly to carry these words forward. This accusation.
I will not permit you this thing, Armand. Understand I am no longer making a request.
no subject
It feels good to know it landed. It feels horrible to know it landed.
'You aren't entitled to that anymore, either.'
No longer maitre. It hasn't been convenient in decades, hasn't been hot in more. Louis doesn't get to make demands of him, and Armand doesn't have to pretend that his threats are viable.
It is incidental, unavoidable, that Louis will think his current project will be about him. Armand considers this— but opts not to embellish it further. He is content with his plan, with the moving parts of it, the delicate set-up and impending payoff. A satisfying end to an itch for himself. But he knows, as he begins to withdraw from this foolish exchange, that he will do something about Louis with deliberation.
Molloy isn't about Louis. It may have started that way, spite, revenge, punishment, a bitter testament to Armand keeping his promises even when Louis breaks his, but it isn't anymore. He made this choice and it horrified him, but now he looks at it, this immortal arrow shot through Marius, through Armand, through Daniel, and he wants to follow the line of it. His blood, their blood. His fledgling. Their connection. He touches that bond again, a flexing thread of strangeness, of comfort.
'I've had enough for tonight. Goodbye, Louis.'
As easy as the shrug from before, Armand closes his mind, and no matter how hard Louis tries or how loud he screams, he will not be able to find him again. Straight to voicemail. He turns the whole phone off.
no subject
Perhaps not unlike standing on cold stone, looking upwards at bookshelves dangling out of reach.
Louis' whole body is flushed hot, responding to anger even if Louis' mind is slow to parse the dimensions of it.
He had felt so little for so long. Years and years of serenity, of calm. He has stepped back from himself now, aware that he is shaking. That he has ruined the rail of the balcony.
That Armand has left him with nothing but this, anger and guilt, a scream of reaction that can go nowhere at all.
The stinging invocation of what Louis had kept so private, a veil drawn down between their intimacy as it had existed outside of Paris. What they had built it into. What had fractured so instantly upon contact with the truth.
Louis tries briefly, uselessly, to find Armand's mind. Knows it is of little use. His gifts are what Armand made of them. The holes have ever been left for Armand's beneft. Finally, defeated, Louis lifts aching hands from the rail, observing how the metal has bent and warped under his grip.
He stands for a long time, listening to the minds of other vampires, the chill of the night air lowering the temperature of his body little by little, until the sound of Lestat and Daniel's return draws him away from contemplation of the void Armand left behind.
(no subject)