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All their games, all their ugly, twisted, sexy little games—because games were what Armand loved best, even if he said he wanted trust and honesty and all that other shit. He and Lestat were just alike. Blinded by the stage lights of their own goddamn one-man play. Artistic director, indeed.
Arun and his daddy. Arun and the pimp. Arun and the pedophile. Arun and his Maître—nice Maître, mean Maître, whatever kind of Maître that Arun would like tonight—
Only it’s not Arun, is it, it’s Armand, because that’s his name, or it has been for the last couple hundred years, and he might as well get used to it by now, and why is he allowed to keep salting five-hundred-year-old wounds when Louis has been expected to heal in seventy, what is his fucking damage.
It isn’t until Armand lets out a slow, barely controlled breath in devastated silence that Louis realizes he failed to block any of his thoughts.
“I love you,” Armand whispers.
Louis swallows against a painful throat.
“Sure, honey,” he says.
“I love you.”
Like saying it again will make it stick.
“I know,” Louis says.
Armand whispers it a third time, and Louis closes his eyes so he won’t have to look at him when he says, “I’m not gonna say it back, honey.”
When Armand is upset, he fantasizes crawling into bed with his old master—not as he did when they were together, but as he would now, older and tired and footsore. Padrone, he’d whisper, and wait for his master’s arms to fall open and pull him close, anointing him with his old name and thereby turning him back into a boy, a little boy in the arms of something greater.
Louis knows this from decades of broken eggshells.
What was it Lestat said?
I want food.
I want sex.
I want to go home.
He does that sometimes—goes away and comes back small, young.
None of that tonight, is what Louis usually tells him. You’re too little for that.
Most of the time that’s enough. Sometimes Armand whines, and Louis finds himself inside of him anyway, cupping Armand’s soft dick in his hand while he fucks him. What does it feel like, for the years to click so far back? He’s never dared to ask.
“Is that nice?” is what he can ask. “You like that?”
All so Armand can duck his head and nod all shy and cute and hide his face in Louis’s neck. As if everything that’s happened is just one big accident, not his fault, which makes it acceptable, then, that Louis has spent decades cradling his jailer beneath him and asking if all is to his satisfaction.