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The first wave hits Armand as he’s climbing the stairs up to Louis’s apartment.
No.
No.
“Armand?” Louis stops ahead of him, one foot raised on the middle landing, neck craned back to regard Armand over his shoulder, his lovely brow furrowed in concern. “What’s wrong?”
Armand stares up at him helplessly for a moment before another contraction of concentrated heat pulses in him, rippling out from the core of his abdomen into the rest of his body. A soft whimper makes it out past his gritted teeth as he hugs his middle protectively and bends slightly on the staircase. The inevitable throbbing is already beginning deep in his hole, fast, much too fast, and he feels the first trickle of slick spilling into his underwear.
It’s only a trickle, for now.
It won’t remain a trickle for long.
Merde.
“I,” he tries. “I think I should go.”
“What?” Louis is turning his full body back, his attention fully on Armand, the concern now digging a worried trench into his forehead. “It’s still pouring outside.”
And so it is. They’re both dripping with it; Louis far less so, though, thanks to the umbrella Armand held for him the whole way here. He only has a moment to relish in the pride of that before a new trickle of slick pulses out of him, and his hole throbs and tightens needily, and he grips the bannister so hard his claws dig ridges into the old wood.
The rain is starting to sound tempting. It would feel like heaven over his skin, already beginning to overheat. He wants to run.
He should run.
“Arun.”
But then, this. This. Louis. Louis, and his determined gaze, and Are you sure about that, Arun?
If Louis rejects him now, Armand might not be able to stand it. And if this happened last night, Armand would be too afraid to risk it — he simply would run. He wouldn’t give Louis a chance to humiliate him again.
But.
But.
But the bench.
“Not here,” Armand manages through a desperate burst of hope, through the itch building just beneath the surface of his skin.
Louis stares at him for another moment, considering. He’s trying to probe into Armand’s mind. Polite, for now, a gentle knock, just to see what’s wrong, and Armand opens the door just a crack for him, careful not to show too much. Keeping himself locked up tight while he still can.
But he shows just enough. And Louis understands; he gasps, flinching away from Armand, his beautiful features shuttering in fear until he forces it away with visible effort.
“Okay,” Louis makes himself say, this wonderful man, the effort to keep himself calm so heartbreakingly obvious. He steps down to level with Armand so he can grip him, firm and strong, under the arm. “Alright. It’s alright. Just one more landing, okay? Come on. We’re almost there.”
“I should go,” Armand gasps into him again.
Louis tugs at him, guides him up. The stairs creak under their weight. The wood groans.
“No.”
“Louis.”
“No, Armand. I’m not letting you go back to those people while you’re like this. Santiago… No telling what that idiot would do.”
Armand almost laughs. Some of the sound makes it out despite his best efforts, prying through the clench of his teeth, and materializes between them into something choked-up and ugly.
If Louis only knew.
Armand tries to object again, but when all that escapes past his throat is a strangled moan he clamps his mouth shut again and meekly follows Louis’s lead up into the small apartment. Louis is staring at him with wide eyes, concern as clear in them as the fear which he’s trying so bravely to mask. His touch doesn’t waver, his grip on Armand never lets up, but he’s obviously fighting the instinct to flee; it blares at Armand so loudly through the feeble mental shields Louis is trying and failing to keep up.
Something they’ll have to talk about —
Just as soon as Armand’s done throbbing and clenching and soaking his underwear.
Louis keeps up his steady support until they’re in the apartment, the doors closing after them, Armand stumbling into the parlor alone, Louis trailing slow and wary behind him. The umbrella drops from his hand. His clothes drip, drip, drip onto the floor. He snatches the wet hat off his head and squeezes it between his fingers, chewing on his bottom lip and closing his eyes.
Hot. So hot. The water is beginning to steam off him, wet on the outside, wet on the inside, slick soiling his underwear, bloodsweat gluing his shirt to the skin of his back.
“So,” Louis says, low, from the threshold to the room. Away from Armand. Looking down at the puddles on the floor. “Lestat used to… He went through something similar. To what I saw in you just now.”
Armand lets out a long, shaky, controlled breath. Of course, he thinks. Of course.
“Did he hurt you?” he asks, cruel though it might be. Louis’s hesitation, at least, is all too clear to him now, and his heart twists and aches with it even as he tries not to let his mind slip away from him.
There. There, a hesitation. In feeling if not in words, in the lightning-quick contraction of Louis’s face into something broken, something desperate, before he can shake his head.
“No,” Louis whispers, after a long moment of aborted attempts to try and fail to locate the words. “Not… not like that. But we came close once. I offered to help him through it once. It… it almost ended very badly, but he stopped himself in time and fled, and then we never did it again. He handled it alone. That one thing… Wasn’t his fault.”
He doesn’t say any more. Doesn’t have to. His thoughts scream at Armand in stark technicolor: Lestat out of his mind, blue eyes lost and blown, gone, gone, his mind gone, his control gone, just an animal left behind with a straining, turgid cock and greedy teeth, the lust and wanting bleeding into fear into panic into No, into Stop.
Armand closes his eyes, and then his mind. Through the lens of Louis’s mind, Lestat’s rut looks terrifying.
That’s not how Armand wants to remember it.
“He told you what it meant?” he manages to ask as he struggles to pick his way over to the nearest chair. He doesn’t want to ruin the upholstery, but his legs are beginning to tremble, his thighs needing to squeeze together. He collapses into it, breathless, already beginning to pant.
He keeps his eyes closed. He can’t look at Louis. He can’t.
“Yeah,” Louis confirms. He keeps to the threshold. “Told me about, he called it the old ways. He said that vampires, since we’re ancient, still carry that ancient gene they never told us about in school, and that some of them… some of you... are affected like this. Marked. He said that you’re marked.”
Marked. Armand wants to cry. He crushes his lips together, his eyelids pressing painfully against each other, and the old bite mark from his Master throbs and throbs and throbs.
“Yes,” he chokes out. “It’s somewhat more complicated than that, but… that’s about… the long and short of it.”
“Are you like him?” Louis asks, his voice going firm with deliberate effort. “‘Cause it looks a lot like what he had. Are you going into a rut, Arun?”
Arun. The sob does make it out of Armand’s throat this time, and he clenches the hat in his hands so hard he rips the stiff rim in half. He’s so wet. So hard. Maybe Louis can already see it through the folds of his dripping coat. One touch, and he’ll be coming, he knows that, he’s already so far gone, so fast. Too fast. It’s been ages since it hit him so violently, so quickly.
Not since Lestat.
“No,” he gasps. “Not like him. Won’t hurt you. Can’t.”
“Then…” A deep breath, over from Louis. A lightening of his mind. Relief, Armand thinks. Relief. A step into the room, towards Armand. “Then what’s this?”
A wave of desire, so strong Armand shudders on it, squeezing his thighs together over his slick, trickling hole. His hands clench over the chair’s armrest, and break them. The wood shatters and splinters into his skin. The pain makes him shudder with a pleasure so spiked and white-hot he almost comes from that alone.
Then the maddening pulse of it fades a little — enough that he can think again. He draws a few steadying breaths, and tries to open his eyes to focus on Louis through the reddening haze.
“The opposite,” he gasps. “Lestat is an Alpha. The… the one who breeds. I’m the Omega, which is on the other end of the spectrum. It means I’m —”
“The one who gets bred,” Louis finishes for him. “Am I getting it right?”
Armand is very, very old. He’s had hundreds and hundreds of years to reconcile himself with the reality of what his body is; what he is. He’s heard it described in the most demeaning terms possible. He’s heard every insult under the sun.
It still doesn’t stop his cheeks heating for reasons completely unrelated to the hormonal storm unleashing in his body.
“Yes,” he allows, simply, because it’s the truth. “So you see, Louis, this isn’t a rut. It’s —”
“A heat.” Understanding clears Louis face with sudden revelation as he stares at Armand, something a bit like awe beginning to paint over his beautiful features. His eyes going big with it. The pupil beginning to expand, his breath catching. “You’re going into heat.”
Armand can only nod. He digs his open palms into the jagged edges of the shattered armrest, drags his skin over the splinters until they bleed.
Louis considers him for another heavy, weighted moment. His nostrils expand at the thickening scent of Armand’s heat-slick blood.
“How does it usually go for you?” he asks, slowly. Calculating. Wondering.
Armand is starting to shake.
“I… have a place,” he stammers. “Underground. Bury myself. Deal with it.”
“Alone?”
Sometimes, Armand confirms through his mind, touching it to Louis’s when words no longer want to make it past his diaphragm. Then, desperate, needing Louis to understand, he sends images: himself, naked in the old coffin, in his own little chamber in the stinky old ruins under what used to be Les Innocents, a nest of blankets old and new amid a mess of old skulls and bones and ashes, dark and musty and wet, working himself open on his marble toy over and over and over and over —
“Fuck.” Louis closes his own eyes, swaying a little under the force of the memories. “Okay. Okay. What about other times?”
And Armand can read the question Louis actually wants to ask, and so he opens his mind again, a wider crack, and pours new images out for him: the contest, him in a chair on the stage, the vampires fighting viciously at his feet, tearing and scratching and biting at each other until one of them emerges, having drawn blood from all the others. The victor. The one who’s worthy to touch Maître, help him through his special time.
Images of them — Gustave, Romaine that one time, Tuan Pham, often, Celeste every few years, Santiago, Santiago, Santiago, in Armand’s coffin, his small cock thrusting into him, fervent, devoted, frenzied…
“No,” Louis snaps, and Armand does his best to stem the flow of the memories that make him whimper and moan and buck his hips up into nothing. “No. I’m not letting you go back there, Arun.”
“Louis —”
“No.” And then, after a small and hesitant beat, he adds, “I thought we cleared it up on that bench just now. Thought I made it clear who you belong to.”
Armand’s eyes snap open, and meet Louis’s. They stay like this for a moment.
No. No, it can’t be. He can’t possibly mean —
But Louis’s beautiful eyes glitter bright and hot, and his face is beginning to smoothen into the same confident look he wore when he wordlessly ordered Armand to light his cigarette for him. His slacks are beginning to tent. His fangs are elongating. Desire thickens the air between them, no longer just a one-way street.
And Armand’s heart flutters helplessly, swelling with hope.
Maybe, it wants to chant. Maybe…
“It’s been so easy,” Louis whispers, “to fuck you. Always ready, always open. Slick when I touched you. I assumed you kept yourself prepared for me, fingering yourself open, slicking up, a plug maybe, cause you wanted me that bad. Went straight up to my head like a shot of helium.”
Armand’s cheeks feel so hot. “I did — I do want you. More than —”
“More than anything in the world. Yes. You said.”
Louis stares at him, and the fear is gone entirely now. Instead, his pupils are blown, and when he puts his hands in the pockets of his pants and shifts his weight from foot to foot, it’s the slow, deliberate performance of a lover.
Of a master.
Another touch of his mind, then, a gentle pressure. A question.
Is this okay? Is this what you want?
And Armand, helpless in the face of it, swept up in wonder and need and love, opens up for him, and lets Louis feel everything. The wonder and the love and the need, and the urgent building desperation, the hollowness between his legs, the itch and the ache, and the slickness, and the way Louis’s words make Armand want to scream and cry with lust.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Please.
Louis takes a moment to absorb it into himself, shuddering just for a blink. The force of it made him stumble back a step — he wasn’t ready, and for a terrifying moment Armand is afraid all over again that he’s revealed too much.
But then Louis opens his eyes again, and looks at him, and there’s recognition in there, and understanding, and the pure, simple kind of lust that makes Armand want to keen and crawl at Louis’s feet.
“And clearly that’s true,” Louis says out loud, and his voice comes out low and rough. “Even that first night — remember that? The night you were going to kill me. Yeah. Threatened me with the fire, then walked me home and kissed me. And then when I brought you home and touched your hole for the first time, it was so wet, and I thought, What a twisted little fuck — planning to kill a guy you opened yourself up for in advance. And I wondered, had he done that before? Had he gotten up early every evening and spent an hour or so just playing with his hole before he came to see me, before we went out on our little walks, hoping tonight would be the night? That’s what I imagined. It drove me fucking crazy.”
Armand pants and whines at that. The splintered ruin of the armrest digs a hole into his palm.
“I assumed you were simply a dirty slut under all that prim and proper bullshit, and I guess I was right, wasn’t I?” Louis continues, bolder and more assured with every word, every answering spill of lust he senses from Armand. “Except you’re even worse than I imagined. You didn’t even need to prepare yourself for me. All it took was a look and a touch from me to get you wet and ready. Is that right, Arun? That what you’re telling me?”
God.
“Yes,” Armand gasps, and can’t stop the needy upward tilt of his hips against the stiff wet cloth of his pants.
“Yes, what?”
Armand swallows over a dry, dry throat. “Yes, Maître.”
“Hm.” Louis takes another step closer, and regards him with his head cocking to the side. “Are you wet for me right now, Arun?”
Armand whines and squirms in his sticky clothes. “Yes, Maître.”
“Interesting.” Louis lets another silence settle between them while Armand gasps and squirms and seeks more pain, more blood, more splinters. The hat, torn up, falls in tatters onto the floor at Armand’s feet.
“Guess that’s why your cock is so small. No use for it, the way you are.”
Armand bites clean through the skin of his bottom lip. He nods.
“Your poor, useless cock. Wasted on someone whose body was literally made to be fucked.”
Born for it. Made for it. Only good for one thing. Armand’s head spins, and for a second, he almost throws up.
Then Louis’s hand is in his hair. Combing through the wet curls, carding individual strands of it apart, smoothening it out of the rigid hold of the pomade. Armand didn’t even register him getting so close, but here he is now, a strong presence right in front of him, and the sweet, heady scent of him makes his head spin and spin.
“It’s alright, Arun,” Louis croons, almost condescending with it, like talking down to a child who’s just done something mildly naughty. “It’s okay. Maître’s here now. I’m gonna take good care of you.”
He twists a fist into the hair at the nape of Armand’s neck.
“Now show me,” he commands. “I want to see just how wet you are for me.”
He tugs on Armand’s hair, hard, forcing his head up, and Armand can’t help it. The moment their eyes meet, he comes.
His first orgasm of the night rocks through him like a violent explosion, white and hot and jerking his entire body up and down. He whines with it, twitching and twisting in the chair, the slick pulsing and pulsing out of him, and his open hand impales itself on the armrest until the wood goes all the way through.
The world goes quiet, then. For a moment or two. Armand can’t be sure. The next thing he knows, he’s blinking his eyes back open and Louis is kneeling in front of him, his hands a hot brand over the skin of Armand’s wrist as he —
— as he sucks at the hole in the middle of Armand’s palm, licking up the blood.
Armand moans at the sight of it and at the sensation alike. Louis glances up at him, and says nothing for a moment as he continues to suck and lick. It’s fervent, the way he does it — more passionate than any other time he’s drunk from Armand since the first time. He makes small sounds of enjoyment, too. His tongue prods and pokes at the torn-up flesh.
He swallows, and mutters, “Did you just come without permission?”
Armand’s next breath tears out of him as a sob. “I —”
Louis’s right hand, the same one that cradled his wrist just a second ago, moves so fast Armand doesn’t see it coming. He doesn’t register the slap at first, either; it only occurs to him that it happened by the itch and the burn on his cheek, branded in the shape of Louis’s palm.
Another touch to his mind, then. Louis — sweet Louis, compassionate Louis, worried Louis — checking in. Is this okay? A tremble in it, too, as if the action surprised Louis even more than it surprised Armand.
Armand gazes at him in wonder, his mouth open, and gently touches the new mark before the sting of it fades.
Are you? he echoes, because Louis doesn’t know what Armand knows, because Louis has no idea that Armand has seen everything: the love and the pain and the silhouette of Lestat rapidly growing smaller and smaller as Louis plummets through the clouds.
Louis takes a moment to think about it, taking a deep breath, the memory of that night darkening his thoughts with terror.
But then he’s looking up at Armand again, and taking another taste from the wound on his palm in an act so deliberate it reads like defiance. And whatever he tastes in the blood — Armand can feel him letting go of it, of the darkness and the terror and the helplessness. He looks at Armand, trembling and spread out and pulsing with need for him, laying himself out at his mercy, and he lets that idea push through until there’s nothing but awe and affection and power.
Armand bites down on a gasp when he sees it take root in Louis fully. But, God.
Power looks good on him.
Do you really like it? Louis asks in his thoughts, the taste of it colored with that same rush, that growing sense of his own position, the first relish in having Armand under his hand.
Armand wants more of it. He wants to see Louis step into it the way he did on the bench. He wants Louis to embrace it as he so clearly wants to, and still doesn’t quite believe he’s allowed.
And so, he lets his eyes flutter closed, and opens his mouth on a whine of pure pleasure, and begs, Do it again, Maître.
“Fuck,” Louis hisses, and then he’s up on his feet again, and he slaps Armand from the other side.
“Yeah?” he demands, his pupils blown so wide they must almost match Armand’s. “You like that, do you? That what you’ve been craving all this time, Arun? Someone to take you in hand, slap you around a little?”
Armand gazes up at him, and lets all of the adoration and wonder he feels for Louis at that moment color his eyes and his voice.
He whispers, “Yes, Maître.” And then, “Please. Harder.”
“Fuck!” Louis slaps him two more times, one side and then the other, and Armand moans for him as sweetly as he’s able while his hole throbs and soaks right through his underwear and slacks and straight through the chair’s upholstery. He’s so hard, he thinks hazily his cock might actually tear through the material.
And then Louis yanks him by the collar of his rain-soaked shirt, and pulls him off the chair and down onto the floor.
“I believe I told you to do something, Arun,” he says, and his voice trembles on the exhale. “Clothes off.”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Armand complies as quickly as his trembling body lets him, peeling the wet, sticky layers that cling to his sweaty skin in a way that makes him want to vibrate right out of his body. The coat, first, then the jacket, the vest, the disgusting shirt he practically has to unglue off himself. He hurries for the belt, next, lets it clatter to the floor, and he stays down on the floor as he gracelessly shimmies out of his slacks and socks.
He reaches for his underwear almost without thinking, eager to rid himself of the loathsome sensation of the wet sticky cotton —
“Wait,” Louis says, cutting through the haze beginning to cloud his mind. “Up.”
Oh.
Louis stares at him as Armand brings himself up, and so, Armand fights off the instinct to cover the humiliating wet patch with his hands. This is clearly what Louis wants to see. Armand keeps his hands stiff by his sides, curled up into fists, and stares ahead, letting Louis look his fill as he stands there and pulses and throbs and needs.
“Well I’ll be damned.” Louis whistles in appreciation, and the crooked little smile Armand can’t see brightens his voice. “If I didn't know any better I’d say you just pissed yourself.”
Armand swallows. The sound is overly loud in the silence between them as Louis comes closer, and touches an exploratory hand to the front of Armand’s soaked underwear.
Armand keens, a desperate little sound. His cock twitches and lets out a thick glob of slick. Louis glances up at him, and whispers, “Damn.”
And gets on his knees in front of Armand.
“I never took Lestat’s knot,” Louis tells him, sounding almost casual now, as if they’re at one of their little cafes making easy conversation. “Only in my mouth, a couple times, but that’s it. Like I said, I offered one time and he clearly wanted me to, but truth be told, that thing scared the beejesus out of me.” Curious fingers explore the soaked fabric clinging to Armand’s skin, press into the outline of his desperate cock, skim past the balls and towards his hole. “Wasn’t any human body could take a thing like that and walk away to tell the story, I used to think. Wondered what the hell it was even for. Not gonna lie, it made me feel inadequate at times, not wanting that in me — like I was letting him down. But I had this notion in my head that as long as I kept refusing, I’d keep some sort of power over him, you know? That I was denying him access to a part of me even though he took everything else.”
“Louis…”
“But you.” Louis’s hand prods deeper between his legs, caressing Armand’s perineum on the way, and presses against his hot throbbing hole through the fabric. “Look at you. You could take it no problem.”
“Louis,” Armand begs as his legs tremble, his eyes falling closed all on their own. He’s so close again. The teasing finger is driving him mad. He’s so close. He’s going to come. “Maître. Please.”
“Did you, Arun?” Louis looks up at him, and presses two fingers inside Armand through the cotton while his other hand smears the slick over his thighs and cheeks. “Did you take his knot? It’s okay if you did. Just tell me.”
“Yes,” Armand breathes.
Louis presses his mouth to Armand’s crotch, and Armand shakes with his second orgasm of the night.
And, curious thing — he’s been expecting to feel Lestat in the room with them, the way his sneering ghost had haunted Louis’s mind since he and Claudia arrived in Paris. But tonight, perhaps for the first time, the apparition isn’t there. Louis’s mind is focused on him, on Armand, and almost fully, too, with only the shadows of memories prying at the corners; but he’s not letting the presence out this time. Lestat isn’t here with them.
It’s just him and Louis tonight. His lover.
His Master.
His.
Finally.
As if to stake his claim, Louis tears clean through Armand’s underwear, uncaring if his claw pierces Armand’s skin as well as the fabric. Armand shudders with it, and then moans when Louis nuzzles against the thin gash he’s left on Armand’s abdomen and suckles at the blood there, lapping it up.
“So fucking sweet,” he whispers into Armand’s trembling skin. “Your blood’s always sweet, Arun, but, God, tonight it’s something else. It’s chocolate and cherries and wine and sunshine. It’s sex. You taste like sex, baby.”
“It’s all for you, Maître.”
“Oh yeah? For me?” Louis pulls himself back to his feet, cups Armand’s face, and forces eye contact. “You went into heat just for me, is that how that works?”
Armand swallows. He whispers, “The last time I went into heat was the night you arrived in Paris.”
Louis sucks in a breath. His thumbs caress the slopes of Armand’s cheeks, smearing the slick residue on them into Armand’s skin. “That true?”
“Yes, Maître. Wanted… ah… wanted you even then.”
“And tonight,” Louis wonders. “Is it because…”
Armand looks into his beautiful, striking green eyes.
“You claimed me,” he whispers.
Louis kisses him.
It’s brutal. It’s bruising. It’s unlike any kiss Louis has ever given him before. Armand melts into it with a delirious, happy sigh, only too glad to surrender himself, and Louis takes, and takes, and takes, claiming him with his mouth and tongue and teeth, his fangs nicking Armand’s lip and tongue, the blood trickling between them.
It’s bliss. It’s heaven. It’s everything Armand has wanted from him for so long.
“How long does this thing usually last for you?” Louis asks, right into his mouth, panting, wild. “Les’s ruts could be as long as a week.”
It’s a struggle to find his words again when all Armand’s brain wants to do is let go and fall right into the red haze already lapping at its shores. But he tries. Because Maître asked him to.
“About three days,” he whispers. “Sometimes up to five. If it’s this intense,” his hole clenches and spasms with need, “it’s usually shorter.”
Louis’s grin is wicked.
“Then I guess we’d better let your coven know you’re not coming home for a couple of nights.”
Then his lips touch Armand’s again, greedy and proprietary, and his arm sneaks around Armand’s hips. Armand almost screams when Louis sneaks his hand down into the crack of his ass, and then pushes lower, until he slides two fingers into him at once.
“Fuck, it’s so easy,” Louis mutters into Armand’s mouth. “You’re already so fucking loose, I could just slide right in.”
“Please,” Armand moans. “Please, Maître. Need you.”
Louis doesn’t seem to have heard him, or pretends he hasn’t. He sets a brutal pace with his fingers, fucking them into Armand hard and fast even despite the awkward angle, pushing up on his prostate with ruthless precision. Armand cries out, climbing onto his toes to make it easier for them both, pushing and rocking back onto the fingers, his hard, leaking cock rubbing wetly against the front of Louis’s slacks.
He’s on the verge of coming a third time when Louis suddenly growls into his neck, pulls his fingers out, and grabs Armand by the hips to turn him around. He forces Armand to bend over the armchair by grabbing the back of his head and pushing it down. Armand catches himself just in time, holding onto the ruined armrests, and then the fingers are back, so much deeper than before, three this time, plunging in easy as anything, Armand’s body opening up for them like a woman’s cunt.
“Yes,” he moans. “Yes, please, more.”
“Oh, you’re getting more,” Louis growls roughly into the hot skin of his back. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that. I just need to pace myself, is all. If I’m gonna be fucking you for three nights straight.”
The laugh Armand lets out catches him by surprise, and he’s too late to stop, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe he doesn’t need to. Louis seems to like it, because his fingers speed up, and he takes extra care to stroke his prostate on every in-thrust, catching it between his fingers.
“You like that, you little slut?” he demands, laughter of his own brightening the words. “Bet you do. Bet you’re giddy at the thought of it.”
“Yes — ah! Yes, Maître.”
“Come on,” Louis orders, breathless, his fingers almost a blur. “Come for me. Want to watch you fall apart on nothing but my fingers.”
And Armand is only too happy to obey.
His bloody cum spills over the armchair, already ruined with his slick, and he moans for Louis, who forces him to ride it out without relenting one bit. Armand pushes back into his hand, clenching and spasming, too delirious to stop his body from doing whatever it needs; and it’s only when the sweet pleasure finally ebbs away does he notice that he no longer has just Louis’s fingers inside.
He’s gone and pushed himself back onto his entire fist, up to the wrist.
“Well, shit,” Louis whispers.
Armand can only pant, ass up and head bent low.
He’s still hard, but, finally, his erection has flagged somewhat. The fist inside him is a satisfying fullness, thick like a knot, and that seems to be satiating the Omega part inside him longing to be bred.
Made for this, purrs Master’s voice, and his mark throbs angrily. Made to take it. My sweet, beautiful boy.
Armand sighs, and slowly, mindlessly, he rocks his hips back and forth.
Louis lets him, for a bit. He keeps his hand steady for him, his fingers curling and uncurling to Armand’s rhythm while his free hand strokes Armand’s sweaty back.
Then, he asks, “That him? Your Maker.”
“Hmm?” Armand needs a moment to realize what the words even meant, he feels so utterly, gloriously good.
“The voice. Was that your Maker? The… the painter?”
Oh. “You heard him?”
“Yeah. Your mind let it out. Wasn’t sure if you meant for me to hear that, but…”
Louis twists his hand as he says it, slow and steady, brushing his thumb against Armand’s prostate. Armand sighs, and lets his whole body shudder with it for a second, content to let it remain just a shudder for now, content to let the heat simmer down before it comes ablaze again.
“Yes,” he manages eventually. “It was him.”
“Huh.” More stroking, more gentle rocking. Soothing, more than anything, this slow rhythmic motion, back and forth, back and forth, so full, so full. And then, “Was he an Alpha?”
“Yes.” Armand indulges in another minute of this, the comfort of it, the delirious sensation of being owned and sated and full. Then, he turns his head — as much as he’s able — and catches the corner of Louis’s eye over his shoulder.
He asks, “Would you like to see?”
Louis thinks about it. Armand doesn’t need to see his face to read the conflict tearing at him: he wants to know, he’s curious — burning with it, a morbid kind of curiosity that frightens him — but he isn’t sure that it’s his place to ask. He doesn’t want to upset Armand. Doesn’t want to dig up anything too ugly, too painful.
This sweet, foolish, wonderful man.
“Seems only fair,” Louis says, eventually, and starts pulling his hand out. “Since you know everything about my Maker already. But, come on, bed first. You can barely stand.”
Armand wants to protest. He’s happy right here, bent over the chair, Louis’s hand stroking him inside, his body gently rocking without rhyme or reason, the pleasure a lovely thrum rumbling in his core.
But Louis is right. Without his support, Armand sways, and almost collapses to the floor when the fingers inside him withdraw one by one.
And the fever is starting to build back up.
Louis is painfully gentle as he leads Armand, trembling and shaking, over to the bed. He helps Armand lay down first, close to the wall. He strokes Armand’s hair. He kisses his forehead, his nose, his closed eyelids and cheeks.
“Okay?”
Armand hums happily, nuzzling into his palm. This is the happiest he’s been in —
Well.
In a long, long time.
He lets Louis know it, too, sending him a wave of his own contentment, and Louis smiles, his eyes sparkling. He kisses Armand’s lips once, twice, three more times.
“Good boy.”
And then he withdraws, and starts to undress.
The sight of him, lithe but powerful, confident in himself, has Armand writhing on the sheets. His cock jerks and fattens back to full hardness. He leaves a trail of slick over the bedding, and moves his hand down to touch his eagerly gaping hole before he realizes he’s doing it.
“Ah-ah-ah,” Louis admonishes him, grinning that crooked grin that Armand wants to kiss. “None of that, Arun. I didn’t say you could.”
“Sorry, Maître.” Armand snaps both his hands back up to settle them firmly on the pillow by his head.
“Huh. I could really get used to this.” Louis shakes his head, amusement cracking through the dominant exterior for a moment as he tugs his slacks and underwear down and frees his glorious hard cock.
“I want you to,” Armand says, shamelessly, with far too much desperate raw honesty to fit the mood. He knows Louis was joking. He knows he’s potentially making it awkward again — being too much.
But he can’t help it. He does want Louis to get used to this. He wants Louis to love it as much as he does.
To love him.
Please, God, let Louis love him.
And maybe Louis does, or is finally beginning to. Armand can feel it on him, the fondness, the attraction, yes, the fascination and lust, those have all been there from the start.
But something’s different now. Something’s shifted. Slowly but surely, over their many nights together, and then in the Louvre, and now on the bench, it feels like they’re starting over. Like they’re committing to one another in a whole new way.
And Lestat’s ghost is still absent from the room and Louis’s mind alike.
Louis smiles at him, gets in bed with him, rubs their noses together, and Armand thinks his heart might just crack open.
“Turn around,” Louis whispers into his lips. “I want to see something.”
Armand gives him one last, lingering kiss before he obeys, and he thinks he has a pretty good idea what Louis wants to see. Sure enough, the moment he faces the wall Louis starts to stroke his hair away to reveal the nape of his neck. Warm, graceful fingers tease at the skin around Armand’s old bond mark, a curious trail, until they stop at the center.
Armand shudders. He closes his eyes, and waits for the question.
“He give it to you?” Louis asks. “Your…”
“My Master.”
“Was gonna say ‘Maker.’”
“Yes.” Armand lets out a sigh as his hole pulses more slick onto his thighs, onto the sheets, onto Louis’s legs where they slot against his. “He was my Maker and my Master. In all ways.”
“Huh.” Louis’s voice comes out carefully, deliberately neutral. “And this…”
“Our bondmark,” Armand explains while his hips start rocking back against Louis — the memory makes it impossible not to. “He gave it to me the night he made me. Once I was strong enough, my first heat started. He took me on the floor, knotted me, and bit me there to make me his. For all to see.”
Louis traces the mark. He lets Armand rock and writhe on the bed, and doesn’t move away.
Armand expects him to ask more questions about Master. Maybe about the Alpha/Omega bond, how it works, how it manifests and why. About the history of it, why it went dormant in humans, why it manifests the way it does in some vampires and not in others. He even expects more questions about Lestat, and why he had never left any lasting ownership marks on Armand’s body, and the thought still tastes like ash on Armand’s tongue but he will answer if the question does come. He will tell Louis everything he knows.
What he doesn’t expect is for Louis’s next question to be: “Can I give you a mark like that?”
Oh.
Oh, God.
“Would you want to?” Armand’s whisper is a trembling breath, barely out.
Louis kisses him — not on the mark, but next to it, close to where Armand’s neck meets his shoulder, a little below his scent glands. His fangs scrape the delicate skin there, a tongue leaves a wet trail his lips kiss away. His hand winds around Armand’s hips to tease at his cock.
“Maybe,” he whispers, his hot breath making Armand squirm. “Maybe I’d like us to mark each other.”
Armand chokes back a sob, but he can’t stop the tear spilling out of his eye and onto the pillow.
“Don’t say such things if you don’t mean them,” he begs.
Louis takes his time leaving small, hot kisses over the skin of Armand’s back, his neck, his shoulders. His hand closes in a possessive grip at the base of Armand’s cock. His own hips begin to rock into Armand’s, his cock teasing between Armand’s cheeks, the head of it catching on Armand’s hole.
He says, “Claudia’s blocking me. Need to send a message out to Santiago and the rest of them.”
Armand swallows. “What’s the message, Maître?”
“Just open the connection for me, Arun.”
His dull front teeth catch the skin of Armand’s shoulder and tug at it playfully. It’s making it hard to concentrate on the Mind Gift; but that’s by Louis’s design, and he makes it obvious when his hand starts to lazily stroke up and down Armand’s purpling shaft.
“Well?” he prompts. His mind swells with satisfaction, with pride, with confidence. “Go on now. I know you can do it.”
He squeezes, lightly, and a thick glob of bloodslick gushes out of the slit of Armand’s cock and onto the sheets.
They’re going to have to burn them by the end of this.
But Louis has already asked him twice, and Armand wants to be good. Especially on their first night like this, in those roles, with Louis still learning how far he’s allowed to take it, still uncertain deep down, still worried he’ll misstep and trigger something they won’t be able to come back from.
Still worried that Armand will turn out exactly like Lestat when push comes to shove.
Armand is determined to spend the rest of eternity proving him wrong.
So he closes his eyes, and does his best to concentrate and reach out with his mind despite being almost all-body at this point. There’s unusual resistance when he first touches Romaine’s mind with his own, but, well.
Armand is rather distracted.
He meets the same initial resistance when he reaches out into the minds of the rest of his coven, which does spark embers of worry in him, and reminds him of his own words of warning to Louis back on the bench: The center isn’t holding. Mutiny brewing. This only proves that the resentment among their ranks is stronger than he initially predicted.
And now he’s going to invite even more of it, break even more of the rules he himself established.
Maybe… Maybe this is a mistake.
“Hey,” Louis whispers into the skin of his neck. “It’s okay. Deep breaths. You’re allowed to have this.”
Armand holds onto him, and wonders, Am I?
But then Romaine answers with a Maître?, polite and servile as ever, and the rest of the coven choruses with the same. They’re listening, including Claudia, whose own mind is a brew of dark resentment and rebellion and hurt surpassing even Santiago.
Armand will have to deal with it. Again. Always…
Louis holds him, and kisses him again, and mutters more reassurance, and Armand lets out a breath.
… But not tonight.
Listen, he tells his flock, looping Louis’s mind into the message, weaving it with theirs. I have gone into heat. I will not be coming back to the theater. There will be no assembly this time.
Silence from some, of a dark and foreboding variety. More resentment. Someone hisses. A burst of confusion from Claudia, ever the scholar. And from Santiago, a solid stone wall.
And where will you be spending the duration of it, Maître? he asks, acting the spokesperson for the coven again, his thoughts carefully blank.
Glad you asked, Louis intervenes, then, holding Armand close. He’ll be with me.
More silence. The outrage in it, the anger, the hurt, they buzz under Armand’s skin like a physical thing.
Is that… so, Santiago’s mind rings with derision. We do have ceremonies and traditions for this sort of thing, you know. Maître himself —
That may have been the case in the past, Louis agrees calmly as he rocks his hips more deliberately into Armand. But your Maître won’t be needing those traditions for the foreseeable future.
Oh, I see. Santiago’s composure is beginning to crack, his calmness giving way to a sneer. And you think you alone are enough for him? You, a mere Beta? Do you even know what you’re signing up for?
Don’t know much about any Betas or anything like that, that’s true. You got me there. Louis withdraws his arm, slowly, to wind it down between where their hips are meeting. But I figure it’s my responsibility to look after Armand now. You know… as his companion.
His cock slides into Armand, then, finally, and for a moment, Armand can’t see or hear anything at all.
Pleasure. Nothing but pleasure, a white-hot explosion of it, rippling from the easy slide of Louis’s thick length inside him, rubbing over and past his prostate, lighting every single nerve along the way on fire. He keens, pushes his face into the pillow, rocks back into it seeking more more more until his ass presses flush into Louis’s hipbones, and he’s beginning to move mindlessly until Louis hums into his neck and grabs his hips to hold them still.
“Easy,” he whispers, warmly, tenderly. “Easy there. I got you.”
He rocks back, slowly — maddeningly slowly — until he’s almost all the way out, and then thrusts back in, and again, and again, and it’s so slow, so deliberate that Armand wants to cry. He does cry, he thinks feverishly. A sob tears itself out of his throat, and his pillow is all wet.
“Please,” he breathes. “Please.”
He hears Louis tell the coven, Armand says Santiago’s in charge while he’s gone, and then the connection ends, Louis hikes Armand’s leg up, and starts to fuck him properly.
“There we go,” he grunts, “That’s right, take it. Take all of it. That what you wanted? You gonna sing for me, love?”
“Please,” Armand sobs, surrendering to it. “Please, harder.”
Louis’s thrusts speed up until the bed shakes with it, the frame pounding rhythmically against the wall.
And it’s good. It’s so good. It’s incredible, the feeling of being held tight and fucked so deeply and thoroughly, the pleasure of it easy and uncomplicated for once, inviting Armand to let go and just feel. He wants to. With everything he is.
Take me, he begs Louis, with his moans and mind alike, Take all of me. I’m yours. Make me yours.
Louis pushes him onto his stomach, climbs over him, fucks into him rough and hard and breathless, and bites into the back of Armand’s shoulder. When he comes, he plunges his fingers into Armand beside his cock, one, two, three, four of them, five, locking them together, spearing him open like a knot would, and Armand’s orgasm makes the world go dark.
Things start to get hazy and blurry after that.
At some point, somehow, Armand registers no longer being on the bed. He thinks maybe Louis moved them, mattress and sheets and all, to the floor. Another thing he registers, disconnected, is a gag, a strip of fabric over his mouth, wet with his own spit and blood, and he’s crying out into it while Louis fucks him on his back.
“The neighbors,” Louis tells him warmly, his voice rough and thick with sex, cigarette smoke in the air between them. “They started to complain. You got really loud for a moment there, baby. Had to wipe them to get them off my back.”
Armand blinks at him, weak and shuddering, and burns for him all over again.
The next thing he’s aware of, other than his own body and its fever and pleasure and Louis, he’s on the floor, on the mattress, still and spent for the moment, and there are voices in the room. Quiet, hushed. Careful whispers. A hand in his hair.
He keeps his eyes closed, tries to focus, and eventually his addled brain starts to make out the words.
“... intense. That’s definitely a huge help, thank you.”
“You should feed, too.” The voice is familiar. Concerned. Gustave? “He usually doesn’t feed during a heat, but you should force blood on him at least once. He’ll be unable to hunt on his own afterwards, otherwise.”
“Yeah. Yes, okay. Will do.”
“His blood smells different.” A different voice, one that makes him feel cold and threatened, and he can’t help curling in on himself at the sound of it.
Claudia.
“Tastes different, too, sis.” Louis. Love in his voice. Affection, patience.
Armand bites into his own bottom lip.
“How often does he get like this? It wasn’t regular with Bruce.”
“It isn’t regular with Maître, either,” Gustave explains quietly. “Or any of the others. Tuan’s an Alpha, so is Celeste, and Eglee’s an Omega just like Maître. None of them can predict when the next cycle will come. They can go years without one.”
“Why only them? How does that work? Why aren’t we affected?”
“You have to be born with that gene already in you. The Dark Gift only makes it manifest. It doesn’t give you anything, it just reveals what was there in the first place.”
“Okay,” Claudia sounds skeptical, “but why? How were they born with it? Hans said —”
“Later,” Gustave says. “When we get back to the theater. It’s complicated.”
Claudia huffs. Footsteps, pounding angrily on the floor. Her heartbeat retreats.
“Thank you, seriously,” Louis whispers. “Not that this hasn’t been fun, but…”
“Of course. He’ll understand. Tell him…”
“Yeah?”
“Tell him we await his return. And, I suppose… congratulations.”
Louis snorts. “Yeah. Thanks.”
More footsteps. Doors creaking, opening and closing. The groan of old wood, more voices out on the staircase, heartbeats growing fainter and distant.
And then, silence. And Louis’s lips on his, curled in a smile.
“Hey. You with me?”
Armand struggles to open his eyes.
Louis is sitting down next to him on the mattress, wrapped in a bloodied sheet. His eyes glitter, his smile is warm, but he looks tired — drained.
Armand’s gut goes cold with guilt.
“I’m —”
“So, Gustave and Claudia dropped by,” Louis explains, pointing to a familiar box placed on the floor beside the mattress. “Left us some… supplies.”
“... Oh.”
“It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed taking care of you.” Louis shrugs, lights a cigarette, and opens the box. “But it’s almost dawn, and I’m beat. I do need a break. Oh, wow, look at that.” His eyebrows ride up to his hairline as he looks inside, and he whistles, amused. He takes out the biggest dildo, Armand’s favorite, long and white marble, and studies the sculpted knot at the base. “This one’s bigger than Lestat’s.”
“Yes.” Armand has enough strength to blink, and shift onto his side to watch him. “This one… I had it carved to match my Master.”
Louis’s bright green eyes meet his. He says nothing for a moment, searching Armand’s expression. Armand’s eyes want to close, but he tries his best to keep them open and focused on Louis while he rubs his legs together — they’re sticky with blood and cum and slick. His hole clenches, raw and aching.
“Your master,” Louis echoes, quietly, and puts the dildo back in the box, the smile slipping from his face. “I did mean to ask. Did he also give you these?”
He inclines his head to indicate Armand’s thighs.
Ah. Armand lets his eyes fall closed, and touches a weak finger to one of the raised scars.
“I wondered when you’d finally ask,” he whispers.
“Seemed personal. Didn’t want to pry.”
Didn’t want to get into anything too deep for fear I would read it as commitment, Armand translates in his own mind, with only a touch of insecure bitterness. He doesn’t want to hold it against Louis anymore.
And anyway, Louis is asking now. And earlier, before Armand lost his mind, he said… he said…
“Did you mean it?” Armand asks, reaching across the mattress for Louis’s hand. “Are we really…”
Louis’s face smoothens out of its frown lines and settles into something gentle, but guarded. He uncurls from his cross-legged position to settle next to Armand. He leans in until the tips of their noses touch.
“I want to,” he confesses in a whisper. “I’m working on it. Just… give me time?”
Armand is too exhausted to read his mind. He wants to try anyway, to see what lurks under the careful, fragile smile, the earnest plea in his eyes.
“But you’re claiming me,” he guesses, heart fluttering with that same hope from before, stronger now that he thinks he’s allowed to express it.
“Yeah.” Louis puts his hand over Armand’s neck, his thumb stroking the skin there. “I am. You’re mine now, Arun.”
He smiles. The smile stays there on his mouth even when Armand leans in to kiss him.
They fuck one last time before dawn, tender and slow —or as slow as Armand’s heat will let them — and then they stumble into Louis’s coffin, slotting their exhausted naked bodies together into the tight, dark space.
They’re going to need to wash at some point. Neither of them has the strength to think of it now. Armand nuzzles into Louis, biting gently on the skin of his chest, and Louis puts his hand in Armand’s sweaty hair.
“Do what you have to, baby,” Louis tells him, handing him the white marble toy. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Yes, Maître.”
Louis falls asleep almost at once after that, worn out to his limit, his hold around Armand going slack.
Armand lies awake in the darkness with his eyes closed and his arms tight around Louis, dozing in and out of consciousness, coasting on the images of Louis’s half-articulated dreams, for as long as he can — until the fever spikes back up to a level he can’t ignore anymore. Then, he surrenders and sinks the marble dildo into himself, and fucks onto it, writhing on top of Louis mindlessly for the rest of the day.
When Louis finally wakes up, it’s to the sight of Armand’s mouth around his rock-hard cock, and for a moment, Armand is worried that he crossed a line.
Instead, Louis strokes his cheek, his eyes sparking excitedly in the darkness of the coffin.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he tells Armand. “Things are just about to get good.”
Armand whimpers in relief, and sucks Louis to the brink of orgasm only to force the lid of the coffin open and climb the delicious cock to ride it so hard the coffin starts to thump against the wall.
They spend the night like this, Louis in and out of Armand, with only a short break for Louis to hunt and give them both a perfunctory wipe. When Louis gets too wrung-out to keep going, he directs Armand with the dildos, firm and authoritative, snapping orders like he was born to it, the hardness in his voice making Armand’s skin crawl hot with desire.
“It’s like you’re a new hire,” Louis tells him softly while Armand is working the sculpted knot out of his hole, “and I’m teaching you. Showing you how to please clients. How to take cock like a good boy.”
His eyes flash at Armand from above, projecting confidence; but he bites his lip, too, as if stopping himself from adding more. From apologizing. From checking in, Is this okay? Have I gone too far? The worry flashes at Armand from his mind, a cloud of doubt, the memory of what Armand told him at the Louvre floating to the front.
Armand needs him to know that there is no such thing as too far. He needs Louis to understand.
So he turns his face, catches Louis’s thumb in his mouth, and sucks on it for a moment.
“You’d have to train me,” he whispers. “I’m brand new. Scared. No idea what I’m doing. I’d likely lash out at you. You’d have to show me my place.”
“Wild little thing, are you, Arun?” There’s that breath of relief again, barely there but enough for Armand to catch it.
Armand looks into his eyes. “Yes. Need you to guide me.”
“And how would I guide you?”
“With your hand.” He hesitates, then, but Louis is looking at him so intently, so hotly, maybe he’s ready for it. Maybe he wants it, too. “And then, when I’m very bad, with your belt.”
Louis’s pupils expand again. He lets out a long, long breath.
Then his face hardens, and he snaps, “Did I give you permission to stop, boy?”
“No, Mr. Du Lac.”
“Then shut the fuck up and get that thing back inside.”
And Armand is so happy he has to stop himself from floating up to the ceiling.
It’s wonderful. It’s blissful. It’s everything Armand’s wanted for centuries.
He tumbles into the hot oblivion of pleasure and flesh with more abandon than he’s allowed himself since the Palazzo burned, and Louis is there to catch him, hold him, kiss and fuck and hit him just so, and for the next several hours, Armand doesn’t have to worry about anything at all.
Maybe this time, Armand thinks to himself in the stuffy darkness of the coffin, a third night gone, his body sated finally, bled and milked for everything it had, sleep pulling at him and making him heavy. Maybe this one. Maybe he will stay.
Maybe.
Maybe…
Please.
He closes his eyes, clings to his companion, and sleeps.