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Armand had, in the last few evenings, come in contact with a series of sensations he had long ago forgotten. Fine silks and cotton against his skin. Sinking deep into a bath and lathering flesh and hair with perfumed soaps and balms. The warmth and security of a contained fire. A woolen carpet scratching up his back, his knees, his elbows. The lustful press of a warm, sturdy body against his own, entirely unclaimed by fear.
“When was the last time you drank?” a deep voice groans into his neck. A feverish violin concerto rips through the humid air of the theater. Armand can scarcely think his answer, let alone say it, but manages anyway.
“It has been a fortnight,” he replies, hitching his legs around the bare torso of a man who in that fasting period alone has gone from enemy to voracious lover.
Hands still. A pair of blue eyes meet his own, irises almost entirely blotted out by the wide, hungry pupils in their midst. The music has stopped, but no applause comes, for time itself is frozen, and he alone controls it. Armand waits for the permission at the tip of Lestat’s tongue. In a hushed, husky phrase, it is freely given: “ Bois de moi.”
The blood, ah, the blood. The vital supply of a young vampire, a strong vampire. It is not bitter with fear and age. It is ageless, immortal, and unafraid of anything, even the tempestuous hand of God. It strikes his tongue and ensnares him, satiates him. Time begins again and he hears a soaring orchestra. Are they floating? Back to the ground. The audience must not see—the feeble masses who bring a stench of life into this place, almost nauseating at times. Even the strongest among them is weak; how well they fall into the trap laid out for them. They largely believe what they are seeing is theater, because (after all) it is. But truth and doubt cloud their minds in equal measure. The believers — those who see theater and just that — have yet a nagging suspicion that this is real death before them. Simultaneously, those in the crowd who feel the death for what it is, with their quickening pulse and shortening breath, delude themselves into believing that what they see cannot possibly be real. Neither quite lands in the realm of pure, unadulterated faith and all the terror that should come with it.
These crowds should know death when they see it on stage. In the streets they see and know hunger, can picture the sunken eyes of the starving, can describe the smell of the bloated bodies of vermin, or cattle, or even neighbors. It does not take a vampire to see death every day in this town, in this time. But the stage is distraction enough and clouds better judgment. The curtain is drawn and yet a veil still hangs in the air, not wholly translucent, that separates actor from audience. If true death cannot rend this veil in two, then what may?
Armand is keenly aware that with the slightest suggestion he too could be consumed by this audience. A loud enough bump, a flutter of curtain, a less engaging scene in the magnified candlelight and their eyes could begin to search for their next savior from boredom. Surely they would not be able to tear their gaze away from the sight of him being ravished. They may feign disgust, fly away in a huff, warn their friends about what a scandalous scene took place as an interlude to the theatrical blood sacrifice. But it would stay in their minds — that was certain. They would not forget what they had seen, they would turn it over in their minds, think about it as they moved silently through their homes. They would think about the shape of the two men, writhing there on the floor, locked together like a single being, a look of ecstasy on the face of the one below, a man more beautiful than they had ever seen. This might terrify them more than anything they had seen on stage that night. And they would never forget.
But for now, they are alone, and their box private, and their actions hidden. Lestat’s hands roam underneath Armand’s expensive shirt — Lestat could not resist acquiring the finest pieces for his new favorite doll. He paws at Armand’s hips, his chest, even allows his fingertips to dance up to his collarbone. His hands are so large they cover Armand’s flank from hip to rib and Armand presses into them, arching his back away from the irritating carpet. Lestat takes the hint. In one swift motion, he circles an arm around Armand’s lower back and lifts him up high enough to pull Armand’s shirt off. He lets Armand down gently enough, but his head is still the first thing to make contact with the floor, his legs still wrapped around Lestat’s hips. Lestat pauses, fans his hands over Armand’s stomach stretched taut like a drum, appraises the figure before him. Armand’s hair tickles the sensitive crease of his own arms, thrown carelessly above his head.
Lestat inhales deeply. “All the saints that cause you and your coven to cast your eyes upon heaven wish they were able to look down on you as I am now,” he breathes.
Armand closes his eyes and tilts his head back further as if Lestat is already working a hand around him. His words, how convincing they are. How persuasive. He can make a people turn from their divine purpose with a single monologue. He can lure a ready stream to their grim deaths with the wag of his tongue. And he can make Armand believe that he is desired as more than just a thing to be possessed.
Lestat surges forward, down. He laps at any skin he can get under his tongue. He bites enough to draw blood but does not latch, instead licking at the droplets as they surface like an animal stooped over water. Armand gets his hands in Lestat’s hair, the warmth radiating off his scalp and neck thrilling to feel. He guides Lestat back up to his lips and traps him in a kiss, moaning when he tastes his own blood on Lestat’s lips. Lestat seems to notice.
“Still thirsty, my pet?” he asks, lips bumping against Armand’s teeth. Armand wraps his arms around Lestat’s shoulders, pulls him in like they are hugging, nods. He is wrapped almost completely around Lestat like a man clinging each limb to a tree branch. He bites down on Lestat’s neck once more.
Blood in his mouth. Blood in his veins. Armand has never tasted better, never sampled a finer blend. Their first- ever drink had not been like this. There in his putrid lair he had latched to Lestat’s neck out of pride and pointedly continued to suck to prove his power. It had disgusted him. Mere weeks ago the blood was riddled with anxieties, churning and groaning in him. Entirely incompatible. Yet he wanted more. His personality already an acquired taste, Lestat’s blood proved the same, but Armand was determined to taste it any time he could. He would grow to love it. He would make it agree with him. He was not convinced it was working, though his attraction grew ever fiercer, the undeniable flare of desire lighting him from inside out. Tonight was the first time he realized that creeping behind that desire was the slippery figure of love.
“Mon enfant,” Armand murmurs against Lestat’s neck, because he does not want to talk about love. What has been uttered earlier in the evening does not escape them but is also not necessary here and now. It is there. It does not need to be.
“What else can I do for you?” Lestat asks. Servitude. Devotion. Gratification. Armand moans when he feels Lestat’s fingers hook themselves into the band of his breeches. Pressing a foot into the floor he rocks up, seeking sensation.
“Unmake me,” is his reply. “Take what you have built and take all that has been built before you and reduce it to rubble.” He knows Lestat is up to this task.
With grace and hunger Lestat throws himself off of Armand and crouches down by his feet, where he quickly sets to task. Delicately holding each ankle, he removes the slippers and stockings he himself selected for the evening. Fitting that the one to choose the clothing is the one to remove and discard it. From bridge to ankle to calf, he kisses his way up Armand’s leg, the heat of him once again moving closer to the place of Armand’s arousal.
Armand props himself up on his elbows so he might see the golden crown of Lestat’s head at work. He complies as Lestat strips him of his final garments, mouth falling open when Lestat wordlessly takes him into his mouth.
That hateful, too-curious tongue that tore the work of centuries apart is now occupied as perhaps it always should be, Armand thinks, and he throws his head back, weaving lithe fingers through golden hair. No part of Lestat’s nature is silent, and so he continues to make noise, indecent sounds that punctuate the orchestra at its own hushed moments. Armand thinks of the thousands of eyes that could turn on him; he lets a whining sigh out of the depths of his lungs.
They are one blended being still, Lestat buried between Armand’s legs, which seemingly of their own volition tense and release around his neck. He is poised like a cat, haunches up, paws tight around the soft flesh of Armand’s hips. He slides them up, then down again, kneading and stroking and straying closer with each movement to Armand’s backside. When the legs around him have not relaxed in a while, Lestat pulls away and looks up Armand’s body to his flushed face.
“Is it as you wished?” he asks, and kisses the length of Armand several times, gently, slowly.
“This does not feel like destruction,” Armand gasps. “It feels like worship.”
Lestat chuckles. Armand feels it against his hip bone.
“Would you prefer me to be truly vulgar?” Lestat asks. He clamps his teeth down into Armand’s side just below his bottom rib. Armand’s grip on Lestat’s hair tightens and Lestat laughs some more. “Would you like me to use my claws?”
“I want to be so close to you that I disappear.”
Lestat flinches almost imperceptibly, but Armand notices. Hands still resting on either side of Lestat’s head, he draws him up to his mouth again, licks into his mouth, distracts him long enough to begin pushing Lestat’s breeches down past his buttocks. Lestat’s breath hitches when Armand gets frustrated and shoves a hand down the front panel. Armand works his hand, relishing the weight on top of him, and only breaks from their kiss when he reaches up to spit into his hand before wrapping it back around Lestat’s cock.
Screams from down below. The strings flutter on a dissonant chord and the audience holds its breath. Another death. This is what unites them, after all. This is why they are all here. This is why Armand was put on the Earth: to bear witness to death, to be made of it, to become it. And here before him, a better death than even himself, lifting him effortlessly from the floor and into his lap. Carnage on the stage. Another corpse through a trapdoor. Lestat’s hands on his ass, their sexes pressed together.
Applause -- intermission. The indecipherable chatter of the audience comes as it always does, and to its invigorated and lively score Lestat probes at Armand with great tenderness, beginning to open him up. It is almost too much for Armand to bear. He tunes out all sound, closes a mental door against the world, and feels. Nothing but sensation. Sight and sound are mere spectacle. Theater. All that is real is just beyond his flesh, sweating and breathing and plunging his fingers deeper, deeper, that’s it, just there, ma vie, ma mort.
Lestat kisses his slack mouth, utters a question. Armand says yes, though he isn’t certain what he was supposed to hear. He feels Lestat lift him slightly, arrange himself, and then Armand is sinking low into Lestat’s lap again, and they are holding each other’s backs, each with a hand in the other’s hair at the base of the skull, and they breathe together, staggered at first, and then synchronized. Then Lestat begins to move.
It is a mere shifting of his hips, but it is enough to make Armand pant into Lestat’s mouth, scratch at his back, feed the blood drawn as a result back to Lestat from his fingernails. Lestat licks at Armand’s fingers, brings them into his mouth. The fingers press into his tongue and seek out Lestat’s fangs as Armand rocks now, forward and back, his other hand trapping his cock against Lestat’s downy stomach, the drag and pull as delicious as the sweat he licks from Lestat’s neck.
They rut against each other in this manner for the rest of the intermission, a brief time, and when the small pit orchestra begins their yawning warm-up, Lestat changes their position entirely, bringing Armand to his hands and knees behind their empty seats. The opening scene begins and Armand almost laughs to himself; this is the rampaging mob scene, which begins with the ensemble storming the home of the lone vampire, and ends with the actors working themselves into an almost orgic frenzy, overcome now with the infection of vampirism, tearing at their clothes and gnashing their teeth at one another. A circular transference of blood on stage. A grounding hand stroking Armand’s lower back.
“Yes,” Armand says, leaning his head against his own forearms. He is not sure why exactly he says it. Lestat grabs hold of his hips, enters him once more, and all thoughts of the pageant below disappear once more. As grunts and the wet, rhythmic slap of skin against skin fill the private box, Armand begins to hear Lestat’s eerie voice in his own mind.
Is this the carnage you craved? He asks.
You have figured out a gift already, Armand replies in kind. You speak without words now.
Lestat leans over, wraps a hand around Armand and tugs. I have always been both student and teacher when no instructor is to be found. His grip tightens, just slightly. You could have shown me all you know.
Armand’s left hand slides between his legs and covers Lestat’s. Yet you did not want it. You did not wish to submit.
Am I not submitting? Lestat asks. His breath is ragged now, rising deep from his chest, near the bottom of his sternum. Is this not the carnage you craved? He repeats.
Armand is not far behind him, feeling his climax build and build. The carnage is all around. We are amidst ruins.
Within moments of each other, they come. Armand bites down on Lestat’s arm to keep himself from groaning too loudly, but it only makes Lestat’s cry more intense, a sound akin to all the air being punched from his lungs. They hear the patrons in their neighboring boxes shift in their seats, mutter to one another, but they do not search for long, for their curiosity is masked by another victim being shuffled to stage.
Lestat collapses half on the floor, half draped over Armand’s body, and wipes the mess from his hand shamelessly on the tufted back panel of the theater seats. He shifts a leg up, effectively trapping Armand’s hips and bottom below his thigh, and breathes heavy into Armand’s ear.
Armand is frozen, near-paralyzed with equal pleasure and rage. He can tell this will not last. This is not love. Lestat’s hand running up and down his shoulder blade does not mean that he will stay forever. He will not follow Armand into his coffin, will not hold him, sheltered from the sun. Why would he? Nicki he tossed aside for this moment, this embrace here in the domain of veiled fantasy, to happen in the first place. Why would Armand be any different? Why would Lestat stay?
He sighs. He leans into Lestat’s touch. It cannot make him stay, but it cannot hurt to try.