Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Armand knew Marius was alive now. Well before they all arrived home and he heard his voice echo through the stone walls of the castle, he knew. He’d heard the mental cries of his coven as they unearthed Marius, Gabrielle and Louis one by one from Rhoshamandes’s keep. He heard their ecstasy, and saw through their eyes the snapping of necks back into place. A grim sight that he watched with intense fascination. He knew he would never forget the secondhand sound of bones snapping around the spine.

In his chateau apartment’s parlour, Armand sat, same as he had spent all his nights since his maker was taken, still numb to it. Armand vacillated through extremes, either feeling nothing or feeling a sorrowful rage that had him hurling things at the wall. Glass ornaments, for instance, hardback books, candlesticks and shoes and twice, himself. Anything to bleed out a little of the main and return to that sweet empty nothingness.

He was used to that. He’d perfected it for centuries in Les Innocents. There was the joy of a Sabbath and the pleasure of watching the fire, no matter what or who fueled it, but for months and years on end, he would feel very little, as there was very little to feel about.

And so now here he sat, in a similar state of dissociation, even as his Marius, his beloved Master, now searched him out.

When Lestat had whispered to, ‘He needs you,’ Marius had felt a strange sense of joy, an overwhelming sweetness. How very pleasant it was that hope still lingered in his tired, tortured body. And he thought of his beloved Armand, his beautiful lost boy and a love taken too soon.

Marius wasn’t naïve and hardly expected some tender reunion. Yet Armand had grieved when he thought his old Master gone. Surely, it meant that perhaps there was some longing there. Beneath the centuries of anger, bitterness, and betrayal.

And perhaps he hoped too much. 

Marius first went to his private chambers where he could wash up, cleansing himself of the blood, the dirt, washing body and hair. Satisfied he looked an acceptable state, he left.

Nothing could have stopped him from walking the decadent hallways until he reached Armand’s rooms. He paused at the barrier between them, the door that could open to new revelations. And maybe, something more.

There was that hope again.

His knock was gentle, a coaxing sound, trying to interest Armand enough with his sudden presence to open the door and let him in.

“Armand,” he said through the thick door, his deep voice carrying through the heavy wood. “May I come in?”

That voice reached out and grabbed Armand through the centuries, and within a moment it was not himself sitting there anymore. At least, not this current version of himself. He was, for the briefest moment, Amadeo once more, face freckled from sunshine and hair tousled from hours dancing with his brothers and running the streets along the canal. He was Amadeo sitting with them at the long supper tables as Riccardo told him the words for their meal and chided him about his apparently lackluster table manners. He was Amadeo, stealing glances towards the archways as he awaited his Master’s return from wherever he stole away to by day. 

They all awaited his return, of course, his collection of castoffs and orphans, but Amadeo was special to him and they all knew it.

As reality returned to him like a lifting fog, Armand found his face inexplicably cold and wet. He lifted his tapered fingers to his cheek, drew them back and stared numbly at the red streaks across his fingertips. No, this wouldn’t do, and he reached into his breast pocket for a handkerchief to wipe away these tears. Shameful and inexcusable. He couldn’t allow himself such a foolish vulnerability. Not in this castle, and not in front of Marius. Amadeo died a very long time ago, lost to fire the same as his master and his brothers. Amadeo was long gone and Armand was the vessel for his ashes. 

“You may,” he said with a forced, steely detachment once he had collected himself and he fought desperately to  reign in those tears as he thought of Marius in that grave, cold and agonized and alone. He was not doing the best job, and as the door creaked open he could already feel his eyes burning again.

Marius stood in the doorway gazing across the room at his most beloved fledgling. The one whose mere presence filled him with too many emotions. So many that they would assault him if he let himself recognize them for what they were: love, desire, disappointment, longing, and guilt. Better to mask it all, push his every emotion aside and—like so many other things—deny their existence.

The way Armand spoke to him was neutral. Perhaps a barrier to keep his heart steely and invulnerable, and in doing so leaving Marius to reconcile the things he felt with what he imagined Armand felt. Marius couldn’t blame him, and this filled him with an immense guilt because he knew the cause of Armand’s coldness. Sometimes it filled him with a nauseating sadness, the great nothingness in Armand’s eyes when they looked at each other. 

Because lingering in his memory was the ghost of a soft, hot boy who had clung to him, kissed him, pledged his heart and soul. Marius couldn’t stand to think of that boy for too long. Following each indulgent memory was a crushing ache, a too familiar yearning. It made him feel like he was burning, like he was withering, folding, brittle and crumbling under the weight of it all.

“Thank you for letting me come see you,” he said with soft politeness. His plan, the only one he could think of, was to be forthright but careful. Marius sat himself at a respectful distance, his hands at ease on his thighs but his back straight, almost too rigid. In honesty, his body ached terribly, but he had endured much worse. “Lestat said…” At this, he trailed and gave himself a quiet moment to restart. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

Armand looked up from where he sat, in the center of a deep green sofa, his arms stretched along the back to either side. Rings glittered on each finger as they ever did, not a single one truly matching the other and yet all forming a lovely and regal image on his pale hands. His hair curled back over his shoulders, the warm amber light of his room bringing out the red to the dark locks. Like a haughty prince awaiting tribute, he surveyed Marius where he stood, seemingly afraid to properly join him in his room. 

How far they were now from Venice. At the palazzo, Armand had no room of his own in which to entertain Marius; all belonged to Master, even the grand room where his brothers slept and where he sometimes joined them for a nap in the heat of the Italian afternoons. Marius rarely set foot there unless a bit was particularly sick or in a particularly dour level of trouble. No, it was always in Master’s room or Master’s parlour or Master’s studio where Armand met his lover. It wasn’t until the Night Island when he had finally played host, and that seemed almost as long ago as his mortal years as an apprentice. 

“If I have been frightened, it is no fault of yours,” he finally said. “You are a queer man with queer means, but to plan your own kidnapping seems far too dramatic for our rational Roman. Please, sit.” But he made no move to indicate where Marius should sit. There was room on each side, there were several chairs facing the couch. Hell, he could sit on the coffee table or kneel at Armand’s feet for all he cared (and he certainly did not care) but he kept silent and unreadable to see what Marius would do, all the while soaking in every line of his face. Lord God, the color of his eyes alone was enough to end Armand. For all the luscious shades of blue he had worn over the years, none perfectly matched those cobalt eyes.

Marius chose his spot purposefully, selecting one of the chairs that sat facing his fledgling. Just far enough, but at the right angle for a direct and unimpeded view. And yet it was the room that he looked at, alert eyes scanning.

Marius always did this first—read the room, memorized the area, sought to glean the personality found in the organization of each selected object, which told the story of the person who designed the space. He sought some insight into Armand by way of the room, trying to find any advantage he could use. But like Armand’s expression, Marius uncovered little from his study.

Plus, it was easier to look at. 

When at last his eyes passed over Armand, he let himself linger there in that moment, stretching the seconds by the length of his silent pause. “Indeed,” he finally replied. “I would never do such a thing.”

Then again, wouldn’t he? It wouldn’t be the first time Marius threw himself into a whirlwind of unknown, of unpredictable danger to protect others. But Marius always played his cards close to his chest, confiding little in others, untrusting, self-reliant to the point of isolation, seeking no advice, manipulative by necessity sometimes, confident of whatever purpose he deemed correct and worthy.

“In any case, I knew Lestat would find me. He’s…tenacious.” Put very kindly. Marius was, for now, placated by his rescue enough not to be hyper-critical of Lestat. Of the fact that none of this would have happened had Lestat not made the wrong choice in the first place. But on what podium of wisdom could Marius stand and orate upon? Marius had too made the same grievous error centuries ago. He showed miscalculated mercy, underestimating his enemy, and it had cost him everything. It reduced his every hope and dream to literal and figurative ashes. And even now, he grieved.

“Tenacious, yes. That’s a word we can agree upon for our prince. Prideful to a fault as well; it might be the same of failure as much as the love for his coven that drives him so hard.” He kept a steely gaze on Marius where he sat, the narrow coffee table and about six feet between them, but so much more. Five centuries lay between them, five centuries and more years on top of that. It was never lost to Armand that his time with Marius had been fleetingly short compared to his long and sleepless life and yet no other person or object from his past could drag his heart around like this. 

“Are you in pain?” he asked suddenly though his voice was devoid of more than passing curiosity. “Those who came for you transferred to me what they saw, of Louis and you. Snapping your own head back around, Marius? Impressive.” Armand would never get rid of the sound of the vertebrae and spinal column cracking back into place. Armand had witnessed ghastly horrors in his life, many at his own hands. He knew what a vampire looked like starved and emaciated, screaming for blood, and he knew the look in their eyes the moment they realized their coffin was being boarded up again. He knew what a severed head looked like trying to move. But seeing through the eyes of those who had been present how Marius had twisted his skull back on the right way, that shook Armand like almost nothing else had; the smell of burning bodies still won out there.

Marius gave Armand a sharp look, the corners of his lips tightening as if at any second they’d turn down into a frown. He didn’t understand Armand’s motive for bringing up what he’d seen, and Marius so wished the others hadn’t allowed Armand to see it through their eyes. Surely, his fledgling knew that Marius would not feel flattered by that particular praise. So, did Armand bring it up with the intention of letting Marius know that he’d seen him in a moment of weakness? 

“No, there’s no pain,” he replied rather than seek closure over Armand’s comment. It was a lie, though. He ached in his bones the way old breaks ache on rainy, damp days. That deep, dense, dull throbbing. His reason for the harmless deception was two fold: he didn’t want Armand to think him weak any further than he did already. Also, if Armand was even capable of any tenderness toward him, Marius didn’t want him to worry.

Lestat had made it seem like Armand was afraid for him. Marius’s entire reason for coming here was based on the hope that this was true. So perhaps the comment was rooted in what had been sincere fear. Fears of which only Marius could assuage if that’s what they were.

“I’m grateful that the parts of my severed spine had not touched in such a way that it would have fused incorrectly. Breaking my own neck? I can’t imagine a single aspect of that being pleasant. It’s not the worst. I broke at least half my bones, probably more, when Akasha…well…” He waved his hand dismissively. “You know.” 

Marius hesitated, then asked, “Did you see anything else?” Oh, Marius hoped not. Marius hoped that Armand had not caught sight through the psychic link of the secret of the encasement, of the metal tombs that had made it impossible for them to cry out for help. Cruel, sadistic Armand. The one Marius knew by story could be gruesome and terrible. It had always been difficult for Marius to accept. Because he still saw the loving, warm, affectionate boy who had adored him. The one Marius had loved like no one before or since. The boy that had died the same night as his brothers, only resurrected as Santino’s monstrous acolyte.

No, Marius quickly chastised himself. He didn’t want to think of that boy right now. He didn’t want to remember the hot sighs that had caressed his icy flesh, the soft and slim arms that had held him tight despite his hard frame. And those whispers: I love you. 

It made him feel sick. 

“Liar.” The chastisement was swift and confident, and with it, Armand stood. Every movement was languid and smooth, the grace of a young man who had been confident in his body long before the blood. He stepped around the table and sat himself on the edge of it, so close to Marius now that their knees might touch should his legs be just a little longer. It vexed him to have even that space between them now, when they had already been separated by years and cruelty and pride and oceans and iron. Iron! What a marvelous thing to note, and he filed it away…somewhere. He told himself he had no need for this information but then, all knowledge was power, was it not?

“You’re lying, Marius. I can see every little knot of tension in your shoulders and the way you hold your back. You’re hurting, oh, you and your man’s pride. I will never understand it.” Of course he meant to speak of much more than his current aches in that single statement. It had been that Roman pride, that way of idiot men that had kept Marius from him all this time. “You have been in a treacherous ordeal and locked in that darkness for, how long has it been?” Long enough for Armand to have endless nightmares about such a thing now, he was sure. Long enough to have sketchbooks filled, putting his pain into art for the first time in half a millennia. Long enough. 

“Have you fed? You ancient thing above the act of feeding, have you had blood?”

He watched Armand approach with an open stare, a look which was neither passive nor notably eager. Marius knew better than to wear his heart on his sleeve. He knew how to keep his heart from skipping, from pounding wildly against the cruel, suffocating cage made of his ancient bones.

If he closed his legs just a bit, half an inch, he’d graze Armand’s delicate knee with his own. He would be lying to himself if he insisted it didn’t affect him.

Always bold, he didn’t try to hide the way he studied Armand, eyes sweeping from head to toe. Memorizing. Comparing, though he knew he should know better. It wasn’t Armand’s fault that he wasn’t Amadeo.

Did any of it linger, though? The fragments of Marius’s long broken heart carried with them his memories. Memories that ached. The hot, fragrant place behind the shell of Armand’s ear that made Marius’s frigid lips melt. Or the enticing curve of his neck too lovely not to feather with possessive kisses. And his shoulders, each light freckle a kiss from the burning sun, which Marius sucked at greedily to claim for himself.

Desire. Hunger. Alone, these were terrible things. Together? Utter agony.

It was a bitter thing, to be cast out of the pillowy, pleasured Heaven he never belonged in in the first place. Ripped away from the love that he—his wretched, undeserving self—should never have been given.

“No,” he at last admitted. “I came here instead.” Those few words were loaded, confessing in their simplicity many complicated things. That Armand was far more important than his pain, that the blood was secondary to this moment. Whatever would come of it, if anything at all. 

Be cautious. Don ’t hope. 

“I didn’t want to make you wait, so I came to comfort you first.” Marius threw in that last part purposefully, awaiting Armand’s reaction to Marius saying he knew Armand cared enough to be upset by his abduction and presumed death.

Armand strengthened his walls as well as he could upon hearing these words. Immediately he wanted to decry Marius as a liar again. Such sweet words just to tell Armand what he wanted to hear. Tell the stupid child what would feel good to keep him complacent for a while! But was that truly what he expected of Marius, or was that simply his own heartache seeping through? Armand sat rigid, his jaw firm as his mind raced to fill in these gaps. 

“I am glad you came,” Armand finally whispered, the sort of voice a particularly weak ghost might have, barely more than mouthing the words. With a stubborn determination he filled his lungs for a more steady reply. “I want you to go hunt tonight. The way you have described. Take a heart, devour it, be the wretched creature we so often decry ourselves as being. You need it, Marius, so when you leave me for the night, go hunt. You’re so pale!” He didn’t even think twice about it; he reached forward to wrap his hand around Marius’s wrist, as much of it as he could with his small hand, and nearly dropped it immediately from the shock. He did not, though. He didn’t want to release him at all, when it seemed any touch between them was more hard won than a castle under siege. 

 “And you’re frozen as the grave! Did he bury you in the tundra? You were not so chilled when you drew me away from that wall, so don’t tell me it just comes with your age.” Grateful for the iron curtain between their minds, he silently hoped that when you leave me would not be immediately. 

Marius watched the shock that went through Armand when he grabbed his wrist. He didn’t need Armand’s assessment to know he was chilled down and through his bones with no warmth at all within to melt.

Yes, there was a mild shock more motivated by concern than revulsion. But then, Marius knew Armand would never be revolted by his coldness. Even as a living, sweet boy, Armand loved to bury his face against his Master’s icy flesh. He sought the chilled cheek against which to press his burning one. No, his boy had adored his coldness as much as he had loved every bit of his Master’s strange nature. And oh, how delicious it had been to burn. 

But it was hard to endure the touch. It hurt. It filled him again with a terrible longing of which he could not fathom how to satisfy. He had to be on guard. Marius was sewn shut. Even one touch could pluck those seams. And once one opened, all the rest of him would zero out. Then he’d be lost, utterly and completely lost to Armand.

“You need not worry for me,” he assured, always presenting the side of him that was resilient, strong. Armand had too much already to bear this worry on his account. 

Yet, he found the worry to be comforting, even soothing. There hadn’t been much affection between the two of them in a terribly long time. Even the smallest gesture filled his heart with a long forgotten hope. Sliding his long fingers up, he press their palms together and entertained their fingers.

“I will feed, don’t you worry.” His brutal child would think no less of him for the brutality he showed when feeding. The ripping of a beating heart, the passionate, hungry blood lust that made him suck and suck until the heart was a drained, cold pulp in his hand. The worry was well placed, though, as Marius habitually abstained as if he needed to rein the beast within and let him out only when it could no longer be controlled. “Perhaps you will come?”

Armand’s soft brown eyes widened, giving the boy a startled appearance from where he sat, and as he unhooked himself from the surprised reaction, he felt one leg slide against Marius’s. It seemed too much effort to move it again, when all his energy was going to try and sort out thoughts and words. 

“We haven’t hunted together since Miami,” he pointed out, surely without need. Marius had as good a memory as any immortal, and Armand would like to think that any memory involving their first and last hunts in 500 years would stick in his old master’s brain. He sighed, and drew his legs back, tucking his ankles beneath the table and bent forward, balancing on his palms. He was now just a few inches from his maker’s face, close enough to see every layered vein of blue pigment in his eyes. Oh, but that wasn’t right, he knew. Blue eyes weren’t truly blue; it was only a trick of melanin and light. In fact truly blue pigments or creatures were extremely rare in their world, deceitful things, and yet no less beautiful. He cocked his head, lost in his own thoughts, spilling a cascade of wide, dark spirals down one shoulder. Did it matter why Marius’s eyes looked blue to him, when they were so beautiful all the same? And did it matter why Marius asked him to hunt, when the time spent with him would be just as meaningful and sweet, whether asked for with pity or with love? 

His chest hurt, and he recoiled back as though struck.

“Why,” he asked in a small voice. “Why hunt with you now? Why do you ask me now, when we have lived together for some time now?”

Marius felt the offhanded caress of Armand’s leg against his cold skin; he felt it all the way up to the roots of his hair, enjoying the secret thrill of it. Better not to think too much into it, to read too deeply into the motion. But Armand made his marble body quake. So secretly. He knew he gave off only the most subtle hint of recognition, too self-controlled, disciplined, to show how affected he was by it. He didn’t want Armand to see him as a fool. 

When Armand moved back, only then did Marius realize that he had been holding in his needless breath. With a whisper exhalation from softly parted lips, he tried to break the spell. That beautiful spell, enthralled by the angelic boy who had made him love deeply, recklessly. The one who consumed the man made of ice and stone.

Miami. Decades ago. 13,000 days ago. Only a fraction of his 700,000. So small and yet bigger than those three years. Those 1,000 nights together, which seemed small in number, but immense in impact. He grieved the endless more they could have had, what they deserved.

What he would give to pluck a single thought from Armand’s locked mind.

But he knew better than to hope. He knew the despair, the longing, and inevitably the disappointment. Every dream had been taken, and yet he could not help but dream. Marius with his foolish dreams. Fleeting dreams. It hurt, it ached and burned down into his very bones.

Yet, how could he resist those doe eyes, the full cheeks, the artfully thick curls. How could he not remember the tickle of Armand’s lush hair against his lips?

He had to be stronger than this.

He closed the gap between them this time, leaning forward. At first his arms rested upon his legs, hands dangling gracefully between his knees.

Such heavy, demanding desire.

Gently, he placed his hand on Armand’s knee, his large hand gripping the smaller, delicate one loosely. Only giving a single caress of his fingers before stilling where they rested.

He had no excuse to give to explain the time gap. 

“I would like for you to join me,” he further insisted. “You may say no. I won’t be offended.”

There was nothing more tempting for a vampire than blood. Even at over 500 years old and able to resist the hunt for nights at a time, a master of the little drink, Armand felt the pull of the blood. How hot and rich it would be sliding down his throat and how warm he would be from each swallow. And for him, there was the added thought of what dazzling array of colors he would see once he began to feast upon their sins and soul. 

But the meal sounded so empty. Simple sugar when here he had the possibility of a real feast. The touch of his maker’s hand on his leg stirred up a cloud of emotions for him like a gondolier’s pole disturbing the mud at the bottom of the canals. It made everything murky and he felt disoriented and unsure. Part of him wanted to steel himself off and go out for a hunt, forgetting every other trauma, and part of him longed for more of this touch.  Against skin next, his cheek or chest, anywhere. God, yes, please!

“Why do you keep secrets from me?” he finally demanded of his maker, not removing that leaden weight of his hand upon his knee. As the words began to spill from his plump, pale lips, they only gained speed as the young vampire gained confidence. “Marius, I asked you a question and you diverted it. Tell me, do you look at me still and see a clueless and unworldly child who cannot handle difficulties as a man does? Tell me, Master, what horrors do you want to shield me from, you who left me in Paris baptized in the ashes of my brothers?”

Marius pulled his hand back, severing their small connection. It was not a recoil or a rejection, but rather an escape, a retreat. A means of protection.

The moment was a stolen one anyway. It couldn’t last. He was too practical to romanticize no matter how much he ached for its sweetness. Marius was too stubborn to let himself be vulnerable. Because if he let himself give in, he might have to confront his loneliness. Even worse, he might come to need someone—Armand. And what would become of him if he lost it—lost him—again? How many times could he shatter before the pieces fractured into too small shards, became dust, unable to glue back together. 

The night Bianca left him, an emptiness had taken root. He convinced himself that isolation was for the best. The human world was not his to enjoy. After all, he lived the pain, suffered the chastisement and humiliation of losing it. He bore the scars of the fire brought to punish him. More than ever he threw himself into caring for his Queen, convincing himself that this was the only life he needed. Though every night, when he stared into Akasha’s empty face, he was crushed by the solitude and quiet. The little seeds of remaining hope dried over time, and the tiny blossoming flowers withered. They were replaced by a vast desert in which nothing could live. He existed, he slept, and that was all.

Yet, he never learned his lessons as well as he should.

He couldn’t remember being human. His dreams fed him hints of his mortality—a smell, the sound of his father’s voice, the music of the forum, the taste of a fruit he couldn’t recall the name of. But he was sure of one thing: he’d never fallen in love as a mortal man. Too cold in nature, even then. Too cold to properly love Pandora the way she deserved.

So, falling in love had been most unexpected. Centuries ago, intoxicated by the beauty of Venice, he followed distant pleas for death out of the hope he’d rescue another abused boy. He’d bring another into his home to nurture and educate.

What he’d found crumpled in a filthy heap was so much more than that. A boy of unimaginable beauty that set Marius’s frozen heart to furious pounding. He’d already fallen into unrelenting love by the time he gathered the dying boy into his arms in the swaying gondola. Against the small shell of the boy’s dirty ear he murmured assurances and encouragements, whispering to live. Of course, he’d indulged. The scent of dirt and death was powerful, but underneath it was the delicious smell of youth, of life. He fed on this with as much pleasure and hunger as he did blood.

At first, the relationship was one of dependence. His tender Amadeo sought the safety of his presence. The innocence and naivety of the boy allowed for nothing else. That didn’t stop Marius from taking what he wanted, and the desperation at the center of it should have been enough of a warning. Amadeo’s submission blinded him to caution. He couldn’t hear the warning bells sounding sharply over the sounds of Amadeo’s sighs and groans. And then a miraculous thing happened: the boy fell in love with him in return. Marius could remember with aching clarity the thick pounding of Amadeo’s racing heart when he walked into their room. And Marius had been all too delighted to give Amadeo what he wanted.

It came to him presently as dreams do. If he closed his eyes, he smelled the nearly overpowering incense and murky canal. Oh, but it wasn’t that part of the memory that made his skin burn. No, it was the faded sensation of soft, hot thighs against his cheeks, the grip of insistent hands, the taste of sweat, the twisting, gasping, moaning. Tearing cloth, a slick tongue tasting of wine, and the single word that came as cries and moans: Master.

Marius had never needed something so much in his entire life. Inside of him was an infinity, such capacity to give and get love as he’d never experienced before.

For once, 500 years ago, he was truly thankful for his immortality. Without it, he’d have died an old man having never known what real love and passion felt like. How was it that the best thing that had ever happened to him became the very worst? It hurt. So, it was better to forget or to deny. It suffocated him. The stain of how it came to a terrible, wretched end spoiled every memory he had of Amadeo. 

Armand wasn’t to blame that every time Marius looked at him, he was nearly overwhelmed by his memories, both wonderful and terrible. Made all the more difficult by the fact that he rarely saw Amadeo in Armand’s eyes. And when he did, he feared it was all in his head. Amadeo had been replaced by a doppelgänger capable of things so gruesome that Marius felt sick to think of them. His sweet cherub made into a devil, the worst of them. Pitiless, cruel, empty.

It was as the past. Armand had escaped, evolved once more, even learned to love again through Daniel. But he was wounded and broken just like Marius. It was too painful to hope. Better then to keep himself at a distance, only giving in to dream about Armand. To the observer, casually watching their meager interactions, it would probably come as a surprise that they’d ever been in love.

Within all of that too big complexity that was his emotions was another acknowledgment that he denied: it was his fault. This corrupted relationship was his failure. Everything Armand had ever done, Marius the unknowing puppeteer. It was easy to ignore that if never confronted to explain. He dreaded the question, why?

As all of this went through him, he sat back. Calm. “There are no horrors I could shield you from that you’ve not already seen.” Done. “I’m not avoiding your question on purpose. Why do I ask you now? Because I want to spend time with you. Does there have to be more behind my motive than that?”

Marius was satisfied with his misdirection. Sometimes the simplest way to hide any truth was to give the truth. It hurt him to hide everything he felt that simmered within the deepest depths of him. Especially when all he wanted to do was ask for more. To demand love. To take it as he once had. Reckless, wasn’t it? His blood burned when he thought about touching Armand. His lips wanted to form the confession, I love you, but he silenced it skillfully even though he felt ripped apart, the words a storm that destroyed everything within their path. Would destroy the both of them. Marius’s failure was inevitable.

They touched, even as they sat physically apart. There was too much hanging around each of them. Like the shimmering heat waves over roads in the summer, they each wore their pain. Armand could see it in Marius and knew it in himself. They were both such liars and both held so much bitterness. He laughed even, to think of it. His Master, who he once held as a living god, his savior and Christ alive, this man who he, in his youth, had looked to model himself after as everything a man should be, and he had taken after him only in the most wretched ways. Liars, both, mourning, and sinners. 

Armand ran his tongue over the back of his little fangs. He was tempted to ask again, why now, why not before in all this time they had been together? It wasn’t as though no part of their twisted relationship had not continued in these years. How many pieces of blue clothing did Armand own, after all, and not simply the neutral denim he had once taken to resemble a mortal boy like his Daniel? How many fights had they slipped into, how many had Armand even baited Marius into, just to have the thrill of something so familiar and all of his attention right on him? He could do that again right now!  Pry at this question till Marius grew furious with him and showed that anger he claimed to hate so much! But, one, that seemed to be a waste of a good fit being here with him alone and two, that wasn’t what he wanted. Armand didn’t want to just stir the pot with Marius as though he were just bored. He thought the man dead just hours ago, and now he sat before him, within reach and breathing, and Armand couldn’t bring himself to bridge the gap between them.

But, God, he wanted to, and he got so far as to reach out for him, but that thick, dreadful air between them slowed his movements to a crawl, and then stopped them all together. Two matching poles of a magnet could not touch each other, and that was how it felt to him now, the entire situation frustrating him till there were red tears flowing in his eyes, and that served only to piss him off even further.

“Well then I should have asked you!” Armand finally roared. His tone was savage as he tossed this at Marius, despite the accusation being completely self-deprecating. His raised hand shook as he could neither lower it nor reach for Marius as he wanted to. “I should have asked you to hunt with me, damn it! I should have asked you to show me your paintings or take me with you to those galleries you so love to visit! I should have listened to those stories you sometimes told to welcoming guests rather than shutting out your voice! But I didn’t, and then you were dead, you bastard! Then you were dead and you left me again before I had the chance to do anything about it!”

It was all Marius’s fault, though it wasn’t at all. Armand felt in his chest that gasp of missing the last step going down stairs, where fear became breathless terror became anger. Did other people feel that? Did they get such a childish pit of rage in their bellies when they were so desperately startled, even at something they themselves had done? It wasn’t the sidewalk's fault when one tripped, after all, but it would still receive a kick, just as Marius then received a sharp strike across his face and all Armand could think was, Finally, I can move again.

For the thousandth time since he’d met, saved, and loved Armand, his heart broke. The ache was so sharp and deep it suffocated him, squeezed his chest until he felt like he would stop breathing. Part of why he kept himself distant from his fledgling was because he didn’t want to see his pain. He didn’t want to feel it. He didn’t want the miserable feeling of his heart shattering. Afraid Armand would reject him and the meager comfort he could provide.

Armand’s verbal explosion revealed one important thing to Marius: he must have been very frightened when Marius was taken. 

His heart pounded. Selfishly, Marius was pleased at the display. The confessions stirred that dangerous hope he surprised and crushed. The hope that he encased in ice and denial. 

Marius had foreseen the danger of Rhoshamandes. That was why he had put Armand into the cell with Lestat. As someone of great importance to Lestat, Armand was a natural target. Marius trusted no one but himself to protect Armand, and he’d kept vigil outside of the cell with Armand as his priority. It hadn’t occurred to him to worry for his own safety. 

Once more, foolish to think himself infallible. He, of any, should know just how weak he was. It would not have been the first time he failed to protect Armand. 

The emotions he felt at the moment confused him. Guilt, sadness, and pleasure. Pleasure that Armand had grieved for him, and yet strangled by it, shattering his heart, his soul, breaking him to his very core. It was so selfish to crave Armand’s sorrow, the confessions that Armand really did—underneath the anger and blame—love him.

He scooted to the edge of where he sat again. Suffice to say, he did not expect to be struck. Who would dare? The slap was hard—it could have snapped the neck of a mortal. Marius was stronger than that, but it hurt. His hand rose to touch the hot skin, but it only made it up halfway before he dropped it back down to rest on his thigh. 

A small sigh escaped his lips. Undeterred by the violence, he put his large hands to Armand’s face, stroking it to comfort him. “There’s a lot we should have done. A lot we should have been allowed. Better, stronger creatures than Rhoshamandes have tried to kill me over the centuries. Don’t ever fear for me. I’ve risen from destruction too many times to account.”

Armand, enraged still and his heart pounding like a wild rabbit’s in his chest, immediately tried to wrench away from that touch; a half second after though, he stilled himself and placed his smaller hands over Marius’s to keep him there. Contradictory though his body language was, it made his desires clear; I can move away, but don’t you dare.

They shook slightly now, as Armand’s rage reached its crest with that slap and then began to abate. But as it rushed away, it left a void, and that void needed to be filled. Too many years of sealing himself away and being numb to life, such a way of existing did not suit Armand well anymore, and everything else came crashing into that hollow. Some bits of rage, but sorrow too, a deep, anguished sorrow and fear. He didn’t realize he was crying until he felt Marius’s thumbs against his cheek becoming slick with his blood tears, and then he became angry all over again at such a childish display. 

“You can’t say that!” he yelled in his maker’s face. “You can’t just go about saying nothing will ever get you! You and I can survive the flames and the sun, you can survive an elder vampire, but you are not immortal, none of us truly are! We have only paused the hourglass, even we cannot truly turn it over once it’s run out, Master, and what happens when yours truly is through?! I thought you dead!”

 More tears came with this howling anguish, and his hands over Marius’s tightened into crushing fists around his fingers. “I thought you truly dead but I couldn’t mourn for you, same as I couldn’t truly mourn for you in the dungeons or in Paris because some foolish part of me wanted to hope for more, that you were alive somehow. And look! Twice now, I, the fool, was right! A fool for god, a fool for you, will I never be anything else?!”

Armand wept openly now, his face crumpling as the heaviness of the night threatened to crush him. Yes he had Marius again. Three times, Marius had stood before Armand with the promise of a new start. The first in Venice when Armand was a slave forced to pleasure men in a filthy brothel, and Marius promised him love. The second at Maharet’s Sonoma compound, where his maker’s arms promised him a second chance. And now what? The third time now, sitting before him after their shortest time apart, what was Armand to think?

“And what does the great Marius have to promise me now?”

The final question left Marius feeling agitated. Pride, for Marius, was a stubborn and relentless necessity, absolutely central to the man he had always been.

Marius wasn’t a soft son of the Roman Empire, lazing about in leisure and excess. No, he had been raised with the rigor and strict structure of the Republic by a stoic father with high expectations for his sons, even the bastard half-slave one. Along with classes of rhetoric and public speaking intended to prepare him for public life, accompanied by instruction on fighting and horse-riding for his eventual military service, Marius was taught the virtues of the Roman way. (Failure to please your magister always resulted in brutal beatings, so Marius learned to be studious early in his education simply for the sake of perseverance.) Chief among those virtues was dignitas. Pride, though not arrogance. 

The Great Marius. A title given to him in jest at best, mocking at its worst. If this were any other time or any other person, Marius might have made his displeasure known. But for his broken child, he kept his expression gentle, his fingers moving in slight stroking motions. Amadeo had a tendency to speak rashly and brazenly when upset or afraid, his mouth faster than his brain could work to warn him against such, so perhaps Armand did, too.

His head started to shake. No, Marius knew he had been the fool the whole time. What chance did one mortal boy have at resisting a creature such as him? In the end, it was Marius’s weakness that doomed the two of them. And now he had mishandled everything and Armand was hurt. The tears pouring from Armand’s too-beautiful brown eyes strangled Marius. He couldn’t take this. All he could do was shut his eyes.

“Hope doesn’t make you a fool.” Marius said it quietly, using that smooth and deep voice he summoned when he wanted to comfort. “You were never a fool for loving me. I was a fool to think I could protect you, that I could have you.”

He’d never been so consumed by desperation, love, shame, and desire before Venice or ever since. Lost in shimmering love and lust, he’d let himself become blind and deaf to all else. His world was Amadeo. That first night, mournful that day had to come but confident that the other boys would take proper care of Amadeo, Marius sunk into a new kind of glittering, golden sleep, dreaming of the boy, his obsession immediate and demanding.

Amadeo was too young, too naive and innocent to purposely seduce Marius. He was blameless in everything that happened. It wasn’t Amadeo’s fault that he was designed perfectly for Marius.

Leaning forward, Marius pressed their foreheads together. The coldness of Armand’s skin filled Marius with something similar to…what? Grief? Whatever the miserable feeling was, it too broke his heart.

But he was a creature of selfish indulgence. His heart pounded, booming loudly in his head. It was so loud to him that it seemed the world would hear it, that it could shake the ground, make heaven and all the stars tremble.

Marius was disgusted with himself. Sickened that he was affected by the smell of the blood tears dripping from Armand’s plump and youthful cheeks. Like a monstrous beast, he wanted to, in slow and ravenous licks, eat the twin trails of blood. A shameful but stifled arousal filled him. A reminder of the weakness claimed for his own. There had never been blood as rich, as delicious to him as Amadeo’s. It was surely the taste of the nectar that the Gods Marius was raised to revere drank, served by the submitting body of his own tender Ganymede. A substance for only gods to consume. No mortal could drown in the pleasure of its taste—it would drive a man to madness. As it was, Marius had been nearly undone by it.

He’d lived 1500 years waiting for Armand, his unfulfilled soul patiently anticipating something it didn’t even know. And then 500 more crushed by loss.

Would Armand even believe his promises? Marius didn’t know if his own heart could endure one more failure either.

“Would you even believe my promises? It would be greedy and cruel to promise you anything, wouldn’t it? I’ve made every promise with the sincerest intent, but that didn’t make a difference.” Perhaps his exhaustion made him candid. Or maybe because he wanted Armand to see him. To understand him. To find him buried underneath all the imperfection, but still love him nonetheless. Marius was too close, too hot, too hungry, and his insides shook. This was exquisite torture.

His next words came in a single long breath, almost inaudible as breaths were. “I promise that I love you.” He wished he could drop the walls just long enough to ask Armand to love him, too.

Armand’s eyes grew wider through Marius’s long confession, and he found himself almost affronted—no, scandalized, to hear Marius admit to everything that Armand had yet to accuse him of. Tonight, at least. Through their short years in Venice, Amadeo had been sharp tongued, and as willing to spit venom at Master as he was to beg for his honey-sweet kisses. It was how they danced, as lovers. Master, monster, beloved, demon, magician, possessed, emancipator, slaver, lover, tyrant. So many words for him and all at once true. But those were words for Armand to lay at his feet and not words for Marius to claim himself! Oh, he felt vexed, robbed of an outlet for this growing anger. He wanted so badly to stem these tears but they refused to stop. Each continued to fall down his face, one after another. 

“Promise that you love me!” he repeated with heavy disbelief. “Yes, you’re right Marius, your promises mean so little, but they were once all I had. In those minutes in the gondola between the moment you paid for me in the brothel and when you laid me to bed and I shivered from fever and hunger, I had only your promises. And, behold! They were realized! You, my savior, promising me milk and honey, and you gave me such things and so much more!” 

Armand’s years of theatre seemed to color his voice here, but just a touch; these emotions were all his own, but it took this sort of gut wrenching near death experience to tear them out of him. God, how many centuries did he fall asleep to the dream of being held by his Master again, and now that he had it, did it hold up to the daydream? He gripped him hard as he could, enough to shatter bones of a lesser vampire, but then, Marius was never lesser in any regard.

“But what good is your promise of love, Master, when I can’t be certain what love means to you? The love of God means something different than the love of a husband does it not? My scripture told of love as wanting eternity for another, even if it meant suffering and pain in this world. Tell me, does God not still love the children he casts into Hell, even as their skin bubbles and blisters? Does he not call it love, what compels him to turn away forever his sons and daughters?”

Finally, here, the tears began to slow, and Armand’s eyes grew soft. He was bone achingly tired, and his crushing hold on Marius lessened. Now, he stroked his master’s fine hands tenderly, and brought one palm to his lips upon which he laid a kiss. 

Deep, doll-like eyes looked to Marius as he said, “Was that the love in your heart, Padrone, as you looked down upon me from on high in Les Innocents and left me there to rot?” 

Marius yanked his hands away as if Armand had burned him even though his insides grew cold. What a cruel contrast to the sweet way Armand had lain a kiss upon his hand. 

And now Marius was sure that the kiss was a mockery, a show of tenderness to soften him, to coax his guard down just before delivering a vicious verbal blow, thereby making it more effective and abrupt. Those tears, were they an act, too? He knew through the stories of others that Armand was a great and well-skilled manipulator. He loved to use his angelic beauty to entrap.

Ruthless, bitter child.

Marius rose at once from the couch, moving away quickly to put some space between the two of them. His long legs carried him across the room where he could look at his fledgling no longer under the spell of his beauty and allure. It gave him space to think—Marius did not like to react instantly to anger. A few seconds of fresh air and clarity let him calm down from the impudence of the question.

“You know what love means to me.” It was a simple but strong statement, one he said with underlying severity. He had venom on his tongue, ready to spit, to poison. His own accusations ready to throw out as harshly as Armand’s.

But what good would that do? To do so would only drive Armand further away. And with him, all of Marius’s newly manifested—new because he would not have dared feel such before now—hope. What a stupid, naive thing to feel. And what a fool he was.

“The way I kissed and held you, that was love. The nights I spent holding you as you slept. Could that be anything else but love? Nursing you back to health, tending eagerly to your every desire and mood, giving you a love I had never before given anyone. What we did in secret, in bed, that was absolute helpless love. You knew it as such then, and you know it now. Only, you no longer feel it fits the narrative of what became of you. I didn’t leave you to rot, Armand, you were already rotten.”

As soon as Marius said it, he regretted it. Perhaps he did not have as good a hold on his anger as he thought.

Taking a deep and steeling breath, Marius let it out as a sigh. The harshness in his face melted away, and there was something desperate in his eyes. An apology. A quiet I’m sorry that he could not verbalize.

“You cast aside everything I’d taught you to become him. You became his instrument of cruelty and despair. You enforced those same ideals that had nearly killed me, left me scarred and weak, and killed your brothers. Yes, you became his, no longer mine in any sense. I love you, I wanted the life we had more than anything. I just wanted to love you until the end of time. Nothing more than to have you as mine. That is what love meant to me.” 

“I was a child!” bellowed Armand, and he threw himself to his feet in such a rage that the table beneath him crashed backwards into the couch, a leg buckling beneath it. Oh he wouldn’t allow Marius to have this room between them, when they already had five centuries and thousands of miles. Marius wanted to toss him away then, but now Armand would make him face the boy he raised and loved and left.

“Marius, God damn it, how dare you!” he cried, and let the entire coven hear it! “I was a child! Perhaps in the manner of our days I was a man, I had my wits and strength. I was a man for you in our bed and have the passion of a thousand nights to account for it. It was a man that tended your accounts and minded the little boys and a man who mixed your paints and delivered your canvases! I ran your household by daylight as a man and it was a man you brought over into the blood, but the moment I was torn away from you, Master, I was only the child of my seventeen years again!” His voice broke like that very boy as he spoke and though his words grew more impassioned with each breath, his voice itself grew softer. Armand shook where he stood and longed to throw himself at his maker, to cling to him or to beat upon his chest. Either would suffice. 

“Marius, I wept for you!” he pressed on. “When I learned what the smell of burning bodies was I cried for you, when Riccardo was fed to me! I needed you and I prayed for you to rescue me as you once had! Don’t you dare lay out my sins like this when I was trying to survive! Think, Marius, what sort of man might stand before you now had you not been a selfish coward and rescued me!”

“I’ve never been a coward,” Marius said. “You know this. Now you throw petty insults to hurt me. How impudent.” He had to restore his control, still the shaking of his hands that so betrayed him. “But I need you to listen to me. To understand my perspective.” 

How he longed to be understood, as if he could perhaps just impart even a bit to Armand of what he suffered. Not to be absolved, not by any means, but be heard. There were countless sides to their tragic story, not only Armand’s.

Armand’s anger shook him. It was impossible to endure this pain that radiated from the expression and countenance of his lost child. Lost in so many ways. Not only in body, but, the most wretched of all, in heart. Had it grown so cold, so unforgiving of what he’d done? There had to linger a bit of that love. It was there in Armand’s pain, the pain that rooted him to a past he could never escape. If he didn’t love, he would not hurt as he did.

“But what can I tell you that you don’t already know? And if that is not enough, I don’t know what to say.” He spread his quaking fingers, pathetic appendages with a will of their own to destroy his pretense. 

“I was too weak to rescue you for the longest time. Akasha ordered me to stay and serve only my duty to her. She knew that if I went off rashly, weakened as I were, I would surely be destroyed. I’ve no doubt she was correct. But she said no, I could not have you. I’m most certain now, as certain as little else, that she disdained our love. You took me from her. For you, I put you first in my heart, no longer her. I had an inkling just then that she lived little in her own body, but linked her mind with mine. I carried her in me. And me, unwitting, so stupid, did not sense this. But she was there, silently steering me through the centuries.”

Bitter sickness and anger filled him. Oh, how badly it hurt, boiling and burning him from the inside out. That fire which has consumed his physical body now raged in his body. The thought of Akasha manipulating him made him angry. She’d fed him, a man hungry for her attention and love, starving, only scraps. Small pieces just enough to keep him in servitude. In the end, her selfishness brought him nothing but emptiness.

“But I found you… When was it? Time passed so strangely then. Frozen in a world that kept moving.” He closed his eyes to remember the monk and Raymond. He summoned their words as if they were spoken into his ear now as they had in centuries past. “They told me you were alive. I hadn’t known you were. Even then, I was too weak.”

He approached Armand by a few bold steps, and yet he kept some distance. They did not need to be face to face for Marius to see Armand’s glowing amber eyes, eyes as such only those with their preternatural powers possessed. 

“I went to you as soon as I could. Amadeo…” He’d slipped, and when he spoke the old name, the name of love, he chastised himself. Hearing that name given to him by his beloved, his master, would it hurt Armand? “You know by then you were committed to your coven, and you led them, indoctrinated them, in a horrid world of vicious servitude to you and Satan. This you… That was not survival. That was a deep-seeded belief. You believed it all. You may have been a child when brought, but you became a man. Armand, you were strong enough to abandon your coven, yet you did not. You could have slain every single pathetic monster under your control and left. Why didn’t you? You can’t blame me for thinking you dead.”

“Do not think as you would now. You’ve seen the errors of your ways. You do not believe those corrupted ideals any more. But remember when you did. When, with all of your heart, you served Satan. It wasn’t a performance or a mask. It wasn’t fake. It was your heart. Would you have truly come away with me? To leave your coven to seek companionship with the pagan, the heathen, that your evil acolytes condemned to perish. Be honest. Think as the one you were then.”

They could only mend if there was truth between the two of them.

Armand gasped upon hearing that name from his maker’s lips again; Amadeo. Oh, wasn’t he dead and buried, though? Amadeo burned to death with his brothers. Beloved by God! He was forsaken by any deity who had the power to intervene. He should claw Marius’s eyes out for even referring to him, to speak that name! And yet, it sounded so sweet on his lips.

Armand glowered, and shook his head like he was trying to keep those words from sticking to him. It sent his auburn curls into a tangle, flaring them around his head in a wild mane. With heavy feet he closed the last of the space between them, drawing himself up to as full a height as he could. Lord, how he once took such solace being so much smaller than his master. Despite his own strength and Marius’s slight build, it made him feel safe. Those masculine hands, that broad chest, those features that conveyed to a young, frightened thing the image of strength, maturity and wisdom. No harm could befall him in Master’s embrace. How he longed to go back.

“What would you, the rational Roman know of belief?” he demanded. “If you thought I was led to such turmoil and sin by false gods then why not take me back and force me to understand? Your son, you called me! Your young love, well! Then you should have known what was best for me! You should have fought for me, damn it! Maybe you could have changed me! But you didn’t want to, Marius! You had your women! You had Akasha, you had our beloved Bianca all to yourself now, and I know your words, Master, how you looked even then for Pandora! Ha!” Armand crowed, nearly on the balls of his feet as his emotions swept him up to a near madness. “Maybe it’s good you didn’t take me, though! You were a foul thing after the burning, a wretched thing! Dark artifice, was I? Nothing but a good fuck, a child who couldn’t love you? A wicked lie! Or was it Bianca who you lied to? Bianca who you would have cast aside for beloved Pandora! So who is it then? Which of us were you honest to, and which bore your lies!”

Marius should have expected Armand to pursue him across the room. This was the one who had, a demanding and spoiled child, taken an axe to his door for attention. It would be undignified and frankly comedic to instigate a pointless chase around the room, so he stood still.

The intensity of Armand’s anger might have been startling if not for the fact that Marius knew it had been simmering for centuries. For too long Armand lived as little more than a miserable specter haunting hallowed grounds, delivering horror upon horror to others as if feeding his hurt, dumping anything he could into that great gaping void, would somehow sedate the enraged spirit within.

But god damn it, why didn’t Armand take any responsibility for the things he’d done and become? Why on earth did he have to be blamed for it all? What on earth had he even imagined could be salvaged? What a ridiculous man he truly was. He had so little to offer his fledgling. Nothing but a love that couldn’t be trusted. But, if everything he had done was so unforgivable, then no measure of love would be enough. Common sense told Marius to leave before things grew even worse, but he couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.

Armand tore open a still bleeding wound when he said one simple word, one name: Akasha. Just as Marius was the source of Armand’s every misery, every crushed hope, Akasha was his. But unlike Armand, there was no one for Marius rage to. No, he carried the heartbreak deep, so deep. There was no other choice but to be quietly, invisibly consumed.

In him coiled a dangerous fury, and it was getting harder to keep it controlled. If he let it go, the entire room would be sent into chaos along with him. Instead, he chose one viscous act—worse than shattering every bit of glass in the room, cracking and rendering the furniture into splinters and dust without a single lift of a finger.

He hit him. Armand’s face felt small against his hand, and deceptively fragile. Marius longed to kiss the cheek that now blazed red, to press his lips to that hot skin and pretend…

Instead, he pointed a finger an inch from Armand’s face. He bent at the waist to look into Armand’s too-beautiful eyes. “Don’t ever say her name out loud. Let everything that happened to me satisfy you, Armand. Fate made me suffer plenty. I never lied to you. Nothing I felt or did or said to you was a lie.” He didn’t address the matter of Bianca. He couldn’t, not while he dealt with this. “I lost you, I lost Pandora, I lost Bianca, and then, finally, I lost her. See my pain, my emptiness, and take whatever pleasure you need from it.”

Straightening his back, returning to tower over the boy, “There’s nothing you need from me, is there?” It was a statement more than a question. “Not from a foul, wretched thing. You have Daniel back now.” He didn’t point this out out of petty jealousy. It hurt. It hurt so much, but he didn’t blame either Armand or Daniel. There was nothing wrong with seizing happiness, as such a thing was painfully rare for their kind. “But there. As you can see, I am alive. You don’t ever have to be afraid for me.”

He turned to look out of the window for a moment, needing some distraction so that Armand didn’t see his expression become brittle. When he spoke, it was quiet and soft, like a musing if anything, “Perhaps the night will come that you’ll forgive me. I’ll wait for you forever. Until the very last second of the end of time, I will wait.”

The words hurt almost more than the bruising strike across Armand’s face, though that alone reddened his skin and he heated he would bruise, if even for just a few moments. Well, not like he wasn’t used to violence at his master’s hand. Forgiveness! Such a word drew Armand immediately to the church once more, the cold Orthodox pews where he knelt to have communion spooned onto his tongue, the warm and lively church where he had taken to a fever. Even the crypts of the cult were holy ground. But in all those places had he ever truly been forgiven? God, should he exist, would know what Armand would become. It was Armand who was the foul and wretched thing, and it was painted across thousands of pages for anyone to see. Marius was twisted, yes, but it was Armand who saw his own soul as stained beyond repair. And he was being asked to forgive? Well that would be rich were it not the greatest sin committed against him he was being asked to forgive!

Armand said nothing to that, and instead sorted his words backwards. Need.

“I have always needed you,” Armand whispered, and he stood stiffly, arms wrapped around himself now. “Master, I cried for you and called for you because I needed you.” How could he convey to Marius this deep shame that he knew—no matter how far he strayed or how much he grew or the depths of his sin, he would never be truly free of his Maker, Master and savior. 

Marius didn’t turn his head, but his eyes moved to look at Armand in their periphery. Turning his head so soon seemed to be giving in, and he wanted to see the sincerity on Armand’s face before he did.

Yet, he knew his reticence was more a matter of stubbornness than caution. After all, Armand may be a master of manipulation—or so he heard—but Marius didn’t think Armand would ever try to deceive him. He had no reason to. 

It was hard to see Armand look vulnerable. It took Marius back to the image of the starved, beaten boy who cowered away from the flooding lamplight. In the delirium of near death, Armand didn’t think salvation would come. Time and time again, in many different ways over the fleeting years, Marius saved him. Until the final time when he did not.

His hands reached for Armand’s face, cupping it, tilting it back to compensate for the height difference so that nothing in his fledgling’s face could be hidden. Fingers stroked where he’d hit, though any hint of violence had already faded. Made and infused with Marius’s powerful blood, Armand would not be easily broken.

“Stop fighting me, then,” Marius spoke low. Half the chateau had likely heard them yelling at each other—it would be the source of quiet gossip for at least a few nights—so, they didn’t need to hear anymore. “Are we going to spend the rest of our lives either ignoring or yelling at each other? You don’t have to forgive me just yet. We are going to try, though. Let me comfort you.”

Stop fighting me, then. There was the simplest edge of a command in those words, which Armand knew well. The confident tone of a man used to being the head of his house. Before Marius would resort to slapping Amadeo, whipping him, or even a raised voice, he had always used this simple and direct tone. This is what we are going to do. Where Marius lives, Marius rules, that’s what Pandora had said, but for the quickest flash here that didn’t sound like a condescending warning; it sounded comforting.

“I’m…Master, I’m just so tired,” whispered Armand, letting Marius hold his face still. So very tired. Didn’t Marius understand that every night was a battle for him? He, who survived, he who never took to the earth for sleep, Armand had to claw his way through the churning nights to keep his head above water but how fantastic it would be to lay down that burden again. Every time he donned a blue sweater or shirt or tunic, every time he hesitated in court and looked to Marius for answers, he was so tired. 

Without further words, Armand pulled his face away from his maker’s touch, found himself mournfully bereft of it, and then immediately pressed himself forward and held his arms tight around Marius. So tired, so done, couldn’t he hold on to this lifeline for just a moment? He would let it go again as soon as he was strong enough.

“I know you are.” Marius used his most soothing tone, giving recognition and validation to the nightly struggles of his long-lost love. Armand was very unreadable—a survival technique, perhaps. But Marius remembered him as a passionate, tumultuous boy. A boy full of a thousand warring emotions that he could scarce make sense of. Constantly seeking assurance, establishing his place as if anyone in the world could replace him. Unthinkable. Utterly unimaginable that anyone could. Marius loved Bianca much as Armand did, but it was a pale love in contrast to how he felt for his precious and priceless Amadeo. Marius’s heart beat only for him.

Vainly, Marius wore the beautiful boy as he would a jewel, adorning himself for too rare nightly excursions. And oh the envy he read from the minds of others. At times, feeling the intensity of true jealousy all around. But, it was the same with Amadeo. Distractions and scattered lovers aside, the common trysts of youth, Amadeo belong to him in body, mind, and soul.

Tenderly, he ran his hand through Armand’s bouncy, luscious curls. It was partially self-indulgent, Marius deriving just as much pleasure from their feel as he hoped to give Armand in comfort.

“Let me take care of you. Let me see the insecurity, the fear, the vulnerability. Let me relieve it in a way that only I can. I adore you, Armand.” After witnessing Armand’s reaction to the old name Amadeo, Marius was reluctant to use it again. Maybe in the future when Armand was ready to revisit the old way. When it would no longer bring with it the pain of memory.

“Will you allow me to lie in bed with you? I promise that I have no ulterior motives.” Marius was a man of honor and decency. He would not take advantage of the trust if given. “I can alleviate all of your fears. You may refuse if you want. I will take no offense, and I will respect your boundaries if you are not ready. So, may I, my darling, precious love.” 

Armand said nothing for the longest time, and did not move. He and Marius had touched many times over their years in the castle together; one of the last things Marius did before his disappearance was physically restrain Armand from smashing his fists bloody against the wall, after all, surely an act of love in its own right? Or maybe an act of annoyance and one to keep Armand from property damage. How was Armand to know?! Yet here in his arms it was so tempting to let go. To be held like this gave him a taste of Venice, and if he closed his eyes he could pretend. The sound of the canal outside the open windows and the scent of linseed oil and roasting food. Amadeo, safe and secure, where Armand was neither. 

“We can’t have Venice again,” he whispered for his own benefit more than Marius’s. “No matter how much we miss it or mourn it, it burned, and we burned with it.” It was an act of God that kept his voice firm and steady as he made this declaration. No, no Venice, and it was a disservice to everyone to close his eyes and pretend. To himself and to Marius, who seemed convinced of love even if it was foolish, a disservice to Lestat, the gracious lord of this land who offered a new sanctuary for the forlorn and downtrodden and opened his doors even to Armand—especially to Armand. 

He swallowed, hands tightening in Marius’s clothes. “You may lie with me, but know it is my bed, and you are a guest there. Where Marius lives, Marius rules, but you do not live within my four walls here. If I tell you to go, you will go.”

We can’t have Venice again. It hurt. Practical, realistic Marius knew it was true and necessary—they’d hurt forever if they never let it go—and he had long before this moment come to that conclusion himself. But to hear it verbalized made him feel startled. There was no changing it, though.

It was what followed that made his forehead draw in with confusion, and then a slight frown formed. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. It stung a bit like rejection would, which he told himself was childish and irrational. And very unfair to his fledgling who only wanted to be equals. Nothing that Armand asked for (or rather told) was illogical. And while Marius didn’t necessarily like it, he committed himself to abiding Armand’s rules. But no, he didn’t like it.

“Yes, of course,” he assured, stroking Armand’s back. “So perhaps we go slow. We are different people now, so we need to…get to know those people, right?”

It felt so good to be held. Marius’s large, cold hand combing through his hair sent shivers all through his body. His maker’s heartbeat was slow in his chest and the steady rhythm did its part to sooth Armand. Alive, he told himself again. Marius was alive when he had surely and finally thought he was dead. Lord Christ did anything else matter now? A third chance together, or was it even a fourth? More than the lovers of fables ever had, that was for certain. He wanted to unfold himself completely and let Marius take care of him as he offered, knowing Marius was in his element when in control, but Armand didn’t know how to do that; he wasn’t Amadeo. 

“We have to get to know ourselves, yes, and each other,” he whispered into the soft fabric of Marius’s shirt. “Come lie with me. Take me to bed, Mas—Marius. This is no Venice, but we can lie together in any city. Let me feel you breathing till I’m sure this is real.”

Marius took note of the correction—Armand so close to calling him Master, but abruptly changing to his ‘proper’ name, though that really wasn’t even his name, per se.

A curious thing considering Armand had been calling him Master here and there this whole time. Quite on purpose, then. 

Surely, the change had to be for Armand’s sake, not his own. Marius surmised that much like hearing the name Amadeo, it might hurt Armand to recall the old honorific that connected them again to Venice. Equality meant no Masters. It didn’t cause Marius pain to be addressed as Master. In fact, it felt right. Not in general—he’d give quite a look to anyone else who addressed him as such. But in Armand’s voice, it made sense. It sounded right. It was Marius that sounded odd.

Something to get used to. 

At take me to bed came the urge to lift Armand and carry him to his bed. Isn’t that what he had always done? Though the boy grew bigger and heavier with each day, well-fed and allowed a lush and pleasured lifestyle that none of the other boys were permitted, Marius loved to lift him up and carry him in his arms. Would Armand find some familiar comfort in it? Or would Armand feel infantilized and patronized? 

So much of this confused Marius. But he could not let Armand see him falter and doubt. What faith could his fledgling have in him if he did?

Marius put his hands on Armand’s shoulders to guide him toward the bedroom. And since he was hesitant to make any motion to control Armand, he resisted the new and familiar urge to place him upon the mattress, to bend his limbs into a comfortable position. Instead, Marius released his grip and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m real,” he said softly. Reaching forward, he grasped Armand’s hands and placed them over his cheeks and jaw, holding them there with a firm press. “I’ve dreamt of you a thousand times, probably more, but I’ve never been able to feel you. Dreams are too cruel. I can feel you now, and I won’t wake from this.”

Armand’s face, for a brief moment, softened, and he could have been Amadeo then for anyone to see. Wide eyes and a hungry face, he let his hands feel the skin beneath them, Marius’s strong jaw, the curve towards his bottom lip. No further than that, he couldn’t allow it, and he began to withdraw his touch, only to hesitate, and then pounce. He grabbed Marius by his arms and hauled him into the bed with him, back to the mattress, and then followed to lie atop him. With Armand’s legs on either side of Marius’s hips and thighs and his face tucked near his neck, they looked perfectly the pair of lovers.

“Lay with me,” Armand reiterated. “I want to hear your heartbeat. Let it sink in, please, that you’re here. Again. For good.”

Marius was momentarily startled by the suddenness of the movement, both that it had happened and that it even could. It was actually a bit thrilling to be caught off guard, and a soft laugh escaped with a will of its own to give him away. This reminded him all too much of the youth who could switch seamlessly between assertive and obedient with a single breath. 

But everything felt right, and he memorized all of it just in case this would never happen again. The tickle of Armand’s hair on his face and neck. That slight weight, solid but somehow still heartbreakingly fragile. When he slid his hands down Armand’s back, they committed every inch to memory. He caressed the small shoulder blades, felt the ridges of the spine, slid over the dipping hollow of his lower back. But he didn’t dare seek out any more. It was too sweet a moment to lose. And just as he was sure Armand could feel the steady pounding of his heart, he felt Armand’s too. He’d loved those nights when, exhausted in general, he would curl his body around Amadeo’s in their bed, seeking out the softest and hottest places, and fall asleep to the rhythm. He never understood how Amadeo could love the feeling of something so hard and cold.

If he were to die and come back to life, this is how he’d always like it to be. Marius knew Pandora and Bianca—his wives as they were called—had been besides themselves. But he, always so selfish, wanted this instead. They could wait. This couldn’t. It had already waited for over five hundred agonizing nights. With all that he and Armand had been through in that time, they deserved this. 

“I love you.” Simple, heartfelt, momentous words. They were too meager, though. But really, how could one express a love like theirs and do it any measure of justice? He sighed a sound of relaxation. “Lestat is going to throw another ball, for the winter solstice.” Leaving out that it had been his idea lest he seem too frivolous. “Would you attend with me? As my partner? You can say no.”

Armand shivered, nearly trembling underneath each pass of his maker’s hand over his lush body. He longed for there to be no barrier of clothes between them and then felt a penitent's guilt at such a longing. That would undo everything he had just wished for and demanded of Marius, and he despised himself for wanting it. He was stronger than this, he thought, even as he sighed against Marius’s ear.  He could sink into this fantasy all too easy and lose himself in it. He had to be stronger than that. 

“A ball? To celebrate you, Louis, and Gabrielle’s safe return?” Armand guessed, his voice rumbling against Marius’s shoulder, breath light and cold for want of blood. “That’s a bold thing of you to ask me.” Attend a ball together, what a novel image. Even in Venice at those grand galas, they arrived together, yes, and everyone knew he was the Master’s kept boy and bed-warmer, his Ganymede, but it was so different from arriving with a woman on his arm. “But, yes. I’ll attend with you. Although I’m not sure entirely what such an arrangement would entail. Perhaps I agree only to keep an eye on you.”

Marius let his eyes close—he really was tired from his ordeal, and this was very soothing. He spent so much time alone that sometimes he forgot others could bring him comfort if he let them. On most occasions, he pretended he didn’t need it even when he did, but that pretense here would only take him further from what he wanted.

He cracked one eye at Armand’s comment, foreseeing a rejection. Not that it would in any way dissuade him from asking again at a later date. He supposed it was bold of him to ask so soon, but Marius knew he had to pursue the things he wanted or else regret all his lost chances.

“I won’t ask much of you,” he promised. “I’m never particularly active at our functions.” This wasn’t new. Marius was a watcher, an observer, too serious and cold in nature to engage in frivolous conversation and dancing. No, he was content to sit at the fringes and watch everyone. “Does it seem pointless? But yes, you can at least keep guard over me. And maybe a dance.” It would cause a wave of whispered gossip as their relationship with all its intimacy and complications was public knowledge. “At least that?” 

Armand didn’t need the mind gift to know he and Marius were thinking the same thing; the stories and gossip that would ensue if Marius de Romanus and Armand le Russe showed up on one another’s arm for a ball. Their kind, both the Coven of the Articulate and blood drinkers as a whole, all knew their story, infamous second only to the turmoil and passion of Lestat and Louis themselves. Oh the chatter and the rumors, he hated the thought of it, but then, he was the one who decided to broadcast his sex life and deepest tragedies all over the pages of The Vampire Armand, was he not?

“A dance,” he agreed, sleep coloring his voice. He was emotionally drained, entirely exhausted from the relief of having Marius alive with him. Of course he wanted to see Louis too, and he supposed he should at least tell Gabrielle hello if he must, for Lestat’s sake, but for now all he could think of was Marius. “Let them talk. Let them be jealous even. Few are held in as high esteem as you, you know. The great Marius, the wise one.”

Marius let out a faint laugh, more a rush of air than an actual laugh. Floating in a near fog of relaxation and genuine happiness, it was easier for Marius to laugh.

“Great and wise? I’ve no idea where they get such notions about me.” In his many years, he’d held on to very, very few connections with his own kind, not interested in notoriety or mentorship. With Akasha’s safety and comfort more important than anything else, he couldn’t really afford friendship. But he knew that amongst his kind he was wrapped up in the legend of the Great Parents, an integral part of their six thousand year reign.

“Though, it’s a bit strange, isn’t it?” he continued to muse from that hazy place. “I did everything I could to avoid a life of politics short of actual death. No one really expected much of the lazy barbarian slave son, anyway, and I was all too happy to prove them right so that they’d leave me alone. What dreary prospects awaited me, anyway? A bored civil servant, entertaining clients one after another, marrying some rich pleb’s daughter. My father never gave up hope. So now he is with our ancestors finally proud of me that I have, after 2,051 years, become a politician. I don’t believe in fate. It’s lazy and indulgent. But if I did this would be a somewhat amusing turn of it.” 

“Inescapable,” whispered Armand, still curled tight with his face against Marius’s neck and shoulder. So many nights he had fallen asleep just there, exhausted from passion or fever or growing pains or the work of running the palazzo during his Master’s absences. This was his favorite place, against his chest and in his arms. Even now with so much anxiety, Armand felt, for now, safe. “That’s how I felt, you know, holding the veil and sending myself into the morning light. Fate. Here I was stolen from the monastery, stolen from God, then stolen from you, my savior, and then from Satan, only to give myself once more to God.” Armand shivered and burrowed himself against his maker’s chest as though two dead things could make any warmth. 

After a quiet moment, Armand continued, a little more firmly, “You never told me any of that when we were together the first time. I, with the heart of a child, you didn’t trust me with your story then. Well, you must now. No more secrets.”

For a moment, Marius’s arms held Armand tighter. He didn’t want to think about the awful night Armand had seemingly immolated himself. Marius had been alone reading when the cry was carried through to him. His emotions cycled between disbelief, anger, and grief on endless repeat.

It was incomprehensible to Marius, really, to think of dying for something as vague as faith. He believed in nothing more than himself. But Armand had always given too much of his heart to God. No matter how many times ‘God’ had abandoned him, Armand continued to believe. Marius didn’t understand why.

But, thinking he’d lost Armand forced him to confront how much he loved his fledgling. At the time, he’d felt crushed by the immensity of that long-buried love. He hadn’t known that something could hurt so much. Not even the loss of Akasha made him feel such all-consuming agony.

“You were a child.” Hindsight being what it was, and developmental psychology putting the past into new perspective, it was the truth. He’d taken a hormonal boy, a boy eager for safety and love, and given to him too much for a boy his age to know. But Marius wasn’t ashamed. “I agree: no more secrets. Though, I don’t worry about secrets you might keep. I worry that you will pull away from me when it comes time to reveal pieces of your heart. You’ll feel afraid of letting me in, and will try to keep me out.”

“You have every reason to believe such a thing. I’m wretched in more ways than one, I know this. Twelve years with Daniel, and I let him know so very little of me. I suppose, in that, you have proven both points—that sharing our lives with mortal children is a frightening affair, and that I’ve closed myself off so completely.” Even just these admissions were painful, and left Armand feeling far too open and vulnerable. But this was Marius, again, and finally, and it was stroking Armand with no small amount of fear that this could be his very final chance to know Marius once more.

Tightening his hold around the man, Armand said, “I’ll try. Marius, that’s all I can give you but I swear it to you. I don’t want to mourn you again. I’ll try.”

Marius ached from Armand’s candid admissions, though he was glad to hear Armand voice his insecurities. Because it meant Armand was willing on some level to be vulnerable in ways that would have been impossible until now. 

The moment was both strange and familiar. Strange to be like this after centuries. Because that stretch of time between then and now was so vast and full, and yet all of that fell away as if it were a mere blink. But familiar because this was the only way they made sense, at least to Marius. He’d avoided Armand a lot in their few decades reunited because he couldn’t bring himself to process his feelings. He hated it most when Armand would fix him with a black, empty expression.

A lot of this was his fault. In raising Armand, he’d gained a lover and a pupil, but he was full of regrets. Regrets that in his many lessons, he hadn’t tried to better equip Armand to handle his traumatic past, thereby failing to give him any ways to cope against future trauma. Watching Armand and Daniel’s relationship from the fringes made him feel guilt. Shame. Because he was the one who made Armand who he was.

“Very frightening. But what’s the alternative? Existing alone? That’s terrifying in its own way. Just try to love the best you can, and take your time. You don’t have to give yourself away on demand. You’ve closed yourself off because you had to, but you don’t have to anymore. Daniel loves you very much, and I know he sees every effort that you make now regardless of what happened in the past. But then, I am very biased when it comes to you.”

Armand nodded, feeling sleep tugging at him despite his stress. Yes, all these things were  true and he couldn’t help but smile slightly at his words, and agree with those as well.

“I have my own biases,” he admitted. His arm draped itself to Marius’s shoulder, curling faintly in his pale hair. “Many involving you. Not always positive. But not always negative either.”

Armand grew quiet then, exhausted, needy, and luxuriating in his maker’s heartbeat. Before falling asleep, he pressed his hand to Marius’s neck, a little tight, and felt for his pulse point. “This blood made me,” he whispered, almost a little faint at the idea.

He almost laughed at the not always positive confession, curious to know an example of this, but he didn’t want Armand to think he took his emotions lightly. At least he knew he could expect honesty from Armand, though he knew that it would, at some point, cause a fight. Probably many. But Marius didn’t want to think about that future, not yet.

“Yes,” he murmured in reply. The squeeze and presses of Armand’s fingers felt curious, possessive, and amazed. Marius wasn’t sure which of those were at the root of this fascination. “My blood, the blood of my maker, and whomever made him. Thousands of years of Akasha's most powerful blood. Made into a powerful potion for you. If only we both truly understood the capabilities contained within our bodies. Never forget who is in your blood, that she is, more than most others, certainly not any peer of your age.”

Armand glowed. For that moment, he let himself slip back into the mind he had some 500 years ago, of the child who thrived on the praise and affirmation of his Master. How he warred with himself then between the pleasure of having his own way and the pleasure of obeying Marius. The rewards of pleasing his savior were deep, but he’d had a young man’s selfish heart. So many times after his taking he had wondered what he had done for Master to not come for him. Sometimes even now he blamed himself even though he yelled his blame towards Marius. But he was too tired just now; he let himself smile into his maker’s neck to be praised so well for his strength, his blood, his power. 

He loved this man, of course he did, but he could not say such a thing to him; thank God they were silent to one another’s mind, he thought, as he finally drifted to sleep.

Marius could tell the moment Armand fell asleep. His voice had grown sluggish and slow, a tell-tale sign. It was the silence, the softness, and finally the rhythmic breathing. Armand seemed perfectly at peace there on top of him. Safe—no need for vulnerability. Armand’s steady heart beat into it. Honestly, Marius could never have expected they’d end up like this. Ever again. He had dismissed it as an impossibility, and therefore something he should forget. Even though forgetting was so, so difficult. 

Marius’s lips could only reach the side of Armand's hair, but that was good enough. If this was the end and tomorrow changed back to how things had been, Marius would be grateful for this. He’d embed this happiness into his heart and never let it go. He’d carry this memory to the very end of his days. His lips lingered, stretching out the kiss by seconds, wishing he could stay there forever.

He still had hours of wakefulness ahead of him being much older. But he stayed completely still save for the soft way he caressed Armand’s back. Of course, as minutes ticked away into hours, Marius felt the inevitable heaviness until it was time for him to sleep, no longer able to resist the rising sun. As soon as he let his eyes close, he sank heavy, knowing only the weight of Armand upon him. And when he could no longer hold on, he let himself go into his own death sleep in the place he most wanted to be, with the beautiful child he wanted more than anything in the world.