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✨✨✨✨
The problem with having three lovers, Armand is coming to realize, is that they can compare notes about you.
Daniel’s at the root of it, because of course he is. Investigative journalism was never just a job for him, even before Louis stitched it into his brain as a permanent lifeline. It was always his passion, his purpose—encoded in his DNA or soul or whatever existed in between the two. Daniel Molloy: the man who would stop at nothing to get the truth. Nosiness as religious vocation.
They are in bed when he first asks: both of them cuddled up beneath the duvet, Armand with his head pillowed on the soft comfortable swell of Daniel’s stomach, the credits of a movie sliding by along the TV screen. One of those extremely dignified based-on-a-real-story award-bait affairs, serious old men in serious grey rooms having serious quiet conversations about the cruelties of the world. Not really to Armand’s taste, but he’s happy to zone out and let the images wash over him.
Armand feels the humming echo of Daniel’s emotions through their bond the whole time; he goes from skeptical, to interested, to engaged, to profoundly moved. By the end of it he is in tears. Just a handful of them, not even a hitch to his breathing. Daniel dabs them away with a tissue and switches off the TV. The question, when it comes, takes Armand by surprise.
“Hey, just out of curiosity, what was the last movie that made you cry?”
It strikes Armand as such a strange thing to ask that he doesn’t stop to consider his answer before he gives it.
“None,” he says, half a laugh behind the word.
“None?” Daniel sounds confused. Is confused, Armand realizes, when he asks, “Haven’t heard of that one, what year’d that come out?”
The fact that Daniel assumes it must be the title of a film is Armand’s first clue that he’s made a mistake. He realizes—now that it’s too late to take it back—that he’s admitted to something outside the norm. Something Daniel might get even more curious about.
Nothing to do but clarify and minimize as much as possible.
Armand sits up in a single fluid motion and begins straightening creases in the duvet.
“Oh, no. I meant that I haven’t. Movies don’t make me cry.” Light, airy, but also matter-of-fact. He throws a shrug in there at the end for good measure. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Daniel looking at him. Staring, really. Armand cannot force himself to meet that gaze. He smoothes out the little dents in the fabric, tugging and petting.
“We should take this to the laundromat, when was the last time we did, anyway? Must be at least—”
Daniel doesn’t take the bait. He interrupts, “You’ve never cried at a movie.”
This time it’s a statement, not a question.
If he could only come up with a retort witty enough, if he could only make himself actually look at Daniel, Armand might be able to slam the brakes on this whole thing. Stop those gears turning in Daniel’s head before they gain any inertia.
Except that he can’t. So he shrugs again, worrying at a stray thread coming undone from the stitching of the duvet. Judging by the quality of the silence that follows, he’s only made things worse.
✨✨✨✨
It’s only the first in what becomes a slow series of ambushes. The next one doesn’t follow for a few months—long enough for Armand’s worry about that initial conversation to fade into the background. Then, they’re bicycling through the park one night—how Armand loves the smooth whirr of the pavement under the tires, the faint rhythmic click of the chain, the moving air against his face—and out of nowhere:
“So Lestat tells me you’ve also never cried at the theatre with him. Which, y’know, I get it for the operas, but he says not at any of the musicals or plays, either. Not any of ‘em.”
It’s a nasty shock, realizing that the discussion had not faded for Daniel the way it had for him. Understanding that Daniel has, in fact, been not only thinking about it, but asking around. Researching. Digging.
Armand does not allow himself to react, in spite of the almost overwhelming impulse to strike back swiftly and decisively—to find whatever insecurity of Daniel’s is in closest proximity and bury his nails in deep enough that he’ll think twice about bringing the subject up again.
He doesn’t bite…but he doesn’t do the other thing, either. That tiny gigantic thing he’s supposed to be working on these days. So simple, so impossible. He doesn’t say: please stop, you’re hurting me and I don’t feel safe.
“I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s a surprise. It can hardly be all that unusual. Plenty of people don’t cry over plays. Most, I imagine, or else Broadway would flood.”
Armand puts some more muscle into his pedaling, then, rocketing forward ahead of Daniel. Satisfying, making him work to catch up. Armand hopes that between the joke and the spontaneous race, he’ll have done enough.
When Daniel pulls level, he immediately says, “Lots of people don’t, most of the time, sure. But I haven’t met anybody before who was a ‘never’. Most people have at least once.”
Armand tries hard for neutrality, but his words come out clipped, “Well. I am not most people.”
“No, you’re certainly not,” Daniel agrees.
✨✨✨✨
Twice could still be nothing, Armand tells himself the next night. Lying to himself. By now, he recognizes all the telltale signs that Daniel has caught the scent of something and the bloodhound in him won’t stop until it has unearthed every buried bone.
Knowing it’s coming doesn’t make the inevitable moment when Daniel brings up the subject again any easier. It’s only two weeks later, this time. They’re three days into an impromptu road trip up the coast. If it had been up to Armand, they would’ve planned ahead: looked into routes, booked rooms in bed & breakfasts, perhaps collaborated on a comprehensive itinerary. Instead, Daniel had shown up one night with two stolen motorcycles, shoved some of Armand’s clothes into a duffle bag, and grinned at him in that way he couldn’t ever say no to.
So they’re in Maine, at some little town right on the coast that Armand didn’t bother learning the name of. They hunted on the road (rural gas station, an unlucky trucker big enough to share) and now they’re out on the water in a little rented boat. It’s hardly bigger than a canoe, but Daniel sweet-talked the lady on the dock into loaning it to them in exchange for half the fish they caught.
The rods are sitting abandoned at the bottom of the boat, and Armand assumes at some point soon Daniel is going to reach over and down his pants and they can finally get to business. Instead, he starts talking, no preamble or warning, as if they’d only just paused the conversation moments before.
“So, at first I just asked Louis if he could remember you ever crying over a book. ‘Cause I had gotten to thinking, maybe it’s the ‘being in public’ thing. I know you were never really a watch-movies-at-home guy before we hooked up, so it might just be that you didn’t like crying in public. But you and Louis both go through books like nobody’s business. Almost eighty years of reading at home together, nice and private, but the answer was still no.”
Armand becomes aware, distantly, that he’s stopped being able to move. That happens, sometimes. He was spinning a fish hook between his thumb and forefinger when Daniel started to talk. He moves his gaze along the shape of the metal. The wide bend of it. Plenty of room to accommodate an entire jawbone. The sharp point, fine and dangerous. Cruel little backwards barb to keep you from getting away no matter hard how you thrashed—
“Louis thought it was pretty strange, too, once I pointed it out to him. I told him what Lestat said and what you said, and we agreed it was interesting. So we broadened the parameters, and we kept talking. Felt like old times, almost. Not a whole interview, but a little encore maybe. And, y’know, he couldn’t think of a single time he’d seen you cry? Not in all those years. Not when shit was at its worst between the two of you. Not even during any scenes. Not once.”
Bend, point, barb. Bend, point, barb. Bend, point, barb. Such an efficient shape.
“I guess it’s possible you were just waiting until Louis wasn’t around, but…for eighty years? I know how hardcore you and Louis can get in bed when you put your minds to it. And I thought, well if he didn’t cry once during that—”
Armand can feel Daniel’s gaze on him. The weight of it. Only man he’d ever known in five centuries who could vivisect you with nothing more than his eyes.
“When was the last time you cried, Armand?”
Daniel’s done talking, now. The question hangs between them as the seconds slip by, becoming minutes. Armand knows this technique. Daniel isn’t going to speak again until he has his answer. Silence as a weapon. Such a joy, seeing him use it on others. His relentless bloodhound. His beloved little fish hook.
Armand thinks maybe he could move, now, if he wanted to. But where would he go? The water of the harbor stretches out all around them, cold and choppy, black in the faint moonlight. Flinging himself over the edge and swimming back to shore would be as good as a confession. He can’t confess, and so he can’t get away. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to go. So Armand goes to the place where he goes when there’s nowhere to go.
✨✨✨✨
Armand comes back while they’re driving through Connecticut. The last time he looked at his watch on the boat it was nearly 2 am; the display in the car reads 10:30, so he knows it must be the next night. The car is really nice. A sedan, a decade or so old, well-loved and showing it. There are receipts stuffed in the cupholder, a few coffee stains on the gray fabric of the front seat, someone’s purple scarf left carelessly in the back. A normal car for a normal life.
“I’m sorry,” Armand says.
Daniel’s face is pale and drawn with worry, illuminated from underneath by the lights of the dashboard.
“We can talk about it when we get home,” he replies, and puts on NPR.
Armand’s pretty sure that means he’s angry. He can’t feel it through the bond, but he can’t feel anything else either. Daniel’s blocking him. But that makes sense, because it’s his fault for not speaking up sooner. He’s supposed to be better about that now. Nothing like this has happened in a few years, and Daniel is probably disappointed because he thought he was done dealing with it.
Armand pulls his legs up onto the seat and hugs his knees, watching the trees slide by.
A few hours later, Daniel drops him off at the curb outside their apartment. He says he’ll be back after he finds somewhere suitable to ditch the car. Lestat and Louis are already inside when Armand opens the door. They don’t try to make him talk; he comes and sits by Louis on the couch while Lestat plays the keyboard that they keep in the closet of the spare bedroom for him.
So nice, having the two of them here. It’s been too long since all four of them were all in a room together. Daniel won’t be more than twenty minutes, and Armand doesn’t see why they have to waste time dwelling on something that doesn’t even matter, anyway. Not when there’s other ways they could all pass their time together that are much more fun.
Louis doesn’t stop him when he swings a leg over and straddles his lap. Doesn’t stop him when Armand cups his face and kisses him, slow and filthy, circling his hips, grinding down. Armand guides Louis’s hands to his ass, his eyes slipping shut as he runs his tongue along the inside of Louis’s lower lip. He whines into the kiss, soft and needy. Every sound, every action an invitation. I’m yours. I want it. Take me. Take me.
“It’s not happening, Armand,” Louis says, so gently, in the gap between kisses, “You remember our rule. Something spooks you that bad, we talk—”
“—we apologize,” Armand fills in the next line in the well-worn script, his forehead pressed to Louis’s, reluctantly slowing and then stopping the movement of his hips.
“—And we discuss how to handle it next time,” Louis finishes.
In the corner of his vision, Armand can see Lestat roll his eyes. Armand loves Lestat so much.
So they wait for Daniel, and then they talk. A lot of it is well-trodden ground, and they can take the shortcuts they’ve made through old arguments. Settled law in their four-way arrangement: that it doesn’t do anyone any favors if Armand lets them trample all over his boundaries, and that it is his responsibility to use the signals they’ve agreed upon to flag when something is wrong. Also settled law: that feeling curious about something does not give Daniel blanket permission to pry, especially if he can tell (and when can’t he, really?) that the omission or concealment is intentional.
That leaves the way clear to come up with some new ones. Louis first volunteers that perhaps, as far as is reasonable, they ought to avoid comparing notes about one another going forward. Lestat butts in, then, with a request for clarification—playing devil’s advocate for light-hearted gossip and the fun of swapping extremely detailed accounts of sexual encounters. Louis, patiently, allows for frivolous exceptions, and says they’ll all just have to use their best judgment.
Haltingly, his voice hardly louder than a whisper, Armand suggests that it might be wise, in the future, to avoid beginning stressful conversations when he is somewhere without egress.
Daniel speaks to him directly for the first time since they were in the car.
“‘Egress’? Really? So…what? You’re trying to say it was because the boat?” His words are heavy with disbelief, shaded with scorn. Like this is clearly a diversion Armand is employing to distract from the real issue.
Armand has diverted enough in his time to know that the skepticism is warranted. Which does not, naturally, make it hurt any less. Daniel is angry, after all. Armand was right.
It is Lestat whose eyes Armand seeks out. It’s always been the easiest with him, this kind of communication. The path between their minds is a broad, deep river with a swift current. He meets Lestat’s gaze and sends it along—the memory of how he felt on the boat. How the usually manageable alarm of being confronted by a topic he did not want to discuss was transmuted into a kind of animal-in-a-snare terror. How it had gradually intensified as Daniel delivered his prepared speech, unheeding, until Armand’s mind was a droning wail of can’t get away can’t get away can’t get away.
Lestat shoots out of his armchair; he’s more than halfway to the front door before he gets a handle on himself. He shuts his eyes and lets out a long, long, slow exhale. A few muttered curses in French, and then he makes his way back to his seat. His hands are visibly shaking as he settles down.
Armand feels bad about that. Of the three of them, Lestat is the only one who never harangues him about communicating. Not fair that he should bear the brunt.
“It was the boat,” Lestat declares crisply, and that settles that.
✨✨✨✨
That could be the end of it if Armand wanted. Not forever, no, but for a few decades at least. Daniel is still curious, but even he knows when to let something lie for a while.
But it would only be temporary. Eternity is a long time, and—ironically enough—Daniel is not someone who easily forgets a scent once he’s onto it.
Which is why, after the apologizing and the strategizing, after the altogether more enjoyable and aerobic ‘making up’ portion of the evening, Armand makes a decision.
He doesn’t want to dread this any longer. Honestly, it’s a miracle he made it this many years without having to talk about it. Better to just get it over with.
They’re all on the bed together, this time, and the duvet is definitely going to need a trip to the laundromat. Or, possibly, the dumpster. It might be beyond saving this time. Louis is propped against the pillows, one hand holding a cigarette and the other buried deep in Daniel’s curls. Daniel is nestled against his side, all soft and sweet the way he only ever gets around Louis. Lestat is sprawled across the foot of the bed, his head half hanging off, phone in hand, on some social media site or another. Armand is a little ways separate from the rest, boneless and sated, lying still as he heals. The itchy feeling of his flesh knitting itself back together is inexpressibly comforting.
It is all those things—the ache of his body, the soft tap of Lestat’s nail as he scrolls, the rhythm of Daniel’s breathing, the smell of Louis’s brand of cigarette, that lets him say the words.
“I just don’t do it.”
The words come out softer than he meant them to. Enough to draw the attention of his lovers, but not enough that any of them really hear it. Armand clears his throat, closes his eyes. Tries again.
“I just don’t. Cry. I just...” A pause, an adjustment. Nudge closer to the truth, “Can’t.”
The silence stretches, weighty and fraught, until Louis says, “Okay.”
Lestat is the closest to him. Without taking his eyes from his phone, he reaches out, hand curling warm and broad around Armand’s ankle. He pets it with swipes of his thumb: wordless comfort.
“You don’t have to answer this, but…ever?”
It’s Louis who says the words, but Armand has a strong suspicion that Daniel fed him the question. He’s being careful with him, still: letting Louis act the go-between so he doesn’t cut Armand on his sharp edges.
Armand thinks about refusing, just for the sake of it. But it’s easier, now that he’s started, to keep speaking.
“When I was younger.”
Louis delicately perches his cigarette between Daniel’s lips, gets his hand free so he can set it down on Armand’s chest, right over his heart. It’s not until he does it that Armand notices how fast it’s beating. When did that start?
“Do you remember when the last time was?”
Armand opens his mouth to say ‘no’; there’s so much that he’s forgotten that he reaches for an I don’t know by default. But this time, he realizes, he does know.
He remembers.
Clammy, underground air. The smell of three days’ rot coming off Riccardo’s body. The sick spongy give of his softening flesh when Armand tore off an arm. Wet sound that it made hitting the floor outside his cell, as far away as he could fling it. Hurling out piece after piece of the stinking meat that used to be his dearest friend. The despair when he realized he was not going to be able to get rid of all of it, it wouldn’t fit, he was too weak to break it into pieces that would go between the bars. Crawling to the furthest corner of the cell away from the thing, curling up small small small, as small as he could get, scraping his cheek raw against the rough stone trying to press himself into the solid rock just to get a little bit further away. Tears so hot they felt like they would scald his skin. Heaving, gulping sobs. Wails. Shocking, even in the extremity of the moment, to hear such a noise coming from himself. Sounds a dying animal would make.
“Hey. Hey hey hey, honey, look at me.”
Louis’s voice cutting through the memory, scattering it like ashes. Obeying him is instinct by now, ingrained down to the marrow. Armand looks. Those green eyes, beautiful beyond anything Armand has ever seen. They move towards one another without further words, a synchronized motion. It’s an old ritual, for them: hands on the backs of one another’s necks, foreheads pressed together, noses just touching. Armand notices his own breathing, now: fast and shallow with panic. Louis strokes the nape of his neck and breathes, loud and slow and steady—a tempo for Armand to follow. He mimics it as best he can, shaky and uneven at first, but gradually easing into it.
It makes more sense, now. His episode in the boat. His terror and avoidance about the whole subject, right from the start. Puzzle pieces falling into place.
His tongue feels unruly and alien in his own mouth, but Armand tries to shape the sounds that he needs.
“It was. Rome. They– I– in the cell— I couldn’t—”
A mistake, trying to talk about it. All that progress he’s made towards calming down by mirroring Louis, undone in a handful of words. Armand’s breathing goes wild and erratic again, the shivers running through his body increasing into uncontrollable tremors. He clenches his teeth as he fights back the nausea. Rationally, he knows he is here and now, but the signals are mixed up in his mind. He sees New York: his bedroom, his lovers, soft electric light, a rumpled duvet; he smells Rome: damp stone, ash smeared in his hair and on his tattered clothes, human waste, most of all the reek of putrefying flesh.
He hasn’t ever told them about Riccardo. None of them. Not in all the years, not through all the negotiations, the soul-baring, the hard talks, the building of something new and better between them.
Armand feels the bed shift beneath him, and then there’s a solid plane of warmth against his back. Lestat, draping himself over Armand like a blanket, arms wrapping tight around his middle. The damp heat of his mouth pressing little kisses to Armand’s shoulder blade. His loose hair tickles against Armand’s back. Louis stays where he is, hand firm at the base of Armand’s skull. Breathing steady, still: giving him a chance to try again.
“That’s enough,” Daniel’s voice. Soft, hoarse with emotion. Vulnerable and earnest in a way that he almost never allows anyone to hear. “You don’t have to tell me any more, Armand. I didn’t know it was— I shouldn’t have pushed.”
Armand can’t speak, because he’s afraid if he unclenches his teeth he will retch. So he feels for the bond between them, taut golden thread, and sends his love along it.
✨✨✨✨
The next one to broach the topic, much to Armand’s surprise, is Lestat.
More than a year has passed, and they’re in the subway, heading home from a show. Armand found the staging pedestrian and the subject matter trite; Lestat wept his way through two separate handkerchiefs by the curtain call.
Not a sign of it on him, now, of course. He’s immaculate, leaning against a metal pole and failing to keep a smirk from the corners of his lips. He’s pretending not to notice a gaggle of teenagers taking videos of him on their phones, for TikTok or whatever it is they’re using nowadays. A sighting of the Vampire Lestat in the wild. Armand gives it about 30 seconds between them getting out of sight of the cluster of young people and Lestat pulling out his phone to look for their posts and see what they said about him.
Armand can’t help smiling at the thought of it. Lestat’s vanity would be more insufferable if he were not so utterly open about it. And besides…it can be a relief, traveling in public with him. All that celebrity and his obvious receptiveness soaking up all the attention in the room. Everyone’s eyes on him meant no one’s eyes on Armand, and some days, that made it a little easier to breathe.
But Armand is wrong; when the train reaches their stop and he and Lestat step out onto the platform, he does not check his phone. Instead, he loops his arm with Armand’s, steering them towards the exit stairs. Armand’s stomach does a small flip. He ought to be immune to it, by now. This way Lestat has of making you feel like the most special person in the entire world, just by paying attention to you.
“Now, I know I shouldn’t be saying this. I shall, no doubt, be in awful trouble when our dear Louis hears, considering our agreement not to pester you about it. I won’t hold it against you if you tell him right away. I know very well that I’m misbehaving dreadfully. But I…I need to say this to you.”
All the blithe flippancy in Lestat’s voice vanishes for the final sentence. When Armand glances over, he is smiling in a closed-lip way that signals he is about to say something very serious, indeed.
“You should try to teach yourself how to cry again. Even though it has been so many years. I believe…you should really try.”
Armand is too stunned to respond. It goes against all precedent, Lestat being the one to suggest it. Usually, it is the two of them united against their two younger, American paramours, who obsess over the philosophies of self-reflection and self-improvement. Lestat has always been on his side before, his silent ally in indulging Daniel and Louis’s notions without necessarily believing in them.
Lestat does not seem to require a response from him. He exhales a little sigh, his smile widening. Pain behind it, Armand can tell. Volumes he is not saying. He simply repeats:
“You should try.”
✨✨✨✨
Armand tries.
He approaches the matter methodically; there are so many conflicting lists and testimonials available on the internet, regarding which films and albums and novels are most likely to inspire tears. Armand collects, collates, makes himself a spreadsheet. It’s nice having a project. There’s some element of procrastination to it, of course, but that’s less of an issue for an immortal with the unending expanse of time stretching out in front of him.
He doesn’t tell Daniel what he’s up to. The additional pressure of scrutiny does not strike him as very advantageous, for this particular project. He works backwards, using the assumptions Daniel made during his little investigation as guidelines. So: privacy. So: media as a catalyst.
Armand tries. He doesn’t just listen, and read, and watch. He makes an active effort to engage his emotions as he does, to dismiss the analytical parts of his mind and just let go.
Easier said than done.
After several dozen utter failures in this mode, he adjusts his methodology. Trial 1: receptive attitude, active effort, sad media—no result. Trial 2: receptive attitude, mild to moderate intoxication, sad media. Still, in the end, no result. For Trial 3, he upgrades the intoxication into the moderate to heavy range.
Still, nothing.
Daniel can tell he’s up to something, Armand knows, but he really is putting in an effort not to intrude. Both of them working so hard. Louis will be proud, when he hears, but Armand isn’t going to tell him until he has a success.
He is going to have a success.
Feeling himself floundering, Armand returns to Daniel’s assumptions to shape what will be Trial 4. The last clue, the one that finally alerted Daniel to the extent of Armand’s dysfunction, was the realization that Armand had never cried during sex with Louis. The way Daniel said it, it’s less about the sex and more about the pain. Thus his reference to how ‘hardcore’ they could be.
He can incorporate that.
Trial 4: receptive attitude, moderate to heavy intoxication, mild self-inflicted pain, sad media. No result.
Trial 5: increasingly desperate attitude, heavy intoxication, moderate self-inflicted pain, sad media. No result.
Armand ditches the internet lists and searches for options that will hit a more personal chord. It takes a little more effort than merely compiling a list of the top 10 tear-jerkers, but what’s a little effort? It’ll be worth it. Lestat said he should try. He is trying.
Trial 6: openly desperate attitude, heavy intoxication, heavy self-inflicted pain, personally-curated upsetting media.
No result. No result. No result.
Armand starts to get careless. Daniel catches him, once or twice, before he is entirely sober. Easy enough to talk his way out of. Harder, when Daniel sneaks up behind him one day and squeezes the dip of his waist right over a patch of skin that is still healing from being flayed off not an hour earlier. Armand doesn’t manage to hide his hiss of pain, his flinch.
But in spite of these slips, Armand fails to realize when Daniel’s tightly-controlled curiosity tips over into concern. The signs are there: worried looks, leading questions, hovering. Armand simply doesn’t notice them. Then again, he hasn’t been sleeping so well, lately.
Fourteen attempts into Trial 6, Armand forgets to lock the door. Daniel’s been so good about respecting his privacy lately that he let himself get sloppy. It is unfortunate timing. He takes Daniel’s “I’m off to hunt, back in a few hours” at face value. He does not consider that it might be a lie, a replacement for “I’m off to pick up our boyfriends who are in town either just for a surprise visit or for an intervention depending on how this shakes out, and we’ll all be back at the apartment in twenty minutes”.
And so not just Daniel, but Louis and Lestat as well, walk right in and catch him, so drunk he’s almost seeing double, driving needles underneath his fingernails as he watches a lurid drama about child sex trafficking.
Things get very messy after that.
Voices are raised, explanations are demanded, explanations are rejected, accusations are hurled in both directions. Armand is mutinous and volatile in his self-defense, giving just as good as he gets…until he notices Lestat.
Lestat, who is not shouting at him along with Louis and Daniel. Who at some point sat down on the couch, put his face in his hands, and began to silently weep.
All the fight goes out of Armand when he sees that. He stumbles over, dropping to his knees and throwing his arms around Lestat’s middle. The world keeps dipping and rolling all around him; he made the human he drained drink too much this time, he thinks. For some reason, Lestat only cries harder when Armand clings to him.
“Don’t, Lestat. Don’t do that. Why are you doing that? I don’t understand.”
Daniel thought it was abnormal that he didn’t cry. Louis felt so guilty for not noticing it all those years. Lestat told him outright he should try to cry again. Why are they all so angry? He was only trying to fix the problem they all pointed out.
“We know you don’t,” Louis sighs. He doesn’t sound angry anymore. Just very, very sad.
✨✨✨✨
Armand stops trying to force it.
Some things aren’t meant to be fixed. There are plenty of other things about him that never will be. The holes in his memory. The scars on his body. The catalogue of unspeakable hurts he has caused the men he loves. His inability to cry is just another item to add to that list.
It fades from his mind, as the years slip by. He stops feeling twinges of self-consciousness and envy when the other three shed tears.
One day, while Lestat and Daniel are out hunting and Louis is reading on the couch, Armand sits down at the table with a pen and some paper, and he writes about Amadeo and Riccardo and the things that happened to them. It’s disjointed and inadequate, the language childish in its stark simplicity. They locked Amadeo in a cell. They didn’t feed him. He got very, very hungry. They brought a human to the cell. Amadeo didn’t recognize him. He was so hungry. He fed. The human died. It was Riccardo. Amadeo recognized him after, but it was too late.
Armand thinks about ripping the pages to pieces; he thinks about setting them on fire. He drops them on Louis’s stomach as he walks by and goes to curl up under the bed.
More years. They aren’t perfect—there are still fights, disagreements, challenges, misunderstandings, old wounds. But as time goes on, Armand finds himself, more and more frequently, feeling happy. Feeling as if happiness could, just possibly, be a thing that stays.
In the end, it is the smallest, stupidest thing that does it.
They’re all together, in New York: a new place by now. Rooms for each of them with some of their belongings, even though Louis and Lestat are still only part-time residents. The tour for Lestat’s new album is starting in a week, and Louis is going to stay until it’s over. Armand feels warm all over, imagining months and months of having him here every sunset, every sunrise.
He’s on the couch with Louis and Daniel, lounging while Lestat shows off the new choreography. Lestat is at his most Lestat, tonight—a little loud, a little manic, a little obnoxious, a little captivating. Even as he spins and kicks and twirls, he is breathlessly relating the latest internecine drama between his band-mates. Armand has long since lost the thread of it, but he nods along. Daniel’s legs draped across his lap; Louis’s head propped against his shoulder. Daniel has fallen asleep; still a fledgling, still prone to nap when his belly is full of hot blood. Louis has a book open in his lap, but Armand can tell he’s listening to Lestat, following along better than he has.
Lestat, just as he is coming to the crux of his story, fails to notice the corner of the rug. His foot catches on it, and just like that, he trips, flails, falls directly on his ass.
With Daniel asleep and Louis pretending not to listen, Armand is the only one who properly sees it; the laugh that bursts out of him is halfway to a shout, loud and shocked and involuntary. But Lestat’s tremendous fall is not half as funny as his indignant scrambling to get back to his feet.
Armand laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
Lestat straightens his shirt, starting to mutter grumpily in French as Daniel snorts himself awake and Louis whines that he missed it. Armand, only too happy to be of service, gives Louis the instant replay through the Mind Gift. That gets Louis laughing, too. Gorgeous peals of it, the two of them falling against one another, helpless under the weight of the hilarity. Daniel muzzily asking what the fuck is going on only plunges them deeper into it, as both of them try, with very limited success, to choke down giggles long enough to get out an explanation.
There are tears running down Louis’s cheeks. Armand sees them, trickling down past the creases at the corners of his beautiful eyes.
He realizes that he feels heat in his own eyes, too. Just a hint of it. Faint swimming of red in his vision.
And in the end, it’s easy. Not a complicated process, not some great muscular effort. Simply a quiet moment of letting go.
Louis must pass the memory over to Daniel, too, because he starts to chuckle, low and rumbling. Lestat, unable to remain huffy in the face of so much mirth, rolls his eyes and smiles, begins to bow to his appreciative audience, deeply and with many flourishes.
Armand laughs, the tears spilling down his cheeks. Only two, at first, but more quickly follow. Strangest of all, how natural it feels. Like he’d never forgotten how to do it in the first place. The tears feel just as hot as he remembered, sliding down his face. He does not bother to brush them away.
Gradually, Louis’s and Daniel’s cackling begins to soften, diminishing into intermittent, hiccupping laughs. Armand grows quieter, too, but his breathing does not settle the way theirs does. His shoulders only shake even harder as he curls forward, hair falling down to cover his face. His head and his chest feel tight, tight, horribly tight—so much pressure inside him. Where did it all come from? What is that awful ache in his throat, burning every time he takes a breath?
He notices, at the same moment Lestat seems to, that he isn’t laughing any longer. Seconds before the first awful sob rips its way out of his throat, Armand hears Lestat’s softly exhaled, “Oh.”
And then the dam breaks.
Armand is flattened by the force of it; he finds his body completely out of his control. What must he look like: his face flushed and crumpled into a grimace of pain, his mouth open and wet with saliva, his nose running, his cheeks sticky and smeared with blood? At some point he buries his hands in his hair, must be pulling it too hard, because he feels hands—Louis’s hands, he’d know them anywhere, in the dark, after a thousand thousand years—prying his own loose, gently but mercilessly, one finger at a time.
He sobs, loud and wretched, rocking a little now, unable to stop himself. Just sobs, and sobs, and sobs. Now that it’s started, it feels like he won’t ever be able to stop. He tries to, scrabbling for any scrap of composure, but all he manages to do is change the low, gulping sound he had been making into something thin and keening and pained.
Daniel reaches for him first, pulling him close. Armand collapses into the touch, twisting around and clambering his way into Daniel’s lap with quaking limbs. Tucks his head under Daniel’s chin and wails into his t-shirt, guttural and raw. Louis is next: arm slung around the small of his back, his mouth settling near to Armand’s ear, murmuring constant reassurances, praise, comfort, love. Lestat, Armand hears, is crying too by the time he reaches the three of them tangled together on the couch. Little hitching uneven breaths. Trying to be quiet about it, for once, but Armand notices. He perches on the other side of Daniel, runs his hand through Armand’s hair, brushing it back, away from his tacky, tear-streaked cheeks.
It does not last forever. Armand doesn’t know how long it is before the tightness in his chest begins to finally loosen. An amount of time that would embarrass him, no doubt, if he did have the precise number.
But they don’t leave. In all that time, they don’t stop holding him, stroking him, comforting him. When the last of the hiccupping aftershocks is finally done, and Armand feels hollow and wrung-out, they’re all still there. Still with him.