Chapter Text
Having Lestat come over to do homework together had always been something pretty ordinary. One couldn't really call it a daily occurrence, but they had been friends for the entirety of high school. Lestat had to come over at least once a week. That wasn't something either of them were willing to ever change, despite Armand having to admit there was a bit of fundamental problem coming with it.
Their troubles were born out of the fact that getting anything done in those occasions always proved to be quite a challenge. Naturally, it had nothing to do with the fact that Armand had a crush on her best friend. Not at all—she had long learned to live with it! Well, more or less.
The real root of everything lied on the fact that Lestat hated homework, and having Armand around meant she spent most of the time trying to distract her too. Therefore, the combined effect of Lestat's gift of the gab and Armand's attention span being at times just as fleeting made things atrociously difficult to accomplish.
If writing was involved, or any type of exercise, that would be somewhat fine. However, if you were to make Lestat try to concentrate on something as abstract as studying... eating soup with a fork would have been an easier challenge. Every time they tried to start, suddenly the conversation was diverted elsewhere. Her love life. Music. Sports. The last book she read. Those kinds of topic were her top choices, but sometimes they would even end up discussing politics or philosophy.
It wasn't Lestat's fault. It was simply how the system was set up, not stimulating her nearly enough. And the thing was, it didn't mean Lestat would fail her classes, since she always got at least a B even if she had barely cracked the book open. Maths excluded, of course, which Lestat completely abhorred. But the point was, Armand needed to put in a lot of effort if she wanted to achieve the same grade. Wasn't that completely unfair? She had to admit that fact alone annoyed Armand to the point of insanity, making her seethe in jealousy.
Yet she still couldn't help gravitating around her all the time. She simply couldn't get enough of her, especially considering those were the last occasions such meet-ups would be possible, as Armand would soon move out for college.
And well, perhaps also because if Lestat was with Armand, then she wouldn't be flirting around someone else.
“And so I told him no again. Something like, ‘Leave me alone, like hell I’m fucking you,’ and he started yanking at my arm. Said something about me always giving everyone a chance. I shoved him back and he called me a ‘fucking bitch’. If I hadn't been scared he’d take out a blade or something, I would’ve laughed at him. It was just ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry,” Armand said. “I wish I had been there.”
It wasn't too rare for Lestat to attract unwanted attention. She thought of it as inevitable—something that came with being blessed with beauty and popularity to the point of having people flock to her like bees to a flower. It wasn't fair, but that was the way it was.
Her tone had been light, so one perhaps would think she hadn't taken the insult too much at heart, but it was betrayed by the strained smile resting on her face. She was a cheerful person, the kind that would keep grinning despite her discomfort and because of her discomfort, yet it was not difficult at all to sense that what happened bothered her quite much. What was Armand to do? “He needs to die,” she decided to add. Yes, perhaps that would work.
“It’s fine.” Maybe she had found Armand's solution quite radical, but her laughter rang in the air after letting out that couple of words. A genuine laugh, this one. Armand was glad and she wondered if there was anything else she could say to make that melodious sound last longer.
Laying down on her stomach on top of the duvet, chin resting on her open palm and her notebook opened in front of her, Lestat had her signature bob of blond wavy hair unbound and a few strands had fallen in front of her eyes. As she tucked them back behind the ears, Armand could see the metal piercings adorning them.
She was beautiful. Radiant, confident and full of vitality. And golden. Just like the sun.
The top she was wearing hung lower on her chest than it was supposed to and she definitely had not realized it. Even if she felt a little bit guilty about it, Armand couldn't help but let her eyes appreciate the view, just for a few seconds, a tiny bit longer, before she averted her gaze in order to pass unnoticed. It settled down on those long fingers of hers, holding a pencil whose end still hadn't met the paper once so far.
It may have taken way too long for her to notice that Lestat was staring at her, observing her from who knows how long, and every time that happened, Armand was always terrified she could see inside her soul. Maybe Lestat could manage to catch things that she shouldn't. Not a mind reader, for she was sure Lestat couldn't read her thoughts, but surely a heart reader, which would allow her to discover her affections. For that very reason, when meeting her inspecting eye, Armand tried to have her mind be absolutely blank and her heart unfeeling, in order not to risk having anything slip out through her expressions.
“Does it ever happen to you?”
Armand inclined her head in confusion. What had they been talking about? Was it getting bothered by entitled boys? That happened, sometimes. Yet rather than people her age, it was more likely for them to be much older for some reason she could still not figure out. Either way, it was not a topic she wished to discuss with Lestat, so she shook her head and shrugged.
“Gotta be my attitude, then. After all, you're the most beautiful person I know,” she winked at her. “Your vibe is just less flashy, I think.”
Whenever Lestat complimented her, Armand felt like brimming—until she remembered that most girls platonically called each other pretty all the time, so it probably meant nothing special to Lestat and she was just being kind. Not flirting. Just being... Lestat. So while at first it generally shocked her into silence, she would fix that by turning it into a sidelong look, showing annoyance at her antics.
Yet her gray eyes seemed to still be inspecting Armand thoroughly. Did Lestat ever feel this uncomfortable when Armand looked at her? She hoped not. Armand was way more discreet while staring at her, after all. A skill she honed thanks to years of experience.
“Are you still with that Danny person again?” Lestat questioned her, eyebrows all scrunched. “I forgot. They seemed quite into you, the one time I saw them.”
Lestat, bless her, never asked about him, and Armand never willingly broached the topic of her own love life with her, so of course she couldn't know how things went between the two of them. She had to be doing this on purpose, another way to distract them from their studying. They should have gone back to chemistry. Unfortunately she knew Lestat very well: simply ordering her to do such a thing would have made her more persistent and suspicious about the matter, having the opposite effect. Sighing, she dropped her own pencil on top of her chemistry book and crossed her legs.
I found them interesting at first, he was so different from me and everyone I knew. But gradually my interest has been fading. I barely reply to him. I haven't seen them in weeks.
However, none of those words made it out of her lips.
“He’s great. Things are fine.”
It wasn't a lie. Daniel was good to her and Armand, even if perhaps a little bit disappointed, was fine with how things were.
Armand knew everything about Lestat’s life, but Lestat didn't know as much about hers. She was more private about her stuff, she supposed, and she talked about it only if asked. The issue wasn't that she didn't trust Lestat with her private life, because she did, it was simply… well. Sometimes she thought the less people knew about her, the better. It would make it easier when people would eventually exit from her life, since they often did. Like her biological parents. Maybe her adoptive dad too, someday.
She hoped the discussion would be closed right there and then, but unexpectedly Lestat shot her yet another weird unrelated question.
“Do you like girls?”
Choking on her own spit to the point of coughing, the only thing Armand managed to get out in a strangled voice was a “What?”
Her cheeks were on fire. There was no way she wasn't blushing, so she hid most of her face inside the crook of her elbow, since she was still coughing. Why did Lestat have to be like this, jumping from topic to topic, uncomfortable question after uncomfortable question with absolutely no apparent link whatsoever? Besides, she had never asked something like this, ever, in almost five years of friendship! Lestat had been quite loud and unapologetic about her own bisexuality, but Armand thought she had long realized that being invasive about stuff Armand didn't want to talk about often made things worse.
There were things Armand liked to be asked about. For example, if Lestat asked her what her favourite bird was right now, then of course she would love to talk about it. At the moment it was the Great Egret: she had recently discovered their full breeding plumage and she thought it was one of the most beautiful things in the world. But there were other things… for example, perhaps at sixteen or so, Lestat had asked her who her ideal type was. Armand had tried really hard to be normal about it, you don't have to describe her, just lie, but unfortunately she almost had vomited from anxiety in front of her instead. Precisely because she found it difficult to hide her discomfort and because of how long they had been knowing each other, it had gotten pretty evident that Lestat had understood that Armand's love life was a do not trespass zone. So why ask this now?
She couldn't bear looking at Lestat, not when her heart was racing inside her chest like that of a rabbit. Please, let her be oblivious to it, to everything that was going on inside her guts.
A hand found her cheek, caressing it with a thumb. It was something Lestat liked doing a lot: petting her hair, grazing her skin with a soft touch, kissing her hand as if Armand were a princess. But now Lestat was close, so very close, why was she suddenly so close, and with her other hand she had unceremoniously pushed away the books that had been laying in the space between the two of them to get even closer. They fell from the bed down to the floor with a thud, yet there was nothing that could bring Armand to give a damn about that, the thought about whether the pages were going to get horribly bent merely a murmur at the back of her mind since there were way more important, life-threatening things going on at the moment. In fact, her head was strikingly empty and all she could do was look at Lestat’s confident expression, the one she would sport when something clicked inside her brain, then down to her lips, attention grabbed by the movement of the tip of Lestat’s tongue as she wet them, and her hot breath hit Armand’s lips. Something was bothering her in her stomach, maybe lower.
“Lestat…?” she whispered, trying to escape her by dragging herself backwards, until her back hit the headboard of the bed. Lestat’s hand was still cradling her cheek.
She truly couldn't understand what Lestat was doing. Perhaps she had caught wind of Armand’s feelings and she was now testing her—after all, it happened pretty often that classmates teased her, whispering she was secretly gay for her best friend, voices that didn't really quiet down even after she got a boyfriend. While she showed much more affection at first, it was soon clear to her that Lestat didn't like her back the way she did, why else would she keep dating other people otherwise. Of course confessing was out of question. She couldn't do anything but hope her feelings would simply go away or die down. They never did. But if Lestat was testing her, then she needed to double her efforts in making it seem like she felt nothing romantic for her, right? That was the natural course of action. Can't get heartbroken, this way.
Yet how to do that, when she found herself completely unable to even construct a proper sentence. “We should…” A gulp. Her tongue felt so impossibly heavy in her mouth. “Chemistry…?”
And Lestat's mouth got closer to her, infinitely closer, merely an eyelash apart and she could feel herself breathing in the air that Lestat was exhaling. Her eyes closed because, heavens, their lips were now pressing together—had it really been Lestat the one who closed the remaining distance? Perhaps it was safer not to know—and Armand whimpered when she felt Lestat’s nibbling on her bottom lip. Once she got the slightest hint that Armand was reciprocating, Lestat pulled her face closer, hands on both sides, searching for Armand’s lips again, and then again, locking their mouths together in a frenzy Armand had never experienced before, not with her boyfriend, nor with any people she ever made out with at parties, mostly when Lestat had left her to chase someone's tail. Hungry, Lestat seemed. Famished. Or perhaps it was herself, it was difficult to have the mental clarity to know. Surely Armand was humming though, groaning even, and Lestat smiled as she pulled away. Armand’s eyes followed the thin string of spit departing from Lestat’s lips that probably connected them to her own.
“I’m studying chemistry through experiential learning. Do you like it, chérie? Do you want to continue?”
Instead of replying, she simply crawled closer to her again until their lips were not even an inch apart, and she started the kiss herself this time, something sweet and light. Clearly not enough for what Lestat was looking for, considering she wrenched control from her almost immediately to deepen the kiss and open her mouth enough for their tongues to make contact. Armand was gasping for air, because she wasn't used to this at all, but Lestat was relentless, not allowing their lips to part for longer than a second unless it was to say something.
“Naughty,” Lestat whispered against her mouth, which confused Armand until she realized her hands had slipped under Lestat’s skirt, thumbing the skin of her inner thighs through the fishnet stockings. When had Lestat climbed into her lap? She couldn't remember. Lestat’s attention now strayed from Armand’s mouth and Armand found herself mourning that, an embarrassing whine escaping from her lips. A kiss on the middle of the cheek, no doubt leaving a lipstick mark, and then on her jaw, until she reached the side of her neck. Before Armand had half a mind of taking her hands away to a more appropriate place, however, Lestat encouraged her. “Pinch them harder. Use your claws, kitten. I like it.”
The way Lestat teased her made a surge of embarrassment raise to her face. Wasn't it weird? But it was the Lestat brand of weird, the one that vexed her, yet she couldn't help but like. And maybe she meant to give Armand a demonstration of how rough she should be, because blunt teeth bit her as Lestat latched onto her skin like a suction cup, her wet tongue licking over the molested portion as if it could offer some relief. Armand closed her eyes at how good it made her feel, outrageously good, and then there was jealousy rushing through her veins: why had Lestat waited so long before allowing her a taste of this? A popping sound was heard when Lestat’s lips left her skin, only to double down in another spot just below the jaw, putting even more effort by raising Armand's chin with her hand to get better access.
“Do they also kiss you like this? Make you feel this good?”
Armand gulped, not wanting to admit the truth, feeling in her guts the burning guilt of speaking this way about her boyfriend, but Lestat’s eyes were fixed on her and she would have known either way.
“No…” It was but a thin whisper. Lestat still heard it. She laughed, or at least it seemed so to Armand, her chest vibrating with the energy of it as it pressed against her own.
Indeed, they had never kissed her like that before. Daniel seemed to prefer when it was her guiding the kiss, the sex, the relationship and Armand didn't mind doing that at all, especially since that boy was too inexperienced to do so himself, but sometimes the chase would get repetitive and leave her unsatisfied. Lestat was the total opposite of it. She could approach you as a full blown tornado that threatened to suck you in and spit you out, completely worn out but irremediably changed, and Armand liked that, craved that.
The skin under her jaw must have been more sensitive, or Lestat must have bitten harder, because she would have cried out if she hadn't pressed a hand to her own mouth. Yet Lestat promptly took it away, intertwining their fingers together. Her breath fanned over the patch of wetness on Armand’s neck caused by her audacious tongue, making Armand shudder. “It’s like hearing birds sing. You're a Bird of Paradise. It’s pleasing to my ear, so let me listen.”
Lestat’s mouth approached her own again and Armand almost sighed at the mere hint of her tongue visible between her parted lips. She meant to open her own so Lestat could have immediate access to everywhere she wanted, but first she asked, “A Bird of Paradise?”
“Quite so. The one that you showed me a few months ago, with the blue head you can see at night.” Her fingers found a strand of Armand's hair and she tucked it behind her ear. “The curved violet tail feathers remind me of your beautiful curls. And when I do your hair, you turn into the ribbon tailed one.”
“Diphyllodes Respublica and Astrapia Mayeri…”
“I don't know how you can remember all those names in Greek and Latin, but it's really attractive.”
Armand was going to point out it's actually not that difficult if you have any basic knowledge of those two languages, that she could teach her if she wanted, but Lestat didn't let herself get interrupted this time, locking their lips together and wasting no time licking inside her mouth, exploring it, feeling her teeth and brushing against Armand’s tongue. Was it the lack of oxygen that was causing Armand to feel so lightheaded? She couldn't think about anything at all, birds and all long gone, her only focus being the slippery foreign thing in her mouth, the pain-pleasure brought by Lestat’s warm fingers now digging into her hips, the blooming bruises on her neck and the hotness pooling in her stomach as Lestat started rocking softly against her.
She had dreamed about doing this with Lestat, sometimes. Well, maybe more than just sometimes. And maybe more than just kissing. And it never really stopped, not even as she got into a relationship, a relationship that she couldn't say she didn't partially pursue in hopes it would help her get over her one-sided affections. Were they still one-sided?
“Do you think you like girls now?” Lestat asked her, a finger going to caress Armand’s burning lips. It was quite ironic that Lestat would ask her that, considering Armand started liking her way before Lestat started having flings with girls too. Armand just nodded, parting her lips and teeth to have Lestat’s thumb slip in between, her incisors biting down just enough to keep it still while her tongue wet it, sucking on it and sliding under the pad first, then the other side too. Much better than when she chewed on the end of her pencil.
The act seemed to have caught Lestat by surprise. “You…” She quickly rose out of it however, taking control of the situation again, slowly pushing the finger deeper inside her mouth and making Armand almost choke on it, causing her to grip her thighs much harder.
“Imagine he were to open that door in this very moment,” she whispered, and Armand stopped looking at Lestat’s face to try getting a glimpse of the door. She couldn't see it of course, since Lestat’s body was covering her view of it, so it wasn't that difficult to imagine him being there. Lestat’s thumb slipped out of her mouth, replaced by her much longer pointer and middle fingers. She gagged on them and she hated to admit how good it felt to have Lestat filling her mouth. Give me another. “Your hands under my skirt. Rubbing myself against the crotch point of your jeans. Your mouth busy with my fingers. How would he feel?”
The answer was easy. It would break his heart.
She could see them, standing on the door, horrified by what she was doing. Maybe he would blame Lestat. After all, Lestat was widely perceived as the unorthodox girl, the rebel girl, the difficult girl, the queer girl, the one parents didn't want their daughters to get involved with or else they would risk straying from the correct path. She could see him crying, pathetically falling to the floor, asking her why, why, what did I do wrong? Why am I not good enough?
And really, it wasn't his fault. It was Armand’s. She had kept involving them in this despite having known by now that, no matter how much she liked him, it paled in comparison to the feelings she had for her best friend. She was a bad person, whether she always had been one or she turned into one, no matter how she liked to fool herself and others into thinking she wasn't. What proved it was that when she stopped swirling her tongue around Lestat’s fingers, opening her mouth to signal she wanted to talk, what she replied as soon as Lestat took her digits back was: “I don't care about how he’d feel.”
It was the harsh truth and even Lestat seemed taken aback by it. Even if he killed himself at the sight of her kissing Lestat, she wouldn't have cared. Maybe a little bit, because it would have been her fault. But if that was the sacrifice to make in order to have this, then... she would do it without batting an eye. It was a horrible thing even to just think of it and she felt really ashamed and disgusted at herself. But so it was. What she felt for Lestat had always been stronger and yes, she would have done anything to change it, but she just couldn't help it. And now that she had her somehow, despite not knowing what changed and how or why Lestat suddenly saw her… she would end anything she still had with him.
Her eyes went back to looking at Lestat’s face, gaze fixed on her own, and Armand wondered how she seemed from her perspective. Was she as much of a disheveled, pathetic thing, as the one she felt she was right now? Her hands left Lestat’s thighs and she brought those fingers of Lestat that were still shining and wet with Armand’s spit to her jaw.
“Kiss me…?” Armand whispered, unable to help the pout forming on her lips, because Lestat had stopped touching her, feeling her up, putting her lips on her. Something seemingly held Lestat back now, a restraint she had never shown so far that afternoon, and Armand’s heart started racing. Could her words have caused for Lestat to suddenly regret what they were doing? Why else would she stop?
But Lestat’s eyes lowered, her expression softening. A sigh of relief almost left Armand's mouth.
“Of course, chérie. Everything you want.”
If she thought that afternoon meant something particular to Lestat, well, she had been wrong. Not that it didn't mean anything at all: it did. But the point was, Armand had hoped what they had together meant potentially becoming something. She thought they would date. She thought that maybe, even while she was away for college, they could still be together, be an actual couple. Instead, when Armand asked her if something changed between them, if she wanted to be her girlfriend, Lestat told her that nothing changed, that she loved her just the same as she always did. I was running out of opportunities, she said. Needed to know if I was imagining things, or if you also felt someway about me. Yet she wanted to be free to pursue other people at times, because she loved loving people. If that was okay with her, then sure, she could be her girlfriend.
It broke her heart, but what right did she have to be brokenhearted? Lestat had not lied to her, she had not promised her something only to go back on her words. The last straw was what greeted her the following morning: Lestat posting an Instagram story, hugging from her back a girl whose face was out of frame and she couldn't recognize, a heart on their joint hands. It seemed she went on a date during the evening, or perhaps it was an old picture. And over that picture she cried, she cried until she had no tears left to spill. This was what she deserved, wasn't it? The same pain that she would be inflicting on Daniel if he had known what happened the day before.
Lestat’s behaviour towards her had never really changed and she still considered Armand her best friend but, both to Armand’s relief and dismay, what happened that day was never repeated again. Perhaps her beloved, perceptive Lestat gathered that Armand wasn't satisfied in the least by such a twisted not girlfriends not mere friends situation. Perhaps there was some other reason. Regardless of that, Armand had kept up the act that she wasn't bothered by it until she finally wouldn't have to see Lestat face to face anymore: after she moved to university a couple of months later, she blocked Lestat’s number and her handle on every possible social media app too.
It was a jerk move. It hurt her deeply, because she was losing her best friend, and she was surely inflicting as much pain on Lestat too. But it was for the better. She was moving to university together with Daniel, yes, Daniel with whom she had tried to mend things since the morning after that event, Daniel who ended up choosing to pursue the same degree as her, and having Lestat out of sight and out of mind would help her not stray away from her partner. To allow her to ignore that awful secret that made her feel so horrible.
It didn't last long. A single month, at most, a single miserable month, before Armand unblocked her and called her in tears, saying she was sorry, saying she was stupid and that what she did was inexcusable but she had to forgive her, please, she couldn't be herself without her.