#maiitre

❝ YOU CAN KEEP anything you like. i've no use for them. ❞ she regrets that there are no jewels left — anything valuable had been sold long ago. but they can always steal more, if armand wants any to go with his new clothes. & gowns she still has aplenty. bursting from the wardrobe are silk & velvet in every color, trimmed with lace & mother-of-pearl, hoop skirts, corsets, stays, stockings, slippers. all of it dreadfully uncomfortable, in gabrielle's opinion. but they were well-made, & it would please her to know that someone could take joy in their beauty. besides, armand had been living in squalor beneath the cemetery for so long, since before she was a babe. so she supposed he deserved something lovely to wrap himself in, if that was what he desired.

There are hundreds and hundreds of people packing the venue and he can see each of them in startling clarity, even with the hot, bright lights and the contrast of the dark that fills in the rest of the room. There is no one special tonight, no one that stands out. He's been haunted for months now, expecting to see Louis, but not Louis from now, Louis from then. Louis from that night when Lestat offered Louis himself and eternity. Sometimes Claudia, burned and disfigured, appearing in the chorus.

But tonight, perhaps, he thinks he is free from such specters, and he can let himself breathe. Never relax, no. His nervous system would never allow that. Too dangerous. And then, he sees him. Not as he remembers him, not dressed for the theater in Paris in the 18th century, not out of time. Just out of place. Those amber eyes, and Lestat feels a shot of adrenaline course through him, a spike of ....what? Recognition? Fear? He's never been afraid of Armand, not really. But this vision, it lasts only a moment before he's gone.

If he ever was at all.

And the rest of the show goes as it should. Lestat allows the crowd to lift him and move him like he's weightless. He does not see Armand again, and when the show ends, it should with the typical routine. A party, some groupies and fans escorted back to the VIP room, where Lestat will try to quiet the voices with alcohol and drugs and blood. But as he's making his way back, something eerie happens. Inexplicable, the feeling of being watched. Of eyes on him.

And then time stops, frozen, and he turns to try and find the source - another vampire, perhaps one come to harm him, but instead he only finds that haunting gaze again. Standing there, like he's not a ghost from a hundred years ago. He blinks and swallows and knows he looks stupid, standing there, not speaking. He suddenly feels terribly nauseous. His throat is tight. Where is Felix? If he ever needed his fledgling, he feels like now would be a good time for him to appear. He does not. Lestat is too sober for this.

"Armand?"

Blood sharing, Lestat had come to realize, was more intimate than sex. Sex was good, great even but it paled in comparison to what vampires could do together. On the pleasure scale, Armand's blood on his tongue, the pounding of his pulse, it was better than the physical and Lestat did not have the experience to think he might want to under play how much an effect it had on him. Armand seemed to know anyway. He could pretend to be nonchalant but his secret had never really been a secret. The blood was also arousing, unfortunately.

It did invoke the physical, mouth on Armand's skin, fangs in his flesh, hot blood down his throat. The taste of him, the sounds of him. Lestat thought he could give up sex but not that. And while he wished to share that with Nicki, it was not yet possible. He was doing his best to avoid him, in fact, and though he believed the relationship to be over after his abduction and murder, it didn't mean he suddenly stopped loving Nicolas. And he could only imagine how Nicki might taste and how he might enjoy this sharing of blood the way Lestat enjoyed it with Armand.

And that was where his mind was, as he sat with Armand, and the elder vampire reached out to wipe blood from his face with his thumb, his expression unreadable. "Sorry, I was...." What? Should he explain? Could he? Instead, he just shook his head, chuckling low under his breath. "I'm sorry. Were you saying something?" He'd totally missed it if he had been, though something told him Armand had simply been watching, observing, as he all to frequently seemed to do. He could be still as a statue, seeing and hearing everything, but not moving, like some priceless, and beautiful, work of art.

It had taken her a few days to work up the courage to speak to Armand, even after being part of his coven for some time. She had always been well behaved and there had been not an ounce of rebellion in her blood and yet, since the arrival of the strangers they would come to know as Lestat and Gabrielle, she had found herself imagining some other life. Not beneath the ground in a crypt, nor on a stage with the others. There was talk of Lestat and Gabrielle leaving and it would reach Armand eventually.

She felt perhaps she ought to tell him that she would be going with them. She'd connected with Gabrielle, the first person to truly see her since her human life and the idea of saying goodbye and never seeing her again did not sit right. And so she would leave, to finally start a life she had been denying herself since she was abducted and forced to become what she was. Armand would either simply not care at all or he would have some stronger feelings about it. Her master was enigmatic.

He was hard to read and sometimes difficult to understand but she has played her part as faithful acolyte for a long time. With or without his permission, she was taking these steps toward her freedom. She found him backstage, post performance where he'd watched from the boxes as per usual. The show had gone well. She approached him tentatively, in case he was already occupied. "Maitre?" Her voice was careful, soft, the same tone she used in deference at all times.

Broken ribs, broken orbital bone. Lacerated liver, he thinks, from the amount of blood that's come out of him in the last hour. Shoulder half out of it's socket, painfully adjusted and shoved back in and the whole time he's waiting, hoping, praying. Out onto vampire radio, where she can't even hear (would she care if she could? would she come?), all his pain and loneliness like a discordant symphony, a child wanting his mother, or lover or whatever she feels like being that night. And yet she does not come.

The phone does not go off. Mother, fledgling, lover. His pain is insufficient to move her. It usually is. Her love is fickle and inconsistent and isn't it fucked up that instead of Gabriella, the person who arrives is a man for whom he has both hatred and passion? Anyone could have come. Louis. Daniel. But instead it's Armand. Imperious and arrogant, ready to tell Lestat all the ways he's failed, to rub salt into the very literal wounds scattered across his body and yet when he enters, he does none of those things. There is an exchange but Lestat is exhausted, defeated. And he needs blood.

And Armand is there. He needs blood. He can hear her voice, singing that awful fucking song but he needs blood. She'd tell him to bleed out. Somehow, and he's not entirely sure now, Armand is offering his arm, and Lestat is taking it. He's bringing it to his mouth and biting down and the memory hits like a truck barreling down the highway. The last time he'd tasted Armand. The ancient blood on his tongue and it's better than any drug, any drink, any fuck. Good boy, Armand says. He isn't sure if it's mocking. He drinks, and drinks and clutches his arm tight, nails breaking the skin.

Why shouldn't it be Armand? No one else came.

Claudia looks at him from the corner of the room. He closes his eyes. Complicit. Another betrayal. Add it to the pile of Lestat's fucking failures.

three useless headcanons about our muses

they swap hair routines for their luscious curls (or they would if he wasn't busy telling armand to kill himself)

they take turns in bed but lestat enjoys being a bratty bottom on occasion and armand being bossy (yes he can use his vampire powers in the bedroom)

lestat wrote a song for armand but is anyone ever going to hear it? no