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Louis leaves the body by a bridge on his walk back home, half-submerged in the groggy Mississippi water, the throat slit once the meal was over to explain the blood loss to whatever poor coroner does the autopsy a couple days from now. Satisfied, he climbs back up to the street, weaves his way through the clusters of tourists and drunk locals, heartbeats rising and fading with a pulsing Doppler effect in his ears.
God, he missed this city. Missed it for eighty years, give or take. It’s different now, of course: electric lights everywhere, brick paved over with asphalt, apartment complexes and fusion restaurants where there used to be nothing. Underneath it all it’s exactly the same— all the changes just ink hammered into skin he knows as well as his own. Better, even.
He lets himself get lost in the neon, the intoxicated singing, the Southern summer air, until suddenly he’s standing in front of a townhouse with his keys in his hand. They painted the front door green last month— or, Louis painted while Lestat sat on the porch with a glass of chardonnay that he occasionally offered him a sip of— and it turned out the same color as their old gate a couple blocks away on Royal Street. Like oxidized copper, like Liberty. These days when he gets homesick all he has to do is go home.
There’s a conversation going on inside, and he listens to the muffled voices with his hand still on the doorknob, trying to determine if he’s going to have to pry Armand’s hands off Lestat’s throat again in the near future. But all he hears is talking, slipping easily between French and English without any underlying threats; underscored by a sweeping soundtrack from the TV in the living room.
Louis lets the tension roll off of him and steps inside. He kicks his sneakers off onto a pile of Lestat’s heels, hangs his jacket on a peg by the door.
“It’s a stunt double,” Armand is saying. “They look like the actor and perform the more dangerous scenes for them.”
“Ah, enfin , then they are cowards.”
“Or they have union contracts.”
At the end of a short hallway he can see Armand perched at his desk, a screwdriver in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Computer parts are spread out in front of him. His hair is tied up and out of the way. His bare knees are pulled up to his chest so that he’s crouching in his seat like some kind of gargoyle, and the t-shirt he’s wearing (one of Louis’) has slid down his shoulder, exposing the skin at the nape of his neck.
Louis comes up behind him, plants a kiss on the top of his head. “What is this?” he asks, gesturing to the circuitry and instruction manuals covering the table.
“A new graphics card,” Armand says, barely looking up from his work.
“Didn’t you just buy one of those?”
“That was the power supply. They’re different.”
“Whatever you say, love.” A kiss on the cheek, a drag of his cigarette. “Next time the accountant calls I’m handing you the phone.”
Lestat is sprawled out on the sofa a few feet away, shirt half-unbuttoned, watching the screen far more intently than Louis could’ve predicted. “I like this dark-haired one. He is good with the sword.”
Louis follows his gaze to the medieval fantasy battle on the flatscreen: a man in a beard and leather armor digging his sword into a monster’s skull, a blond elf notching an arrow into his bow.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Armand replies. “You just described half the cast.”
“Do we all look the same to you?”
“By we do you mean brooding little white men? Because if that’s the case, yes. Very much so.”
“Do you see, mon cher , how he talks about me?” Lestat turns to face them, his face a theatre mask of victimhood. “And you left me alone with him for hours .”
Louis leaves Armand to his computer repairs and settles onto the other side of the couch, half watching the movie, half watching the other men in the room. There is nothing in history, heaven, or earth that could have convinced him it was possible for the three of them to end up here. But maybe, as a blue-eyed immortal with a stomach full of someone else’s blood, his tolerance for the improbable should be a little higher.
He slides closer to Lestat, who wraps an arm around him without looking, without thinking, as if they’ve been spending every night for the last century this way. As if neither one of them left New Orleans between that night in the chapel and now; still the black-magic kings of the French Quarter, hopelessly in love.
“These men,” Lestat begins, leaning in closer and pointing at the screen, “they are bringing a ring to a volcano in the middle of Hell.”
“It isn’t Hell,” comes a correction from behind them.
“A wizard asked them to do it, but he died while you were out. And this ring, when they wear it, it drives them mad.”
“Sounds like you and that wedding band,” Louis says.
“You are both so cruel to me. I should go.”
Louis puts a hand on his thigh, running his thumb over his knee. “Stay. C’mon. Stay. Tell me about the movie.”
He was never going to leave. But he sighs and rolls his eyes like he’s acquiescing anyway. “The small one is their leader, I believe. And that one—” he gestures towards another character with auburn hair and a red tunic “— Armand, is his foot still broken?”
“It was the actor who broke it, not the character.”
“I think he’s got a little more to worry about right now,” Louis says. “That fuckin’ goblin thing just shot him in the ribs.”
“ Merde. I liked him, too. Armand, does everyone interesting die in this film?”
The scene goes on. They kill the rest of the monsters; mourn the dying man. Our people, our people. I would have followed you, my brother... my captain... my king. Louis spends the time looking over his shoulder studying Armand as he replaces the side panel on his computer and places his tools in a neat stack on the edge of the table. He rises, stretches, and walks into the kitchen. He seems unaware of the eyes on him, lost in his own thoughts. There’s a lattice of scars that cover the space between the frayed hem of his boxers and the backs of his knees; but they’re practically invisible in the dim light of the living room.
At any other point in his life he would be trying to cover them up. He’d be making constant, minute adjustments to his posture just in case somebody was watching him. He would have been waiting at the door when Louis came home, or on his knees in the bedroom upstairs. It’s hard to reconcile the boy prince of the Paris coven with the man he is now. Harder still to look at him, lit up by the TV, and remember that somewhere in his blood and nervous system there are still lingering traces of Amadeo; that there are nights when Arun is a hell of a lot more than a title they bring out for foreplay.
As the years stack up those nights grow fewer and fewer. Further and further apart.
He comes back a moment later with a glass of whiskey in each hand, stands in the doorway and rocks back and forth on his heels, amber eyes fixed on the screen. It’s good, Louis thinks, that he made it to the modern age. It’s some kind of miracle.
Armand must finally notice him staring. He only really smiles when he’s acting, but the corners of his mouth and eyes pull back in a look that Louis knows means he’s happy.
Come join us , he thinks. Then, the afterthought that he barely needs to add anymore: that‘s not an order. I’m just asking .
There’s a drawn-out pause. Forgiveness is a strange thing, and a tenuous one; sometimes neither of them can be sure that it’s really here to stay. And sometimes Armand has to work his way up to being close to other people, like a stray cat deciding if the food is worth the hand that’s holding it.
Tonight, he comes to sit with them, setting the glasses on the coffee table.
“Nothing for me?” Lestat asks.
“Was the blood and the orgasm three hours ago not enough for you?”
“Three hours. My god, we have been watching this movie for that long?”
Armand shrugs and swings his legs over Louis’ lap. “It is the extended edition.”
“ Ma moitié , your boy has trapped me in purgatory.”
“Looks like you’re enjoying it to me,” Louis says.
The journey to a place that isn’t Hell continues on the TV before them. The whiskey dwindles, then disappears. Occasionally Armand will point at the screen and start talking: fast-paced tangents about motion capture software and digital recoloring that leave Louis feeling like he was the one born before the printing press. Even with the confusion, it’s a welcome change from the facade of disinterest that he spent the first decades of their relationship locked behind.
Once, a few months ago, Louis had stumbled downstairs in the early evening to find Armand standing in the kitchen. He was frozen in that picture-perfect statuesque state he gets stuck in occasionally; staring at the pictures and postcards on the fridge like shadows on the cave walls, like they were the whole world. I have never had this before , he’d said softly. I’m not sure I know what to do with it .
You don’t have to do anything , Louis had replied, wrapping his arms around his waist. It’s just here. It’s just yours.
They stood like that for a long time. Until the sun stopped shining behind the curtains and they could hear Lestat singing scales in the shower. It wasn’t until they came apart again that he’d noticed the red tear tracks down Armand’s face and throat.
Now he leans his head against Lestat’s shoulder, breathes in the blood-and-bergamot smell of him. Unchanged after a century and then some. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it, how much better he sleeps when he has it, until it was gone and back again.
The world on the other side of the windows starts to brighten, the people stumbling home from their parties replaced by the ones who work opening shifts downtown. He can feel the sun start to pull him down to sleep. The other two will stay up longer: toothless arguments that last long into the midday, until Armand gives up and goes to smoke on the daylit back porch where he knows Lestat can’t follow. Maybe one of them carries Louis to bed. Maybe after a second thought they climb in next to him, an arm thrown across his chest, a kiss on the corner of his mouth. Then a few hours later they wake up and it’s sunset, and their limbs are tangled together, and there’s coffee on the stove downstairs.
This is time to a vampire. Nights away from home, and mornings where you find your way back to it. A boy destined for the San Sebastiano catacombs who sits in your living room instead. And as Louis’ eyes begin to close, two more DVD cases spotted on the coffee table: a promise that it will all be here tomorrow.