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"Lestat called after you," Marius says. A familiar tone, a familiar stature. The room is different, the sheets no longer fine silks but Egyptian cotton, lit by buzzing fluorescent white lights rather than the flickering, moving shadows of candles. But much is the same. Armand stretched across the length of the bed. Marius, not quite looking at him, but sensing him—observing him all the same.
"Did he?" Armand asks. Disinterested tone even as his question prompts elaboration. His thumb rubbing against his forefinger. Enough now. Stillness. Disinterest.
"His companion was curious about your whereabouts. I turned them away."
Armand hums, feels warmth blossom from his core to his fingertips. It is almost enough to make him feel human again. It is almost enough to feel like love. He imagines it as he wishes for it to have happened: Lestat telling Louis that Marius is alive as he told Armand, Louis and his 20th century sensibilities and his hatred for Armand's maker. Oh, Lestat, he cannot be with Marius. Marius fucked him up bad. The idea of them worrying about him, his lovers of past, makes his heart dip then soar then dip then soar. Worry about me as if you love me—
Stop that, Armand tells himself, but he hears it in his fledgeling's voice, and perhaps that is why the idea is snuffed out before it has sparked. Armand likes to be worried about, always has. It is an affliction that Marius had attempted to remedy before, but all attempts only fed into Amadeo's aching, greedy mouth in turn.
"An overreaction," is Armand's flippant response. He only realizes after the words have left his mouth that it is unclear who he believes is overreacting, but he makes no move to remedy this. Marius glances over his shoulder. Armand has not moved a muscle, and he meets his maker's gaze.
Marius can no longer read his mind, but he does not need to. He must recognize the look on Armand's face, the same self-satisfied smirk that Amadeo used to wear those mornings he ran back to the Palazzo covered in the marks other boys left on him. Marius' gaze is stone cold, but his mouth twitches into a frown, and that is familiar—a salve. Armand feels elated. This is everything he wants. Now, everyone cares.
"They called you Armand."
"The name the coven gave me."
"And what of the name I gave to you?" In half a breath, Marius is sitting on the edge of the bed, hand on Armand's jaw. It does not hurt, but it is not a comfort either. It simply is—the hand on his face. "Has the coven left deeper roots in you than I?"
Armand tilts his head as if the answer is simple, even as he knows it is not. "Of course not," Armand says, "Armand is for the others—those who I do not care for any longer. Amadeo is for you."
"You are always for me," Marius says, "Always Amadeo."
500 years spent Armand. 500 years not quite his and not quite anyone's.
Still.
"Yes, of course, Maestro."
Still.
"I am only for you."
Persistent still, his maker. Vindictive or possessive or… "Not for your American friend? Not for Lestat?"
"I only care for you." A lie, but an insignificant one. What did it matter, the little guilty pleasures he allowed himself, if it was Marius' bed he was spending the night in? What did it matter if they were no more tangible than fine china stowed on the highest shelf—safe from clumsy hands? And if Marius truly wished to speak about Lestat, then Armand had many probing questions of his own, but he waits patiently. Another time. Let the heat warm the pot. There is already enough to eat for tonight.
"My beautiful Amadeo." The grip on his jaw grows tighter until Armand is sure Marius will hurt him tonight. Good. He can hardly hold back the buzzing in his skin—the anticipation—but he forces his limbs to relax. He lies still, as he has been trained to do. For a second, when Marius' thumb slips past his lips and pulls his mouth open, he feels close to being Amadeo again.
But then his fangs drop, and Marius, disgusted, and the flickering buzz of the overhead lights. He has come close to capturing lightning twice, but the shock merely lands inches away, crackling and setting his hair on end. No, he has not captured it again, not yet.
He is glad Marius cannot read his mind any longer. When they are done, he presses on the bruising, his fingers small in comparison and he imagines Louis—or no, Daniel. Both. All of them. Everyone he's ever loved since Marius—melted and stirred and recast, sitting in front of him as one ominous figure to watch as he shows off his bruises. Look what I've done, Armand says, Look how low I've brought myself. The anger bleeds out of their eyes, replaced by that ever reluctant and unwilling concern. They cannot help themselves.
Except sometimes they can. Angry amalgamation sits and watches too. Finds joy in it. Laughs when Armand presses on a bruise and says, "You deserve it. You deserve worse, but for now this will do." Alright. If they find satisfaction in his pain, then he has given them satisfaction, no? It is why Armand is so good on his knees—why Louis was so quick to forgive until he wasn't.
Time passes. Hands become rougher, the grip on his hip harsher. Good, Armand thinks, this is better. More solid. More steady. More. The heaviness enters his bones like heat. Armand knows how to walk on air, but he’s always preferred the ground.
Armand thinks he likes pain just as much as Amadeo did.
This much, at least, has stayed constant.
“Will you pose for me, Amadeo?”
In lieu of response, Armand begins to unbutton his shirt. This is another duty of his. Will you bathe with me, Amadeo? Will you lie with me, Amadeo? Mix the paints, Amadeo. And now Pose for me, Amadeo. It is not as if he has anything better to do. His days with Marius are longer and less eventful than they were when he was Amadeo. He has less responsibilities. Marius shares less. So Armand does not complain about posing. At worst, it is boring, unless it is not, and either way, it simply is.
When he is stripped bare, Marius sets him on the stage and rearranges his limbs. Armand goes limp when it is necessary, holds when he is supposed to. Marius' hands linger at times across large swathes of smooth skin. When he steps back, he says, "You are as beautiful as I remember." What a silly thing to say, Armand thinks. Vampires do not scar, and they certainly do not age. He does not say any of these thoughts out loud. Only smiles graciously and waits for the painting to begin.
You have been good, Amadeo. Words spoken when he returned to the Palazzo unmarred by fist fights and rough sex. He hears them now even as Marius does not speak the words. Does the absence of evidence absolve him of the sin? No, he has washed his hands of blood but that does not mean it does not flow through his veins. A foolish notion. Another deceit among his many.
"Relax your face, Amadeo."
Armand forces the tension from his forehead. His lips twitch, quiver, and then relax.
It is deeper than his skin—whatever is wrong with him. As unmarred as he may appear on Marius' posing stage, he has never been clean. Sickness, dirt, it clings to him like roots. To cut it from him, would be to kill him. It is deeper than skin.
Hours pass. When Marius turns the portrait to show Armand his progress, it is Amadeo who stares back on the canvas. The beauty that he is or was, the cleanliness of him. Was he ever that soft in the eyes? Even back then? No, perhaps not. Marius had always made corrections.
Now, when Armand stretches his lithe limbs, sees the hair that curls over his body, hears the deep timbre of his own voice, he feels as if he cannot escape it. He tries to channel the carefree nature he knows Amadeo had once possessed, but his body does not cooperate—cannot make itself any smaller than it is. He cannot fold his limbs in. And when he tries to remember how to speak as Amadeo spoke, he feels his mouth go dry, like ashes stuck to his tongue and the roof of his mouth. How was it that Amadeo had died when Marius had not? All this time he believed himself the survivor of the two. How funny of fate. How cruel.
Armand throws himself off the docks one evening as the sun sets over the water. An old man driving a water bus has to drag him out like a writhing fish. Is this how it had felt that day with Riccardo? No—No, this man is nobody. This man is food. It is nothing. Armand feels nothing, even as the driver scolds him, even as his expensive clothes stick to his body.
"You are so young," the driver says, "You don't know what waits for you. Why kill yourself now?"
Armand gazes at the wrinkles on the driver's face, the grey of his moustache. Would Armand have looked like this in another life? No. Silly idea. He would have died on the fire like his brothers. Or he would have died on the boat, in the brothels, maybe sooner. So many chances to die, and yet, the thought of killing himself rarely crosses his mind. He has contemplated it, sure, as all vampires do, and yet, he has never considered the action with any real merit. He never thought to burn himself alive as Louis did, never buried himself as Lestat. Never, but why? Why never?
"I was not trying to kill myself," Armand says. Words sticky. Tongue heavy with ashes.
"You threw yourself into the water. You did not swim. I saw you."
Armand hums thoughtfully. He knows what it looked like now. "No," he says. Stands. I was trying to live again. To feel life in his bones the way he did when he was young. Before the water taxis and the gondalas and the water up to his ankles. Before combustion engines and buzzing lights, before he could taste ash in his mouth.
The driver looks ready to speak again, but Armand does not let him. He rises and walks away, dripping all the way back to the not-quite-Palazzo. No Riccardo to take his clothes. No Bianca whose bed he could slip under. No Amadeo. No child he is. His weight is his own now. It is unbearable. He wants to turn back to the driver and shout, "You have just given me a wonderful idea about killing myself!" But he will not. Even now, it is still a thought in the wind, water slipping through his fingers—another end to his suffering he cannot quite grasp.