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Lestat is, for the lack of a better word, difficult.

Seventy years with Armand has Louis accustomed to suggestions of authority being enough to summon unquestioning submission and threats of violence being enough to have Armand at his feet begging to lick his boots clean for him, which, in retrospect, might’ve set him up for failure.

Lestat does not bend and he does not break. He does not use the appropriate titles and he does not avoid eye contact and he breaks every rule Louis comes up with and he smiles the whole time, an unbearable bratty presence that swans around the room with no care let alone worry, disturbing Armand who keeps making outraged side eyes at Louis, who’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on in his bedroom, and how to get it back under control before he loses grasp on Armand as well.

“If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to,” he tells Lestat, after a particularly disastrous attempt at making Lestat not only bark but also act like the dog he’d been wearing the fluffy ears attached to an even fluffier headband to resemble. “You don’t actually have to be my submissive.”

Lestat looks at him like he’s suddenly grown three extra heads. “Of course I want to,” he says. “Louis, you are so magnificent and radiant when you dominate us.”

But that’s just the thing, isn’t it? He doesn’t. Lestat tramples all over the scene he’s set and then he pauses to sit pretty and smile and idly hump Armand’s side or the bed to Louis’s barely kept together, wavering poker face and Armand’s much more blatantly scandalized reaction.

“You make it impossible for me to dominate you,” Louis says. He runs his fingers through Lestat’s hair soothingly because he’s trying to be as diplomatic as possible. It is so damn difficult to soften these sentiments when every day Lestat does the exact opposite of what he claims to be trying to do. “You are the force you always are, love. You do not yield. You do not submit.”

Lestat makes a face full of surprise and a little bit of hurt. “You spank me all the time!”

And he does. It does absolutely nothing to make Lestat more obedient. If anything it makes him worse. He wiggles his ass and leans into it, tells him to go harder, laughs or complains or tries to take the lead until Louis gives up, and then Lestat considers the matter solved, the punishment over, nothing having been learned.

“Maybe we should try something different,” Louis says. Changing direction might be good. “Maybe the way I’ve been doing things is just not for you.”

“I’ll do better,” Lestat says. He looks at him with those big, imploring eyes. “Saint Louis, I’ll prove myself to you, I promise.”

–

“Am I a bad dominant?” he asks Armand, later that night.

Armand’s got his fangs deep in Louis’s neck so it’s maybe not the best time to ask him questions that require actual thought. Or any questions at all, for that matter. He looks a little bit irritated when he pulls away, smacks his lips a little bit, a nasty little thing he has started doing when pulled from a vein before he’s finished.

“No,” he says dutifully. “You satisfy me.”

He doesn’t always, but that’s fine, nothing is perfect all the time. He fidgets with his hands, nods. If Armand was a cat his ears would be flattened on either side of his head. He kneads a little into Louis’s chest with a single hand, nuzzles into his neck again.

“I don’t know if that’s just because you make it easy for me,” he says once Armand’s put his fangs back in. “You are very easy to dominate. You do almost all of the work yourself.”

Armand sighs. He pulls away from Louis’s neck again with a thoroughly defeated look. If Louis felt like it he could flip Armand on his back on the floor in less than a second, have him feeling helpless and begging for it in less than five. He entertains this idea. It would certainly make him feel better about himself. “Is this about Lestat?”

In the past this would’ve been the beginning of a fight. No – by the time they got to Lestat’s name this would already long been a fight. Lestat’s name would’ve been the final blast that shut everything down until someone slinked back with apologies and atonement. Ten years after Armand relented and finally went back to his fledgling Louis is not only bringing up Lestat but having sex with them both, at the same time, even, which he finds somewhat impressive, considering to Armand ten years is probably the equivalent of thirty seconds to Louis. Daniel is doing some sort of evil and sinister magic with him. Louis, to be fair, is also doing evil and sinister magic with both himself and Lestat.

“Yes,” Louis says. He sighs. Armand reaches for Louis’s hand and puts it on his own neck. Greedy thing. Louis rolls his eyes. “Yes, it’s about Lestat.”

“Lestat is a brat,” Armand says. “He likes the fight.”

“You also like the fight,” Louis points out. He has decades worth of memories of Armand biting and clawing and fighting his restraints while Louis brings a whip down on his bruised thighs like if he stops Armand might tear him to shreds, as much fear in the arc of the blow as there was – well. Whatever the other prevailing emotion had been.

“Yes,” Armand agrees. Faint smile on his lips. He leans into the touch he gave himself. “It’s different. I like losing the fight. Lestat likes winning, and you have given him no reason to think he is not winning. Lestat does not care about being punished.”

Armand does. Armand lives for punishment. Armand loves it, and hates it, and can be goaded into just about anything with the threat or promise of punishment, depending on his mood.

“Okay,” Louis says. “I’ve noticed, yes.”

“You can’t make him care about it,” Armand says. “If you want him to submit you have to find another way to make him care.”

“Like what?” Louis says. He’s sensing a little bit of whine in his own voice.

Armand smiles. It’s a smile that once could’ve been read as condescending. Here, now, in Louis’s bedroom, Armand in his lap, patting his chest with one hand, it’s just amused.

“Up to you,” Armand says. “I hear you’re the one in charge.”

–

So Louis plans and plots. He’s got a stack of books to go through, halfway through one he’s already formed Opinions on, capital O, thank you very much, most of them skeptical, but then again Armand is hardly a representative sample, Louis hardly has experience outside of him, and Lestat is kind of too much for him to handle without any outside help, as much as it pains him to admit it.

It is then, in some way, a victory when the books are not what saves him. They don’t always, but more often than not they put him on the right path, though this time all he’s getting is things he’s certain Lestat would simply choose to release himself of at the first opportunity, that being the second he experiences it. The books do nothing.

No. Lestat sets his own trap.

They’re sitting on the couch, Louis’s feet in Lestat’s lap, Lestat massaging his feet dutifully, sweetly, his own idea, just normal husbandly duties, nothing particularly submissive about it the way it would be with Armand.

Speaking of whom. Louis looks outside through the window onto the porch where Armand is standing in the rain, drenched to the bone, enormous eyes wet and sad, arms wrapped around himself watching Louis and Lestat sitting by the pleasantly warm fireplace. He’s on time out, which is a new thing they’re trying out, something neither of them is really sure how to feel about yet, but Armand had asked for it with his fingers loosely around Louis’s wrist, a little unsure but undoubtedly hard, panting for it in the way Louis recognizes as part desire, part fear, and he’d said okay, fine, if you insist, which is another thing they’re trying out.

He is the picture of misery out there, Louis must admit. He’s trying not to look too often, because most of the point is that he’s ignored. The masochism of it is nearly entirely psychological. The rain is incidental, but it is making him shake pathetically as he tries to keep himself warm.

Lestat, on the other hand, is not the person who’s meant to be ignoring Armand for another hour and a half and has not once taken his eyes off of him.

“I don’t like it,” he whines, positively agonized. His fingers dig into the balls of Louis’s feet with the force of a hydraulic press, and Louis hisses loudly. Lestat does not notice. “Oh, chéri, he looks so miserable outside in the rain. Oh! Pauvre bête. So wet and lonely. Mon petit diablotin.”

A thought. An evil little thought.

–

Lestat and Armand circle each other like two cats unused to each other’s presence when left to their own devices and when they kiss they kiss like they’ve been starving for each other’s mouths for as long as they’ve been roaming this earth. Both of these things are true, in a way, Louis supposes, but it doesn’t make it any less endearing to watch.

Watching Lestat overpower Armand easily, hands above his head on the floor, held down by the wrists while Lestat kisses him like he’s trying to eat him, Armand shivering and whining underneath him, Louis understands why Armand likes directing so much.

The evil thought takes shape. It takes root. It grows. Louis waters it. It grows larger. Sprouts new leaves.

–

Two days later in the bedroom Armand kneels sweetly at Louis’s feet, already naked, and Lestat fidgets with his own fingers, also kneeling. Less sweetly, but at least he’s on the ground. Sometimes just getting him there is a scene in itself.

“New rule,” Louis says. He pushes a stray curl behind Armand’s ear. Armand sighs, leans into Louis’s hand. He opens his palm so he can cup Armand’s cheek, rub his thumb into the hollow of it. Armand’s tongue comes to push into it from the inside. “Any acting up, from either of you, Armand gets punished.”

And oh, Lestat and Armand react at the same time.

From Armand: a visible twitch of his cock, half hard between his legs, swelling and lengthening rapidly. A half-moan from his lips, and his eyes falling shut as he leans into Louis’s touch.

From Lestat: the straightening of his hunched spine, a baffled little “what?”

Louis smiles. Jackpot.

“Okay?” he says. He’s watching Lestat more than Armand, who’s had a decade of self improvement, who now sometimes tells him if he doesn’t like something, and who has never turned down a punishment even if he’s done nothing to deserve it, perhaps especially if he’s done nothing to deserve it.

“Yes, sir,” Armand says.

No more Maître. Maybe in another decade. For now it’s sir or it’s Louis, and Armand doesn’t even say it like he’s saying Maître in his head anymore, like he used to, before they had a fight about it, several years ago, resulting in a standstill limbo where he refused to call Louis anything at all until Louis had to involve both Lestat and Daniel to litigate the situation on their behalf. Which they had, two veteran boundary drawing lawyers by then, Lestat obviously amused, Daniel apologetic and tired, Armand standing behind him with his hands in his pockets obviously trying his hardest not to explode everyone present with his mind. To his credit all he’d done was knock over all of Louis’s plant pots, which, still, hey. Not nice, and also, hey.

Armand, now, is docile and agreeable, settled into this new dynamic, almost no growing pains left to experience that either of them is aware of, though Louis is sure there’s landmines to discover, still, in the soft earth of their relationship. With them there always are.

Lestat, on the other hand, is whiny and new and predictably, reliably he starts whining immediately. “Louis,” he says, “this is unfair. It should be me who is punished, if I overstep, if I fail to –”

“Okay?” Louis interrupts him.

Some of the books he’s reading talk about colors and safewords and so on and so forth. Armand had refused to entertain them wholesale when Louis first brought them up, before he’d even had a chance to form a strong opinion on them himself, which had annoyed him more than the refusal itself. Louis could’ve fought him on that, refused to play at all if this one rule couldn’t be agreed upon, but Daniel had come to Armand’s defense, as he seems to often do, now, and promised the moon and the stars from the sky if he agreed to just drop it before it became another fight.

Well, he hadn’t, but he had promised that Armand would tell him if he needed to stop, which is about as realistic of a promise. To his credit Armand has told Louis to stop, in the recent past. Three times, yes, but it’s three times more than in the entirety of their seventy years together, so. There is something to Daniel’s promises. Sure. Not that it should matter to Daniel, but Louis supposes there is something there about knowing that someone will have your back because they trust your judgment that much.

So fine, Armand doesn’t want to use safewords or traffic light colors. He’s five hundred years old and has known traffic lights for perhaps a fifth of that time, and also doesn’t really care about them now that he does know of them, barely knows what each color signifies judging by the way he drives, so sure, Louis will give him that, it probably does feel pointless. The more annoying thing is that Lestat had immediately adopted Armand’s approach despite having none of the baggage and also none of the experience, however complicated Armand’s might be, which, fine, again, but then he needs Lestat to know what he’s agreeing to, and he needs Lestat to agree to it, explicitly, after thinking it through.

Which he will do, if prompted. It’s just that he does need to be prompted.

“Okay,” Lestat says. He licks his lips. Thinks it over, and then, more sure, “okay.”

“You will tell me if you change your mind,” Louis says.

“Yes,” Lestat agrees. “Yes, Louis.”

“Thank you, baby. Armand?”

Armand doesn’t quite roll his eyes but Louis can tell he wants to. “Yes,” he says, a dutifully agreeable tone to his voice. “I will.”

“Good boy,” Louis says. He drops his hand. “Come kiss me, baby.”

Armand shuffles over to him, right between Louis’s spread knees. He tilts his head up, closes his eyes, and Louis leans down to kiss him. It’s a sweet kiss, chaste, Armand opening his mouth with his tongue just at the seam of them, ready to meet Louis’s if it wants to visit, but he’s soft and yielding underneath him. Whatever Louis wants to do with the kiss is what will be done with the kiss. Sweet boy, he thinks. He’s still so bad at closing off his thoughts, which Armand exploits shamelessly, and Louis knows he does because he preens, makes a little noise, pushes further into Louis, like he’s looking for something.

“Get out of there,” Louis says, knocks on Armand’s head with his balled up hand lightly. “I’ve told you before.”

“I’m sorry,” Armand says. He turns his head so he can mouth at Louis’s fist, kiss his knuckles, the tip of his tongue peeking out past his lips to lick at his skin. He’s trying to get permission to suck on his fingers. Louis might’ve let him do it, if not for the looking.

“Have you been good?” he asks. He reaches into Armand’s hair, takes a handful.

Armand squirms a little, but only from the neck down, visibly embarrassed. “No, sir,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Greedy thing,” Louis says. “Insatiable.”

Armand likes this train of thought. It’s a classic for a reason. He makes a sad little warbling noise and sits down on his heels. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Lestat shuffles around on his knees next to them. There’s clearly something he wants to say. Louis has some amount of faith in him either saying it himself or staying quiet altogether, but in the past he has been known to simply make increasing amounts of noise until acknowledged.

“Hi,” Louis says to Lestat. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I want to kiss him, too,” Lestat says, and he starts moving towards Armand without having been given the permission to do so.

“No,” Louis says. “Sit down.”

Lestat makes an annoyed face. Armand is right there, a half-lidded, dazed look on his face, within arm’s reach. “But –”

Okay. A demonstration of the rules, and the consequences of breaking them, then.

Louis backhands Armand across the face without much of a thought.

It’s loud, flesh on flesh, bone on bone. Armand moans, thready and surprised, chokes a little bit on the spit he’d not had a chance to swallow down before the impact. If Louis were to look he’s sure he could see pearly fluid bead up at the tip of Armand’s hopelessly hard cock.

“Louis,” Lestat says, all color draining from his face.

“Sit down,” he repeats.

This just might be the silver bullet to all of Louis’s headaches because Lestat, god bless him, sits down with such speed Louis thinks he might actually fall over.

“Kneel,” he says. “Legs apart.”

“It burns,” Lestat complains, though he doesn’t seem to be that upset about it, still shell-shocked from the sound of the impact, the aftermath of burst capillaries under the surface of Armand’s unbroken skin.

“Good,” Louis says. “Hold still.”

This might be asking for too much. Lestat cannot hold still and he cannot be expected to wait for any amount of time, and setting him up to fail seems unfair even to Louis, even with Armand obviously drooling thinking about the prospect, unlimited punishment he doesn’t have to think too hard about, Lestat crying in his ear about his beautifully suffering face. Are you kidding. It’s quite possibly the best thing Armand could receive, and he didn’t even have to ask for it.

“I’m trying,” Lestat says. “Please do not hurt the gremlin again.”

“Oh,” Louis says, a little bit of laughter in his voice. “I will hurt him again.”

For all that Lestat worries and frets about Armand, Louis has seen him hit him twice as hard as he ever has, has seem them wrestle and bite each other until they’d left puddles of blood on the living room floor and beyond, has seem them snarl and swipe and do things to each other that Louis is sure he couldn’t have dreamt up if he was given the entire eternity to imagine one scenario after another. Lestat does not mind it when Armand hurts. Lestat likes him with his lip split open, his hips and thighs slashed to ribbons, and he will do it himself, if Louis allows him to, if Louis trusts him to play nice. Lestat has, so far, proven himself to be trustworthy. The distress is real but it is also, in a different way, not genuine.

And anyway – he’s naked. Louis can see his cock throb as he visibly gains interest in the proceedings. He sees the way his pupils dilate when Armand’s teeth slice the inside of his cheek open when Louis slaps him across the face. He doesn’t want Louis to punish Armand, but he doesn’t not want Louis to hurt him.

Louis is pretty proud of walking this specific tightrope. Lestat is pinched between Louis’s index finger and Armand’s thumb. Good place for him to be.

Armand makes a pleased little purring sound. “How can I please you, Louis?” he asks.

Louis smiles. “How about you let me use your mouth for a little while, love.”

There is no more Maître. It’s different with Arun because it’s also just his name. He’s been using it less, since they started doing this again, but it’s still an option. It’s just been put on a shelf neither of them can reach without a stepladder. The stepladder is within reach, though. It’s reachable. It’s on the table.

“Yes, Louis,” Armand says. He goes to nuzzle at the fly of Louis’s jeans, an eager thing, already thinking Louis must want him to get him out of his pants and then his underwear with his mouth, which is what he wants done to him, he’s right, it’s just that the proper noun in this sentence is someone else’s name today.

“No,” Louis says. He combs all five fingers of his right hand through Armand’s curls. They’re silky between his fingers, a familiar handhold. “I think Lestat needs practice. Don’t you think, love?”

Lestat makes a complicated series of faces. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” Louis says. “Come on. Using your teeth should be easy for you, no?”

Lestat grumbles, and goes to get up off the floor, which, bad move. Louis tightens his grip in Armand’s hair and yanks hard. Armand doesn’t quite tip over, but he has to scramble to regain his balance, makes a breathy little noise, a little hurt, mostly just into it.

“No,” Louis says. “What have I told you?”

Lestat gestures wildly with both arms but he drops to his knees. “You –”

Louis, still holding Armand by the hair, slaps him hard for the second time in what feels like a ridiculously short amount of time, and then slaps him again, just for good measure. “Last chance.”

“You’ve given me no chances,” Lestat grumbles, but he painstakingly works to relax his jaw and shoulders, rounds his posture, drops to his hands and knees. “Okay?”

“Yes,” Louis says. “That’s good, love.”

Armand breathes loudly through his mouth, eyes closed. Louis loosens his grip so that Armand can move out of the way when Lestat gets close enough to push into his personal space but does not let go. A little leash made out of his own body, which, well. That’s how everything works with Armand, isn’t it, and also, how Louis even painted himself into this particular corner.

Lestat knocks his shoulder against Armand’s chest, clearly on purpose. “Oh,” he says, devastated, “diablotin. I am so sorry.”

“Whether or not he gets punished,” Louis says, “is entirely up to you.”

“You want me to fail,” Lestat complains, slotting his body between Louis’s legs, where Armand was just a few moments ago. “You are making it impossible for me to be good.”

Louis really, really, wants to laugh out loud. He doesn’t, because he wants Lestat’s breath on his aching erection and his teeth on his fly more than that.

“And yet you’ll behave, for him,” Louis says. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Lestat mumbles. He’s got his front teeth around the fly now, and Louis lifts his hip up and into his face to help him, suddenly a little bit hazy on what exactly it is that they were doing. “Yes, I will try my best for the gremlin.”

Lestat has never, in the history of their relationship and possibly ever in his life failed at getting someone out of their pants, and the jeans Louis is wearing are loose enough at the waist that it is not very difficult for Lestat to pull them down once they’ve been wiggled over his hips. The cool air hits Louis’s overheated skin, a shock and a pleasant surprise, and Lestat presses an unauthorized kiss to the length of Louis’s erection through the fabric of his underwear, his cheek brushing Louis’s thigh as he does so.

“Perfect,” he says to himself, and then, to Louis, “are you satisfied?”

“Nuh uh,” Louis disagrees. “The deal was to get me out of both, wasn’t it?”

A moment of consideration from Lestat. A glance at Armand’s face. “Am I allowed to stand up now?”

Louis laughs. “Why on earth would you want to stand up to take my underwear off with your mouth?”

A beat of silence. “Hm,” he says, and then nothing else. He reaches forward with both hands but remains on his knees, which is good enough. Louis is enjoying where this is going.

Lestat’s fingers dig into the sheets. He puts some of his weight on his hands so he can straighten out a bit, tilt his head to brush his cheek against Louis’s thigh before he closes his teeth around the waistband of his boxers, the touch of skin to skin making him shiver.

“Good boy,” Louis says right when Lestat’s hands lift off the bed and land on his waist, squeeze for leverage. Louis slaps Armand across the face without looking or having much time to react on anything other than instinct, gets his nose good, and Armand makes a surprised noise. He hadn’t been expecting it this time, unable to see Lestat’s hands move from the bedspread to Louis’s body, and Lestat whimpers like he’s the one who’s been hurt.

“Did I tell you that you could put your hands on me?” Louis asks.

“No,” Lestat says. He opens his mouth as if to say something, and then shuts it, clearly thinking, which might be a first for him, under circumstances like these. “No, you didn’t.”

“Then,” Louis says, petting over the shape of the impact site on Armand’s face without looking. He can feel the blissfully blank expression with his fingertips. “Why’d you do it?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Lestat says, sounding petulant about it.

“That’s right,” Louis says. “You weren’t.”

“I am sorry,” Lestat says. “Would you like me to continue what I was doing?”

“Without the hands, yes,” Louis says.

With Armand he’d be out of his pants and in his mouth to the root by now, but this is fun. Every step is a fight, yes, but Lestat no longer wants it to be one, which makes it fun for Louis, if not for Lestat. Lestat leans in again, teeth delicately around his waistband again, and his hands are under the bed this time, holding onto the bed frame for leverage, and it both works better and is less blatantly against the rules. Louis’s cock bobs free and Lestat keeps pulling until the underwear pools around his ankles on the floor, at which point he looks up at Louis, blatantly interested in his cock more than his face.

“Laundry basket,” Louis tells him, sugary sweet, and Lestat goes to grab the two pools of fabric off the floor with his silly little hand. Louis takes pity on him, mostly because his hand is starting to feel static burn from all the slapping. He’s sure Armand is disappointed to see him ruin this opportunity for a new and exciting punishment, which is also good, because Armand is currently getting a disproportionate amount of fun out of this. “Your teeth, sweetheart,” he says. “Think.”

Lestat leans down, noses into the crotch of the underwear for a long second, indulgent in a way that Louis can’t find it within himself to tell him not to do. Louis picks his feet off the ground long enough for Lestat to negotiate the fabric out from between them and between his teeth, mouth awkwardly full of denim and soft cotton.

“Go on,” he says when Lestat pauses. “Yes, you’re still crawling, honey.”

He doesn’t watch Lestat make his way across the room. Armand, leaning lightly on his left leg, is licking his lips, a little pathetic, the way Louis likes him, and he’s been oh so very good, waiting and sharing nicely, and he tells him this.

“Thank you,” Armand says. He wants to say something else but isn’t sure how to say it. He looks up at Louis’s bare cock, at his face, back at his cock again, and then at the floor, bashful and embarrassed.

“You can, sweetheart,” Louis says. “Go ahead.”

Armand lengthens his body in a way that looks effortless but Louis knows to be practiced, carefully fussed over until it both feels and looks like he’s never put an ounce of thought into it, presses a kiss to Louis’s knee on his way up.

“Thank you,” he says. Louis doesn’t see him lick his lips but he must have done so because when he kisses the head of Louis’s cock the touch is wet and warm in a way the kiss to his knee hadn’t been. “Thank you.”

He’s perfect. Louis sighs, tilts his hips into the angle of his face to make it easier on him, and Armand makes a hungry little noise, a shaky exhale, inhale, exhale again. Greedy and sweet.

“There you go,” Louis says when Armand swallows him down, to midshaft first to get himself used to it, and then once his gag reflex has been defeated all the way to the root. “There you go.”

Armand nuzzles his cheek against Louis’s thigh. His eyes close. He suckles softly, like it’s his own thumb, and Louis can feel himself through Armand’s cheek. “Greedy thing,” Louis tells him. “You just rest there.”

Armand would gladly rest there for the rest of the night and the following day and the next night as well. Lestat has made it to the laundry basket and is now on his way back, an inelegant dragging of his limbs that Louis knows he could easily make look effortless and catlike but is distinctly choosing not to do. It’s hard to tell if he’s embarrassed or petulant, or a mixture of the two, but he doesn’t try to stand up or even sit down properly when he finds himself at Louis’s feet again.

“Well done,” Louis says. “Stay. I want to look at you.”

“I am here,” Lestat says. He tilts his head, looks up at Louis like a dog. He smiles, a little.

“Yes,” Louis agrees, and reaches for his mouth with two fingers. “Like a puppy. C’mon, let me look at you.”

Lestat does not protest or move when Louis sticks his index finger into his mouth. He doesn’t open his mouth, clearly nervous about doing the wrong thing, watching Armand suckle with worried eyes every so often, and Louis pets over the outsides of his teeth under his lips, hooks his fingers in the corners of his mouth, one and then the other, pulls to the side.

“Pretty little teeth,” Louis comments, and lets go of his lip, which he’d been holding up and out of the way with his thumb. “All done. Do you want your kiss, Lestat?”

“Yes,” he agrees, but looks at Armand, nervous. “How?”

Louis laughs. He leans forward and down, and Armand, stuck in the folding of his body, gags as the motion forces more of Louis’s cock into his throat. “Just like this.”

Lestat kisses back eagerly, the way he always does, like he’s never been kissed before and is experiencing life threatening side effects of kiss deficiency. He kisses like he’s never done anything else in his life, like it’s the only thing he does, and Louis lets him lick his teeth, nip at his tongue, anything he can think of that he finds kind of off-putting in the abstract but can’t help but long for whenever he goes without for too long. Louis lets go of Armand’s hair, finally, cups Lestat’s jaw instead, puts the spit-slick fingers of his other hand on his shoulder. There is no direction he’s trying to give to Lestat. He just wants to feel the way he moves. Lestat smiles, a little bit, the corners of his mouth stretching, his lips thinning, but he doesn’t stop.

Between them Armand continues making soft gagging noises, nose pressed flush against Louis’s skin, trying and failing to swallow the saliva pooling in his mouth, nowhere for it to go, least of all down his blocked off throat. It feels good, a pleasant tightening of his throat, the rhythmic struggle of his sucking as he tries to keep swallowing through the discomfort. He’s not getting any closer from it but it’s nice. If it’s keeping him hard and present it’s doing what it’s meant to.

Louis pulls away with a wet noise, kisses Lestat again, and Lestat tries to deepen the kiss again, to no avail. “Later,” Louis promises, pulls away for good. He draws his hands away from his body for good measure, straightens back up.

“Later,” Lestat repeats obediently, and then he furrows his brows, having processed the word several seconds after hearing it. “And what about now?”

“Patience,” Louis says. He puts one hand in Armand’s hair and pulls him closer towards him. He chokes, and his body tries to cough but there’s nothing for him to really do about that, his body won’t move like that, so Louis pulls him away just a few inches, slams him all the way back down again. His cock would come out through Armand’s nose if it were up to him, but alas. He has had enough experience with filling the various cavities and passages of Armand’s body with liquids that he knows if he came at the right angle it would come out through his nostrils. Nice thought. It had been nice with blood. A pretty picture, Armand coughing and quietly crying from the burn, the delicate tissue raw from the lit match he’d had him hold to his nose before. Well. Nevertheless.

And of course Lestat finds patience near enough impossible, especially now, especially when Louis is grabbing the back of Armand’s head with both hands, Armand whose own hands are clasped together behind his own back, fingers digging into each other hard enough that if Louis focuses his hearing enough he thinks he might hear the bones grind together. Louis fucks Armand’s head onto his cock more than he fucks his cock into Armand’s mouth, and Armand drools down the sides of his mouth, down the middle of his plush bottom lip, down the length of Louis’s cock and down onto the bedspread and the floor and his own thighs, and Louis says, “Lick it up, Lestat.”

Armand cannot moan, physically, but his eyes roll back, the whites of his eyeballs a brilliant contrast to the blown pupils he’d been giving Louis glances with from under his ridiculous eyelashes when he managed to remember to keep his eyes at least partially open. “Armand likes that,” Louis says. He yanks on Armand’s hair, pulls him forward, listens to him gag, feels him clench and release, stubborn and eager.

“Of course,” Lestat says, leans down, and he seems unsure of how to position his limbs, unable to reach Armand’s legs from his hands and knees. He does try. Louis must give him credit for it.

“May I lie down?” he asks.

“Yes,” Louis says. “Thank you for asking.”

Lestat sighs, a long suffering thing, and he puts his legs down first, his hips, his chest, and then his arms. “Oh, mon diablotin,” he mutters, and then he licks down the wet, shiny strands of saliva that have been sliding down Armand’s bare thighs, right next to his dripping cock, his tight balls.

Armand jumps like he’s been burned with a hot iron, which pushes him closer to Louis, though maybe that characterization is more of a wish than a representation of reality because Armand’s nose had already been smushed into Louis’s pubic bone in a way that seemed like a hard limit for both of their respective bodily shapes and structures. Armand makes a pretty little choking noise anyway, as if the reality of the situation is both irrelevant and separate from what they’re doing on a more immediate level. Lestat licks up the mess Armand’s made of himself, and he makes a face, of course, but his tongue doesn’t hesitate, and after he’s followed the trail down to the floor he doesn’t stop.

“Good boy, Lestat,” Louis says. And he has been very good, hasn’t he? He didn’t even have to be told to do it. “You deserve a reward.”

Louis pulls Armand off of his cock with no warning or fanfare, and Armand makes a series of deeply hurt noises, some of them psychological but some of them no doubt physical as his throat adjusts to the sudden emptiness.

“Come on, then,” Louis says. He spreads his legs invitingly. “Your turn.”

Armand licks his lips. His tongue moves slowly, like he’s forgotten how to use it. He might have. “Thank you, sir,” he says, a few seconds too late. He’s supposed to say it right after his lips cease to make contact with Louis’s cock, but he’s feeling forgiving and kind today.

“You’re welcome. Come sit on the bed, honey.”

Armand knows what’s going to follow when he says this, but he does not show his excitement beyond a tremble that starts at his wrists and goes down all the way to the tips of his fingers.

“Yes,” he exhales, “Yes.”

Lestat, pensive and a little bit off kilter, Armand’s spit still in his mouth, sits up and then slowly knee-walks over to where Armand is still sitting on his knees, unsteady, preparing to move, and he kisses Armand on the corner of his mouth. Louis’s hand in Armand’s hair is immediate, and he stands up this time, takes Armand up with him, weak-legged and unsteady.

“Did I tell you to do that?” he asks. He swings his arm, lets go of Armand’s hair. Armand lands on his back on the bed, a tangle of limbs, a wild look on his face. His cock drools onto his stomach, just as greedy as his mouth.

“No,” Lestat says. “Oh, I’m sorry, diablotin, I forgot.”

“Forgot?” Louis repeats. “Turn over, Arun.”

Armand does, a quick little twist of his hips to get himself face down. Louis, still standing, pulls his hips up from the mattress with his arm under them, and then brings his other hand down on the meat of his ass hard.

It’s not the hardest he can hit him, isn’t the hardest he’s ever hit him, isn’t even the hardest he’s hit him this week, but Armand makes a sound like he’s never felt anything like it before. The wet-hot sound of blood rushing to where the skin to skin contact has coaxed it to the surface doesn’t help.

Lestat wails. “It’s all my fault,” he says, “Louis, I am so sorry, please do not punish him again.”

“You are a bad influence,” Louis says. “What if he learns from you? Huh? Then what will I do?”

Another slap, to the top of his left thigh this time. Another whimper from Armand, another mournful noise from Lestat.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Lestat says. “I will be good. I am listening.”

“Too late,” Louis says. Hand to skin again. The skin is warming up pleasantly, so he hits him again just to feel the sting on his own skin. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice.”

“I’m sorry,” Armand says, too. He’s trying it on, now, but Louis hits him, one more time, since he wants it so bad.

“That’s enough,” Louis tells him. “Spread your legs.”

Armand spreads. Louis does not touch him. “Lestat,” he says, and then he sighs, and then he reaches to pet Lestat’s hair, too. Silky and wavy. He pulls on a strand, lets go, scratches his scalp. He sits back down, spreads his legs. “You know what to do.”

Lestat does. He swallows Louis down easily, makes sad little puppy eyes at him while he does, and he starts suckling, like Armand had, but Louis slaps Armand across his spread open asscheeks and goes, firmly, “stop.”

Lestat stills. He doesn’t say anything, on account of the cock in his mouth, but his eyebrows are raised.

“Just warm it,” Louis says. He cups Lestat’s cheek, feels his bones under the skin. “Just hold it. Just like Armand did. That’s it.”

Eye contact. One second, two seconds, and then Lestat looks away. He closes his eyes. Swallows. Louis slaps Armand, claws out this time, and one of them catches on the rim of his hole, cleaves him open, and this time Armand wails, a genuine hurt, real pain. Lestat’s eyes fly open. No swallowing? his eyes ask.

“I told you to stay still,” Louis says. Smiles. Pats his cheek.

And Lestat does. His mouth is warm, wet, and he starts breathing heavily, laboriously, in long gulps as the saliva in his mouth becomes overwhelming, and then it starts spilling out. His drooling mutt. It brings a smile to the face to even think of him as such.

Louis returns his attention to Armand. “Poor thing,” he says, one hand on his hip. “Turn around. Let me see what we’re working with.”

Armand tries to roll over without moving his legs, which fails, and he hisses and squirms when the motion rips the already healing tear open again. Louis hums and shushes him. It’s pitiful partially because he’s barely hurt. Louis has broken his hands. Louis has broken his jaw. Louis has whipped him until he passed out. This is, in some ways, ridiculous. Louis should split the seam of his balls, or put another cut across the center of his hole. Or both, at the same time, or in quick succession – really give him something to cry about.

Maybe next time Lestat swallows. That’s a thought. A delicious one at that.

On his back, finally, Armand spreads his legs and whines. His cock is dark and heavy with his arousal. He’s lying in the wet spot he’d left behind while he’d been lying on his stomach, but he’s working valiantly to create another one in the dip of his belly, his cock slick and dripping still. Greedy thing. Louis wants to slap it just for the sake of it. Another time, he reminds himself. He has to play by his own rules. There’s no point to having rules if he ignores them. Trampling over his rules is why he’s here in the first place.

Lestat’s punishment being Louis’s punishment is, of course, a typical situation.

Nevermind all that. Louis reaches for Armand’s cock, and it jumps as if to meet his hand, but Louis doesn’t touch it, follows the shape of it a centimeter or so above it, just enough to disturb the air, for Armand to taste the memory of his touch in his mouth, on his cock, in the back of his skull. Lestat has not swallowed. Louis’s cock is warm and wet, just like he’d asked for it to be. Lestat is drooling down his chest. It’s a good look on him.

Cock, tightly drawn balls, perineum. Louis reaches Armand’s hole, a little bit of blood still slicking up the rim of it. He rubs his index finger against the split skin to slick up his finger, keep the wound open, and Armand whines. His cock pulses.

“Exhale,” Louis says, and then he slides his finger in, sure and quick, all the way to the knuckle.

Armand’s hips always twitch and pull away from the penetration. Louis likes it, that the reflex still exists, that he’s not managed to train it out of himself. So many other things he’s willed out of existence, over the years, but when Louis pushes in he still flinches away from the breach.

“Hold still,” Louis says. “Push into me. That’s it.”

Armand squeezes around him, an involuntary little pulse of muscle to muscle as he adjusts. Louis thrusts his finger in, out, in again, a slow little circle, and Armand sighs. He doesn’t need it, he insists, but he always gets it anyway. Well – usually he does, anyway. The times he gets Louis’s cock without warning notwithstanding.

It’s not for Armand’s benefit, anyway, for the most part. It’s for Louis, in some ways – for him to feel his insides without the distraction of his cock being squeezed, milked, his hips gaining a mind of their own as soon as he’s buried to the hilt inside of Armand’s beautiful body. For Armand, in other ways – Louis saying look, I like your body without getting anything immediately out of it, too. Louis swipes his finger over Armand’s prostate, and Armand’s cock drools, drips out a steady stream of thin liquid lasting for as long as every little swipe of Louis’s finger does.

He could make him come like this. He’s straddling the edge already, his cock moving on its own, bobbing and pulsing against his taut stomach, his thighs shaking. If Louis were to breathe directly on him he would be gone.

It is a tempting thought. Unfortunately for everyone involved Lestat chooses exactly that moment to swallow.

Armand hears it. Lestat knows Armand hears it, and he certainly knows that Louis felt it, and in his panic he swallows again, and then he can’t stop swallowing, having put himself in a spiral of compulsive movement.

“Armand,” Louis says slowly. “Lift up your knees.”

Armand starts trembling. The bed shakes with it.

Louis takes his finger out, and Armand lifts his legs obediently. His hole doesn’t gape when Louis’s finger retreats, but it does wink shut prettily, wound healed. Louis didn’t tell him to hold his legs so he doesn’t, the burn of the position no doubt setting in quickly.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Armand asks softly, knowing full well that Louis is going to hurt him.

“Yes,” Louis says. “I’m sorry, honey.”

“It’s okay,” Armand says. He draws in an unsteady little breath. His accent is affecting French. “I am happy to be his whipping boy.”

Lestat makes a gurgling noise around Louis’s cock, a desperate sound, and Louis sighs, shakes his head. “You hear that?”

Armand closes his eyes. He’s still shaking, and it knocks his mouth open, keeps his lips trembling over his teeth. “Yes, sir,” he says, “I understand.”

“How many?” Louis asks Armand. “I lost count.”

“Five,” Armand says, which might be true, or maybe not, but if it isn’t he’s almost certainly rounding up. “And then the complaining.”

“Thank you,” Louis says. He pets down Armand’s hip, thigh, knee. “Hold still.”

Armand opens his eyes fully, a little owlish, bright orange and welling with tears. “Will it hurt less that way?”

Louis smiles. “No,” he says.

No reason to ease into it. Armand has already been eased into it, and he wants no further warning, if he ever wanted one at all. He lets his body decide what to do with Armand. He does not aim. Armand watches the movement of his hand in slow motion, breath stuck in his throat, legs trembling, and waits.

The first slap lands squarely on Armand’s sac.

He opens his mouth and wails, openly, without restraint, and this time Louis knows it really did hurt that much, so he slaps him again to hear him wail again, to feel the texture of his skin and his poor contracting balls, trying to make sense of the sensation beyond the searing pain. His cock throbs, twists itself up off of his belly, and Louis wants to go for it so badly, wants to hit it right on the head, make him howl and buck and twist, but it’s impossible. He can’t slap it from here, the angle is all wrong. He can bring his claws out on the next slap to his balls, though, watch the delicate skin split, and on the next one he can do the same, an inch away vertically, following the raised skin at the center of his sac. Small victories. He bleeds beautifully, and when Louis connects the wounds with his claw Armand screams.

It’s difficult to tell because Armand is so loud, but it eventually occurs to him that Lestat is also wailing. It’s garbled around Louis’s cock, and he isn’t swallowing, but the vibration of it is obvious, and also, it still makes a sound. Louis reaches for the back of his head blindly, pulls him off of his cock. Lestat disconnects from it with a wet pop, cheeks still hollowed, flushed and feverish. His eyes are wet.

“You’re done,” Louis says, like one might speak to a dog. And then in a more serious voice, “okay?”

“Okay,” Lestat says, and then, “no more, please. Our little beast, look at him.”

Their little beast is sobbing softly, his wounds bleeding heavily, legs still dutifully in the air. “Hm,” Louis says. Looks down at Lestat. Smiles. “You have anything you’d like to say to him?”

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately, “Armand, mon petit diablotin, oh, I am so sorry.”

“Doesn’t do much to help him,” Louis says. “Would you like him to show you how sorry he is, Arun?”

“Yes, Louis,” Armand sighs. The trembling has not stopped. His eyes look glossy and vacant. He’s in his body, but only barely. “Yes. Anything.”

Lestat looks at him, wide eyed. Louis looks back. “Well,” he says, “go on then,” and when Lestat doesn’t stop looking and doesn’t start moving he sighs fondly, ruffles his hair, goes “yes, you can touch him. Anywhere you like.”

Lestat makes a pathetic little noise without opening his mouth but he climbs onto the bed with trembling limbs. He stops. Calculates. Takes in the sight in front of him.

Armand’s face is flushed. The marks Louis had left with his hands are fading, though he wouldn’t say they’re doing so fast. The life cycle of a bruise is shorter but it isn’t nonexistent, a spectrum of purple and yellow and green on Armand’s beautiful skin, cheekbone to cheekbone. If he were to roll Armand over, which he will, he would see the dark red skin of his ass, the backs of his thighs, where Louis had hit him with his open palms, a bit of claw mark, the blood running down in little rivulets where the skin has been broken.

Here, on this side of his body, between his legs he’s bleeding a heavier stream down onto the blankets and probably right through the sheets as well, right into the plastic mattress protector underneath. It’s those wounds that Louis wants to kiss, wants to lick all of the blood from until he’s clean and smooth and perfect again.

But Louis is Louis and Lestat is Lestat, and Lestat being Lestat he goes for Armand’s face first, a bashful, embarrassed motion. Armand closes his eyes, and his mouth falls open, an inviting flick of tongue. Lestat does not kiss his mouth. His lips press to Armand’s closed eyelid, then the other, and then the first one again. He whispers something Louis can’t hear into the thin skin there, and then he kisses the other eyelid again. Armand’s arms twitch, but he’s not strong enough to lift them. It seems, for a moment, that Lestat intends to keep doing this for the foreseeable future, but his lips move down to the bruises, then, his tongue peeking out, tracing the shapes and textures of the indents of Louis’s hand like he would suck on Louis’s fingers, and Armand whimpers, his cock visibly deeply interested.

“Does it feel good?” Louis asks. He puts his hand on Armand’s stomach, right next to where the tip of his cock lifts up by itself, falls down again with a wet smack, a tantalizing little cycle.

“Yes,” Armand agrees. He shudders. Lestat’s tongue leaves little saliva marks all over his face, and if it’s healing him faster Louis cannot tell, but Armand leans into the touch, tries to press into the soft pressure of it. When Louis pokes at the edge of Armand’s consciousness he gets nearly nothing except for overwhelming pleasure, all-consuming, fuzzy, still growing in size.

Louis watches Armand’s lashes flutter over his cheekbones and wishes his bruises could last. He’s beautiful. Of course he is. Lestat licks his split lip, kisses it, licks it again, and the wound closes under his mouth. He makes a sad little noise, which is kind of giving his game away, but Louis doesn’t say anything. Why bring attention to it if it’s there regardless.

“Beautiful,” Lestat says. “Can he turn around?”

“Yes,” Louis agrees. “Armand, baby, come on. On your back.”

Armand twitches, hips and then thighs, and goes to move himself. It looks extraordinarily difficult, which means it must feel even more so. Louis takes pity on him, one hand on his shoulder to help him, goes “there you are,” and when he lands on his stomach he makes a series of hitching, breathy little noises, once when his cock contacts with the bed, once when it rubs into the sheets, once when his abused cheeks finally feel the cold air of the room, no pressure against them to dull the sensation.

“Come on,” he says to Lestat, “put your mouth on him, he’s aching for it.”

He’s taken worse. Louis has already thought this, but the sentiment remains. The blood has already dried but Lestat leans in to tongue at the skin anyway, lap up the stains and smudges, and it occurs to Louis that despite everything they’ve done together he has never once kissed Armand’s wounds better, not like this. Could it really be this that undoes him? The gentleness that follows? Lestat’s filthy mouth on his most tender skin?

Armand makes an eager little noise, a pitiful thing, spreads his legs open. He doesn’t quite grind into the bed but the motion is adjacent to it, certainly. In a perfect world Armand would have his hips lifted up off the bed so he could see his cock, and also to make the position more difficult for him, but alas. He’s pretty certain if he tried to make Armand hold that position right now he might simply disintegrate.

“Oh, I know, pauvre petit,” Lestat mutters. He presses his lips to the base of Armand’s spine, kisses down the swell of his round little ass. He’s trying to memorize the bruises, the cuts, so he can close his eyes while he does this. It’s cute. Louis kind of likes it.

Armand’s mouth falls open the instant Lestat puts his tongue on the hand-shaped bruise perfectly straddling the boundary between his ass and his thigh. There is no sound, and there is no thought inside of him. When he reaches for his mind he only finds an absence of. Huh. Interesting. A file for the Armand-titled catalogue he’s putting together in his mind.

The bruises aren’t warm anymore but Lestat laps at them like they’re burning hot coals and he is the water pouring out of a fire hose, in that he is drenching him with spit and blood like it’s the only function he was built to fill. Well. Guess that makes him the hose, then, Louis thinks, but he’s already thinking about this too hard. Lestat’s pink tongue against Armand’s deep-maroon skin, yes, better, blood under the surface that Lestat wants to get to but wants to soothe even more than that. Lestat noses down between his cheeks, barely spread apart from the way his legs are arranged, licks over the pucker of his hole, the thin veneer of plausible deniability that only Louis is to blame for, having made the cut, no matter how healed by now. Lestat tongues at his hole, where he remembers the cut to have been, the newborn skin and then over his hole again. Louis watches his fluttering eyelashes, his hard breathing, the pointing of his tongue as if he’s trying to breach him with the wet muscle.

He watches Armand, writhing like every touch is a million needle pricks, a million overwhelming pleasure points, and finally says, “enough.”

Lestat looks up at him with big, blue eyes, and does not protest. He licks his lips, and then he puts his tongue back in his mouth. “Yes, Louis,” he says in a tone that Louis has never heard before. It makes all of his blood rush directly to his cock, which throbs, of course it does, the wretched thing.

“Roll him over onto his back again.”

Lestat, wide-eyed and suddenly obedient, puts a hand so uncharacteristically gentle it might as well be someone else doing it on Armand’s hip, another on his shoulder. He rolls him around gently, and once he’s on his back Lestat’s eyes blatantly focus on his cock, how it’s gotten him wet from belly button to upper thigh, smeared everywhere from the writhing.

“Oh,” Lestat sighs, “he is so wet for us.”

Phrasing, Louis thinks, and then, what the hell, that is exactly what he is. He’s still lube-slick too, though he’s probably tightened up again enough that Louis’s fingers would feel foreign again. Which is fine. Louis is not planning on fucking him tonight anymore. He has other plans now.

“Spread your legs, Arun,” Louis says. Armand clearly tries to, but his legs start shaking hard enough that he cannot control his muscles enough to do so. “Lestat,” he says instead, and Lestat does not wait for him to tell him twice, puts a gentle hand on each of Armand’s thighs, and pulls them apart, utilitarian as much as it is erotic.

The wounds are not healed, but they are not as red-raw as they were. Well – at first, anyway. His legs opening stretches the skin, pulls the wounds open again, a trickle of blood that turns into a steady stream, thin but fast.

“Look at that,” Louis says. He reaches out to touch the tender skin of Armand’s balls with two fingers, the ghost of contact before he pulls away. He holds the fingers to the light, two thin lines of beautiful red he smudges rubbing them together. “Look what you’ve done to him.”

Lestat watches him do this. Attentive eyes. Straight spine. He licks his lips. Glances at Armand’s prone body longingly. “Go ahead,” Louis says.

Lestat dives in with the sort of hunger most people would classify as either heartbreakingly desperate or repulsively greedy, but to Louis just registers as the average Lestat experience. Then again he’s never kissed skin he wasn’t desperately greedy for, so. Same difference, really. His shoulders land between Armand’s thighs, and he pulls his legs up so he can fit himself between the brackets of them, and Armand makes a soft, pleading noise at all of the jostling, the pulling of the sore skin, the re-splitting of wounds that had already started to heal.

“Rest, diablotin,” Lestat says. He presses a wet, sucking kiss into Armand’s sac without any attempt at easing into it, right over the split Louis had put into it. “I’ll take care of you.”

Armand shivers like he’s cold. Freezing, in fact, body shaking with the intensity of it all. Louis tries to enter his mind again but again he finds nothing but blinding white pleasure. Lestat’s tongue traces over the wound, again and again and again, and he’s bit his lip to mix his blood into the saliva which is making the skin stretch and connect again, yes. Smart boy. Armand whines and bucks into the touch, trembling again, and Louis watches his poor, tortured cock as it sways and jumps, elegant like a ballerina. There’s another sucking noise, then, Lestat’s face nosing its way further in, a broken moan from Armand, and Louis is pretty sure he’s not actually doing what he’s meant to be doing anymore.

“Are you kissing it better, or are you playing with him?”

Lestat releases Armand’s testicle from his mouth with a wet pop. He’s not bleeding anymore, Lestat’s blood strong and potent, but it must have been pulling on the skin where it had just knitted itself back together again, still tender and raised, visibly reddened.

“Sorry,” he says. He has the decency to look guilty at least. “I could not resist.”

“That’s how you got here,” Louis says. “Not resisting.”

Lestat looks immensely sad. “Yes,” he agrees. “And yet I return to my foolish ways.”

Louis has to bite down on the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t laugh. “It seems so, yes.”

Lestat kisses Armand’s taint, his hole, the bruise on his thigh clearly visible from any which way you could look at him. “You will not punish him again,” he says, a bold assumption, and an audacious thing to say out loud.

“No,” Louis says anyway, though he probably shouldn’t let Lestat make these calls for him. “You are making amends, now.”

Lestat hums, pleased. His tongue is broad and flat when Louis sees it peek out from between his lips next, licking Armand like a dog, like he’s eating an ice cream cone, and it is beautiful, the sight of Armand’s wounds healing in real time under Lestat’s worshipful mouth, and then again, that eager tongue licking at his hole to make Armand moan and press into the touch, needy and empty, hollowed out for someone to fill. He’s so sweet, it occurs to him, and then, immediately after, it occurs to him that this might be the first time he’s thought that about him in a situation like this.

Armand writhes. He's beautiful, and Lestat’s mouth wanders again, over the entire length of his cock, a few centimeters above it and then directly on it, lips and tongue tracing veins and moving parts from where it joins his body up towards the glans, and when he gets to his destination he closes his mouth around the tip, sucks softly, swallows more of it until he can have his tongue working the underside of it while he suckles. Armand sighs softly, moans a bit, brows furrowing in as his hips rise to meet Lestat’s mouth, but Lestat won’t take him in his mouth fully, a cruel tease, and a terrible rule breaker too. He shouldn’t have given him an inch earlier. Here’s the mile, now.

“No,” Louis says, and he slaps Armand across the thigh, hard, right above a bruise Lestat has just painstakingly tried scrubbing from existence. Lestat scrambles to pull away, a wet pop and a soft cry from Armand, Lestat clearly alarmed about the proximity of the hit and the existence of it at all in equal measure.

“Louis,” Lestat says, scandalized. “You said –”

“Changed my mind,” Louis says. He rubs his hand over where his hand had landed. Armand is no longer whining, just breathing hard. “Play by the rules.”

“Impossible,” Lestat grumbles. “Absolutely, completely impossible.”

He dives for the new mark, then, tongue flat and wet across the length of it before it has a chance to turn into a bruise, and it must feel divine because Armand’s leg kicks out, and then a panicked breath, which Louis only catches because he was waiting for it.

“You’re allowed,” Louis says, just in case, though there is nothing short of spontaneous combustion that can stop Armand anyway, but he doesn’t want Armand to feel bad about it, at least. “Go on. Good boy.”

His entire body tenses from toe to the top of his head, and then he starts shaking, a full body thing, before his cock even twitches. He’s beautiful – those fluttering eyelashes, his mouth wide open, covered in the marks Louis has given him, and he comes in a slow, jerking thing that seems to contract through his entire body, once, twice, three times, the proof of it splattering on his belly, his heaving chest. The unavoidable pulsing of his balls splits the skin again and he makes a noise that’s half sob, half moan, a thick thing stuck in his throat and knocked loose very suddenly, nearly painfully.

Lestat licks him through it, and when his body starts to calm down again he moves his head enough to be able to mouth at the head of his cock, oversensitive to the point of painful, though Lestat remains undeterred, braving through Armand’s leg kicking feebly, his poor, abused body shaking and squirming. Lestat sucks the tip into his mouth. Armand’s jaw starts to wobble like it’s about to fall from whatever it is that’s holding it to the rest of his skull, his poor little cock trying desperately to either shrink into his body or get hard again. Louis can see him pulse, twitch, pulse again, and Lestat makes a pleased little sound with his tongue swirling around the little slit at the center of him.

“Enough,” Louis says once Armand’s body has gone limp and lax. “Come on, Les. That’s good.”

Lestat presses one more kiss into Armand’s skin, and then he pulls away. The look on his face is not unlike the one Louis has seen him make over the bodies of countless kills before, bloody and animalistic. Fangs out, growling, evil, and so, so beautiful.

He’s been good. In the grand scheme of things, he has been good.

A reward, then. If the punishment must fit the crime then the reward must fit the – well. The crime, still, he supposes. Louis reaches out, grabs a loose hold of Lestat’s cock. He’s hard, throbbing, the kind of neglected arousal that makes the first touch feel nearly unpleasant, his body having adjusted to one kind of sensation, a distracted background hum. It comes to the forefront, now. Lestat adjusts. “Mon chéri,” he sighs, “yes, touch me.”

Louis rolls his eyes, but only a little bit, because Lestat deserves some theatrics, after all he’s endured. And yes, Lestat looks at him with those wet eyes, and he’s not really sad or even particularly submissive anymore, but it’s the fact that Louis has seen the potential for it that really matters.

“I have an idea for you,” Louis says. He gives Lestat a nice, long stroke, tip to root, root to tip again. His cock is blood-hot and heavy in his hand. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Does it involve you finishing me off?” Lestat asks, bucks into Louis’s hand. “Because, mon chéri –”

“No,” Louis interrupts him. “Armand.”

Armand, soft and shivering and completely spent, lies on his back on the bed with his eyes closed. He’s the picture of a tortured saint, panting and flayed open. Lestat glances at him, then back at Louis.

“Don’t you think your gremlin has endured everything he can endure?” he asks.

Louis smiles. “For you,” he says, rubs the head of Lestat’s cock with his palm just to make him shiver, buck into it, then lets go of it, “he would endure anything.”

He bends down, then, kisses Armand’s cheek, his nose, his lips. Armand doesn’t lean into the kiss but he does open his mouth, just slightly, just enough for Louis to press his tongue inside, feel the sharp edges and sides of his teeth. His arms twitch, as if he wants to move them but can’t quite remember how to. Louis can feel Lestat’s eyes on them, two laser pointer holes in the back of his skull, and he smiles slightly.

“He’ll be good,” he says softly. “Won’t you?”

Armand does not quite nod but the sentiment is there. He tries to open his legs but Louis catches his thigh before he can and gets a confused little whine out of Armand for his efforts.

“Shh,” Louis says. He rubs Armand’s hip with his thumb. “You’re going to lie on your side, baby. Lestat is going to fuck your thighs.”

Armand moans, a broken thing. He rubs his legs together, contemplative, and hisses when the bruises on his legs press together, rubs them together again. Lestat, smart enough to not complain or protest, says nothing. Louis smiles. “Come lie behind him. I’ll help you.”

He has to help Armand find the position, and then he has to help him maintain it until Lestat can slot himself against Armand’s back, damp collar bone to damp shoulder blade, arm over his belly, hand coming to grab onto his hip. He kisses the back of his neck, then again, and Armand sighs softly, a pleased little thing, happy and content. Louis longs to kiss his skin as well, suddenly, or at least to have his hand in his hair, to stroke those beautiful curls, slicked down around his face with sweat. He lifts up Armand’s leg just an inch or so, so that Lestat can slide his cock between his thighs, which he does, as if it’s entirely instinctual, an involuntary, reptilian response to a new hole being revealed for him to fuck.

Lestat and Armand moan as nearly the same being when Louis lets go of Armand’s leg. It’s not the tight heat of Armand’s hole, and that’s the point. It’s a maddening half-pressure, friction that feels just a little bit wrong, and when Lestat experimentally thrusts his hips until they connect with the backs of Armand’s thighs the tip of his cock nudges against Armand’s sac – makes them both moan, brings beautiful tears to Armand’s bloodshot eyes as the tender skin threatens to break again – and then slips out, the tip left unstimulated and bare.

It’s the point. Lestat has been good enough to deserve a reward, but he’s not been that good. Armand, covered in cuts and bruises, is proof enough. Lestat is frustrated and needy, and Armand, already on the verge of tears from the overstimulation, would rather have Lestat split him open on his cock without preparation than endure the maddeningly dull sensation of Lestat’s cock between his thighs, only ghosting over his cock, nowhere near his hole, no doubt twitching imagining being finally filled. But Armand has been good, has been enduring, and he will continue to endure, and this, too, is both a punishment and a reward, the painful prodding, the slick slide, Lestat’s humid breath against his skin, and Louis, not touching, only looking.

Louis, idly, wonders if he’s going to cry, and if so, how long it will take until he does.

The tip of Lestat’s cock rubs against the barely healed skin of Armand’s balls on every thrust. Louis watches his eyes roll into the back of his head with each painful nudge, mouth open and drooling, his hips twitching, a confused attempt at getting away from the pain and pressing into it at the same time, and Lestat keeps murmuring into his shoulder, a litany of apologies as he continues to hurt him, chasing his own pleasure with more urgency than whatever desire he has to allow Armand’s skin to heal first, until the wound splits open again, and Louis can pinpoint the exact moment it does from the way Armand’s eyes roll back in his head, the way he chokes on his own tongue. Lestat’s cock comes away bloody each time Louis sees it, slick and red, and when Lestat apologizes it does not sound sincere, does not sound like he wishes things were any other way.

Louis’s own cock throbs in his hand. “How does he feel?”

“I want to fuck him properly,” Lestat gasps, which doesn’t quite answer the question, but close enough. “I need to feel him, Louis.”

“You shouldn’t have been so bad,” Louis says, a little out of breath, “should’ve given me a chance to work him open first.”

Lestat makes a frustrated noise. “Yes,” he says, thrusts harder, as if to soothe himself. “I am sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Louis says, thrusts into his own hand, an instinctual mirroring of the motion, “that’s the point of the punishment. You’re learning.”

Lestat thinks this over, or maybe he doesn’t. His hips are losing their rhythm, a wild, manic pace to the motion now, Armand jostling in his arms as his grip tightens around his belly, his chest, Lestat’s teeth grazing his back as Armand’s limp feet grind into the mattress. Louis can see his cock start to thicken again, rising from between his bruised thighs.

“I want him to,” Armand says. It’s the first thing he’s said in what feels like hours, and his voice is raspy and rough. “I want him inside of me.”

It’s nice to hear Armand ask for things. And still, Lestat’s punishment is Armand’s punishment is Louis’s punishment, and Louis says “no, honey. Not tonight.”

Armand nods sadly, a limp, placid thing, and Lestat’s hand creeps down towards where the tip of his own slick cock keeps appearing from underneath Armand’s abused balls, his blood-slick thighs, and asks, imploringly, “can I?”

“Go ahead,” Louis says, his own cock pleasantly slick and heavy in his hand. He brings his free hand to cup his own balls. If he wasn’t so damn close already just from stroking himself a little, from watching his beautiful boys, he might try to save himself for Lestat, maybe even Armand, get them both to work his cock with their hands or mouths, between their bodies, even, but at this rate there is no hope and no fear of that becoming reality, not tonight.

Guess it’s fair enough. Armand doesn’t get to get fucked, Lestat doesn’t get to fuck him, and Louis gets to get himself off. He bucks into his own hand, his palm slippery, precome slicking up the webbing between his fingers when he swipes his thumb over the leaking slit of himself.

Armand starts crying when Lestat’s hand closes around his cock. It’s hard, but only half-committed to the idea of it, and when Lestat strokes it he shies away, his hips moving backwards to press into Lestat’s body. Louis knows this intimately: the oversensitive flesh, the heated skin, the unreal, floating feeling in his skull just behind his eyes, how it makes every touch confusing and overstimulating. He moans through his sobbing, claws at the sheets, legs kicking and jerking, out of control, skin peeled back to show whatever soft and vulnerable insides he’d managed to keep hidden until now.

“Je t’aime,” Lestat mumbles into Armand’s shoulder, barely loud enough for Louis to hear, and he strokes Armand’s purpling cock like he doesn’t even notice the desperate squirming, the thrashing, the way his head moves wildly, whole body shuddering. “Oh, Armand, mon petit ange.”

And he does look like an angel, he really does. Slick skin all over, curls mussed from the constant contact with the sheets or someone’s hands, his beautiful big eyes closed with tears running down from them anyway, undeterred by the shuttered gates of his eyelids, his pretty little mouth closing and opening seemingly at random, feeling whatever it is that he feels with no comment, no complaint. His cock pulses violently, balls drawing up to his body, and Lestat’s erratic thrusts turn into little grinding circles of his hips as he gets close. Louis closes his eyes, tries to bump into Armand’s thoughts, finds him trying to hold onto a memory of Lestat inside of him, fucking him, full to the point where he felt like he was going to split open.

It feels – Louis reaches into the memory. Armand in Paris with Lestat’s hand on the small of his back, pushing his chest into the floor, ass up, knees and cheek equally uncomfortable against the cold concrete, and Lestat’s cock splitting him open while his cock drools, drips, his hollow insides made whole again. There is something desperately new to it, a sort of vulnerability to the act of taking Lestat inside of oneself he can reach out and touch in his own memories, too. In the memory that isn’t his own Armand’s cock is twitching, his body shaking, and Louis’s hand moving fast, punishingly hard, and he’s lost to it, the memory of Lestat inside of Armand and the knowledge that they could be doing it now, again, if not for Louis having told them not to, comes hard enough to make his teeth clatter, his knees shake, a surprise as much as it can be.

He does not realize he’s bitten through his lip until he opens his eyes again and sees the blood drip down onto his chest, his hand, his softening cock. He licks his lip, and realizes he’s missed the sight of Lestat and Armand so badly it’s left a hole in his mind when he looks again, relieved that they still exist in the present moment, as well.

Right now: Lestat, on the bed, with his pupils black and huge at the sight of Louis’s release, bites hard into Armand’s shoulder, jerks his hips forward erratically one, twice, three times, and comes hard.

The arc of it reaches all over the bed, across Armand’s stomach and thighs, his cock, his ass when Lestat keeps moving through it, smears it over the abused skin. He squeezes Armand’s cock, the slide wet and tight and frantic, and Armand’s cock finally, heartachingly painfully twitches hard, and Louis can see his balls pulse, too, but when he comes nothing comes out but an agonized, broken moan. He’s wrung dry, the poor little thing. Lestat kisses his back, and then kisses it again, squeezes him hard. He contemplates like this for a while, clearly in deep thought. Armand shivers, and Louis wonders, suddenly, whether they’re talking to each other.

The thought, he realizes, doesn’t make him feel jealous. It just makes him fond. He doesn’t try to check. He doesn’t need to know.

After a while, Lestat, still holding onto Armand like he’s acutely worried about the implications of no longer holding him, rolls him to his back so he can kiss him on his slack mouth. He’s easy, no fight or protest in him, no longer bleeding but certainly looking like he might if touched wrong again. Louis watches the rise of his chest, the fall of it, the way he gets just a little confused, finds himself straddling the fence between mortal and vampire, breathing like he needs to, still. Comfort in the simple act of existing made into a motion. He used to do this in Dubai, too, and in San Francisco, before that, and Paris, and Cairo, and so on. Laps around the swimming pool. The prayer mat. Metronomic. Louis’s heart swells. It occurs to him, suddenly, that he can touch. He can join this.

Armand is ragdoll-limp on the bed with his legs spread when Louis gets to him. He’s – well, he’s wet, for the lack of a better word. Semen and sweat and saliva and blood, despite Lestat’s best efforts, and also, due to Lestat’s efforts. His muscles are twitching intermittently, an involuntary jerk of a calf or a thigh. He’s a newborn thing, the way he always is after he’s been worked so thoroughly out of his body. Louis sits down next to him on the bed and contemplates the act of holding with the intention of disassembling.

“Hi,” he says. Armand’s eyelids flutter slightly in greeting. Louis bends down and kisses his face. The bruises are nearly entirely gone, and when he presses into where one once bloomed under his cheekbone Armand only makes a little noise of contentment.

Lestat comes from the other side. He presses his front into Armand’s side and puts his fangs to Armand’s neck without breaking skin. “Hello,” he says, a low rumble of sound to skin.

“Lestat,” Armand mumbles, although with his confused fangs half-dropped and his tongue slow and heavy in his mouth it sounds more like Leththat.

“How come I don’t get a greeting?” Louis asks, a smile on his lips. Armand reaches out with a shaking arm, attached to which is a shaking hand, and blindly grabs his wrist.

“Thank you,” Armand says instead of anything more normal, like Louis’s name, but, sure, fine, Louis can work with it. He rubs Armand’s cheek with his thumb, touches the corner of his mouth with his ring finger.

“Need anything?” he asks, intentionally, because he’s conscious about this kind of stuff now. He’s sticky. Everyone involved is sticky. Armand most of all is sticky. On the stickiness scale Louis is a three and Armand is a nine, Lestat a strong six. Louis kind of wants to lick him clean, but it would probably be better if he could take a washcloth to his quivering stomach, his tender thighs.

“Mm,” says Armand, which isn’t an answer, but it is a thoughtful sound, which means it’s allowed. It hurts, sometimes, the tenderness Louis feels for him in these moments. It doesn’t feel like betrayal anymore, most of the time, but it does feel like the bottom of the pit of it is unreachable, like he’s shoving just about anything in it and yet it still threatens to swallow him whole. His Armand. The way he is, despite everything, still his.

“Let me know, baby,” Louis says. There is an Armand-shaped lump in his throat. “I’ll be here. We’ll all be here.”

He kisses his forehead, and then again, and when Armand’s eyelids flutter he kisses him for a third time before sitting up again. Lestat raises himself up onto his elbows, leans over Armand’s body, a little more hesitant than usual, and Louis meets him halfway, kisses him on the mouth. It’s nearly chaste, Lestat’s mouth seeming as contemplative as his mind, and Louis smiles into it.

“Hi,” Louis says, nearly against his lips. It feels good to be tender with someone.

“Hi,” Lestat greets him back. He is so uncharacteristically quiet. Almost settled. So much has been taken out of him, physically, psychologically. He’s hollowed out. Louis kisses him again, overcome with affection.

“Are you okay?” he asks after he’s pulled away. “I’m sorry we didn’t talk about it before.”

“I enjoyed myself,” Lestat says. He’s quiet for a few moments. “I understand what you meant, now. I did not submit to you before.”

Louis smiles. “Glad I could help you come to that realization.”

Lestat, too, smiles. It’s a strange moment: basking in the energy, the connection, the mutual vulnerability. Something has been unlocked. It feels good to know that these moments are still happening, that there is more that can still be unlocked, after all these years. Not every box inside of them needs to stay sealed. A tear threatens to form at the corner of Louis’s eye.

“Wrist,” Armand requests into the silence. Louis reaches for his mouth with his left wrist, and Armand grabs a shaky hold of it with three fingers and a thumb, latches onto it. A slow, soft suckling, a little bit of tremble to his movements. It feels good, it always does, and Armand goes limp and lax like everything has been sucked out of him entirely, like he’s making all the room he can for Louis inside of himself.

He’s needy in a sweet way, afterwards. Sometimes he needs a little bit of time to get there, but eventually he does, nearly every time. He doesn’t ask for much. Louis is glad to give it to him, now. There was a time neither of them could do it for the other, no matter how little they were asking for. It’s okay, now. It’s different, now.

Lestat reaches for Armand so he can pet his hair, propped up on one elbow, mesmerized. “He’s so,” he starts saying, and then he stops, seemingly realizing he’s not sure what he was going to say. Louis has a feeling he might know the vague thread of thought being picked at here.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “So were you.”

He reaches for Lestat’s hand, the one in Armand’s hair, covers it with his own. Lestat looks at him, mouth curling into a smile. “I was good,” he says, eyes sparkling with satisfaction. “For you.”

“Sort of,” Louis agrees, feeling a little bit smug. Maybe he is good at this, after all, he’s starting to think. In some ways having Armand be his training wheels might’ve been good. “I think there’s something there.”

If Lestat takes this judgment as a jab he takes it in stride. “Yes,” he agrees. “And next time there will be no mistakes for him to be punished for. His skin shall remain unbroken.”

“He wouldn’t like that,” Louis says. Smiles slightly. He picks his hand up off of Lestat’s so he can draw a twisting little spiral over the length of Lestat’s index finger with his own. “You can be a little bit bad. Might be good for everyone.”

“Good,” Lestat repeats. He smiles, a pleased, self-satisfied smirk, a bit of purposeful flirting to it. New Orleans, so long ago, now. A balcony. Night air. Bourbon and smoke. “I wouldn’t want to let my Saint Louis down.”

Suppose so. He has been trying so hard in so many ways, after all, enough that Louis kind of believes him when he says these things now. He leans forward. Lestat catches his lips over Armand’s head, over their hands, stroking Armand’s hair, gentle scalp-scratching circles.

Armand has stopped suckling, but he does not let go of Louis’s wrist, keeps gnawing at it with his blunt teeth. Louis does not try to free himself, happy enough to be chewed on. Lestat kisses him and he tastes like Armand, like Louis, tastes good, like he’s good, like he’s trying to be good, finally.