Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Over the years, Rashid had streamlined the process of Armand’s hunts. He had developed protocols to maximize efficiency and discretion, and to ensure the safety of everyone involved.

Well. Almost everyone.

These protocols varied widely based on the crimes of the individual whom Armand had chosen to hunt. If, for instance, Armand’s prey-to-be was someone with a documented history of interpersonal violence, Rashid insisted upon certain precautions.

First precaution: he brought in extra security for the penthouse. Usually, the mere presence of a few large men in uniforms was more than enough to discourage any misbehavior. A little ironic, given how harmless those men were compared to Armand. How often Rashid had seen it in their faces when Armand came gliding into the room, all sweet curls and big doe eyes and dainty loose wrists; he watched them look Armand up and down and then hold themselves differently. He didn’t need mind-reading abilities to see the way they slotted him into some comfortable, reductive category in their minds. Soft. Weak. Effeminate. Victim. Someone to make them feel bigger by comparison. Someone to hurt.

Sometimes, the hardest part of his job was keeping the smile from his face.

Second precaution: he insisted on a thorough personal search before they were even allowed in the front door. Rashid had conducted these searches himself, initially, until the first time he had felt the hard outline of a pistol tucked into the waistband of a man’s trousers, underneath his shirt. Rashid had pulled his hand back like it had been burned. He’d never touched a gun before. Once he pulled it free, he was startled by the sheer weight of it. He didn’t know how to hold it, was terrified if he handled it incorrectly it would go off in his hands. His confusion and distress must have been visible, because the man who’d tried to sneak it inside had laughed. Since then, Rashid had let one of the security men carry out the search. He insisted on observing the process, though, just check that they were thorough every single time.

Third precaution: he did his best to ensure that no members of the staff, including himself, were ever left alone with the target. In theory, it was an easy enough thing to arrange; Louis and Armand had put Rashid in charge of the rest of the staff almost immediately after hiring him. They had veto power on all his decisions, of course, but for years he had been solely responsible for scheduling, wages, promotions, demotions, hiring, firing, training, and the allocation of tasks. So, on days when someone dangerous was going to enter the apartment, Rashid instructed the staff to move in pairs, and designated which areas they should avoid if at all possible. It was safest for everyone involved to limit the overall amount of contact. The less they knew, the better. He overheard enough snatches of hastily-hushed conversation to know that the policy earned him no small amount of mockery, but that was fun. He knew what the other employees thought of him. He’d given up trying to change their minds; simply no helping it.

Fourth and final precaution: he slipped a miniature taser into his coat pocket, in case of absolute emergency. He had purchased it with his own money rather than be forced to explain to one or both of his bosses why he felt he needed it. He felt confident that they could have no objections. It was the sort of weapon that would do no good whatsoever against a vampire, but that should, in theory, be sufficient to temporarily incapacitate a human. That was how it had been advertised, at least. Rashid had never actually had to use it. But the weight of it in his pocket was reassuring, as he escorted the murderers and torturers and rapists and abusers and war criminals through the penthouse to wherever Armand was waiting.

Four entirely reasonable precautions. Rashid was proud of this arrangement, and for years, the hunts ran without a hitch. There was just one flaw underlying the overall system. A flaw that rested on two tiny, crucial, incorrect assumptions: that it was only worth the expense and inconvenience to enact those precautions if Armand’s prey was someone particularly violent; and that anyone capable of hands-on brutality must, at some point in the past, have demonstrated it publicly enough that there would be a record. An arrest, a newspaper article, a thread on Reddit. Something. Rashid was so thorough in his research; of course, he believed that no one truly dangerous could slip underneath the radar.

It was pride. It was naivete. It was complacency.

In all of Rashid’s research about Grant Sullivan, he had come across no traces of personal violence. He was an American ex-pat, 42 years old, a skilled programmer who had spent the past decade of his life improving the software used in military drones. Rashid had found evidence of myriad other, smaller sins—barely-concealed bribery of politicians and law enforcement, some light embezzling, a few hushed-up DUIs. He was hardly the worst monster Rashid had ever coaxed onto a proverbial platter for Armand, but he was far from a saint. Yes, he had an unthinkable amount of blood on his hands; Rashid’s mistake was believing that all of it was metaphorical.

So he did not waste money scheduling extra security. He did not go fishing through storage for the hand-held metal detector. He did not pull anyone off their assigned duties to accompany him. He left his taser sitting in the small box beneath his bed where he kept it.

He greeted Mr. Sullivan at the front door and invited him inside with blithe good-humor. He explained that Armand was waiting in his personal library and beckoned the man to follow; Rashid thought this would be one of the times when Armand wanted to talk to his victim for a while before the chase. He liked doing that, if he felt there was something interesting that he could learn from them about the world. He was probably going to grill this man about the nuances of drone software for an hour before he started the hunt; Rashid had to suppress a smile at the thought.

He led the man through the silent rooms of the penthouse. Louis was overseas on business, and it would be a few hours before any of the rest of the staff turned up to begin their workday. Rashid was the only one who actually lived on-site, available at a moment’s notice no matter the hour. This particular apartment had been designed to accommodate a sizeable staff; half a dozen tiny rooms tucked away on a lower floor that was only accessible from inside the penthouse. Rashid was sure the designer had used a nice euphemism, rather than calling it the servants’ quarters. But his was the only one of those rooms that was occupied—the rest had been repurposed for storage. Louis and Armand valued their privacy, and their needs were fewer than those of a human couple would be. No need for a cook, a nanny, a professional trainer. So much of the Sisyphean messiness of everyday human life simply did not apply. And besides—as Louis had said a few times, no doubt considering it a compliment at the time—Rashid was capable enough to count as three or even four men.

He was looking forward to watching Armand’s face light up, the way it so often did when Rashid introduced him to his next meal. It would be good to see him smile again. Rashid knew all too well what a hard few months it had been for Armand. Mr. Sullivan seemed like he would provide some good entertainment; he was athletic, for a programmer. During his research, Rashid had skimmed posts on Mr. Sullivan’s social media about half-marathons and creatine, so it seemed likely that Armand would be in for a fun—

Rashid stumbled, almost losing his balance as something heavy slammed into him. He lost hold of his tablet, hearing it shatter against the concrete floor as he himself collided hard with the wall. His first thought was that Mr. Sullivan must have tripped and toppled into him. He didn’t even realize what was going on, until he felt the blade against his throat.

“You people must think I’m an idiot, huh?”

Rashid had never had a knife to his throat before. The most surprising thing about it was how little it hurt. He could feel the sharpness of the metal, the hot line where it had dug a little ways into his skin. But that was all it was—mere heat, absent of any pain. It was probably all the adrenaline in his blood. Rashid had read about how the fight-or-flight response could temporarily suspend the nervous system’s ability to register pain. It was an automatic survival mechanism, meant to eliminate any distractions that might hinder one’s focus on getting away from the threat. Something to do with endorphins? He couldn’t recall the precise mechanisms behind it.

But what a wonder, really. All those complex processes activating automatically, without ever needing to be trained or consciously called on, at the first sign of trouble. Which, in this case, had been when Mr. Sullivan shoved him back against the wall, clamped a big and sweaty hand over his mouth, held a knife up to his neck, and told him not to fight.

Or had it been the knife, first, then the hand, then the warning? Or the hand, the knife, the warning? The wall had come first, but he couldn’t remember the sequence of the other three. It had happened only seconds ago. Why couldn’t he remember? It had all been so fast, a blur, but it alarmed him not to know. Rashid prided himself on his ability to observe details that other people missed and recall them accurately. So why couldn’t he now? Was it because he had hit the back of his head, when Mr. Sullivan slammed him into the wall? Or was it the panic, making him stupid, the way it made everybody stupid—and why should he be an exception? People often said that after they’d been assaulted, didn’t they: that their memories were blurred, incomplete, uncertain? And that was what was happening to him. He was being assaulted.

He was—

“I recognize your voice. You were the one on the phone, right? The one who invited me and set all this up for your boss?”

Mr. Sullivan was speaking fast; he was wide-eyed and rather manic. Rashid thought he was probably high on something, given his affect and the state of his pupils, but there had been no evidence of drug usage in his research. Then again, there hadn’t been anything about him pulling knives on people, either. He’d gotten Rashid pinned so quickly, without a trace of hesitation or uncertainty. No way to be sure, really, but it didn’t feel like it was the first time he’d pulled that particular maneuver.

Rashid’s stomach roiled at that thought. It was catching up to him, now. The shock was fading, and reality was sinking in. Mr. Sullivan had done this before. He’d done this before and cleaned up so carefully, so thoroughly that no one had even whispered about it.

This was, he realized, very, very, very, very bad.

“You thought this would actually work? That I was dumb enough to just walk in here ready to play chase across the city, like it’s an honest game and not an obvious set-up? Please. You think nobody’s tried to kill me before? I know a trap when I see one.”

Rashid would be trying to talk his way out of this, now, if he could speak. But the clammy hand across the bottom of his face was unyielding. How much of a sound would he be able to make, if he tried screaming? Surely it wouldn’t be loud enough for Armand to hear, even with his vampire senses. He was on the opposite end of the penthouse, so far away. Even if Rashid could reach far enough to knock over the small table that was the closest item of furniture, he doubted the crash would be audible. Besides, the vase on top of it had cost a few million dollars. It was three centuries old. He wasn’t going to smash it just because he’d been stupid, he’d been so fucking stupid, and now—

“I don’t know who hired your boss or if he’s just some free-range sicko, but he sure didn’t know who he was messing with. I saw through it. I was fucking ready.”

Rashid had not been ready. Not for any of this. Not for the knife; not for the paranoid ranting; not for the flecks of spit landing on his cheeks; not for the hand on his face wrenching away only to be replaced by the man’s mouth, clumsy and brutal; not for that hand relocating to his ass, kneading it with nauseating appreciation; not for the smug shushing noises when his breaths started to come fast and shallow with terror; not for the unmistakable feeling of an erection being ground against his thigh; not for the sick slow paralyzed realization I think he’s going to rape me; not for the shock of pain when he bit down hard on Rashid’s tongue.

The fear in Rashid’s chest wound tighter and tighter. He wanted to twist free and run, bolt away as fast as he could and not stop until his legs gave out, but he couldn’t seem to move a single muscle. He had never in his life been so aware of his own neck. So many fragile structures all clustered together: spine, windpipe, jugular, carotid artery. How fast would he bleed out, if Mr. Sullivan cut him? Would it hurt very badly? What would Director Talbot tell his family? What excuses did the Talamasca dole out for its fallen field agents? How proud and foolish Rashid had been, assuming he was too clever to ever become one of them…

Would it be smarter, in the end, not to struggle? To simply let him do what he wanted? Maybe he wasn’t planning on killing Rashid, after all. Maybe he would only fuck him, give him a little dose of payback, and then leave. If he was quick enough about it, could Rashid cover for his mistake? Tidy himself up, lie to Armand, tell him that Mr. Sullivan was a no-show? That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? He would be able to save face. He would be the only one who ever knew.

Mr. Sullivan grabbed his shoulder and turned him roughly, shoving him face-first into the wall. The knife was back against his neck at once, the point of it this time, wedged into the dip just beneath the base of his skull. Rashid heard the metal rattle of a belt buckle being unfastened—such a mundane sound—and all his rational thinking and planning dissolved into blind panic.

—Armand! Armand, help me, please, please, help me!

Rashid didn’t even know if Armand would be able to hear him. He had not done this in years: attempted to project his thoughts past the natural barrier around his mind. He had never had to do it on command, in a crisis. Would it even work? Had he forgotten the trick of it? Mr. Sullivan maneuvered him, kicking his ankle to force his legs further apart, and Rashid tried again, all other thoughts obliterated apart from his pleading.

—Please, Armand, please, pleaseplease get him off me–

A flurry of disturbed air, and Rashid lurched off-balance as the weight that had been pinning him in place disappeared. He caught himself on the wall before he fell, turning to see…

Armand.

He was dressed for a hunt, a simple black turtleneck like he usually favored, to minimize sun exposure to his bare skin and visible bloodstains that might prove inconvenient on his journey home. Mr. Sullivan was twisting in his grip like a hooked fish: an apt comparison, given that Armand had hoisted him into the air by his collarbone. He had pushed his fingers straight through the flesh and held him aloft as if he were no heavier than a piece of clothing on a hanger.

Armand was here. Armand had heard him and he’d come to save him.

“He has a knife–” Rashid warned in a strangled gasp, a second too late. Mr. Sullivan lunged with it, aiming for Armand’s eyes. Armand leaned out of the way of the stab with lazy ease, exhaling a faint tsk of irritation. He caught the hand with the blade in his own and squeezed. Rashid heard the bones cracking, heard the wet squish as Armand swiftly changed it from a human hand into a messy smear of unrecognizable red pulp. He yanked the knife free and let it fall with a clatter that was only just audible beneath Mr. Sullivan’s screams.

“Quiet,” Armand commanded, and the howl cut off with a throaty wet click.

Mr. Sullivan thrashed in Armand’s hold, cradling the mashed remnants of his hand against his chest and trying to kick at him. His slacks were bunched up around his ankles and limiting his movements. Armand did not compel him to be still as well as silent, though Rashid knew he easily could have. He let him struggle, instead, watching with pitiless indifference. The veins stood out on Mr. Sullivan’s forehead as he wept, his face brick-red and wet with tears and snot.

Rashid sagged back against the wall, so overcome with relief he could think nothing but he came for me, he heard me and he came for me—

“How arrogant you must be, to recognize a trap and then to walk in it anyway. You were convinced that some foreknowledge and a little switchblade would be enough to render you the victor. Such a pity. I thought you were going to be clever.”

Armand was beautiful in his scorn and his effortless superiority. Rashid felt, bubbling up amidst the relief, a kind of giddy vindictiveness. Now that the danger was passed, now that Armand was here and he was safe, he could appreciate just how spectacularly Mr. Sullivan had fucked up.

“You thought it was going to be so easy, didn’t you? That you could just waltz into my home and help yourself? You even took that little pill on your way here, didn’t you, just to make sure you had the energy for both of us. Remarkable complacency. But then, I suppose that’s the product of a lifetime spent never…what is the phrase? Picking on someone your own size.”

Mr. Sullivan sucked in a sharp, frightened gasp; it took Rashid a moment to spot why. Armand’s eyes had begun to vibrate, a juddering unnatural movement. Rashid had read about that in the files before he left London but he’d never, ever seen it before.

“Do you not like it?” Armand asked, his voice light with mockery, “Being the rabbit for once and not the fox?”

With that, Armand lowered Mr. Sullivan to the ground, releasing him and taking a small step back. For a moment, the man stood frozen in shock. Then he was pulling up his slacks with his uninjured hand and fleeing clumsily towards the nearest door. He got within two steps of it before, in the blink of an eye, Armand was standing in front of him, his posture lazy, blocking the way.

Mr. Sullivan reeled away, changing course, dashing for the door on the opposite side of the room. Rashid understood the game when, again, Armand allowed him to get within arm’s reach of freedom before (presumably: Rashid did not see the stages in between, but he had read about this…) stopping time and sauntering over to stand in his way.

There were three exits to the room; when Mr. Sullivan tried the third one, as if it would be any different this time, Rashid could not help it. He laughed. It was, objectively, funny. The man hadn’t taken the time to do up his button and fly—probably couldn’t have managed it one-handed anyway—so he had to hold up his slacks as he ran, shuffling and awkward. Hard to feel any pity for him, considering the reason his pants were undone in the first place.

But it had been a mistake, letting that hiccupping little laugh out. It reminded Mr. Sullivan of Rashid’s continued presence in the room, right as the hopelessness of his situation finally sank in. Rashid’s stomach dropped with fear as Mr. Sullivan turned towards him. His eyes flicked from Rashid, to the knife on the ground, and back.

And once again, Mr. Sullivan was lunging at him, scooping up the knife and closing in. What was his plan? Take Rashid hostage and demand that Armand let him go? No, no, it wasn’t that. There was no calculation in his face, no hope. Just pure, desperate hate. He knew that he was never going to get out of here and he simply wanted to take Rashid with him in one last act of spite.

This time, Rashid at least tried to get away. He forced his shaking legs to move and he ran. In his scrambling fear, he bumped into the small table, sent that vase toppling. He paused to catch it, because apparently his instinct not to break any of his employer’s things was stronger than his survival drive. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Armand had not registered the shift in Mr. Sullivan’s trajectory, at first. He grinned as he bent to pick up the knife, thinking no doubt that he meant to try to fight back. It wasn’t until Rashid moved that Armand seemed to understand.

“No!”

Armand tackled Mr. Sullivan to the ground in the instant before he reached Rashid. Rashid watched as they fell, a confused rolling tangle of limbs, and then Armand was on top, pinning him. Mr. Sullivan bucked and writhed, trying to break free. The power of Armand’s earlier command must have elapsed, because Mr. Sullivan began to yell, wordless and outraged.

From Armand, there was no more mocking, no more cold superiority. Whether it was his fear for Rashid, or the act of pouncing, or the feeling of his prey beneath him, or all the three—his demeanor shifted. He snarled, animalistic and feral, and tore into Mr. Sullivan’s throat. His movements were quick, fluid, utterly unnatural. He did not merely bite down and then suck from the punctures his fangs left behind, the way Rashid had seen Louis do with his human donors. Rashid watched him sink his teeth in deep and then jerk his head from side to side, ripping loose a mouthful of flesh. He spat it out onto the floor and plunged the bottom half of his face into the crater he’d opened up in Mr. Sullivan’s neck, growling low and constant.

Mr. Sullivan’s cries changed, his anger giving way to pain and terror. He tried to shove Armand off once more, and Rashid could hear the snap of ligaments tearing as Armand dislocated both his arms, a firm rebuke, no more of that from you, now.

This was not how Armand usually ate; Rashid knew that. He had read so many accounts of Armand’s hunting, mostly collected during his tenure with the Théâtre des Vampires. Armand abstained from many of the common feeding practices of other vampires: he did not fuck his prey, whether or not they were willing, before or after killing them. He did not maim or injure, prior to the necessary bite. He did not terrorize. Instead, he used the Mind Gift to lull the humans he fed from into a state of calm acceptance before draining them quickly and, according to all accounts, fastidiously.

(Nowhere in all of the Talamasca’s centuries of accrued analysis on the vampire Armand was even a single sentence speculating that there might be a link between these unusual habits and halal slaughter practices; not a single acknowledgement that the ‘gibberish’ that a few accounts mentioned Armand murmuring before he ate might, in fact, be a quick prayer.)

This was something very different. All those pent-up baser instincts let loose, with the force of a dam breaking. Armand was no longer growling, which made it easier for Rashid to hear the wet gulping sounds of his frenzied drinking. He did not stop to come up for air, but then, he didn’t need to, did he? Breathing was a vestigial biological habit for vampires rather than a necessity.

Mr. Sullivan’s skin had gone waxy and corpse-white by the time Armand lifted his head. He tore the shirt from the body as if it were made of cobwebs, plunged his hand straight into the chest cavity and yanked something out. Rashid couldn’t see what it was until Armand shook the clinging hunks of meat off it. It was Mr. Sullivan’s sternum; he recognized the shape of it as Armand cracked it open between his two hands. He bent down over it and started to lap up the marrow—Rashid saw the pink flash of his tongue dipping in again and again, quick greedy licks. But of course, that must be the best bit, mustn’t it? Where the blood was made, fresh and new, right from the source.

He should be disgusted, no matter his feelings about Mr. Sullivan as an individual. Rashid knew that. The sane human response to a display of bestial violence on this level was nausea, revulsion. Terror would make a suitable alternative. So would numb shock—all perfectly normal responses to the trauma of watching another human being be torn apart and eaten.

Armand was digging through Mr. Sullivan’s guts, now, unspooling them onto the floor to get better access to the pelvis. The disc of bone snapped so easily between his hands. Such a familiar motion: like splitting a piece of bread in two to share. Rashid watched, breathless and captivated, as Armand slurped at the pockets of marrow lodged in the thickest parts of the bone. He was breathing again, panting with uncontrolled delight over his dessert. That reverent look on his beautiful face, his eyes closed and his mouth slack, as if he’d never tasted anything sweeter. A bliss so intense it bordered on erotic.

It was all Rashid could do to keep his hands at his sides, not to palm himself through his clothes. Because he wasn’t sane, he wasn’t normal. He’d always known it, and here was the final, incontrovertible evidence. He was watching a monster devour someone, devour a person, and he was so aroused he thought he might come from a single touch.

Once he had sucked the second ilium dry and let it fall from his hands, Armand rocked back onto his heels. He lifted his gaze up and asked, “Are you alright, Rashid?”

Rashid opened his mouth to answer, but no sound would come out. He swallowed, watching as Armand rose to his feet, his movements slow and elegant once more. Pulling his façade back on—but he was always this underneath, wasn’t he? No matter how many centuries he’d been alive. No matter how refined his manners, how perfect his mimicry. It was camouflage. Rashid had just seen the wolf beneath the sheep’s clothing with his own eyes for the very first time.

He tried once again to answer, but his mouth was too dry, his throat stopped up with emotion. He nodded, instead.

“You’re breathing very fast,” Armand said. Rashid couldn’t tell if it was observation, accusation, or apology.

He stepped closer to Rashid, a fat drop of blood gathering at the point of his narrow chin. It hung there for a moment, suspended and heavy, before plummeting; Rashid shuddered hard enough that Armand saw it. Rashid knew he’d seen it from the slight tilt of his head, the perceptible sharpening of his curiosity.

From this close, Rashid could see all the tiny changes in Armand’s face. His nostrils were flared, his breathing much louder than usual. His eyes were dilated wider than any human’s Rashid had ever seen: only a tiny band of bright orange-gold visible, vibrating along with the eerie movements of his eyeballs. A few miniscule droplets of blood from the arterial spray were caught in Armand’s long lashes and the delicate arch of his eyebrows.

And then there were the fangs, but Rashid tried not to look at those. He’d seen them before, of course; little glimpses, now and then. Occasionally, Louis would summon him for something while Armand was still sprawled out on the bed, naked and gasping for breath, the smell of blood thick in the air. When that happened, Rashid would often see the points of Armand’s descended fangs in his open mouth, tiny and yet so deadly.

Every time he saw them, Rashid’s mind churned with speculation: How many tens of thousands of people had died with those sharp little things in them? What did it really feel like when he pushed them inside? Were they more sensitive than human teeth, like the studies suggested? Just how sensitive were his? What kinds of sounds would he make, if Rashid touched them just right for him? Sweet soft half-swallowed whimpers like Rashid sometimes heard as he walked by a closed door? Or low guttural growling, animal and ravenous, like he had made as he fed on Mr. Sullivan just now? How would Armand look at him, if he invited him in close and then slowly bared a patch of skin for him—wherever it was softest, some tender hidden nook of his body, all hot and flushed with blood already in anticipation? If he told him: ‘It’s for you, sir. Only for you. Please.’? How would it feel? Damp breath, hesitation, and then the bite. Armand would be so gentle wouldn’t he? He would be, for Rashid. Hardly any pain at all. Just the sudden feeling of delicious fullness, those cute needle-sharp fangs sliding all the way inside him, down to the gum, going in deep and easy and slick—

He couldn’t keep himself from looking any longer. Rashid’s gaze dropped to Armand’s mouth, smeared with gore from the body cooling on the ground a few feet away. He wondered, as Armand took a half-step closer still, just how many times he had jerked off thinking about Armand putting that little mouth on him. Biting him, feeding from him. Nuzzling against the open fly of his trousers and mouthing at his cock through his underwear, like he was so eager for it that he couldn’t even wait—

Rashid had never been this close to Armand so soon after he’d fed. He was accustomed to the way that very little heat radiated from Armand. It was like being near to a statue or a mannequin—no detectable change in temperature. But there was warmth, now. Rashid could feel the heat of Mr. Sullivan’s lifeblood pouring from Armand’s skin.

“You’re panting,” Armand reiterated, “You’re shaking. Are you that afraid of me, now?”

Armand asked it like he was sure of the answer. Like he knew already that it was yes and it was all he could do to keep his despair tucked away underneath that seamless, practiced accent. But it wasn’t precisely despair, Rashid thought—it was an emotion they didn’t have a name for. It was whatever happened when you carried around desolation in your chest for half a millennium, until it eroded down from a jagged shard into something soft and faded and opaque, like sea glass. Armand asked the question like he was a monster, and he knew it, and he was too exhausted to feel his self-loathing as anything more than the ache from an old, deep bruise.

Rashid knew what he should say. The safe answer, the wise answer. Yes, sir, I’m very sorry, sir, thank you for the help, sir, I’ll just go get cleaned up, sir, and then I’ll be back to deal with the mess on the floor. He could feel the shape of the words in his mouth already. They’d always come so easily to him—whatever lies he needed to keep his real self safely hidden. He’d mastered that skill long before the Talamasca ever got their hands on him.

Yes, Rashid had a lifetime’s worth of practice at lying. Sometimes he wondered if he was even capable of doing the opposite anymore.

“I’m not,” he breathed, so airy he could hardly hear himself, “I’m not scared.”

Rashid’s heart beat fast as he watched the words sink in. Disbelief on Armand’s beautiful face, at first, followed by confusion as he registered the particular emphasis Rashid had placed on the final word. A tonal suggestion that there was something else he was, at that moment. A beat, and then Armand’s eyes widened. Rashid balled his hands into fists, resisting the urge to cover himself as Armand’s gaze raked down his body, searching for confirmation. Rashid did not look, too. He knew it must be all too obvious how hard he was, the strain of his aching cock against the tight front of his trousers. He watched Armand’s nostrils flare even wider. Could he smell it on him, now that he knew what notes to search for? Rashid dug his blunt fingernails into his palm to keep from making any sort of undignified sound at that thought.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not afraid of me,” Armand pointed out, his tone distracted; he had not taken his wide, vibrating, unblinking eyes off Rashid’s erection. Rashid felt himself twitch under the scrutiny.

“It does for me,” Rashid insisted. He didn’t know what he was doing; this was against all the rules he’d laid out for himself. He should shut up. He should leave. He should—

Armand lifted his gaze finally, the vibrating of his eyes slowing and then ceasing entirely.

“You’re bleeding,” he announced. He neatly pierced the pad of his index finger with his thumbnail and brought it to Rashid’s neck, tracing his blood along the long cut that the knife had left behind. Rashid felt a rush of heat, an odd itching sensation as the cut healed. He’d read analyses about the healing properties of vampiric blood from the archives, had seen Armand use his blood to patch up the blood donors on the occasions that Louis got a bit carried away. He had always wondered how it would feel.

Armand was standing so close that Rashid could feel his breath. He watched as another bead of blood gathered and dropped, this time from the tip of Armand’s nose.

Wordlessly, Rashid opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. He could feel the ragged patch where Mr. Sullivan had bitten it. Armand sucked in a sharp breath; probably imagining how it had gotten that way, what had happened before he heard Rashid’s call for help. He pressed his bleeding fingertip to Rashid’s tongue, over the stinging wound. Rashid waited for the itching to stop, before he closed his lips around Armand’s finger, dipping his head forward to pull more of it into his mouth.

He raised his eyes to meet Armand’s as he ran his tongue along the digit, hollowing out his cheeks, making a real show of it. He felt his face heating even as he did it. He wanted to be shameless, brazen, but he knew the blush betrayed him. He pulled back until his lips were wrapped wetly around Armand’s first knuckle before sinking down once more, as far as he could go, allowing himself one soft, muffled, eager sound.

“Rashid—” Armand’s voice had turned rough, and Rashid’s stomach twisted with pleasure at making it that way. He wanted more. He wanted Armand’s voice wrecked, gasping his name, again and again, whispering it with that same bliss he’d seen on Armand’s face as he fed, Rashid, Rashid, my sweet Rashid, my love—

Rashid let Armand’s finger slip from his mouth. He was so tired of living on fantasies. He was tired of thinking, tired of rules, tired of silence, tired of duty, tired of loneliness, tired of wondering.

It was the easiest thing in the world, to give in and let it happen. To rise up on his tiptoes and fall forward and kiss Armand full on the mouth. He buried his hands in Armand’s curls, easy, parted his lips with a shivery sigh, easy, let his eyes sink shut, easy, let his mouth do what it had wanted to do for months, easy. All of it easy and soft and perfect.

Armand kissed back, tentative at first, then bolder. His mouth tasted coppery with blood and Rashid swallowed back a whimper at the thought. This beautiful predator, still tasting of his kill, parting his lips for Rashid so very sweetly. Rashid pressed the tip of his tongue to one of Armand’s fangs, felt the way it made him jolt, heard the needy, shocked sound it startled from him.

Whatever reservations Armand had been harboring, that little trick did away with the last of them. He crowded forward, pressing Rashid back against the wall and slotting his thigh neatly between Rashid’s legs. Rashid whimpered into the kiss, rocking forward against him in tiny, eager thrusts. He felt Armand smiling against his mouth, adjusting his stance to give Rashid a little more room to work.

God, he wasn’t going to last five minutes at this rate. Not two minutes, once Armand dropped his hands to settle at his hips, not guiding him, just feeling the rhythmic back and forth motion of his hips.

Rashid felt the oddest sensation—something nudging against his thoughts, a faint pressure, asking for permission. It took a moment to figure out how to let it in, and then his head echoed with Armand’s voice, soft and rich.

—You called me by my name.

It took Rashid a moment to understand what Armand meant. He had, hadn’t he? When he’d cried for help. It had not been a conscious choice. He’d simply been too scared to remember to substitute ‘sir’ for ‘Armand’. He was always ‘Armand’ in Rashid’s mind. He had been for more than a year now.

—Yes. Yes, I’m sorry, sir, I–

Armand had begun kissing his way along Rashid’s jaw, which was good, because it felt wonderful, and bad, because there was nothing left now to stopper up all the little sounds he kept making, a soft ah! for every thrust. Rashid had always struggled with it, trying to be silent and stoic during sex, the way people expected, the way people wanted from a man—

—I want to hear it again.

Armand slipped his fingertips beneath the hem of Rashid’s shirt and ran them over his tense belly. They were tacky with blood. Rashid shuddered, remembering those hands scooping out fistfuls of Mr. Sullivan’s entrails. He could feel his balls draw in tight to his body, he was close, he was so close—

—Armand, Armand…

His thrusts were wild now, stuttering and desperate. Armand kissed down his neck, nuzzling at the dip just above his collarbone. He was smiling, again; Rashid could feel it, the soft indent of his little fangs pressed against the skin, too gentle even to scratch.

—Out loud, please.

“Armand—!”

Rashid choked the name out as he arched forward hard, his whole body tense as he came in hot pulses. He shuddered his way through the orgasm as it dragged on and on, rutting against Armand until he couldn’t bear to move any longer. When it finally released him, he sagged forward, sweaty and trembling and gasping. Armand caught his weight easily, supporting him when his legs gave up on doing so.

He buried his face against Armand’s chest, and for a few moments they stayed like that as Rashid just tried to catch his breath. His body stayed heavy and hot with afterglow, but his brain, unfortunately, began to slowly come back online.

Armand could not read his thoughts; Rashid knew that. He must have given himself away somehow: a change in his breathing, a shift in the tension of his muscles, who knew? Whatever it was, Armand detected it, the moment it all started to catch up with him.

“Rashid, I believe it would be for the best if you took the day off. I will inform the rest of the staff when they arrive, and Karishma can fill in for you.”

Rashid protested by reflex, “But, sir—”

His eyes drifted over to Mr. Sullivan’s corpse on the floor: the glistening pile of intestines, the gaping cavity of the torso, the shards of bone and scraps of torn flesh littered all around. It was a mess. One of Rashid’s duties was to ensure that the penthouse remained spotless: messes were his purview, not Armand’s. A simple, straightforward process. If there was a mess, he cleaned it up. And this mess wasn’t like the others, was it? He was the one responsible for it in the first place…

He had never touched a dead body before. What was he going to do with it? He’d never asked Armand how he disposed of the remains when he was finished with his hunts. He had read about various common methods amongst vampires, while he was preparing for this assignment. Rashid was pretty sure he wouldn’t be strong enough to even lift it. Would he have to cut it up, first?

Rashid’s stomach turned at the thought. The damp fabric of his underwear was clinging to his oversensitive cock and it was going to seep through, soon, if he didn’t change. He had gotten off on it, on witnessing this man’s murder. He had watched this man die and it had made him so hard that he had humped Armand like a wild animal until he’d come in his pants, like some kind of sick freak—

“Rashid,” Armand repeated, setting a fingertip against his chin and redirecting his gaze. There was blood smeared from his Adam’s apple to his nose, and his expression was kind and very, very worried, “That was not a request. Please, go and take care of yourself. I will deal with this and—and we will talk later.”

Rashid opened his mouth to argue, but what would he say? It was not a request. Armand had told him very clearly what he expected of him. What choice did he have, but to do as he was told?

“I—of course, sir.”

Armand leaned in and kissed Rashid, a brief, chaste press of his lips. Rashid caught Armand by the shirt before he could pull away. There was something he needed to say, before he did as he was told; something he couldn’t bear to leave undone a second longer.

“Thank you,” he breathed, pressing his forehead to Armand’s. “Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for coming. Thank you for, for—” his voice cracked and broke off into silence. It was too enormous to put into words.

Armand was quiet for a while. Rashid wondered what he was thinking. If there were things he did not know how to say, either.

In the end, he kissed Rashid again, lingering and slow, their lips still half stuck together when he murmured: “Any time you call, I will come.”

Chapter Text

Rashid did not know what it was that woke him: a subtle shift in the angle of the mattress beneath him, the soft sound of someone breathing, a combination of faint scents, the pressure of a hand laid on the covers over his stomach. What he did know was that when he opened his eyes, Armand was finally there.

He looked particularly unearthly, perched at the edge of the bed and illuminated from behind by the dim glow of the nightlight in the bathroom. Rashid took in the achingly familiar shape of him in silhouette: the curls, the jut of his Adam’s apple, the slope of his nose, the curve of his shoulders. His eyes were all that was visible of his face, glowing very faintly, sunset-colored and unsettling and beloved.

He’d been waiting for this moment since he set that newspaper down in front of Daniel Molloy. Armand had come for him, just like Rashid knew he would.

“I thought it would be harder to find you,” Armand said, and the sound of his voice after a month of not hearing it felt like a knife sliding between Rashid’s ribs. “They don’t even keep the directory behind a lock. It was just sitting there on the reception desk. It was so easy that I thought it must be decoy, but here you are.”

Armand ran his fingers through Rashid’s hair, brushing it back in exactly the way he always used to after Rashid collapsed back against the pillows, gasping and twitching with little aftershocks. That light, lovely, precise pressure from his nails. Not piercing the skin. Not yet. But that was going to come soon enough, wouldn’t it? Armand could only be here to kill him.

Rashid had daydreamed about this reunion more times than he could count. He’d played out so many potential scenarios in his mind. He’d expected to be afraid when the time came. After all, he’d seen first-hand what Armand could do to a fragile human body, hadn’t he?

Instead, what he felt was an overwhelming sense of relief.

“Is Rashid even your real name? Or do they insist on cover identities, even within the Motherhouse?”

Rashid took a while to answer. He had to handle this carefully. It was so important. It was probably the last important thing he would ever do, and he couldn’t afford to let his emotions undermine what he’d planned for this eventuality. So the silence stretched on as he fought against the impulse to do something silly like bury his face against Armand’s thigh and sob I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

“Rashid is my name. No point in changing it for a cover when it’s so common.”

He’d used a different surname in Dubai, but Armand had doubtless already noticed that discrepancy when he saw the directory. Helen—who was in charge of setting up false identities and generating all the official paperwork and references and sundry online detritus that would trick a background check—had given Rashid a choice whether or not he wanted to use his real name. Pros and cons, either way. A false name would help to constantly remind him of his precarious position and keep him alert. His real name would offer authenticity; so hard, to train someone to respond to a new name as instantly and unhesitatingly as they ought.

Rashid had opted for the latter: he was confident that he would not lose focus on his task no matter what. So sure it would, in fact, be no struggle at all, that nothing could shake his faith in the order or his assignment.

Arrogance.

He was so glad he’d made that choice, in hindsight. Glad that he got to hear his own true name in Armand’s voice so many times, in all its endless variations: when Armand was worried; when Armand was playful; when Armand was sleepy; when Armand was dazed; when Armand was lost and childlike; when Armand wanted affection and didn’t know how to ask; when Armand was teetering right at the edge, helpless and raw and needy all for him—

Rashid shut his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to keep hot tears from leaking out of the corners.

“It’s interesting. I don’t know if I should believe you or not.”

It would’ve been better if he had spat the implied accusation, or said it outright: why should I trust anything you say, liar? It would’ve been better if he had twisted his fingers into Rashid’s hair and pulled until it stung. Rashid knew he deserved bitter recriminations and pain; he wanted Armand to be angry with him.

But Armand’s fingers continued carding through his hair—gentle, gentle—and his voice was detached and numb, the way it only got when Armand was truly hurt. Rashid had heard him go hollow like this before. How dreadful, to join the ranks of experiences so painful that Armand stopped being able to comprehend them and became baffled and quiet.

Moving slowly, telegraphing the action, Rashid slid his arm from underneath the covers and clicked on the lamp on the bedside table. He squinted against the spill of light. He ought to be able to see him; he didn’t deserve the mercy of shadows obscuring Armand’s absent little frown.

Armand’s fingers were too cold, Rashid realized. They should be warmer at this time of the month. He had long since memorized the cycles of Armand’s feeding; he ate once around the 10-12th of the month, and then again around the 24-26th. But this was not how his body looked or felt less than a week after a hunt. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, a drawn waxiness to his skin. He looked more like the dead thing he really was than Rashid had ever seen. Had he missed his earlier feeding date as well? Was Malik his last proper meal?

What would be best—should he encourage Armand to drain him once he’d finished what he came here for? Or would the very act of giving permission ensure that Armand did the opposite, fearing a trap or trick?

(And why shouldn’t he fear it? Fool him a thousand times, shame on Rashid. Fool him a thousand-and-one, shame on Armand. The entire situation was one of Rashid’s own making; too late now to wish things were different.)

“I’m going to sit up.”

Armand didn’t say anything, but he moved his hand from Rashid’s hair, which was probably as close to permission as he was going to get. Rashid scooted back, propping himself up against the pillows, wiping the dampness from his face with the ragged cuff of his sweater. He was already breaking the rules: he’d sworn to himself that he would not cry, would not fight, would not beg for forgiveness.

“The Steins. That was you?”

Rashid flinched. He had predicted Armand would have questions; he had not anticipated that would be the first one. Rashid crossed his arms tight over his chest, shame making his voice thick as he answered.

“Yes.”

“What else?”

It was proving much harder than he’d anticipated, not crying. When he was planning this, Rashid had thought it would be a choice. But his body was not allowing him to not cry. His vision swam, his throat ached. He fought it as well as he could.

“Would you like a full list?”

Armand scrutinized him, like he wasn’t sure which answer he wanted to give. Rashid couldn’t blame him. Had Armand even realized it until this moment, the extent of Rashid’s meddling? He had no inkling what was going on behind those luminous eyes, but after a few seconds, Armand nodded.

Rashid nodded back in confirmation. He had prepared for this. He opened his mouth and worked his way through the catalogue chronologically. His acts of interference had not begun right away. It was only in his second year of working in Armand’s household that the odd requests had begun to come through from his superiors. Rashid, we need you to delete that email from Mr. Du Lac’s inbox. Rashid, we need you to plant this somewhere they will find it, no, not right away, put it somewhere clever. Rashid, we need you to cancel that flight reservation, and make it convincing, will you, like Armand was the one doing it? Rashid, we need—

Little inconsequential acts of sabotage. Each one taken in isolation was just a tiny needle prick—an annoyance, an inconvenience, a prank. Collectively, they made up an ongoing and relentless assault on Armand and Louis’s relationship.

Rashid made no attempt to excuse his actions, to diminish them or imply he was unaware of their impact. He delivered the facts of what he had done as precisely as he could—which was, without flattering himself, extremely precise. This was, after all, what he was trained for. Even moments after being roused from sleep, even in heightened emotional distress, his memory for detail was organized and thorough.

Armand did not interrupt him or otherwise react. He sat still as a statue, listening while Rashid explained three years’ worth of deception and sabotage. Eventually, Rashid came to the denouement: the script, delivered directly to the table where the three of them sat. Rashid had known what it meant, handing it over. His cover had already begun slipping thanks to the journalist’s recklessness. There was no possible explanation for the presence of that document apart from Rashid. Armand had seen him holding it in his hand. No lie on Earth was going to be good enough to undo that.

And he had kept a straight face, hadn’t he, for that final betrayal? He had not snuck one last glance at Armand, had not said any last words to him. He’d maintained the charade right to the end, like a good little agent.

The symmetry of it would be funny, if Rashid could think about any of it without feeling sick to his stomach: how tearing down Armand’s long-held lie had brought his own toppling down with it. One stone. Two birds. Tempting to think of it as something they had in common, except that he was the one who had thrown the stone.

It had begun to rain softly outside; Rashid could hear the patter of it against the window as the silence hung between them.

“What a fool I am,” Armand said at last. “I should’ve realized sooner that something was amiss. You were always too good at your job. And yet I let myself be blind, because I—wanted to believe it. It was a relief, having someone I could rely on so completely. But you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true.”

Armand huffed out a laugh, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Rashid recognized that smile. It was the same one that slipped out when Armand talked about being sold, about being raped as a child, about his centuries spent in filth and misery beneath Paris. Perhaps it was a conscious attempt to undercut the horror, or perhaps it was simply a confused reflex somewhere in his wiring. Either way, Rashid knew it as a sign of emotional distress. And he could not reach for Armand, could he? Could not draw him into his arms and hold him? Because he was the cause, this time.

There were very few options left for Rashid. Atonement was out of the question; he knew that. But maybe he could take away a little of that pain. Just a little.

That was what he had planned; there was a speech he had rehearsed in his head over and over this last month. Nothing left but to deliver it and hope that he could convince Armand to believe him.

He drew in a deep breath and began.

“I know that you’re here to kill me, and maybe hurt me a lot before you do it. I know that I deserve that. I couldn’t stop you if I wanted to, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. If you hadn’t shown up in another month or two, I was thinking I would just do it myself.”

It was the first thing that Rashid had said that startled a reaction from Armand. Before, Armand’s gaze had dropped to his lap as Rashid rattled off all the ways he had eroded Louis’s hard-won trust in him; now he looked up, his eyes round and vibrant orange with shock. Rashid forced himself not to turn away, clenching his jaw against another wave of shame. He knew that suicide was a difficult topic for Armand. But it was the truth, and the last thing he was going to do right now was lie by omission.

“I’m not trying to change your mind or save my life. As far as I’m concerned, I’m already dead. But I—I need to say some things to you first, Armand. You deserve the whole truth and you don’t have it yet. I told you how, but not—not why. I want to tell you why.”

Armand scoffed, “And you think you’re entitled to that? Another chance to fill my head with lies?”

He was finally angry. Rashid thought it must have been the comment about killing himself that had done it. Then he thought, with renewed self-loathing, that it was sick how he couldn’t stop taking notes about Armand in his own head even now.

Rashid considered his response carefully before he spoke.

“I am a very good liar. You’ve never known that about me. I already had a talent for it when the Talamasca recruited me, and they honed it. Obviously, my natural resistances help a great deal, but there were many more skills that I learned. Distraction methods, tricks for making people doubt their own perception, guidelines for how to vary just enough details in retellings to not seem unrealistically consistent. And then, of course, for creatures like yourself, meditation techniques to minimize the autonomic responses that usually accompany lying. Sweat production, heart-rate, voice pitch. I am, among other things, a professional deceiver.

“If I could neutralize my defenses and let you compel me or read my memories, I would do it. But I can’t. And I’m not going to pretend I’m not capable of telling you of something untrue. We both know that I can. That I—have.”

Rashid closed his eyes, fighting back tears again.

“I’ve thought about this a lot since I came back to London. I’ve thought of all the things I wanted to say to you. How I could possibly apologize. But I haven’t—haven’t come up with any reason for you to believe me. Because, well, why the fuck would you?”

Rashid’s voice cracked on the question. Impossible to answer; there was no solution. Armand had trusted Rashid; Rashid had betrayed him. That wasn’t the sort of thing that could be mended easily or quickly. In all likelihood, it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be mended at all. His fault. His fucking fault. Rashid gave up trying not to cry. And if he was going to cry, he might as well beg.

“All I can do is ask, as a favor, even though I know I do not deserve one. Please. Please listen to me, Armand. Please at least let me say it, and you can decide whether you believe it or not. And then—then you can do whatever you want with me, and that’s fine.”

Rashid hung his head and waited for Armand’s answer. He could not remember the last time he had felt so aware of his body. How many more beats of his heart left, before it would stop for good? It seemed to be trying to achieve as high a number as possible, rabbiting away in his chest. How many more breaths? How many more tears?

“And what is it, that you must share with me so urgently?”

He was grateful for the scorn in Armand’s voice. So much better than the hollow confusion that had been there earlier. Rashid would rather Armand hate him than sound so lost and small.

“Everything I told you earlier, everything I did to– to come between you and Louis? I received specific instructions to do those things, with the expectation that I would report back on the results in detail. Particularly…the impact on your relationship. I—I went along with it without even questioning, at first. I didn’t know you as well, then, and I was always so eager to prove myself. I wanted to show that the order had done the right thing to choose me—”

“How old?”

Rashid faltered; he had not anticipated the interruption, did not understand the question.

“What?”

“How old were you, when the Talamasca recruited you?”

Rashid dropped his gaze to his hands. Why would Armand ask something like that? He was trying so hard not to even give the appearance of making excuses for himself. He had promised the truth; he would tell the truth. But it occurred to him only in that moment, when ambushed with the question, that the truth might look a little different from the outside.

“…Nineteen.”

“Hmm.”

Rashid fought the impulse to explain, to excuse. It wasn’t something he had ever considered before, that the answer to that question might be a fact in need of excusing. He had been a legal adult by then, and treated as one by his family and most of the people around him for considerably longer. He had been offered a career opportunity and he had seized it with both hands. Just what was Armand thinking, behind that loud silence of his?

Armand eventually prompted, “You were saying?”

Rashid nodded, but he had lost his momentum. He struggled to begin again, stumbling over false starts, his head still bowed.

“Yes. Yes, I was saying. I was—I wanted you to know that I didn’t…there was no enjoyment in it, for me. As I got to know you better and I saw what it was doing to you…it made me sick to my stomach.”

He spat the words, bitterness sitting like a stone in his stomach even now.

“But I—I did it anyway. Every time. Anything they asked. Because I believed that the order was good, and there must be a reason for all of it. I didn’t think I could—I didn’t know how to—it wasn’t my place to argue or question. So…I lied to you. And I hurt you. And I hurt you. And I h-hurt you.”

Rashid curled forward, burying his face in his hands. Guilt roiled inside him, punctuated by more of that dissonant relief. It felt so good, to finally just say it out loud. To put things into the open between them.

It felt good, too, knowing that Armand was going to end him for it.

“Eventually, I did ask why all of it was necessary, and they told me that it—it was safer for me not to know. Fed me a bunch of bullshit about trust being the foundation of the Talamasca. I just had to trust in the senior members of the order and everything would turn out alright. I—requested to be switched to another assignment, over and over, and they said no every time. They told me I was too valuable and it would be risky to replace me at such a—a critical juncture.”

That was what they had called it. Trying to manipulate him, probably. Make him feel like he was part of something urgent.

“But by then I knew I wasn’t doing anything important. I couldn’t be. You and Louis, you weren’t scheming to take over the world. You were just—just trying to care of one another, and mind your own business, and live your lives. And the truth is, I still don’t know why the order had me doing those things. I’ve been looking into it since I got back, but the whole thing is all…wrong. No official record of orders. No path to trace to know who was giving them. The Director made me swear I wouldn’t breathe a word about the last four years to anyone, even other members of the order. I think—I think maybe it wasn’t a legitimate assignment at all. I think some senior member was just using me to carry out their petty vendetta, and I went along with it like an idiot because I didn’t know any better. At least, not until it was too late and I was in so deep that I couldn’t imagine leaving without—without—”

“Without permission?” Armand completed, softly.

It was not the word Rashid had been searching for, but it was the right one. It left him speechless, reeling from how well Armand understood him. He always had, hadn’t he? Even before he knew the secret. He’d looked right into Rashid’s soul and seen so many things he’d never dared show anyone, had hardly even allowed himself to see—

“Yes,” Rashid exhaled, stunned. Once more, Armand had thrown him off his rhythm and he was at a loss how to restart.

After a few moments’ silence, Armand asked, “What would have happened to you? If you had disobeyed your instructions, or left before you were given dispensation?”

“I would’ve been kicked out,” Rashid answered at once. He didn’t even have to think about it. There was no other possible outcome. The Talamasca had certain expectations of its members. Loyalty was a good thing. It was reasonable of them to demand it, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

“If…if that had happened, I’m not sure where I would have gone. At that point I hadn’t spoken to my family or any of my friends in years. That’s the policy for undercover assignments. Absolutely no contact. And—and besides, with my family, it’s—I couldn’t have—”

“I know,” Armand cut him off softly, because he did.

“Even if I could’ve gotten some friend to believe me and put me up for a while, I couldn’t exactly write ‘undercover agent for a secret order you’ve never heard of who will deny they exist if you call’ on my CV. I haven’t had any other jobs on record for almost two decades. I’m not sure I could’ve even accessed my savings, since my bank account is contained within the overall Talamasca holdings—”

“Of course it is.”

Yes, he should’ve been more suspicious of that, shouldn’t he? He’d bought it so easily, the speech about discretion and protecting the order from scrutiny. He’d believed that it was safest for him and everyone to keep financial matters internal. Another error, another bit of useless hindsight.

(But then…he had only been nineteen, hadn’t he?)

Those same practical reasons were why Rashid was still here, in spite of his certainty that he had thrown away four years of his life acting as a tool to further some old man’s grudge. He was finally beginning to see what Armand had grasped instantly: that the Talamasca was set up to be very difficult to leave. Of course, any member could, in theory, break with the order at any moment. In practice…well. Rashid had never heard of anyone quitting. Only members who had died.

And now, he was about to have his own entirely conventional exit from the order.

“I would’ve had nothing. My future was with the order, or—or it didn’t exist in any form I could even imagine. But all that doesn’t matter. That’s not really what I need to say. What I need to say…what I need you to know, Armand—”

His voice was cracking on every other sentence, now, but Rashid kept going. He had gotten to the crux of it, and if he could just get this part out, he’d be able to rest afterwards.

“Everything between us? None of that was part of my assignment. In fact, I kept it secret. I never put anything about us in my reports, and I haven’t—I haven’t breathed a word since I got back. That wasn’t for the Talamasca. It was for me.”

The rain was falling harder, now, fat drops battering themselves against the window. It had been difficult for Rashid to adjust to how little it rained in Dubai. Ten times less than in London: he’d looked it up.

Some part of him was glad, that his final moments would include the sound of the rain.

“Being with you was the only good thing—the only real thing—”

Rashid had to pause and gather his composure. This part was too important to risk a single misstep. He had to get this right. He had to make Armand believe him.

“I meant every word. Every kiss, every…all of it. And I know it’s poisoned for you now, because of what I did, and that’s my fault, and I can’t undo it, no matter how much I wish I—”

He covered his mouth with his hand, too overwhelmed with regret to continue speaking. How he wished he could go back and make different choices. Be wiser. Be braver. Be the kind of man that he could respect. But it was too late. The best he could hope for, now, was to convince Armand that he was worth more than what Rashid had been able to give him.

“But please, Armand. Even if you don’t believe anything else I’ve said. Please believe this. I wasn’t lying about wanting you. I wasn’t lying about falling for you. None of that was a trick. I don’t care if you kill me. But you have to—you have to listen to me. You have to believe me. I wasn’t lying about loving you. Not for a single second. After I’m gone, if you’re ever—if you ever doubt it, that someone could love you, remember this. Remember me telling you.”

Even as he was begging, Rashid felt a nauseous, creeping certainty that all this was really for his own sake. Selfishness, more selfishness. After all, what good had his love ever done for Armand? An extra twist to the knife in his back. A pinch of salt right in the wound. Rashid’s love had not given him the spine to stand up to the order. It had not halted his slow campaign of sabotage that unraveled the life Armand had built for himself with the man that he loved, had loved since long before Rashid was even born.

The man who actually mattered to him.

How presumptuous, to think that it would make a difference to Armand, whether their little affair was real or another facet of his manipulation. It had always been just a distraction for him. Rashid knew that. He knew how little he amounted to, in the grand scheme of Armand’s existence.

“That’s all I needed to say. I love you, and—and I’m sorry.”

It was not all he wanted to say. So many questions that he longed to ask. When was the last time Armand had eaten? Where was he living? Who was looking after him, now that Rashid was not there? Was he keeping up with his prayers? Had he ever gone to see that stupid cyberpunk film he’d been looking forward to? Had he gone alone? Had it made him cry? Had he even let himself cry since Louis had tossed him out? Had the two of them spoken since that day? When was the last time he had eaten? Wouldn’t he let Rashid feed him, just a glass or two, just to tide him over until he could hunt again? Was he getting enough sleep? Was he going to be okay?

Questions he had lost the right to ask; questions that tore at him from the inside regardless. He had spoken to Jesse just two days ago, about why some people left behind ghosts and others didn’t. She said it wasn’t like in the movies—some concrete bit of unfinished business—but rather it was often emotional wounds that needed closing. She had told him, with all the eerie authority of someone who had been chatting to dead spirits since she was in pre-school, that the most common cause was guilt.

(Director Talbot had shown him a picture, the day after he returned to the Motherhouse. Plucked from the cloud off Daniel Molloy’s cell phone. It showed one of the familiar concrete walls of the penthouse, cracked and damaged, a large crater caved into it. You had already made your exit by this point, hadn’t you, Rashid? Wise move. Evidently, once he read that script, Louis threw Armand into the wall so hard that he left this behind. Funny, isn’t it? Like something out of a cartoon. Rashid was a good liar; he told the Director yes, it was very funny, and thanked him for sharing.)

Would he leave behind a ghost, when Armand finished what he came here for? He hoped not. He hoped Jesse didn’t end up in this room in a few weeks, coaxing his spirit to leave it all behind. He hoped she would not be the one to find his body, when he didn’t turn up for their next little outing.

Rashid had kept his head bowed and his gaze lowered throughout his little speech. Now, he forced himself to look up at Armand as he asked, in a small voice, “Do you…believe me?”

Armand gave his answer by standing up and walking away from the bed without a word. Which couldn’t be anything other than no, could it? Of course he didn’t believe him. Rashid had been foolish to think that if he was just earnest enough, if he poured his heart into his words, he could overcome the overwhelming evidence that he was untrustworthy.

He watched Armand’s back as he rounded the corner and disappeared into the little ensuite bathroom. A series of soft sounds—a cabinet opening and closing, the tap running then turning off, a splash of water in the sink. Rashid was too distraught even to be curious what Armand was doing. He hugged his knees to his chest and buried his face again, telling himself that just because Armand didn’t believe him now didn’t mean he never would. Perhaps in time, when his anger had faded. Perhaps he would think back to this conversation and consider that maybe Rashid had loved him, after all. For what little that even meant…

Rashid felt the mattress dip as Armand sat on it once more. A hand on his jaw, coaxing him to uncurl himself. So, it was time. Rashid exhaled a shuddery sigh and was glad. It would be over soon and he wouldn’t have to think anymore. He let Armand move him without resistance. Would he make it easy, like he did for his victims? No pain?

Armand kept hold of his chin and, still without speaking, began to wash Rashid’s tear-stained face with the damp washcloth he had brought back from the bathroom. Rashid closed his eyes, assuming this was the prelude. Clean him up before the execution. He was grateful for the little mercy. Armand was as gentle with him as ever, and the cool cloth felt so nice against his flushed and puffy face.

“Is there anything else you would like to get off your chest?”

It was nice of Armand, to allow him time for his final confessions. Rashid leaned into Armand’s touch, enjoying the pleasant rasp of the terrycloth against his eyelids, his lips, his forehead. Not such a bad way to go, was it? Considering some of the stories he had heard about other members of the order, it was a lot better than many got.

“I researched you and Louis to prepare for my assignment. I’ve read the order’s entire file on you. It had a lot of information about—about stuff that’s happened to you. Stuff you might not have ever wanted to tell me.”

“I had assumed as much, once I learned you were Talamasca. Anything else?”

Armand’s voice was low, almost hypnotic. Rashid began to relax in spite of himself, the tension draining from him with every breath and every swipe of the cloth. It still felt so foreign, being taken care of like this. Being tended to. So pleasant it always felt like it shouldn’t be allowed.

“I’m glad I met you. I’m glad we—had the time we had. Even though I know I made your life worse. I can’t bring myself to wish none of it happened, and I think…I think that might make me a bad person.”

Armand hummed, a wordless considering noise.

“I feel less and less sure, the older I get, that there really is any such thing as a bad person. If such a thing existed, I don’t think you’d come close to qualifying. Anything else?”

Rashid wanted to argue, to insist upon his own evil, but then he thought about all the times he and Armand had talked about these topics—sin, and evil, and morality, and nature, and faith, and violence. How Armand had coaxed his thoughts out of him, had listened as if they genuinely mattered to him. So, instead of objecting, he admitted:

“I miss you. I think about you every day. I’m so worried about you. I hate imagining you all on your own.”

The air was cool against his face as the cloth was pulled quickly away. Rashid was sure he’d gone too far, crossed some invisible line, until he felt cool lips pressing against his own. Armand’s lips. Armand, kissing him. Rashid responded automatically, parting his lips and kissing back. He kept expecting Armand to pull away, to finish his goodbye and conclude the task that he’d surely come here for.

But he didn’t.

He kept kissing Rashid, his hands coming up to cup his face, thumbs running along his damp cheeks. Armand deepened the kiss and Rashid sank into it. He had thought Armand might want to torture him before killing him, but perhaps he wanted this instead. One last fuck to remember him by.

It was more than Rashid had hoped for. He’d thought about it a lot, in the month since they last saw one another. How he hadn’t known their last times had been their last times. Their final kiss had been just like any other. No particular weight to it, no ceremony. This was much better.

Armand pulled back, their lips sticking together as they parted, like their bodies were fighting to stay joined. He stayed close enough that he could bump his nose against Rashid’s, a small gesture of affection that made Rashid’s chest feel tight.

From this distance, Rashid could see the bruises underneath his eyes all the clearer; even his lips looked paler than they ought to, like the color had been drained from him. He looked ill. He looked like someone wasting away.

“I’m not going to kill you.”

Rashid heard the words, but the sentence was nonsensical, impossible. It must have shown on his face, because Armand repeated himself, slow and deliberate.

“I’m not going to kill you, Rashid.”

There was a ringing in Rashid’s ears. He understood all the words, but he could not make them make sense. Of course, Armand was going to kill him. Armand had to kill him. It was an inevitability. He’d known that the second he handed over the script. There was no outcome in which Armand did not find and kill him—except the remote possibility that he took too long and Rashid could not bear the waiting anymore and pre-empted him with a bottle of pills.

“I thought I might, when I came here, but I had already changed my mind before you even woke up. I knew I couldn’t do it the moment I laid eyes on you.”

The calm that had stolen over him as Armand washed his face vanished; Rashid’s heart began to race once more. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This wasn’t what he’d prepared for.

“I don’t understand.”

Armand ran the edge of his thumbnail along the line of Rashid’s jaw, catching it against the few days’ worth of stubble he found there. Rashid had showered and shaved at the same time each morning in Dubai. A man of meticulous habits, Armand had called him. It hadn’t seemed to matter so much after he got back to London. Nothing had. Not when he was already dead.

“It’s simple. I’m saying that I forgive you.”

One of the ways Rashid had been able to get to sleep, since returning to the Motherhouse, was by lying in bed and indulging in a rotation of fantasy scenarios. Little dramas that he played out over and over again behind his closed eyelids—all of them the purest wish-fulfillment. Slapping Daniel Molloy directly on the mouth. Calling Louis’s cell phone and confessing to every act of interference. Marching into Director Talbot’s office and saying Fuck you, I quit.

Only once had he allowed himself to imagine this: Armand cradling his face and murmuring words of forgiveness. He had ended up crying so hard he thought he would puke.

“You can’t.”

“And yet, I do.”

“You can’t,” Rashid repeated, his voice nearly pleading.

“I don’t believe that it is your decision to make, Rashid.”

“What I did to you is unforgivable—”

“Rashid,” Armand cut him off, laying a cold finger over his lips to stop his objections, “I will not listen to another word of this. I am going to be candid with you. I understand that, to you, what you have done is heinous. I can see that your guilt weighs on you. But…unforgivable? Please. You merely aided in accelerating an—an inevitability.”

Armand’s lips pulled back once again into that small, heartbreaking spasm of a smile.

“He was always going to leave. Even if you had never been involved. Even if…things had not happened the way they happened in Paris. Louis was always going to leave me. I’ve known that for longer than you have been alive.”

The awful parody of a smile widened, and Armand gave a tiny shrug, as if to say: so it goes. Pain radiating from every subdued inch of him.

“If it will help, consider your…research,” Armand suggested, bitterness sharpening the last word. “Do you really think, after the life I have lived, that I would be incapable of forgiving you for sending a few emails and—rearranging a few papers?”

Rashid was not entirely sure how Armand meant it. Did he intend to imply that Rashid’s crimes looked insignificant, measured against his own? All the humans who had died to sustain him? All his centuries as a coven leader, enforcing the cult’s strict laws through coercion and violence? Or was he saying that Rashid’s crimes were nothing when compared to the abuse and brutality and degradation that he had suffered since he was a small child?

Rashid did not ask which it was. Perhaps he had intended both meanings. Either way, Armand’s point was clear.

“You forgive me?” he breathed, hardly daring to believe it.

“I forgive you,” Armand echoed, “And—I have missed you, too.”

Rashid shoved the covers off himself, scrambling to get on top of them, to get close to Armand as quickly as possible. He nearly fell over in his haste to crawl into Armand’s lap; Armand caught him, laughing startled and soft before helping him the rest of the way. Rashid tucked his face into the curve of Armand’s neck and clung to him as tightly as he could. His whole body was shaking. Rashid had not let himself think, this past month, about how much he ached for this: Armand solid and familiar in his arms. Now that he was here, Rashid still couldn’t bring himself to trust it.

“Is this a dream?” he asked, his voice small and terrified. Why was the possibility of happiness so much more frightening than the certainty of misery? He felt like he couldn’t get enough air, his breaths coming sharp and shallow, teetering on the edge of hyperventilation. He gathered up handfuls of the back of Armand’s shirt, holding tight as if he would disappear at any moment.

And what if this was nothing but a dream? What if by asking that question, he broke the spell and woke up alone to the silence of his room? What if none of it was real—just a cruel trick his mind had played on itself?

It would be beyond enduring. Rashid knew his own limits, what he could and couldn’t bear. If he woke up after all this and realized Armand did not forgive him after all, he was going to go straight to the roof of the Motherhouse and throw himself off it.

Armand reached up to pinch Rashid’s earlobe just hard enough to sting. Giving him that bright little flash of pain before he murmured, “See? You’re awake.”

Rashid was too overwhelmed to be embarrassed by the sound he made, then. Armand just held him, rubbing circles into his back and pressing small kisses into his hair. Rashid had finally washed all the dye out, like Armand used to tell him he should. He wondered if Armand had noticed.

The truth of it echoed in him, over and over.

Armand forgave him.

Armand forgave him.

Armand forgave him.

Armand actually forgave him.

What did that mean for him? Armand forgave him. Since that was true, Armand was not going to kill him. Since that was true, Rashid was not going to kill himself. Since that was true, he was alive after all. Since that was true, he ought to start considering a future that would last not just days or weeks but years, decades. Since that was true, there was another question he needed to ask.

“Is this going to be the last time I see you?”

Just because Armand forgave him didn’t mean he wanted to be around him, and Rashid could hardly blame him if that were the case. There was a chance this was still a farewell, simply a different one than he’d imagined.

“Only if you want it to be,” Armand said, “For my part, I hope it is not. I would very much like to continue to see you.”

Rashid’s stomach flipped, and for once he spoke without pausing to weigh the words.

“Yes. Yes, please, I want to be with you. I know it can’t be the same as before—”

He broke off, his throat too tight to keep speaking, as it occurred to him right in that moment that maybe it could be better.

No more guilt. No more preoccupation as he kept track of which lies he needed to maintain towards whom. No more play-acting as a butler. No more fucking Dubai. No more—

No more Louis.

It was an awful thing to think. Rashid was profoundly glad once more that Armand could not hear into his mind. But he could not un-think it. He could not undo his realization that this time, he would have Armand all to himself.

He was not delusional. He knew he was just a mortal. He knew that if Louis changed his mind about the separation, Armand would drop everything—Rashid included—and be at his side in a heartbeat. He knew he would never mean even 1% of what Louis had meant to Armand. He knew all of that.

But even if he was just a distracting toy for Armand to play with…well, now Armand had more free time he needed to fill up, didn’t he?

Rashid tucked that selfish, traitorous thought away for the time being. For now, Armand’s arms were wrapped around him, and Armand would ‘very much like’ to continue to see him, and it was raining, and the future was real, and Rashid could not remember the last time he felt so happy.

He could hear Armand’s heartbeat, with his ear tucked against his throat. It was slow and sludgy. His skin, where Rashid’s face was tucked against it, felt cold and strangely inelastic. Like it was only partly skin and partly some other substance.

Time to do something about that.

Rashid let out a shivery sigh and loosened his grip on Armand. He lifted his head and sat back, still straddling Armand’s lap but allowing some distance between them. Armand followed his lead, letting his arms drop to his sides.

“You need to eat.”

Rashid took Armand’s hand and used one of his sharp fingernails to trace a small cut into the thin skin at the inside of his wrist. He held his wrist up in offering, the way he had so many times before. Always so gratifying, to watch the way Armand responded to the smell of his blood. The flare of his nostrils, the swell of his pupils, the soft exhale, those sweet little fangs dropping down in his partly open mouth.

Armand hesitated, close enough that Rashid could feel the movement of air from his breaths. All the tiny hairs on his arm stood on end; a little trickle of blood was starting to wind its way down his forearm. He swiped it up with his thumb and smeared it onto Armand’s lower lip. Armand’s pupils grew even wider, his tongue darting out, quick pink flash, to taste.

“You’re still taking the iron supplements,” Armand breathed, wonder in his voice. Rashid hadn’t realized he would be able to tell from just a taste. His stomach did a small flip, his cock stirring with interest.

Rashid ignored it. He cleared his throat and replied with deliberate dignity, “Yes. I never stopped, sir.”

At some point, Armand had forgotten about blinking, the way he did when he got too focused on something. His eyes were fixed on the little wound, but he made no move to close the distance. The blood was oozing in a thin rivulet again, so Rashid repeated his gesture and swiped it up. This time, Armand closed his lips around Rashid’s thumb, running his tongue over its surface to get every last bit.

—You don’t have to call me that anymore, Rashid.

“I know.”

Rashid pulled his thumb free; it shone wet with saliva. Armand’s mouth must have been watering from the second he’d made the cut.

“I know I don’t have to call you ‘sir’ anymore. But—” Rashid’s voice wavered. His cheeks burned hot, but he forced himself to keep speaking. The words came halting and slow, “But what if I…want to? What if I, um. Like it?”

He was a piece of work, wasn’t he? His time in Dubai had proven that Rashid could look anyone at all right in the eyes and lie without even a flicker in his pulse. What did it say about him, that falsehoods flowed smoothly from his tongue, but he had to pry the truth loose syllable by syllable, stammering and awkward as a child?

Fear of vulnerability, probably. That old classic. How many times had it gotten in his way before? Still, he’d made himself say it. It was progress of a sort.

“You like it?” Armand echoed, uncertain and a touch breathless.

“I like it.”

Rashid thought that, perhaps, a fuller discussion of the matter should wait for another time. He didn’t know how to articulate what it meant to him, how that little honorific had changed over time, morphing from a humiliating necessity to maintain his cover to a term of endearment. To a different, secret way of saying ‘mine’.

It was a delicate thing to explain, and Armand’s focus was transparently not on their conversation. He was staring at Rashid’s bleeding wrist with open longing, yet he still made no move to close the distance. Rashid understood, then, that he wasn’t going to. Whatever it was that had prevented him from feeding all this past month must still be holding him back. Armand was so hungry he could barely think, but he wasn’t going to feed himself.

He needed help. Rashid had missed helping Armand very, very much.

So he moved his wrist forward, pressed it directly against Armand’s slack mouth. That, at last, did the trick. Armand shuddered, his eyes slipping closed. He sank his fangs in, tiny anchors, and began to drink. Rashid had expected huge, ravenous gulps, but Armand did not suck at all. He let the blood flow at its own pace into his waiting mouth, running his tongue along the cut over and over and over again to greet the blood as it emerged. At first, Armand was cold against his skin—cold lips, cold fangs, cold gums, cold tongue. Rashid felt his heat leech into Armand, felt his flesh begin to soften and plump after the very first swallow.

After a little while, Armand shuddered and nudged the tip of his tongue inside the wound, coaxing it wider. Rashid clenched his jaw at the stab of bright pain as his flesh tore, and the blood began to pour much quickly, steady hot pulses of it filling Armand’s mouth. Armand made a wet, muffled sound of ecstasy that went right to Rashid’s gut.

Rashid was just beginning to feel light-headed when Armand pulled off him, healing his wrist with a quick press of a bloody fingertip. Rashid watched him run his tongue along his teeth as he sat back and opened his eyes.

“You should take more,” he protested. Armand looked better—his cheeks less sunken, his color improved—but Rashid could tell it was nowhere close to enough. He opened his mouth to insist again, but Armand laid a finger across his lips, silencing him.

“If I promise to hunt properly tomorrow night, will you let it go?”

That beautiful word. Tomorrow. A future with both of them in it. Possibilities beyond anything Rashid had ever let himself imagine.

—I’m holding you to that.

Armand flashed a smile, a little blood still showing between his teeth.

—I would expect nothing less.

Because the future was real again, a lot of things would need to happen. Plans would need to be proposed, decisions would need to be made, details would need to be ironed out.

Rashid was good at all of those things. Very efficient, was what Louis always said if he approved of Rashid’s work. Rashid had never been entirely sure if he always used the exact same phrase deliberately for some reason, or if he simply forgot about Rashid’s existence the moment he was out of view and was thus unaware of the repetition.

Director Talbot had said it, too, during his first debrief after returning to London. Remarkably efficient work, Rashid. Right before he hinted and insinuated and implied his way to the gag order about Dubai.

Rashid did not feel like being efficient tonight.

The feeling of blood loss was wonderful and familiar; it sanded the edges of Rashid’s inhibitions and left him heavy-limbed and lazy. He slid from Armand’s lap, sprawling out and tugging Armand down along with him. Armand allowed himself to be maneuvered, and it was the simplest thing that had happened that night, fitting their bodies back together the way they had so many times before.

“And have you been sleeping as badly as you’ve been eating, sir?” Rashid asked, voice muffled against the back of Armand’s shoulder.

“Confrontational,” Armand remarked, which was not an answer. Not giving an answer meant Rashid was right, which he’d already known.

“I see,” Rashid’s voice was dry with sarcastic understanding. He expected Armand to respond in kind: so often they had bantered back and forth like this, lying slotted together, his dear immortal predator melting with contentment after just a few minutes playing little spoon.

Instead, the pause before Armand’s reply stretched a beat too long, and his voice, when it came, rang directly in Rashid’s head.

—It’s hard in an empty bed.

Rashid tightened his hold on Armand, nuzzling his nose against the little raised scar at the very base of his hairline. So many scars on Armand that weren’t visible until you knew where to look.

—Things have been hard.

Theirs was not a simple situation; Rashid knew that. But at that moment, for the first time in a very long time, his priorities were. He wanted to make things less hard for Armand, in whatever way he could, for as long as Armand would allow him to do it. Even if it came at a cost to himself. Even if it would only amount to a small reprieve in the centuries of grief. He wanted to be that reprieve for Armand—a little bright spot in his memory, in the years after he was gone.

And it wasn’t an accident, was it? That things had been hard for Armand lately. Someone had arranged this: relentlessly, painstakingly, secretly. Someone had used Rashid to dismantle the tenuous happiness and stability Armand had found with Louis.

Rashid wanted to know who was responsible.

“I’m not leaving the order.”

He felt Armand tense in his arms and quickly added, “Yet. I want to give them a taste of their own medicine. I’m going to find out who was behind the assignment and why. It’s going to eat me alive if I don’t.”

It was a service he could render to Armand, wasn’t it? A kind of restitution for the damage he had done.

Armand let out a short, sharp exhale that Rashid only realized was a laugh when he spoke, and the amusement was audible in his voice, “You really are Talamasca, aren’t you? Can’t bear a single unanswered question.”

Rashid’s insides squirmed with affection and guilt and hope in equal measure. It felt wrong, talking about it. Joking about it. The wounds too fresh. But they wouldn’t be forever.

“Guilty, sir.”

Chapter Text

In the year and a half since he had hired Rashid, Armand had not once heard him swear.

Not so surprising a thing, at first glance. Of course, Rashid did not use profanity on the job; Rashid was a consummate professional. He had demonstrated his ability to remain composed while under pressure from the very start of his employment. He was not sullen with Armand or Louis, no matter how unreasonable their demands or at what hours they made them. He was patient and fair with the rest of the staff, in spite of their cliquishness and unspoken but unanimous decision to ostracize him. He never lost his temper or betrayed frustration with even the most fickle and offensive of business associates who visited to discuss buying or selling art.

All of that was admirable but unexceptional. It was what the job required; it was what Armand expected. He appreciated that Rashid displayed such decorum in spite of his youth and the lax standards that were fashionable at present. Appreciated it, but was not surprised by it.

What surprised him was that Rashid did not swear even when he believed no one could hear him.

Most of the time, it was not Armand’s intention to eavesdrop. The combination of his enhanced senses and the acoustical properties of the penthouse made it difficult to avoid overhearing many of Rashid’s mundane activities. He generally faded into the background with the rest of the noise. It was all one to Armand: the hum of the air conditioning, the steady metronome of Rashid’s heartbeat, the buzz of the electric lights, the dull impacts of Rashid’s fingers against a keyboard as he composed an email, the mechanical drone of the elevator sliding up and down and up and down, the soft splash of water in the sink as Rashid washed his hands after taking a piss, the odd low groan of the building swaying in the wind. He paid it no mind.

Except occasionally—especially during the day, while Louis was fast asleep and Armand was bored—he would listen. And even when he was unaware of being observed, Rashid did not swear.

He did not swear any of the times that he injured himself in all those unavoidable little ways—a stubbed toe, a paper cut, a burned tongue. Each time, Rashid’s reaction was the same. First a hiss, then a soft tssk through his teeth, as if he were disappointed in himself. As if he ought to know better.

He did not swear, the day he lost hours’ worth of work due to a computer program crashing. Armand knew that was what had happened due to Rashid’s muttered running commentary. Even with the door closed to the maids’ room he’d converted into a small office, he was perfectly audible. He said come on and no no no, please and you can’t be serious, but he did not add even a single frustrated shit.

He did not swear when he dropped a glass bowl and it shattered against the concrete floor, scattering pieces far and wide.

He did not swear when he was reshelving books and turned around to see not an empty room as he’d been expecting, but Armand, standing in the nearest doorway. He’d been there for some time, listening to Rashid’s soft humming, watching him silently out of the shadows. Rashid jumped, clutching a copy of Written on the Body to his chest. Startled rabbit, with the white showing all around his eyes, and the sudden sweetness of his fear in the air, and the frantic tempo of his heart racing. His recovery was swift and dignified: “My apologies, sir, I didn’t hear you come in.” Every word smooth, decorous, and correct, even as his blood roared through his veins, that addictive throbbing thumpthumpthumpthumpthump that made Armand’s gums ache.

Even hurt, frustrated, startled, he didn’t utter a single expletive. It was unusual. It was puzzling.

Armand was unaccustomed to masks that he could not peer underneath. He had met a handful of other humans with Rashid’s gift over the centuries, but they had invariably been dull, and vulgar, and unintelligent. Nothing worthy of his notice.

But Rashid was none of those things. Rashid was quick-witted, scrupulous, hard-working, handsome, and unflappable. Rashid did not flinch when handling bags of human blood or wire transfers in the millions. Rashid had turned Armand down when he offered him his body. Rashid was a mystery.

Who could blame Armand for being curious? For taking an interest? For paying a little more attention than he perhaps ought to? After all, how long had it been since he encountered an intriguing mind that was completely closed to him?

(Armand knew how long—long enough that he hadn’t been Armand, yet. Even his precociousness with the Mind Gift could not overcome the silence between maker and fledgling. He recalled the cluster of questions that had been a constant presence in Amadeo’s mind, like the shadow cast by every single thought: what does he think of me now, what does he feel about me, how can I make him notice me, how can I make him continue to love me—).

What would it take, Armand found himself wondering idly, to make Rashid curse?

The answer, to Armand’s great surprise, was a bat.

It happened just after sunset, as hazy orange light still lingered at the horizon. Louis was sound asleep; he’d stayed up two hours past dawn for a business call he insisted on taking himself and he’d worn himself out. Armand reached out to touch his mind, found him deep in a dream of a humid Sunday morning sitting in a church pew. He pulled away before any more details from the dream could sink in—his goal had not been to pry, only to make sure it wasn’t another nightmare, that Louis didn’t need him.

He opened the door to the balcony and stepped out into the heat. Nothing like Louis’s memories of Louisiana summer, but humid enough compared to many of the places they’d lived. Armand heard the soft sound of Rashid’s footfalls as he approached. He was walking with purpose. He must have some question to ask or message to deliver; Armand paused, waiting to close the door so that Rashid could join him and say whatever he needed to.

But he never got the chance.

A small, dark shape flitted through the cooling air and into Armand’s view. It darted over his head, through the open door and directly into the reading room. Armand turned just in time to see it narrowly avoid colliding with Rashid, who threw his arms up instinctively to protect his face and shouted, “Fuck!”

Armand didn’t even notice, at first. He was too busy watching the small creature flying in frantic loops through the air, buzzing close to the top of the magnolia tree, narrowly swerving to avoid the hanging bookshelves, zooming down low again. That last maneuver sent Rashid scrambling, all his professionalism and poise abandoning him. He dove for cover and hid beneath the table, as if it would shield him from attack.

At first, Armand had assumed it must be a bird. But it passed closer to him on its next revolution around the room and he saw that it was a little brown bat.

“Fuck fuck fuck!” Rashid repeated, and this time, Armand realized.

He smiled. How could he not? It was simply too funny, that this of all things was what finally did it! Something so innocent. Not pain, or stress, or even a genuine threat. A harmless, fuzzy little animal no bigger than Armand’s own hand, flying around the room in confusion. And yet Rashid cowered in terror as if he’d been transported into a war zone. The incongruity was delicious.

“Such colorful language, Rashid!” Armand chided brightly. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Armand couldn’t resist teasing. He knew that Rashid had a sense of humor, even if he usually kept it carefully hidden away. It had taken months before he let Armand see that side of himself: his quick wit, his grasp of comic timing, his talent for dry, insightful little comebacks that only ever became funnier the longer Armand thought about them.

But Rashid did not rise to the bait this time. He gestured, instead, for Armand to join him under the table. Shifted to the side, even, to make more room for him. Which, well. That was funny, but Armand did not think it was intended to be.

The next time the bat careened close to him, Armand stopped time. Such an easy thing, to reach out and capture it between his two hands, careful not to crush its wings. He let time resume its normal course.

“All clear,” he announced, craning his neck to see Rashid where he was hiding, “The situation is contained.”

It took Rashid a moment to catch up with what had happened. He took in the empty air and noticed the little writhing thing clutched in Armand’s hands. Armand expected Rashid’s relief to be as extravagant as his alarm had been. Instead, his face paled, his eyes going round with horror.

He babbled, he begged, “Oh, no, no, be careful, sir, oh please, don’t touch it, take it outside, quick, quick, get it out, quick, don’t—“

Armand was tempted, for just an instant, to open his hands and launch the tiny thing at Rashid. Cruel little impulse, easily squashed. Instead, crossed the distance to the open door in a few strides and released the creature into the night. It flew away and quickly vanished out of his sight, clearly unharmed by its brief misadventure.

Rashid clambered out from under the table. He almost fell in his haste as he rushed over and slammed the door shut before anything else could get in.

Then, inexplicably, he grabbed Armand by the sleeve and began to haul him along as if he were a misbehaving child. The action was so unprecedented that Armand did not even think to resist it. He allowed Rashid to lead him, utterly bemused by his behavior. First the profanity, now laying hands on him? It was bizarre.

“Did you feel it bite you? Did its mouth touch you at all?”

Rashid pulled Armand through a door into a room he rarely entered. The lights were motion-activated, flicking on to illuminate a small bathroom—just a toilet, a sink, an oval mirror, and a little cupboard. Rashid dragged him to the sink and turned on the tap at full blast. His hands were shaking as he did it. He was trembling all over, in fact. Armand could hear his heart hammering, noticed how shallow and fast his breathing had become. Even with the bat gone, Rashid’s terror appeared to be only increasing.

Rashid pulled off his gloves and tossed them to the floor. On the floor. He then guided Armand’s hands beneath the water, feeling over them carefully with his fingertips, turning them over and back again, scrutinizing.

“I don’t see any marks, but you heal s-so fast, it could’ve bitten you and you might not have even noticed— ”

Rashid kept working even as he spoke: quick landslide of words, quick series of movements. He pumped out an excessive amount of soap from the dispenser and beginning to scrub Armand’s hands with frantic urgency, splashing the cuffs of Armand’s shirt, getting water and flecks of foam all over both of them.

“Rashid,” Armand insisted, his amusement now tinged with concern. “It couldn’t have weighed more than ten grams. Its mouth was the size of a thimble. I have not been mauled by a wild beast.”

Rashid rinsed Armand’s hands, swiping between his fingers, clearing every last trace of suds away before he pumped out more soap and started washing them all over again.

“Bats can transmit rabies, and sometimes people don’t even realize they’ve been bitten, because their teeth are so small. They don’t know to go in for the post exposure vaccine, and then they die, because it’s lethal if you don’t catch it in time, it’s always lethal, every time, one hundred percent fatality rate.”

His voice choked off into silence and he scrubbed harder, breathing in sharp shallow gasps. Panicking. Coming apart at the seams, because he was so frightened.

Gently, Armand reminded, “Rashid, I can’t get sick. I’m a vampire.”

“Do you know that?!” Rashid snapped, “Do you know that vampires can’t get rabies? I mean, fuck, has anyone ever actually tested it? Is there evidence? For all we know it could— it could kill vampires just the same as it kills humans and no one’s realized it. And it would be— it’s supposed to be so painful. Even if you didn’t die from it, you could be in agony, for months, for years, f-forever—”

Rashid broke off once more, rinsing Armand’s hands a second time. He shut off the water and dried Armand’s hands roughly with the nearby hand towel. He knelt and opened the cupboard. Inside was a first aid kit; Rashid pulled out its bottle of isopropyl alcohol and promptly upturned the entire thing over Armand’s hands.

Armand watched him, too stunned to speak. Rashid had sworn, again. What was more, he had raised his voice. He was so beside himself with worry that he had shouted at Armand and he didn’t even seem to realize it.

“Don’t touch anything, let that dry, I’m calling Dr. Bhansali. We need to get you a vaccine, as quickly as possible, because with your accelerated healing, the timeframe might be different, we might only have hours. I just hope he can get here in time—”

“You’re really afraid for me, aren’t you?”

There was an ache starting to form underneath his ribs. Something that had nothing at all to do with rabies.

He understood, now, why Rashid was not behaving like himself. Whatever the origins of this ludicrous paranoia, Rashid earnestly believed that Armand was in danger, and it had sent him into a frenzy of terror. He was not showing the deference due to his employer because he was not thinking of Armand in that way. Dragging him in here, inspecting him for wounds, washing his hands—it was not professional obligation.

He cared.

Rashid cared about him. Not as his boss, not as a matter of duty. Rashid cared about him as a person. The thought of Armand in danger, in pain, had caused Rashid undeniable distress.

The weight of the revelation left Armand in a daze. He watched as Rashid pulled out his phone and called Dr. Bhansali. He’d given Rashid the number on his first day, told him to save it in case of any medical emergencies among the staff. It had not seemed necessary, at the time, to divulge anything else. He should warn him, now, that Dr. Bhansali not only knew he was a vampire, but was in fact an expert in vampire biology. But that chasm had opened up inside him—the one that placed an unbridgeable gap between his thoughts and his ability to articulate them through speech. So he just stood there, mute and overwhelmed, as the alcohol dried on his hands.

Armand did not know what he must have looked like, but Rashid reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be alright,” he reassured.

How earnest he looked, with that deep furrow between his brows, his bottom lip drawn between his teeth with worry. So very grave. It was strange, being fretted over a creature so much more fragile than himself. He ought to have been offended, perhaps, but instead he just ached with an emotion he could not name.

He listened to Rashid’s exchange with the doctor. Halfway through his account of what had happened, Rashid mentioned that Armand was the one who had handled the wild bat. Armand watched his face as Bhansali explained that no, vampires could not get rabies, and yes, he was extremely certain—he had conducted multiple tests and witnessed the result personally.

Armand watched Rashid’s shoulders sag with relief. Rashid hung up after a perfunctory thank you—still unlike himself, still rude.

Armand remained rooted to the spot when Rashid surged forward and hugged him. A tight, brief, clumsy embrace, the spontaneous outpouring of his intense relief. Sluggish as his mind was at present, Armand did not have a chance to even consider hugging back before Rashid had pulled away.

This, it seemed, was the final straw that made Rashid realize how far he had forgotten himself. His face flushed, his cheeks going rosy as he ducked his head. He looked around the bathroom as if only realizing now what a state it was in: water splashed everywhere, the hand towel crumpled in the sink, the discarded alcohol bottle atop it, his gloves lying on the floor. Rashid bent to retrieve them, keeping his face averted.

“Dr. Bhansali assures me that the vaccine won’t be necessary, after all. I…am very sorry for not believing you, sir. I was— I was—”

Rashid’s voice cracked, and all at once the chasm inside Armand did not seem so wide after all.

“You were scared. No apologies necessary, Rashid.”

Rashid nodded, still not meeting Armand’s gaze. He picked up the hand towel, began to fold it, changed his mind, and set about mopping up the water.

“Did you lose someone to rabies?” Armand asked. He knew so little of Rashid’s life, before he came to work here. He’d done a small amount of research, but his inquiries had been security-related rather than broadly biographical.

Rashid shook his head, “Watched a documentary about it a few months ago. Guess it really made an impact. Stupid.”

Armand did not need to have access to Rashid’s thoughts to know what he had really meant. I’m stupid. I’m stupid for making such a fuss. Armand did not like to hear him excoriate himself like that.

“I suppose it would be in poor taste, to choose this moment to tell you that vampires can, in fact, transform into bats?”

Rashid’s head snapped up, his expression of shock comically pronounced. Armand smiled with teeth, quickly adding, “A joke. That one is purely a mortal invention, like garlic and crosses.”

Rashid let out a whoosh of breath. The corner of his mouth tugged into a smile, seemingly in spite of himself, and he shook his head in mock outrage. For just one moment, he drew his hand back, as if winding up to throw the hand towel at Armand. He caught himself, visibly remembering who he was, who Armand was, and re-orienting his response.

“You can do it,” Armand said, quickly, impulsively. “You can throw it at me. I earned it.”

Rashid only stared.

“Sir…”

Armand didn’t know what he was doing. Didn’t know what he was saying. He could not let go of his conviction that he had glimpsed the real Rashid for the very first time tonight. That underneath the faultless performance of formality and correctness was a man who swore, and made messes, and cared about Armand enough that the thought of him being hurt made him so scared he could barely breathe.

“What I’m saying is…when it’s just the two of us— well, nothing wrong with a little familiarity, as far as I’m concerned.”

The silence stretched, and for a few moments Armand did not know whether Rashid would reject his invitation. And it was an invitation, wasn’t it? An offer, to be something different to one another than merely what was laid out in Rashid’s employment contract.

Armand could not help the reflex, reaching out to Rashid’s mind to search for any hint of what he was thinking. He was met, as always, by the impenetrable barrier. Not a single crack in the surface, not any hint of light from underneath. Utterly maddening.

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” Rashid said.

He pulled back his arm and threw the damp towel directly into Armand’s face.