Sleeping Arrangements
This is just a quick thing I wrote in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. Happy Valentines!
(Lestat/Armand/Louis/Daniel)
It’s an adjustment to add another person into their routine, such as it is.
They’re not always under the same roof – sometimes one of them is off attending business or at court, sometimes they just need breathing space and a chance to collect their own thoughts. Sometimes they just don’t feel like sharing a bed at all, needing some space to themselves and coming back when they’re ready to. Sometimes two people want to fuck in an involved or vigorous way and the others want to read or watch a movie.
When it had just been Daniel moving back in, it hadn’t been uncommon for all three to spend most of their days together in the same bed. That became the routine; Armand adjusted his bedtime to earlier so he could lay with both lovers after they fell asleep. Daniel remained sluggish early and sometimes Armand would pick him up to put him into bed to find Louis already in it, reading or listening to something. Then he’d just pull Daniel into his bedtime clothing, brush his hair and tuck him in with them both. If Armand had to go and get Louis to put him to bed as he’d slumped reading at the desk, he happily put him to bed too.
More than once, it had been mortal sleep and Louis had startled upon being picked up and caused them both to wobble and laugh.
At first, Armand lingered in bed before they awoke as well. There was something reassuring about it, to feel Daniel’s chest rise and fall against him, to feel Louis’ fuzzy consciousness slip back into being from his rest. As time went on, if he had other things to do, he’d get up and come back to find them chatting in bed together or just getting changed. It started to happen at night too, that they’d still curl up together even if Armand hadn’t made it back. A layer of familiarity settled between them. When he’d find them like that, Armand would squeeze himself between them, gathering them too close to him but also not close enough. Sometimes, he’d just like to look at them until sleep came. His little lovers, happy together.
As soon as they’d begun to settle into having Daniel there, Lestat had barged his way into their home and their bed. Sometimes he stayed only for a few hours, other times he’d stay for a few weeks. There was no rhyme or reason to it, as if Lestat had ever had a rhyme or reason for anything.
“This is a home, is it not?” Lestat had just settled himself in and Armand climbed onto him so he could use him as an oversized pillow, but still pull Daniel or Louis close if he wanted.
“Don’t you have a home to go to?” Daniel had grumbled, getting a faceful of Lestat’s hair when he decided he wanted to be in the middle.
It wouldn’t be as much of a disturbance if Lestat’s bedtime routine wasn’t so damned involved. There were very specific pyjamas, he liked to brush his hair out and put it up and out of the way, he liked to do his nails so he didn’t have to when he woke up and he used scented sprays on the pillows much to Louis’ eye-rolling.
“It’s good for insomnia,” Lestat insisted, as if he hadn’t seen the way Louis hoarded Bath & Body Works candles like an obsession.
“You’re a vampire,” Louis replied. “You don’t get insomnia! The sun puts you to sleep.”
“Smells like the lotion we used at that place with the giant tub in the Philippines,” Daniel decided, pulling Armand up until his head was under his chin. Possessive tonight, in his own way.
“There’s a place a giant bath in the Philippines?” Lestat had asked, sinking into the other side with more pillows added. His face changed suddenly, his skin flushing as he shot Armand a sharp look. “I didn’t ask for you to drop that into my mind like a erotic stereoscope! Why is your mind always preoccupied with fleshly pleasures?”
“Why do you go into my mind seeking it out?” Armand had replied, utterly unrepentant.
It was no different at the court.
While Armand had dedicated himself to designing his own living space, he rarely seemed to stay in it. It was more common for him to stay in either Daniel’s rooms which remained or in with Louis and Lestat, eventually getting annoyed by the separation and pulling Daniel in with them. It led to Marius giving Lestat the most bizarre look when Daniel slipped out of his rooms for a cigarette in the early hours of the morning with tell tale bites fading on his skin.
“This is going to get confusing if you’re going to start taking multiple consorts,” Marius had whispered to him the following night, once the ‘official’ business had been seen to.
“I only have one consort,” Lestat told him plainly. “Armand isn’t a consort, he’s really more of a mistress.”
“And Daniel?” Marius asked.
“Mistresses’ consort,” Lestat smiled. “Or whatever it is Armand wants to call him. I’m not saying I’m opposed to the idea of trying him, I have often wondered if he’d taste like Armand – or if indeed Louis tastes like me! I should ask Armand, he would know, he’d make a note of something like that.”
Marius had wisely just left it there.
It took about a year for Lestat to settle himself into just climbing into bed. He still didn’t enjoy going to bed early, but when the sun rose, he’d spend an hour with Armand to himself while their fledglings slept on. Sometimes they’d excuse themselves to the bathtub and leave it stained red, scratched to hell and on more than one occasion, with several tiles cracked. Other times, they just talked quietly to one another.
“Do you like it,” Armand had asked him, his eyes cast low with a sweet submission, “Our arrangement?”
“Is that what it is?” Lestat murmured, sliding his fingers down Armand’s face and pushing his chin up so he could look at those eyes. “An arrangement?”
“What would you call it?” Armand’s eyes seemed to dart around unsure of where to look, struck naked by being forced into confronting what he was asking.
There was really only one answer for that. “My darling, I think it might be love.”
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I've been stuck reading "The vampire Lestat" because the emotional toll of his mother not being able to transition hurts my heart, and you're telling me now we have a WHOLE SHOW ABOUT IWTV??
I'm gonna watch it for sure. I've heard Louis and Lestat's relationship finally breaks through the will they/won't they teen sexual tension of the first novel. 👀👀
Anyone has any idea if the show will follow the book (thus giving us Claudia and Arman, and eventually giving Louis his apathetic, emo phase), or if we're turning a 180 and going to a completely new story?
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