angrybubbles | Why Loumand Work Together (Reply)

Louis gets to enter a relationship with the first reoccurring sexual partner since Lestat, allowing him to explore his sexuality in both one-night stands and in ongoing discovery with someone. Armand who has a breadth of experience to share with him, until he finds things that really click. Louis knows his tastes a lot better, now.

Armand getting to be swept off his feet by a partner he is reluctant to hold power over ("Maitre is a coven endearment. For you, Armand")
((I know there is a deeper discussion in the Fandom about how much power Armand actually held in the relationship, which is fine to discuss, but Armand's intentions are not to hold power over Louis as a Maitre, which is an important detail to me))

Louis really getting to figure out his values and what he wants from a relationship before he dedicates himself to it. He doesn't want anyone to put him in his place, or fall into the rhythm he fell into with Lestat. He wants to choose it. And he gets to choose Maitre.

"I want you. I want you more than anything in the world."
"Are you sure about that, Arun?"

And then Armand, who has been wrestling with indifference and boredom running the coven, now getting a chance to touch the freedom Louis refuses to give up. He's always telling Louis how the coven insists on things and how he'll be difficult to be in a relationship with. And Louis chooses to pursue him anyway, bringing sparks of interest (and tension) back to Armand's world.

"Been thinking about you. Been thinking about you often."
"Tricky."
"What's that?"
"Us. Coven life, it can get labyrinthian depths of... it can be tricky."

"I never laughed at you," he said. "I cannot afford to laugh at you. It is through you that I can save myself from the despair which I've described to you as our death. It is through you that I must make my link with this nineteenth century and come to understand in a way that will revitalize me, which I so desperately need. It is for you that I've been waiting at the Théâtre des Vampires. If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant."

Armand in Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

And even after the trial, when Louis chooses Armand out of spite because of a lie that will be maintained over the next 77 years, they are not hitting a wall of no growth. They're just growing differently and with more toxicity.

Louis uses Armand as a fulcrum of stability in his shattered grief. Armand, as fucked up as he is, is a pillar of strength when understanding the endurance it takes to be a vampire. Without Armand there, would Louis have survived those 70 years? I think there could be an argument for yes, but the self-destructive behavior in San Francisco was only maintainable because Armand was holding parts of him together. If Louis is afraid of who he'd be when he's alone, because he's depressed and suicidal and simmering in self-hatred, then Armand is a soothing cool bandage to reassure Louis in who he can be. ((Which is why the gaslighting is framed the way it is. He keeps my best interests in mind, even when I can't or won't. It's learned dependence.)) It is through enough time with Armand (and the final snips on the twine holding them together from Daniel) that lets Louis realize he is a fully formed vampire that can handle the future without spite and compromise. A vampire on his own terms.

And for Armand? He is finally the one who was chosen and who was taken with instead of left behind. Finally, free from Paris and coven responsibilities, he is able to rearrange himself to fit Louis's needs. And by rearranging himself for Louis, who is in some ways replacing the sun that was his maker, Armand is able to deconstruct from the methods of existence he had been taught in the cult. Subtextually, Loumand is Armand's last step to finish deconstructing the cult (started by Lestat) by giving him something to replace those coping mechanisms with.

Like fuck, man. Even if they balanced on the knife's edge of destruction, as they stitched each other together, they still stitched themselves up. It was bad. They were suffocating each other, Armand was draining Louis and leaving him a husk. The love had turned rancid and stale. They needed that divorce so badly. But they got through the decades together by holding the other in the mold of a role that allowed them to cure themselves from the inside. That is what is so beautiful about Loumand.

They really can never be untangled from each other's story.