Work Text:
“My smell has changed in the last few weeks, my very behaviour changed and the sound you hear is unmistakable and you tell me, you didn’t get it? Liars! Both of you!”
*
"I'll turn your bones to dust - that's what the damn bastard said to me," Claudia tells him afterwards as she recounts how Lestat caught her on the train. "He also told me both of us have to get along to make you happy, and I totally agree with the happy part," she says, grinning at Louis, and then her expression twists, "but he's a psychopath, Louis, we're totally at his mercy. We'll never be free as long as he's here. He's powerful, he's dangerous, but I think he can be defeated. And I will defeat him!”
Louis partially agrees, but then again - Lestat is his companion. His true companion, as flawed as he may sometimes be. The daily conversations they have – Louis can't imagine ever not having this. He has never opened up so much to anyone, he has never seen so much knowledge, so much experience, so much depth in anyone. How is he to continue his eternal existence without Lestat? What would be its purpose? Why would he harm the person he loves most? And what a love that is - brighter and deeper to fill even more than ten thousand nights.
„Do you know how much it hurts to love him? How it fills my soul? How it flows through my veins keeping me together? He is the center of my very existence, sister.”
“You’re no wiser now than you were before, Lou.”
And she is so right.
It's been weeks, months, since Lestat came back into their life and no matter where he is, it's always the same sentences echoing in Louis' head: We have to kill him. We have to get rid of him and be free. I will free you, Louis. I will free both of us. Spoken in Claudia's voice. Whispered in his head, often at the most inopportune moments, and with great fondness especially when he and Lestat share the bed again. Or share every other horizontal or vertical surface to fuck. No. To make love, Louis corrects himself, because that's what it is now. After he reclaimed Lestat as his companion, after this first violent encounter - participated rape - whispers his conscience to him, after all of this, it grew more passionate, fiercer, more fulfilling. And now they're making love and instead of the pursuit for each of their individual pleasure, they connect on a deeper level. Each night more and more.
I don’t want him dead, thinks Louis again and again in variations of the same thought. I want him alive, I want him for myself. I want to spend eternity with him.
But there is no eternity without Claudia. And Claudia will never forgive or forget what happened.
Louis’ heart is full to the brim with love for Lestat. His every waking thought belongs to his companion and when he sleeps Somnus provides him with dreams about the one, whom he loves more than he ever loved another being.
This love, deep as it is, is mixed with pain. Pain rooted in the past. This love is complicated and painful. Sometimes Louis wakes up from nightmares where he sees himself falling down towards earth. Eternally floating in the middle of an endless fall. He wakes up just before he hits the ground and still feels the pain from back then in his very bones and in his soul. I told you he has to die, is Claudia’s comment, whispered in his head, each time he sits upright in his coffin, heart almost bursting, bloody sweat on his forehead. Laying back to sleep after calming down. Dreaming and waking up again. Thoughts and feelings suspended in free fall. An endless repeating, collecting himself and everything starts from anew.
A variation of this dream is even worse. As it was rape when he violently sunk his fangs into Louis’ jugular and lifted them both up to 3000 feet drinking his blood and biting into him deeper and deeper to punish and to hurt. It felt like he wanted to reverse the Dark Gift he shared with Louis by taking back all of the blood he had given to him.
And since a few weeks the cause of the nightmares and, at the same time, the solace is no longer with him to help. No softly placed kisses, no whispers of how much he is sorry, how much he cares for Louis, how much he loves him, no slow lovemaking to sooth him. First he got himself a new coffin and then he decided to put it in an adjoining room. Louis is emotionally unable to ask him why. He doesn't want to hear the answer.
All of this feeds Claudia’s hate.
Oddly enough, Lestat has stopped taunting back. He tries to avoid her, doesn't respond to the beginning of the escalation and most of the time he just nods, gets up, often with a murmured "how right you are" and retreats to another room or throws on his coat, takes the car keys and leaves their house, returning just before dawn, quietly and secretly.
No smell of Antoinette on him. No cocky behavior.
Louis recalls a remarkable chess game between the two when it was midway through Claudia's hissed monologue about the atrocities Lestat has done to her and Louis, and Lestat simply stood up, knocked over the figure of the king with one finger and said to her: "The king surrenders. You have won.” She held out just long enough and only started screaming in rage when he was out of the room. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her lose control.
*
They never hunt together and as fate would have it, on this particular evening Louis and Claudia arrive at the same time at the gate of their house. A few giggles about rats are exchanged and the drunk man Claudia had for dinner causes her to sway and hiccup slightly.
The car is placed right in front of the door. Loaded with some suitcases. That’s very unusual.
And Louis notices Claudia's eyes widening briefly as she takes in the scene. Is this fear? Or is this surprise on her face? More the latter, it seems.
Lestat approaches them from the living room. The suitcase he puts down, when he sees them, seems heavy. Books, thinks Louis.
He obviously didn't expect them to come home that early. You can clearly tell the surprise isn't pleasant for him, but he tries to cover it up as nonchalantly as always.
There's a tension in the air Louis can't explain. Claudia, having the door behind her back, is almost… ready to jump, that's the only way Louis can describe how her whole body tenses up. Ready to strike. She bares her teeth in a smile, but it's all crooked and wrong.
“How did you like my gift?” she asks Lestat, every saccharine word carefully pronounced.
“What gift?” asks Louis before Lestat can respond.
“Oh, she means the beautiful young man she has artfully placed on the sofa.”
“Sedated,” he adds after a moment “and so lovely in his helplessness. The perfect victim.The perfect gift to reconcile and forgive one another.”
"Have you tasted him? I have chosen him for you very carefully."
Lestat crosses his arms and assumes a seemingly relaxed stance, but at the same time he doesn't take his eyes off Claudia.
"No. And I think I'll refrain from tasting his blood. As delicious as it may be."
He keeps talking and Louis doesn't understand what's happening here. Somehow he can't put what he's hearing from Lestat into the right context. He feels like he's walked into a room in the middle of a theatrical performance and he doesn't know what happened before or where the conversation is leading to.
“It was under these circumstances that I decided to leave. I'm about to pack some belongings and then I'm off. I'll send you the title deed for this house in a few days. I think this is the best solution for everyone involved.” He says all this without pausing, his french accent more audible than usual and Louis notices, he does it without looking them in the eyes.
"What do you mean, you’re leaving?" asks the Creole. "Where to? I thought we were...we were on the best way to finally...why? How can you do this to me? Lestat, you can't do this! If this is about Antoinette yet again, I swear to you, I will kill her myself!”
"You don't seem to understand me," Lestat says coldly, this time looking him straight in the eyes. "You are finally free to do whatever you want. Free to leave New Orleans and go to Europe. Free to find your next companion. Hopefully one that suits you better than I do. You. Are. Free. Do you understand me? Both of you are. Free from my presence. And don`t tell me you don`t want it.”
"Oh yes," he says, his eyes narrowing, "I got exactly the meaning of this gift and I have foreseen what you two have planned to be my fate. I will not allow you to do this to me."
"Planned? What plans?"
“What have we planned, Uncle Les?" asks Claudia and she no longer tries to hide her hatred.
But Lestat turns his full attention to Louis.
Are those tears filling his eyes?
One single tear - red and shiny - running down Lestat's cheek confirms Louis' thoughts.
Lestat brushes it away impatiently with the back of his hand.
“Laudanum and arsenic - did you really think it would kill me? Or did you know it wouldn’t, but it would have other, grave, consequences? Consequences you desperately wish for?”
Another tear joins the first and this time the blonde seems not to care.
“Laudanum and arsenic? Why would I do that? What consequences? Lestat, what are you talking about?”
„You wanted to poison me. Dead blood? You wanted me to drink it? I understand it that you hate me after everything I've done to both of you, all the unforgivable things, but this is beyond hate. I understand I'm not wanted here and that's why I choose to go, but I thought something wonderful had blossomed between us and this is a confirmation, an impossibillity made true…I thought you finally loved me, Louis, but instead you let her poison your feelings against me. My philosopher. My martyr. My voice of reason and morality. And what is left of this? Hate and destruction.”
"What nonsense are you talking about? Are you trying to manipulate Louis? You can try that, but I don't believe a word you say. You are the father of lies, always have been.”
"I still don't understand what this is about. Why don't we just sit down and talk about it?"
"Let me go," Lestat says pleadingly to Claudia. Louis has only now noticed that, like a piece on a chessboard, she has placed herself in the hallway in such a way she would have to move to the side in order to let Lestat leave the house. She blocks the door.
Checkmate.
"Let me go and you can have everything from me: the house, my entire fortune, anything you want and I swear I will never contact you or Louis ever again. I will keep my distance forever. I will leave the continent if you ask me to. But let me go unharmed. Please."
“Where are your powers now, dearest Uncle Les?”
“STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!” roars Louis. “BOTH OF YOU. I want to know what this is about. Stop talking in riddles, Lestat!”
“My smell has changed in the last few weeks, my very behaviour changed and the sound you hear is unmistakable and you tell me, you didn’t get it? Liars! Both of you!”
“Why dead blood? Or poison? Why not simple a blade to my abdomen and the mistake is corrected. Let me get the knife for you and then you can press it home!”
“What sound, Lestat?”
“Don’t listen to him, he's lying.”
Lestat sighs.
“Listen carefully,” he says and Louis closes his eyes. The rush of his own blood, the beating of his heart, Claudia’s skirt rustling, the clock in the main room ticking, outside a carriage passing, a couple walking by and talking, rats squeaking, electricity buzzing.
“Concentrate on me,” says Lestat and Louis remembers him being the mentor and anchor for the fledling vampire overwhelmed by sounds and smells.
And then.
Then.
He hears it and obviously Claudia too as she clasps her hands in front of her mouth.
A second heartbeat, tiny and vulnerable besides Lestat’s powerful and steady one. Like a small bird fluttering in a grasp. Like a firefly trapped in a jar. It beats rapidly, unaware it could be hurt so easily.
“What is this?”
“Yours and mine. Becoming one. That you hated me so much you were willing to kill it - my mind can’t proceed with this thought or what do you think would have happened if I had accepted the gift? I might have gotten dizzy, might have been weak for a few days, but the consequence for the tiny life gifted to us would have been final – death - in all it’s cruelness and brutality, a slow death and for me the pain of having miscarried.“
He is fully crying now.
„Do you hate me so much, Louis?“
„Sweet Lord,“ whispers Louis. „I didn’t know, Claudia, what have you done? I, Lestat, this is a misunderstanding, please, Beloved, I would never, but are you sure it’s ours? I mean, you’re a man, we both are and we are technically dead...and how is this miracle even possible?”
“I read about it,” says Claudia. “A legend mentioned in one of the books I took from a library.”
“Do you think I’ll let anyone but you fuck me? Really? Pardon me, but I’m not that much of a slut. It was only you. It was always only you, Louis. All those lovers, all those diversions – all of them without meaning. I even left Antoinette for real as soon as I understood what is happening to me, what a gift we were given. It’s fine if you don’t want it. I accept this, but let me walk away unharmed and let me keep it.”
I will let you got, if that’s what you want, thinks Louis even if it will break my heart, and then he realizes Claudia has already made a decision. And that decision is not in Lestat's favor.
He'll never get past her, she won't let him and despite her much smaller physique and young age, she's an opponent not to be underestimated. Her hate gives her power.
But the escalation Louis fears, because he doesn't know what to do - protect Lestat and hurt Claudia? Take Claudia's side? Do nothing and allow her to accomplish what she has planned or allow Lestat to strike her down? Live with the consequences whatever they may be? - does not unfold.
At some point Lestat grabs the banister. His breathing gets faster, he closes his eyes repeatedly in visible pain.
Louis manages to prevent the fainting Lestat from falling to the ground by picking him up.
„Kill him now,“ says Claudia and tries to pull Lestat out of his arms, „kill him NOW, Louis, listen to me, his unconsciousness is the perfect opportunity! Let me fire up the incinerator.”
“IT’S MY CHILD INSIDE HIM!” Louis shouts back. “And he is the love of my life! You can’t force me to burn him alive. I won’t do this!”
“Is it your child? As far as we know it could be everyone else’s child and not yours. I don’t believe a word of what’s he saying!”
“But I do! And this is the end of this conversation, young lady!”
*
"I brought your suitcases back into the house," says Louis as Lestat regains consciousness, "I put everything back in the closets. You stay here. You, we, we won't let you go, no, I mean, this came out wrong, nobody will harm you, I won't let anything happen to the child, I love you Lestat, I want you to stay, I can't live without you. Here, I said it. Please stay. Don't leave and I will deal with Claudia."
"I'm moving out," Claudia yells at them as she walks past, and the door of the house is slammed shut with all might.
Lestat is lying on the sofa where Louis has placed him before, paler than usual, but comfortable resting on a pillow, well covered with a soft blanket. This will be the place where he will spend most of his time for the next few months - dressed in fluffy pajamas, sleeping, dozing, reading. In fact, he is always tired and getting more and more powerless.
Eventually he stops leaving the house as his belly has expanded and is now clearly visible, and the exhaustion gets to a point where it is impossible for him to keep standing or move for more than a few minutes. At some point in time Louis decides to give up his diet, which consists of rats, cats and dogs. He now takes two victims, although not every night. And that in itself is more than he would need for himself, but it's not only for him. The child has to grow and Lestat needs the blood too. And Louis wants to be a responsible father and companion.
He loves those quiet moments after a tiring hunt. Sitting with Lestat and letting him slowly feed and take the blood he needs. Being tenderly asked from time to time: “Did I take too much, my Louis?” in this lovely accented baritone. Sweet touches and kisses between them and often he lays down with Lestat for a little bit more closeness.
The hostilities between Claudia and Lestat have subsided in proportion to the expanding belly. They are very polite to each other now, a little too feignedly friendly for Louis' liking, but that's better than before when it was difficult for Louis to witness and endure.
Do you still plan to kill him?
I've matured, she answers him mentally, I think about it differently now. Although should he ever rise against you...
Rise against me? Look at him, he fell asleep in the middle of his own sentence, because he's so tired. He doesn't even manage to go upstairs anymore, I have to carry him up every day and put him in his coffin, I have to hunt for him. What rising?
Indeed, Claudia sighs theatrically, what a pityfull decline. He's not a worthy opponent anymore. Have you noticed how gentle he's gotten? How soft? It’s disgusting! It's really bad and she shakes her head, I miss the old Lestat, who was a plague and whom I could profoundly hate and still have a clear conscience.
"Are you two talking again?" asks Lestat. "It scares me, you know that, don't you?" And that concludes the mental conversation for the day. Stress is not good for the child. And Lestat is very vulnerable right now and needs rest.
*
It's been a particularly tiring hunt, and Louis is done with the world when he opens the door and steps inside. Lestat is expected to give birth in the next few days and it's all a little too much for Louis.
He hears Claudia humming and whispering. She's in the living room. When he looks inside, he sees a picture he did not expect: Lestat is lying on his side, curled, well covered, his head resting on a pillow she is holding in her lap. His eyes are closed. Her hand is slowly combing through his hair in a gesture full of love and care. “Better?” she asks him, “Are you still afraid? You know we are protecting you, right? It was only a bad dream, Les, nothing more. No one can hurt you. No one would dare to. You are our family and the child is too. Shhh, calm down.”
Lestat’s whispered “I love you too” is almost more than Louis can take and he slowly retreats back into the hallway. He never tells them he witnessed this wonderful moment between them. He stores the image in the depths of his heart.
*
Their daughter is born in August on a beautiful warm day, with the help of a method Louis heard about – a Caesarean – performed by a human doctor, whom Lestat has obviously known for a long time. Louis doesn't even want to know how long and from where he knows him. However, Doctor Rosenbaum is a remarkable individual who knows exactly what they are, but other than a certain fascination, he doesn't seem to care. He also doesn't care about the fact of them having a relationship or about the fact that it is normally impossible for two men to make a child. He treats all of his patients with the same tender devotion, regardless of who they are.
*
She is a hereditary vampire - born, not made and she grows faster than a human child usually would. She is a lovely being, beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent and a sister to Claudia. Lestat teaches her everything he knows and he is finally also the mentor and teacher to Louis and Claudia he was always meant to be - patient, wise, not witholding secrets from his past.
*
"I'm ready now," says Claudia one day and they let her walk out on her own into the wide world.
"Write us or call," says Lestat, and they all hug for a goodbye.
"And you intend to stay here?"
"I will not leave you and our daughter. My place is at your side, Lestat. You promised me ten thousand nights as your companion. And I hope you will fulfill the promise you made.”
"I intend to do exactly this, mon chere."