Chapter Text
The arrival of September had sparked rumor of an artistic renaissance in New Orleans, following an especially muggy summer.
Word of this had reached Lestat’s ears as he sat comfortably in his air-conditioned Garden District living room, skimming over the Arts & Entertainment section in today’s The Times-Picayune. Contrary to Louis’ insistence on Lestat at least trying to adapt to 21st century tactics of receiving all news via smartphone, Lestat still enjoyed the act of physically holding a newspaper. Today’s issue, in particular, had managed to catch his eye.
“‘The Marigny Opera House welcomes the Metropolitan Opera for three nights as the sixth stop on their North American tour, performing Donizetti’s ‘Don Pasquale’.’ Louis!” Lestat finished reading aloud the excerpt and lifted his nose from the paper. “Louis, come in here!”
Lestat heard an abrupt pause in the clacking of Louis typing away on his laptop from their dining room, followed by footsteps and his companion’s face staring at him from the doorway.
“Why are you yelling?”
“‘Don Pasquale’ will be playing in New Orleans for the first time in over a century,” Lestat said, figuring it a suitable answer. “What are we doing next Thursday?”
Louis shrugged, glancing around as if to say This. The summer months filled with sticky weather and an abundance of daylight had turned the family of vampires into a pack of homebodies. And although the more temperate months were approaching, the weather was still stuck in a very humid limbo.
“Right,” Lestat acknowledged the mute response. “Shall I get two tickets for us then?”
“It would be nice to get out of the house,” Louis agreed, amused by the idea but quickly remembering one very important detail Lestat had neglected to mention. “Who’s watching Rose during this?”
Lestat paused, considering it. Despite the fact that their daughter could also be in attendance for this, he sensed the two of them were imagining a date night rather than a full family outing. Something they had not had in quite some time.
“Ah! We will just compensate Liz extra to stay after Rose’s academic lesson,” Lestat smiled. “Problem solved.”
“We’ve never just left her alone with a human before. Even Liz.”
“Well, when do you suggest we start? Give it ten more years?”
“Maybe,” Louis said, and Lestat knew he meant it. “She’s still so young, Lestat. She doesn’t really get all of this yet.”
Lestat sighed, not eager to have this same debate again. For years now, he and Louis had gone back and forth about when it would be most appropriate to reveal to their vampire child—who only drank blood and never left the house during daylight—that she was, shockingly, a vampire.
He tried accepting his companion’s hesitation. He knew where it came from. In Louis’ perfect world, they would keep their daughter wrapped up in this unblemished bubble forever, where no harm could ever come to her. As her mind and body continued to mature and her general curiosity grew, maintaining this illusion proved to be more of a challenge each day they continued it.
Children adapt. She won’t be traumatized. Lestat tried reasoning this way the first few times he and Louis talked about it. It’s her nature, when Louis argued she was too young to understand the repercussions of hunting every single night.
Lestat saw it differently. Was he going to encourage his daughter, with the mind and body of a five-year-old, to take down a 250-pound adult man? Of course not. Was he going to encourage her to watch as he took down the 250-pound adult man, and let her enjoy the bounty? Absolutely.
“We could always just… tell her,” Lestat said, noticing Louis begin to squint. “Explaining why there are risks might prove more effective than pretending there are none.”
“So, you’re suggesting we just tell Rose she can’t bite her tutor while we’re out of the house?”
“Precisely.”
Louis rolled his eyes, and Lestat knew well enough that it was less from annoyance than overall anxiety about the situation.
“Well, I hope Rose doesn’t realize she’s hungry right when Liz gets a papercut,” Louis sighed.
The two were interrupted by a loud clatter from the second floor, indicating Rose had dropped whatever heavy object she’d been playing with in her bedroom. It was a nice tension breaker.
“Let’s stick a pin in it for now,” Louis compromised, before turning and calling up the stairs. “Everything alright up there?”
Lestat heard Rose’s muffled acknowledgement that she was okay, and he gave Louis a smile before releasing him to finish up his work in the dining room that he “really needed to get done by tonight”.
• • •
‘Desert Rose’ was the official name for the shade of pink they’d chose when deciding to repaint the master bath a few months earlier. Lestat argued it was too warm to be considered a true pink and was closer to a red. Maybe even a terracotta.
It was pink.
Rose sat, legs crossed, on the counter while Lestat brushed out her damp hair in the now pink bathroom. This was becoming a nightly ritual now that she insisted on taking her pre-coffin shower in her fathers’ newly painted bathroom instead of her own. She grimaced when he tried pulling too hard through a knot, and complained that he was hurting her.
“Did you remember to use a conditioner when you washed your hair?” Lestat frowned, looking at her through the reflection of the large, gold-rimmed mirror.
“Yes…”
“It would be unwise to lie to me,” Lestat said. “Your hair feels like straw, and this is why you have knots.”
“I did!” Rose argued, but shrunk into herself when Lestat’s gaze hadn’t let up. “I will next time…”
Lestat grabbed the bottle of leave-in conditioner Louis bought for him, spraying a bit throughout his daughter’s hair and resumed brushing gently through the small knots.
“Can you give me a braid?” Rose asked, perking up once she’d stopped feeling like her father was trying to rip her hair out of her head. “So when I wake up my hair will be wavy.”
“Sure,” Lestat agreed, brushing through the last few pieces of hair. “Though I am afraid that since we have the same hair, the New Orleans humidity will still have the final say over what your hair decides to do tomorrow.”
Rose just looked at him, seeming indifferent. She held onto the doll she’d carried into the bathroom with her, pretending to brush through its blonde hair which matched her own.
“Do you like having long hair?” She asked after a minute.
“I do.”
“Even with the hu–mi… humid… humidi—” Rose scrunched her nose, sounding the word out.
“Humidity,” Lestat helped her, interrupting before she could become frustrated. “I could do without it. I love most things about this city, besides that one detail. The length was far easier to maintain in Auvergne.”
“What’s Auvergne?”
“Auvergne is where I am from, in France,” Lestat explained. It had been a while since he had discussed that time in his life, though he was surprised he hadn’t managed to mention it before to Rose. “This is why my accent is different from yours. I spoke French before English.”
Rose craned her neck to look at him directly. “You have an accent?”
“Well, I do not think I do… but according to Lou—your daddy, apparently I do,” Lestat chuckled, gesturing for her to turn back around so he could continue fixing up her braid.
The two sat in silence, with Rose watching Lestat finish her hair up in the mirror. He’d made one large braid down the center of her back, surprising himself at how much her hair had grown.
Rose was fortunate to have long, blonde hair that made it down to just above the middle of her back. There were still many things about born vampires that Lestat and Louis were learning day by day through raising Rose, and one of the more surprising details was discovering that her hair would continue to grow.
This made sense, of course, since there was no way she would have been born with all of the hair she was ever going to have. Lestat tried cutting it once when she was smaller, before she would have been able to notice and comment on it, and found it grew back to the same length the next day. Just as his own hair would.
Now, it was a matter of when her hair would stop growing. It was ridiculous to assume it would grow forever. When he and Louis had gone to Montreal, none of the coven members had exorbitantly long hair. In some ways still, he envied the length.
“If you came from France…” Rose fidgeted with her doll while she tried verbalizing her thoughts. “Did I also come from France?”
“No, cherie,” Lestat fixed some of the hair which had slipped out by the top of her head, tucking it behind her ear. “You came from me.”
“How?”
Lestat squinted, knowing if Louis were in the room right now he’d be whispering something to him about keeping it ‘age appropriate’. Lestat never knew what that meant.
“I grew you inside of me until you were ready to come out,” Lestat explained, and now it was Rose’s turn to squint.
“Doesn’t that mean you had a baby?” Rose asked curiously.
“Yes, I had you.”
“You did?”
“Of course I did. That is why you’re here,” Lestat replied, shrugging like it was obvious.
“Oh,” Rose blinked, looking at herself in the mirror. “Is that why we have the same hair?”
Lestat smiled, resting his chin on top of her head. “Oui, that is exactly right.”
• • •
The following evening, Liz was sitting with Rose in the dining room, chin resting on her palm while she propped her elbow up and listened to Rose’s incessant questioning.
Their daughter’s tutor, Liz, had just returned from a two-month trip to visit her sister who’d just had a baby. It was like a switch had flipped in Rose from the previous night, since now it seemed that all she wanted to talk about were babies.
“Miss Liz, do babies cry a lot?” Rose asked, swinging her legs under the table.
“Sometimes,” Liz responded patiently. She had been trying to maneuver this conversation into the lesson she’d planned for that evening, but it seemed any lull struck five new questions from Rose. “Babies can’t speak when they’re really little, so crying is how they communicate.”
“Did you know that my Papa had a baby?”
“I did not know that, Rose,” Liz said. “That’s very exciting for him.”
“Would you ever have a baby?”
Louis cleared his throat from where he was eavesdropping from the kitchen. He appeared in the doorway, looking at his daughter.
“That’s not appropriate to ask, Rose,” Louis reprimanded, watching her turn and look at him with big eyes.
Lestat left to hunt prior to Liz arriving, and had asked Louis to try and think more about whether he would consider letting Liz babysit for them. Louis figured the best way to test this theory would be to let himself stay out of sight during their lesson, but he was finding it difficult to go anywhere further than the next room over.
They agreed never to let Liz know what they were, and she never wanted to question it either with the amount of money they were paying her. Louis figured she just thought they had ties with the mob, and was grateful that she was content to accept their money—regardless of where it came from.
Louis liked Liz’s presence. She was patient with their daughter and, under different circumstances, he could have seen himself considering her a friend. It seemed like an obvious choice to consider her for Rose’s babysitter, and Louis was beginning to grow frustrated with himself over his fears surrounding the idea.
Louis thought of Daniel, who'd watched Rose a couple of times in the past for them when he’d been nearby. This was of no use to them now, though, since Daniel was likely hundreds of miles away.
Their only option was Liz.
“Hey, Rose,” Liz said, once it seemed like her train of thought had broken enough to begin their lesson. “How about for every question you answer correctly, I’ll reward you with a treat?”
• • •
“It was chocolate,” Louis said. “Liz was bribing our daughter with chocolate.”
Lestat settled in closer to Louis while they adjusted their positioning in the younger vampire’s coffin. They hadn’t mentioned anything to Liz about babysitting that night, but Lestat was finally asking Louis how it actually went once they’d said goodnight to their daughter.
“Did she eat the chocolate?” Lestat grimaced.
“She bit it after Liz explained how good it was, that it was pretty high quality,” Louis said. “I don’t think I’ve seen her look that betrayed since she asked me to let her try a banana.”
Lestat hummed, thumb tracing over one of the buttons on Louis’ sleepshirt while he formed his next question.
“Do you still feel like it’s a bad idea? To let her babysit?” Lestat asked.
“I don’t know,” Louis sighed. “Tonight went fine, but it got me thinking… what do we do if Rose does get hungry when we’re out? We can’t have Liz snooping through our fridge.”
“We will make sure Rose eats before, and leave money for Liz to order food. That way she will have no reason to open our refrigerator,” Lestat said through a low yawn. “Which is already a strange thing for someone to do. Do people usually go through refrigerators at houses that are not theirs?”
“I meant more like, if Rose asked her to grab something out of the fridge to eat,” Louis explained. “I just wish Daniel lived even a little bit closer. It would be so much easier for him to watch her for a night instead.”
“Have you heard from him recently?” Lestat asked.
“No. Not in a couple of months,” Louis said. “Last time we spoke he said something about a new book, though. So… who knows what he’s been up to. He actually even threw around the idea of interviewing you, which I thought was funny.”
“Why is that funny?” Lestat frowned. “Daniel would be lucky to interview me. There is a lot I could tell him, it would make for a fascinating book. In fact, I will make sure to mention this to him next time he’s here—”
“I’m sure it would be good. I was just teasing you,” Louis squeezed him. “Oh, you’ll never guess what Rose kept going on about tonight.”
“Hm?”
“She must have watched something with a baby in it, because that was the only topic she wanted to talk about tonight. First it was about Liz’s niece, then she brought you having a baby up which I think… confused Liz more than anything.”
“What is confusing about it?” Lestat grumbled into the crook of Louis’ neck. “People do all sorts of things in this century. I would assume having a baby is pretty unexceptional.”
“Okay, but it’s still less common for men to.”
Lestat muttered something unintelligible, and propped himself up on his elbow, facing Louis. Louis looked at him, confused about why he’d moved from where they were finally managing to get comfortable a few seconds earlier.
“Has our daughter ever seen a baby?” Lestat asked.
“She’s seen a baby, Lestat,” Louis furrowed his brow. “She watches way too many movies. She’s definitely seen one before.”
“In the flesh. She has never seen a baby up close,” Lestat continued, doubling down. “Is that not odd?”
“What are you saying?”
“I…” Lestat started, sighing. “I don’t want to fight about this right now, but I just think… Are we stripping her of experiences she should be having?”
Louis stared at him. “Like… hanging out with a baby?”
“I don’t know, Louis,” Lestat groaned, getting frustrated. “Maybe. It could be a start.”
“Okay… so, what are you suggesting?”
“We find a baby.”
“We find a baby? Like, outside?” Louis stared at him.
“Sure,” Lestat shrugged. “If you think that is where we should look.”
Neither said anything for a minute, and Lestat groaned, flopping back down in the coffin so he was laying against Louis once again.
“It is not a fully fledged idea,” Lestat said. “I just want to make sure we are not robbing her of important life experiences.”
Louis wet his lip, thinking once more about the brief conversation he’d had with Fareed Bhansali years ago. He was unsure whether this was Lestat’s odd way of saying that he wanted to be around another baby, or if this was genuinely about Rose. They’d talked before about if she was getting to experience enough, but Lestat had never reacted this intensely about anything relating to it before.
Lestat shifted, grunting in discomfort in the narrow space.
Louis cleared his throat, already beginning to feel his nerves bubbling up in his throat. “What if we…”
“Moved to my coffin? I think it’s a fantastic idea, it is much more comfortable,” Lestat said, still squirming around.
“…Had another baby.”
Lestat stopped, looking at Louis and sighing. “We can have sex tonight, Louis, but I have already told you I don’t like playing that one. It always ends with me feeling hollow and sad.”
“I’m serious,” Louis said, voice barely over a whisper.
Lestat creased his brow, sitting up further in the coffin. Louis waited for a response, but after an uncomfortably long moment of silence, he continued.
“I had a conversation… a while ago, with Fareed,” Louis mirrored Lestat by sitting up and leaned back on his palms. “There’s a way… well, there are these treatments, I think. I’d need to reach out and have him explain it to me again, but in theory, we’d be able to have one together—”
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
Louis glanced upward, trying to recall. “Well… technically, since the first time we met Émilie. But, the treatments—”
“Yes, I know about these treatments,” Lestat said impatiently. “How long have you wanted this?”
“Wait, you already knew about them?” Louis asked, craning his neck forward. “Why did you never bring it up?”
“They are experimental, Louis. Or, they were 75 years ago when I had first heard about them,” Lestat replied nonchalantly. “You also never expressed any obvious interest in wanting another child until thirty seconds ago.”
“I’ve said it—”
“And saying it while in the throes of passion does not count,” Lestat added. “Not unless you repeat it with a clear head.”
“I mean, it’s been in the back of my mind for a while,” Louis said, slowly laying back down in the coffin. “Not just during that… I don’t know, I’ve thought about it.”
Lestat’s body relaxed imperceptibly, his gaze fixed on Louis.
“You could say something,” Louis said, once the room had fallen silent again. “Worries me a little when you get all quiet.”
“What would you like me to say?”
“Don’t be like that,” Louis frowned. “Were you not saying five minutes ago that you wanted to ‘find a baby’ for our daughter?”
“Yes, I meant it more as hyperbole,” Lestat said. “I felt that was obvious.”
“You can just say you don’t want another kid, you don’t have to make me feel bad—”
“‘Want’ is not a factor here. I want to have a baby with you. I want to do it irresponsibly, like two teenagers discovering why their parents told them not to fool around on the couch,” Lestat explained. “The thorn here is having the luxury of time to mull over fine details.”
“That’s not really a bad thing,” Louis offered after a few seconds. “Probably better to be intentional.”
“I know how it feels to be resented for making someone. I suffered an almost fatal neck wound from it once,” Lestat said. Louis grimaced. “Forgive me for wishing there could be more options.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t got those… C’mere,” Louis said, reaching out for Lestat, who had not moved from his upright position. “I wanna hold you.”
Lestat gave in, melting into Louis’ embrace and feeling a kiss press against his forehead. Louis exhaled, tracing his fingers down Lestat's spine. Their breathing began to sync, and Lestat suspected for a moment that Louis had fallen asleep.
“What are you thinking about?” Louis asked softly, breaking the silence.
“I am thinking that…” Lestat paused, chewing over the words in his head. “I am becoming too tired to continue having this conversation. Now I do not have a clear head.”
“Oh,” Louis said, a hint of disappointment in his tone. “Yeah, let’s… let’s just continue this one tomorrow.”
“That would be better,” Lestat hummed, reaching to grab the handle on the lid and pull them into the darkness.
• • •
“No—Rose, watch what I am doing here,” Lestat said, holding his hands up for Rose to watch where he placed his fingers on the piano keys.
He’d been playing the next evening, as he often did to clear his head, when Rose came up and sat by him on the bench. She was eager to learn, although very unserious and impatient when it came to practicing a new skill.
“Your hands are too small for what I am doing, but you can watch me—do not press on the keys right now, just watch me.”
He began playing a piece he’d composed sometime around when he first met Louis a century ago, though he was only half focused on it while also trying to make sure Rose was actually listening and not just goofing around.
“Can you play one I can do?” Rose whined after a minute, growing restless where she sat by him on the bench. “This one is too hard.”
“If I am going to teach you to play the piano, it will take more than just playing a song,” Lestat said, ignoring her groan that followed.
Rose got off the bench and Lestat was grateful, hearing her footsteps run off while he continued playing with his back turned. After a few minutes, he heard another set of footsteps approaching him. Heavier ones.
He paused, waiting for Louis to speak before he turned.
“Are you heading out soon?” Louis asked, and Lestat realized it must be getting close to when he would normally leave to hunt.
Lestat turned, noticing something in Louis’ hands. A thermos.
“Rose asked if you could bring this with you tonight,” Louis said, holding it out for him. “She likes when it’s warm.”
There was something inherently wrong, Lestat thought, about a vampire child who was unaware of it asking for fresh blood. He stood from the bench, grabbing the thermos from Louis.
Lestat wondered what Rose assumed he did when he left the house each night, often returning with a thermos full of warm blood for her and Louis to enjoy. Clearly she knew it was coming from somewhere, though he was sure she wouldn’t have pieced together the gory details all on her own.
It was like they were hiding the truth in plain sight, and with the idea now on the table of adding another child to the mix, it seemed to only become more complicated. Lestat’s brain, his logical side, knew it would be a bad idea. They could hardly agree on a way to tell one child they were a vampire, how could they possibly manage it with two?
His heart disagreed, of course. Lestat loved Louis, and the thought of being able to have a child with him—one that was theirs, and only theirs—was exhilarating. Nothing made him happier than the thought of being able to give that to Louis. His Louis.
• • •
“Louis,” Lestat said, once they’d shut the coffin lid and Louis had curled up as close as their bodies would allow. “Are you awake?”
“Mm,” Louis grumbled, yawning into Lestat’s hair where he was pressed against the nape of his neck. “Barely. Yes.”
“We need to talk about something.”
“We just spent so long getting ready to sleep,” Louis muttered. “Why’d you wait ‘till now?”
In all honesty, Lestat had been trying to talk about it since he returned from his hunt, but kept finding the words stuck in his throat.
“It is about the conversation from last night,” Lestat said. “I think it would be best to consult Fareed Bhansali before we get our hopes up about anything.”
“Get our hopes up… that mean you’re coming around to it?” Louis asked sleepily, palm tracing over Lestat’s abdomen from where his hand had moved under his shirt.
“I want to know more,” Lestat said, lacing his fingers with Louis’ and lifting their hands away from his stomach. “Mostly because I cannot stop picturing our Rose playing with a faceless, curly-haired baby.”
“Why’s the baby gotta be faceless?”
“Well, if I begin to imagine what features our baby would have from each of us, I will only be more upset when Fareed inevitably tells us the treatments will not work,” Lestat mumbled, feeling Louis squeeze him tighter.
“That’s not going to happen,” Louis reassured, hooking his chin over a dip in Lestat’s shoulder. “But, it does feel nice to hear you say that.”
“…The treatments will not work?”
“No, not that part,” Louis rolled his eyes. “Our baby. I like hearing that.”
Lestat tried to mirror Louis’ headspace, all doe-eyed and dreamlike. It was difficult, though, and he felt nauseous as the thought of Fareed delivering bad news continued to thwart the good feelings he desperately wanted to have about this.
He dreamt about the faceless baby after finally giving in to the pull of the sun. Though, it wasn’t faceless in this dream. Their baby had a head of thick, dark curls and Lestat’s eye color. The shape was Louis’. Along with the rest of the features. Every other small detail there was all Louis.