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Louis paced over the soft carpeted floor of the living room. It was an awkward sort of pacing with the way he constantly had to side step various lamps and potted plants and endtables. The living room managed to be crowded with furniture and decorations despite its spaciousness because neither he or Lestat liked minimalism. They both enjoyed colorful, mismatching furniture that still managed to compliment its surroundings. Their home in rue royale had been like that. It may have bore witness to an at times strained family, cruel words exchanged, heartbreak and extreme violence committed against various humans but it never lacked character. It was overwhelming and even suffocating at times but never unassuming. Their space have always been alive the way they themselves were very much not.
His apartment with Armand was a far cry from this one with littered walls and a lived in mess decorating the very space they resided in. To be honest, Louis didnt care much about anything at that point in his life, and he certianly didnt care enough to voice his opinion on interior design out of all the things. So he let Armand choose whatever and when their shared house ended up looking like a dental clinic's waiting area, it only matched how he felt: namely a vague sense of impatience and helplessness. But now living in a home that felt like one, he realized just how much those little things meant and he was glad that he listened to Lestat for a change and voiced his every single whim (whater it be an opinion on the wallpaper or a third change on the wood flooring and even demanding the whole electricity infrastracture to be redone just because he didn’t like where one single socket was placed) without caring that they drove their realtor to an early retirement and their interior designer to a dozen grey hairs caused by the stress alone. It is to be our home mon cher, Lestat said, you shall have anything you want. He then offered to eat the building manager who made a pointy comment about the unending sounds of repairs in their apartment if it would ease his mortal pleasing head of his. He said no.
“I don’t understand why you get so defensive of her, Lestat. I ain’t said anything bad.” He turned to his husband (still not legally, something that annoyed him to no end) who was sitting down on the navy couch, frowning. He had a barely noticeable pout on his bottom lip that appeared whenever they had an argument. It was cute and nothing like the thinned pressed together lips the older man only had when their argument got too serious, in which that they exchanged cruel barbs (mostly Louis) and shattered various objects against the wall (mostly Lestat). And they haven’t had those often anymore, to both of their surprises. Sure, they still bickered and yelled a little but it would have been concerning if they didn’t. Lestat felt things too loudly and unashamedly expressed them, making it everyone else’s problem as well. While Louis repressed and intellectualized his feelings and when that didn’t work, provoked. Because unlike hurt, grief and sadness he never knew how to deal with, anger was a safe crevice. It was familiar and something that could be explained without baring his soul. Lestat had always said that Louis couldn’t let go of his past teachings with the way he still anxiously looked around when his lover pressed a peck to his lips on a public space, a part of him worried that cops would drag them away for their crimes against nature; or how he still clinged tightly to the idea that a man shouldn’t cry, that he shouldn’t show vulnerability. His maker might have something right there, not that he would ever say so.
“Forgive me for being offended when I asked you to see my mother two nights in a row and you acted as if I cursed your entire bloodline! She barely comes around as it is and I want to spend time with her.” Lestat threw his hands up with annoyance. His silk unbuttoned shirt that he started shedding to get comfortable before they started arguing slid a little bit more open in his chest, the burgundy fabric looked tantalizing on the man’s pale, scarred skin.
“You can spend time with her, I ain’t stopping you. I’m just asking you not to bring me along.” Louis stopped his pacing and turned to his lover, grabbing the back of an armchair. He was in similar formal attire, cream silk shirt and comfortle black pants, having been just returned from their night with Gabrielle where they sat at the bar of some fancy hotel. Top floor of some scyscraper with above avarage cocktails and a nicely decorated interior with little crowd or noise, which he appreciated.
“I want my love getting along with my mother.” The older vampire exhaled. “I don’t understand why you don’t like her.”
Louis huffed and busied his hands taking off his watch, a gift from Lestat. “I told you, It’s not that I don’t like her. I just don’t like the way she treats you.” He refused to meet Lestat’s eyes as he said so. He had so much he held back because his husband got extremely defensive against anything negative uttered about his lovely maman, as currently observed in exhibit A. “She doesn’t bother to contact, let alone visit you for decades before suddenly re-entering your life and expects you to base your life around her.”
And damn it, Lestat went running each time. Louis only met Gabrielle twice, the first one in one of Lestat’s concerts when they were fighting because of the book and he went to confront his ex after finding out that he had been blocked. It was a brief meeting that didn’t leave him with too many opinions except that she was annoying. They got introduced by Lestat who then ignored him in favor of his mother until the younger one eventually stormed off, slamming the door after him. Back then, he thought that Lestat was so occupied with her just to piss him off but soon, it became clear that this was not the case.
When they rekindled their relationship, Louis finally asked about the woman. Lestat always spoke of her fondly but the stories he told always sounded off to Louis. His fond memories of her consisted her giving Lestat the tiniest hint of warmth, usually after something especially awful like a nasty scar the marquise gave his son or getting dragged back from the acting troupe. She would step in to silently clean her sons scar or hand him some jewellery to go sell them and make a life for himself. Never affectionate. Lestat liked to claim that she comforted him in those moments but never elaborated, making Louis believe that they were merely said to appease him.
Her not defending Lestat against her husband, Louis could understand. The man was awful to all of them and Gabrielle couldn’t have done much. But it was her complete lack of reaction and concern that bugged him. How she could easily hear her son cry in his room and walk past, how she could just ignore the little boy begging to be taught how to read and go back to her book. And it wasn’t any different now either. Lestat would go decades without a word from her before she announced that she was in the town for a single night and expected Lestat to drop everything and come running back to her. And Lestat did. He trailed her around like an eager puppy, begging for a tiny scrap of affection she would toss his way. It was painful to watch.
Lestat snarls, the barely visible scar on the corner of his mouth pulled. “She is a free spirit, she likes to travel and I won’t hold her back like my father did.” This was another thing Louis wondered how his lover was unaware of. Lestat’s constant comparison to his father. He would often compare his behaviour towards Gabrielle to the marquis in sentences that were clearly not originally his but something he was repeating. ‘Gabrielle have always had my respect even if father could never understand her’ and ‘I’m not like that old bastard who didn’t know her worth’ or ‘I was always her man more than my father was’. How could he seriously not hear how fucked up they sounded? When Louis tried to tell him that, he just laughed it off and said that she just saw him as an extension of herself, her masculine side. Which did nothing to assuage his worries as it sounded a whole different level of toxic and codependent.
“It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me.” Lestat insisted with the air of a stubborn little boy trying to prove mama loved him the most. “And it's ridiculous of you to say as if Florence was such a good mother. She treated you horribly and you still kept seeing her.” Louis gritted his teeth at the low blow and didn’t let it get to him. Unlike him, his lover would never weopanize his past unless he was feeling especially cornered. So the fact that he chose to bring it up meaned that Louis hit a sore spot. It was also clear from how Lestat’s tone was chipped and voice at a normal volume, something he only did when particularly angry or scared.
“I know she was bad, I do.” Louis admitted, something that took a lot of time. It was a hard thing to admit your mother had been bad, felt wrong. But he came to embrace that years later, that the memory of the loving mother of his youth and the cruel one could co-exist and admitting she did a bad job at times didn’t mean he couldn’t love her anyway. “But she wasn’t always like that, Lestat. She was different before father died. Less judgemental, more easygoing.” Because she trusted her husband to manage everything, didn’t feel the need to establish her dominance like she did when Louis was the one running things. “And even after, she was still loving. She worried, she cared. She hugged me and held me, she showed affection. She-“
“She loves me.” Lestat cut him off, an indignant fire in his blue eyes at the barest hint of his mother not loving him. A mistake, Louis realized. With all the abandonment issues of a two years old and being particularly sensitive about his ability of being loved, implying Gabrielle doesn’t love him was akin to setting a time bomb on their living room. And Lestat was about to blow.
“I didn’t sa-“
“She does love me.” Lestat insisted petulantly. “She gave me her last piece of jewelery so I could make a life for myself in Paris with Nicki. She got me my dogs. She- she supported me.” He went on with a desperate hurry, trying to prove the love to Louis or himself, the younger man wasn’t sure. “She shows affection to me. We hug too.” He wasn’t looking at Louis anymore but at the thin air, seeming so far away. Searching for anything in his memories to prove her being loving too.
“She loves me.” He repeated. “Why else would she kiss me? Why would she comfort me after I killed those wolves? Why share a coffin with me? Let me pleasure her?”
Louis felt his breath get knocked out from his lungs as if punched. The blood he drank earlier in the night drained from his face and a weird sense of nausea came to him. “Hey. Lestat, hold on. I- what do you mean?” He asked carefully, gripping the soft fabric of the armchair thigtly and wishing, hoping, that he got the wrong idea. That Leatat didn’t mean… “Pl-“ Nope, he couldn’t say it. Because how could one ask their husband what they meant by pleasuring his mother. The words just refused to come out at the profound wrongness of it. So he settled for the next best thing he could ask. “Comfort you how?” he rasped out.
Lestat, broken out of his rambeling, was looking at him. He seemed calmer now but it could just be Louis too dumbfounded to understand.
Louis circled the room to sit next to Lestat on the couch. Because his legs felt like they were about to fail him. All the while Lestat traced the younger vampires movement with his eyes, a confused frown in his face like Louis just asked a very stupid question. He shrugged “Well she helped me dress my wounds. She listened to my fears about how I was scared I would one day kill my father and brothers in a similar fashion. She told me it was okay, she hated them too. She thought about bad things she would never do too. She allowed me to cry for my dogs and brought me to orgasm in order to cheer me up.”
There was a distinct feeling of someone ripping out your still beating heart and chop it to little pieces as you watched just to set them on fire and stuff it back inside your ribs that Louis felt only a handful of times in his over a hundred years of living. He felt it the first time when he learned how poorly the staff was treating Paul in the mental hospital. An ache so bad that it made him weep there crouching over the phone. The second time was when Claudia talked about Bruce. A fire that burned so hot that he was surprised how he managed to live. The third was when she died. The most agonizing of it all that left him unfeeling for years.
That feeling, the one that he hoped he would never taste again, was back. His fingers suddenly felt cold, the metallic taste of blood coating his mouth from the blood he drank climbing back on his throath. He forcefully swallowed back, refusing to throw up, and glanced at his husband who so casually dropped this bomb on him. “Y-you… you guys had..?” He couldn’t finish the sentence, just looking at his lovers blue eyes. Desperate for the man to burst out laughing and reveal that it was a tasteless joke. And he would yell, say it wasn’t funny and pout a little before the man eventually kissed him and made him forgot his annoyance.
“We never had intercourse. But she would occasionally comfort me with her touch. And I, her.” Lestat shrugged, unaware of the havoc in his husbands mind. “You don’t need to be jealous, mon cher. Nothing happened between us since we parted ways, long before I met you.”
“I’m not jealous.” Louis really wasn’t. He was horrified and sick but definetly not jealous. He wanted to cry. He wanted to yell. He wanted to ask Lestat if he knew that this, this wasn’t normal. It was abusive and toxic and god, so fucked up. But he had to thread carefully here. Not only Lestat was so defensive of his mother, he would also snap if he thought Louis pitied him. Which wasn’t the case. “Lestat, I… you know that’s not…okay, right?”
Lestat huffed a confused breath. “I know it’s quite unusual but it shouldn’t really matter. We are vampires, non? She isn’t my mother anymore, those labels mean nothing.” Now that was a blatant lie, one that Lestat seemed to believe himself but it was one. The man just called her his mother mere minutes ago. He almost never called Gabrielle mother in front of her though, she didn’t like it, he told Louis. But it was clear that when she wasn’t around, his natural instinct was to call her his mother. Because she fucking is, Louis thought.
“And before the dark gift, well.” Lestat shrugged. “We had a special bond. It doesn’t matter what others say. We were just a bit unconventional, that’s all. It’s not like we had romantic feelings for each other. It was just a way to show love.”
Suddenly, Louis felt a blinding urge to storm off and find Gabrielle and slowly skin her. He hated her. He hated this, his love so unaware of the abuse he lived through.
No romantic feelings, hah, Louis wasn’t so sure Gabrielle would agree to that statement. Because while Lestat who was starved for a tiny bit of affection could justify those touches as love, Gabrielle who knew better had no reason to do something like that unless she wanted it. Unless she desired him.
Louis chose his next words carefully. He hated that he had to bring her into their stormy romance one more time, had to bring her between them again as a shield. But he couldn’t think of anything else he could say that could make Lestat see the situation more logically. “Would you do that, with Claudia?”
“Putain de merde! What kind of a question is- no! Of course not! How can you even ask this to me?” The older man flinched as if slapped, face contorted with even the thought of it. Louis gently took one of his hands in his.
“Exactly, you wouldn’t even consider it.” He spoke lightly like trying not to spook a frightened animal. “And she ain’t even related to us, not biologically. But you wouldn’t. How is it any diffirent with Gabrielle?”
Lestat frowned before snatching his hand away, looking at his lover like he had been tricked. “They are two unrelated things.” He said coldly. “My relationship with Gabrielle was just different. It was just… I- she loved me. That’s what matters.”
The younger vampire took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself. His first instinct was to rage, get angry and take it out on Lestat with sarcastic comments or withdraw in disgust. Not towards his maker, never towards him, but towards that woman who so selfishly abused her son. The past Louis would probably have done so by now. Made a comment like ‘you hit the same vagina that you spent nine months in?’ because he didn’t know another way to deal with those intense emotions.
But this kind of shit was the reason they were so fucked up back then. Lestat not allowing himself to be vulnurable and on the rare times he did, Louis dismissing it. Or worse, mocking him or using that piece of information on their fights to hurt his lover. He did the same with Armand too, collecting sore spots like a stamp collection and turn them into weapons. Because the best defence was offence and Lord knew his walls were flimsy at best. They would crumble down with a bit of affection and allow the enemy in. So the best thing he could do was to attack before anyone reached them. Something that left him alone inside the barren trail of his forts. No amount of I love you’s could take that feeling away because the thick stone walls muffled the screams to a whisper that didn’t reach his heart.
But now they were trying to be diffirent, better. Louis started seeing a therapist and while his lover was still reluctant to do the same, he also put in a lot of work. In the past few months, Lestat suddenly interrupted himself during a screaming session just to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths before anouncing he didn’t want to continue fighting while they were both angry because ‘we both hurt each other when we are like that, mon cher’. It was a huge surprise for Louis that his husband who normally seeked closure in an arguement as soon as possible even if the other tried to leave would be mindful enough to suggest they take a break.
He came to find out that Lestat had been watching videos on healthy relationship dynamics from youtube and tiktok -his lover never did have the patience to read. And while Louis was doubtful the internet was the best place to explore mindfulness, it did seem to help with their arguments and it was still the only option since the older vampire refused seeing a real therapist. Thousands of humans' experiences are more valuable than any four year education Louis, he said.
So with all still all their mistakes, they were both trying their best to make their relationship less toxic now. Not the level of healthy that didn’t destroy furniture or have angry sex on the carpeted floor beside pieces of shattered glass but the absence of spousal murder or dropping one another from the sky was enough for now.
That was why Louis couldn’t allow that ugly urge to win. Why he had to tread carefully in this situation and not snap. “Baby.” He took his maker's hands back in his with a gentle squeeze, the pet name slightly softening Lestat’s cold defensive gaze. “I’m not saying she doesn’t love you. And I know you love her too. I just want you to understand that you don’t need to do everything that she asks you to. You are allowed to say no.” He spoke softly, a slight stab in his chest with the fact that Lestat had be told that his consent mattered at his over two hundred years of living.
“I know that.” Lestat raised his chin, although his voice wasn’t very steady. “I wanted to. She suffered so much because of him. And I- I abandoned her. I left her with those vultures to live happily in Paris. And she never asked for anything back, just made sure I was happy. So I wanted to make her happy in return. She deserves it.” The blue eyes were frighteningly empty, like Lestat heard how his own words sounded to his own ears and still tried to convince himself it was okay. “It’s not like she forced me to. I enjoyed it. I liked making her feel nice.”
Louis wanted to say that this was the first time he heard some concerning comment about consent from his lover but that would be a lie. Just two years ago, when they were fighting about that damn book and Lestat was ignoring him, Louis had decided to take the matter into his own hands and attended one of the shows in LA. The older vampire had been radiant up there on the stage. He was on his element with all the attention directed at him, basking in it. He pranced around, lewdly licked the mic, thrusted his sinful hips into the air (which made Louis half hard in his pants with the sight alone but no one had to know that) and even got a fan to come up on stage and sank his fangs into the girl's throat. But it wasn’t just the show that bewitched the audience. Lestat had always been talented and even Louis who had no taste for rock or any kind of loud music was stunned by the silk voice murmuring those crude lines.
Louis went backstage after the show with a strange mix of arousal, annoyance and awe. But it was soon all replaced with anger when he pushed the dressing room open just to be greeted with Lestat surounded with eager groupies. The man himself was still in his last costume; thight leather pants and combat boots with a sheer, see through top. Only the top was discarded on the dirty floor next to various empty liquor bottles. No one seemed to care about the filth or the stink of weed in the room. A ginger man was on his knees between Lestat’s still clothed spread legs. The tight pants were pushed down just enough to expose the rockstar's cock which was currently getting deep-throated by the boy. A girl was sitting beside Lestat on the couch, half naked, sucking her idol’s neck as the man shamelessly played with her exposed tits. And a second girl on the other side was half sitting on Lestat’s lap, neck exposed for him to drink from. She had a pretty face but her nose had some white substance on it, no doubt the lines of coke on the coffee table.
Louis’s reaction to his ex-husband in the beginning of an orgy was anything but calm. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! You get mad at me and throw yourself at some floozies, is that it? Is that why you are acting like a fucking whore?!”
His maker's calmness only managed to enrage him further as the man lazily dislatched his fangs from the neck of the girl he was currently drinking from and told the boy who stopped blowing him off to look at Louis to go on. He gave an unimpressed look to Louis, eyes hazy with drugs and one hand still groping the blonde girl's breast even as he stopped fondling them. “I have a gorgeous body, non? And those people want it. Who am I to stop them if they wish to share their passion with it? And can you really blame them, because I remember more than one occasion where you were just as eager to-“
Louis never heard the end of that sentence as he slammed the door and stormed off by that point. At the time, he didn’t think much of it. Or rather he did, but it was admittedly not the wording that he chose to replay over and over in his head. But now, in the light of this recent revelation, more instances of Lestat seeing his body as a seperate thing from himself appeared in his mind. Instances of his maker referring to his flings as ‘giving them what they want’, or off-handedly mentioning that he never rejected an offer of sex before he and Louis started dating again. The younger vampire merely brushed them off as Lestat over exaggerating to get a rise out of Louis or the fact that his lover always saw sex as an impersonal thing. Never did he think that it was a compulsion, a fucked up idea that made the man think that anyone who wanted him were entitled to his body. That saying no wasn’t an option when he was a coerced young man trying to get his mothers attention in any way he could and it wasn’t an option decades later.
Unshed tears pricked his eyes like a needle but he refused to let them fall. How many worrying comments did he brush off, how many times did he fail to recognize this line of thinking in his lover? In the man who he shared a life and raised a daughter with. How could he be so blind?
“Lestat, baby, its-its not a transactional thing.”
The older vampire chuckled and freed one hand to bring it up to his husband's cheek, softly stroking it. “Of course it is.” he said. “You were always a romantic, mon cher, I get it. But it's not so deep. She wanted me and I could give her what she wanted. Besides, beauty is meant to be shared, non?”
Louis worried his lips instead of matching the grin Lestat wore because of the joke only he found amusing. He met his maker's eyes and a treacherous thought suddenly invaded his mind. One that slithered through the folds of his brain like a poisonous reptile and filled him with cold dread. A thought he didn’t even wish to entertain but it was too late.
The younger man pressed his lips together. Was it possible that Lestat ever wanted to say no to him but couldn’t do so because he thought he wasn’t supposed to? Their many, many encounters flashed through his eyes quickly as he tried to find a clue that Lestat had been unenthusiastic. He couldn’t but then again his love was the greatest actor to ever walk on stage, as Armand called him. Could Louis even tell if there were ever any sign? Probably not. All he could do was ask but he wasn’t sure Lestat would be able to tell himself either.
“You know I want you, right?” He tried a different route, one he wasn’t sure if it would work.
“Of course, cheri. You made that very obvious just today before we left the coffin.” Lestat smirked.
“Okay.” Louis didn’t join in on the tease, his face serious but not unkind. “And remember last week, the night we went to the club with the band? You wanted to do it on the couch but I wasn’t in the mood after what happened with Larry and you stopped.”
Larry forgot that he was on antibiotics for a cold and a night of heavy drinking caused him to suddenly throw up in a violent manner before passing out. There were a lot of drugs in the party that the band often partaken in so they thought it was on OD and were scared shitless. Thankfully their friend's condition was milder than that as they soon found on the ER, although not before giving them all a serious scare. Even Louis who, despite his initial dislike of the way the man was close with his lover, had grown to like the guy.
“Yes, of course.” Lestat answered, confused. What else would he do?
“Would you rather that I didn’t tell you no? That even if I normally want you, I didn’t want to do it then but I didn’t stop you because I wanted to make you happy?”
The older vampire gasped, his beautiful eyes squeezing with a frown. “Of course not! That would be…non! It’s supposed to be enjoyable for both of us!”
“I agree. So shouldn’t it be the same for you with Gabrielle?”
“No. Non, that’s different. I enjoy making her feel good. I enjoy her attention. I want it.” Lestat shook his head.
“I enjoy making you feel good too. I enjoy your attention. Should I not say no because of this?”
Lestat opened his mouth to answer but no words came out. He frowned, seeming to be battling with his own conflicting thoughts. His blue eyes went hazy, staring at thin air as he retreated inside his own mind to try and solve this problem. It was like he was trying to solve an impossible riddle, frozen in place as the cogs turned behind his skull. Louis didn’t interrupt, just squeezed the hand in his, giving his husband time to think.
It was almost two minutes until the vampire spoke. “But she loves me.” He whispered, still sounding very far away. “If she loves me, why- why would she do that? She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t hurt me. She loves me.”
Lestat finally met Louis’s gaze as he shakily forced those words out. His eyes were full of unshed tears now, pupils enlarged with shock and confusion. They were begging Louis for an explanation. Tell him that of course she wouldn’t do that, there was simply something else they weren’t considering.
“I know baby, I know she does.” Because even if the woman was selfish and sick, she did care about her son. She just happened to be a very fucked up person besides that. “But she shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. It wasn’t okay.”
Louis put a hand on Lestat's shoulder and kept eye contact. A tear escaped the older man’s right eye as he shook his head. “No, no. She wouldn’t. She loves me.”
Louis smiled gently but there was no amusement in it. “We can still hurt those who we love. We both hurt Claudia. We both hurt each other. Doesn’t mean there is no love.”
A sob escaped the other vampire’s chest at that. Instinctively, Louis pulled him closer and Lestat went willingly into his arms. The man sobbed against his husband's breastbone as red tears stained the tan fabric. Louis held him with his chin tucked on top of his lover's head, occasionally pressing a kiss to the now frizzy blonde hair that inexplicably always seemed to get that way whenever Lestat was upset and pretended he didn’t shed a few tears himself in the meantime.
Louis didn’t know how long they sat there on the couch, holding each other. They were in their own bubble, undisturbed by the undistinguishable chatter of the city beneath them. He allowed his mind to go blank for a while, there were so many things to think and worry about. So much shit they had to somehow deal with. He had no idea how but as immortal beings, they had all the time in the world to figure it out. So just for this last few hours of the night before the sun came up, he closed his eyes and focused on his husband in his arms.