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It felt strange to have him in his arms again. It felt like coming back home. Yet, what was home but broken stained glass windows. There was a hurt wedged deep inside his chest. A wooden stake of his own making.
Louis closed his eyes, breathing in the smell. Old hairspray still lingering in Lestat's perfect mane of hair. Something so achingly human. Something so far, far away. His mouth tried to close that distance by placing a kiss against Lestat's temple but his hair was getting in the way.
Lestat shifted slightly, clinging to him like a domesticated animal. They stayed like this. A moment. Two. Lestat shifted again, a hint of familiar eagerness in his hips.
"Getting bothered already?" Louis teased softly, voice hushed and low. Content.
He felt Lestat shudder, then freeze over completely. A razor-sharp change cutting through his expression — part of his face that Louis could see. A sliver of something almost shy and embarrassed and pained.
Louis held back a frown, threatening to climb up his eyebrows. Cautiously, making himself sound nonchalant, he said, "It's okay. We don't have to do anything if you aren't really into it tonight."
Lestat's head rose swiftly.
"No! I do want you, Louis. I always do. I—"
"Shh. It's okay not to want to have sex, Lestat. You remember that, right?"
They stared at each other, wishing the thoughts could be shared between them. No words needed for explanations. But they could have only words. Words and blood, and blood was... overwhelming. Painful. Fragile. The bridge of words had to be built first before the cord of blood could connect them again. One step at a time.
"Of course. It's just... Lately I have been feeling like I want it all the time but also as if I never want it." Lestat was looking away now. Trembling eyelashes, unburdened from his usual stage mascara. "Does it even make any sense to you?"
Louis hummed, concern itching right under his skin.
"A little."
"It's frustrating," Lestat groaned, lightly grinding against Louis's leg, without even realizing he did that, before abruptly pulling away. "I can't help it."
Gently, Louis guided him into his embrace again, back to chest this time. He felt small now, Louis thought, surprised to the point of almost confusion, and the hurt in his chest grew sharper — thousands upon thousands of little rat teeth gnawing at his heart. This horrible, crushing realization that Lestat had always been this vulnerable creature. Underbelly so soft it's easy to pierce. Easy to want to pierce.
Louis tightened his arm around Lestat, pressing him closer against himself.
"Louis?" Lestat murmured, desperation caught between the strained strings of his voice. A sense of unuttered formless plea, as if Louis held all the answers he needed.
He didn't. His hands were full of delusions and self-deceptive half-truths. Even after so many years of immortal life it was still hard letting them go, no matter how much quiet contemplation he fostered. Louis had not a single answer to give.
"Maybe we could just stay like this for a while...?" he suggested meekly.
In this arrangement of their bodies, heartbeats synchronized. In this arrangement of their time spent together sharing the same physical space. In this arrangement of speaking terms, text messages answered, phone calls returned. Whatever 'like this' meant to Lestat, Louis would accept it.
"We could."
Lestat sounded distant, not quite closed off but drifting away. Breath after breath. Louis's palm flat on his chest. No wall between them. Just themselves. Louis tried to search for words to bridge the evergrowing gap, yet the bridge was falling down, falling down.
"Do you want to do something else?" His voice felt awkward in his throat. Flat. Indifferent.
Lestat sighed. A corner of Louis's mouth twitched. He hated how fast a spark of frustration lit up in his chest, singeing the wooden stake of hurt stuck there.
"I can't read your mind, Les. You need to talk to me."
Wrong words. He felt them cut his tongue upon leaving his mouth.
Lestat strained in his arms, as if ready to break out of the embrace.
"Ah, yes. The benevolent King Of Cold Silence wants me to talk to him." The aftersound of an old pain rang loudly and viciously like a church bell. Louis closed his eyes and pressed his face into Lestat's hair.
"Don't," he whispered. "Don't. I just want to understand what you want us to be right now. I don't want to make anything worse by misunderstanding you or guessing wrong. I don't want to... hurt you."
He expected another cruel jab. A sneer. A petty laughter. All of that justified as much as monsters or evildoers or demons could ever justify themselves. I hurt you because I am of evil nature. I hurt you because I hurt. I hurt you.
For a moment, Lestat remained silent, stiff as if made of stone, then he began to speak.
"I thought this," he squeezed Louis's arm gently, almost timidly, "would be enough. I want it to be enough, not forever, for a bit. But I don't feel like it can be enough. My thoughts keep running in dirty circles. The intrusive flashes of fantasies — those banal carnalities, like parasites. They eat me, even when I simply want to hold you in my arms. Maybe because of how I was made, I am now cursed with my maker's love. Or—"
"Not love," Louis interjected instantly, his blood running cold, nausea in his throat.
"I know. I know. I don't mean the word literally, Louis."
He could tell that Lestat just rolled his eyes.
"Even so, don't use it."
Words were a powerful tool, suited for aiming both outside oneself and inside. Louis understood this rather well. The cruelty of the tongue. A twinge of guilt pierced his chest. He shook the feeling off, hand clutching Lestat's shirt.
"It doesn't matter," Lestat insisted stubbornly but he sounded quieter. A sense of fundamental defeat heavy in his voice, weighing him down. Whatever word he used as a wrapper out loud or in the confines of his head, the thing that had been his vampiric birth would never unbecome that thing. Not worth arguing semantics.
The silence blanketed them once more, the flow of Lestat speech interrupted. Louis felt himself suffocating.
"Do you want to get it out of your system with my help or not?" he said, desperately needing to breathe.
A practical approach from a practical man. His inner self cringed.
Lestat turned around to face him. His eyes weren't rimmed with blood yet but they looked misty. Louis's chest ached hard. This creature made of fragile pieces constantly falling apart, constantly putting himself together. The endurance of spirit preserving its natural light. The ancient madness peeking through the cracks. His wound, his salvation. His death, his rebirth.
His Big Bad Wolf and his Red Riding Hood. How deeply he cared for him.
"Yes," Lestat breathed out. Trembling lips. Gaze shying away. Shame — a nauseatingly familiar feeling. How much Louis hated to be reminded of that again, even if it wasn't the same for Lestat as it used to be for him. It wasn't about what Lestat was. There was no liberation for him in the acceptance of your whole self. It was about what was done to him. Only more hurt in the acknowledgement of hurt.
Tenderness gathered on his fingertips, Louis cupped Lestat's face and kissed his mouth.