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Larry is dead.
Lestat’s band is made of vampires now. Their album is nowhere near ready. Louis is losing his mind, and Claudia keeps staring at him with deep pain written all over those impossibly red eyes, her burned palm turned to him.
And Larry is dead.
Lestat closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Still a piece of shit,” Claudia’s ghost says from where she sits across the studio, arms crossed, lips pressed on a thin line. “He died because of you, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” his voice sounds defeated even to his own ears, so unlike him.
“You could have turned him too. He would have asked for it. He’d be here, he’d be a vampire too, if only you had stopped him from leaving,” she continues. “Like you wanted to. But no. You had to be cruel to him. Had to make him feel useless.”
Lestat takes a deep breath. Not real.
“Stop.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“Please, stop.”
His phone is ringing, but Lestat wants to go to coffin.
Too many voices. Too many muses. The coffin will silence it all.
“Who are you talking to?”
Lestat jumps. He doesn’t need to turn around to know who it is— that voice, Louis, Louis, but Louis didn’t call when Lestat got shot and Louis’ muse never speaks, just sits there in silent judgement—
Modern clothes, Lestat thinks as he turns, finding him standing across the room. Modern hair. The drum of his heartbeat. Real.
Louis takes a step closer. “Lestat?”
“A muse,” Lestat says at last, answering him. “Talking to a muse.”
Louis sends him a look that tells Lestat he isn’t making any sense. Louis doesn’t question it, though. He shrugs, hands inside his coat’s pockets, shoulders low as if trying to make himself smaller. Atypical, Lestat thinks.
“Thank you,” Louis says, voice all but a whisper. “For coming today.”
Lestat leans against the wall, dizzy. His heart hurts just as badly as his head does, and all these human feelings are really overwhelming—
Claudia laughs bitterly at them, shaking her head disapprovingly. “Still the same fucking shit,” she mumbles as she sits down on the couch, crossing her legs, watching them.
Lestat shakes his head. Tries to clear his thoughts. Tries to ignore it.
“You called,” he finally answers. Simple. Uncomplicated. You called, I came.
“Yeah,” Louis takes another step. Lestat can smell him now, cedar and rain, burnt candles and old books. If Lestat closes his eyes, he’s back in the townhouse, and Claudia is still alive. “You’ll always come when I need you, won’t you?”
He still needs me, is what Lestat hears. After all this time, he still needs me.
It’s humiliating, really. The way Lestat’s eyes water. How his whole body reacts to Louis’ mere presence. How right he is— because yes, of course, of course Lestat will always drop everything, ignore all the ways in which Louis has hurt him, and come when he calls.
Louis won’t do the same.
There were two attempted murders against his life. Two.
Louis takes one last step forward, standing in front of Lestat now, too close to be comfortable.
Claudia’s ghost laughs again.
Thumbs under his eyes, shedding away blood tears. Lestat doesn’t feel the tears coming, but they’re there somehow, being wiped by Louis’ strong hands. He can’t pinpoint when it happens, when exactly he starts crying or when exactly Louis takes his face in his hands, but he’s being touched now and it’s perfect, perfect—
“I’m sorry,” Louis presses their foreheads together, voice breaking. “I’m an asshole, and I was struggling, and I’m sorry. I should have called.”
Lestat can’t move. He looks up at Louis, eyes crossed, breath catching.
“Don’t do that again,” he breathes out slowly, shoulders slowly relaxing. “I needed you.”
“I know, baby.”
Louis kisses his face. A weird spot next to Lestat’s nose, close to his left eye. Lestat freezes.
Louis notices, pausing for a split second, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, he presses his lips to Lestat’s temple, murmuring against his skin:
“Relax. It’s just me.”
“Don’t— don’t call me that,” Lestat manages to say, even though there’s a gigantic knot on his throat, even though his whole body starts shivering with electricity.
“Call you what?” Louis pulls away to look at him better, but his hands don’t leave Lestat’s face. “Baby?”
Lestat flinches at the word, avoids Louis’ gaze, looks down at the floor as Louis tries to find his eyes again.
“Hey,” Louis cups his jaw, pulling his face upwards. “Sorry. I’m sorry, okay? I won’t say it again.”
Lestat nods.
“Oh my fucking god,” Claudia laughs, making Lestat look to the other side of the room, away from where her ghost sits on the couch, away from Louis.
Why is she being so mean now? We were playing the piano just moments ago, Let’s go back to that. It broke my heart but at least she wasn’t cruel— at least I could forget she hates me—
“Wha— Lestat, what’s going on?” Louis sounds too worried now, brows knitting with concern. “Why are you acting so strange?”
Lestat startles violently, ripping himself away before Louis can reach for him. He can't bear to look at either of them. He wheels around and rushes toward the bathroom, shoving the door open with trembling hands.
“Lestat!” He hears Louis call. Claudia’s laughter follows him all the way down the hall.
He reaches the bathroom and braces both hands against the sink, his fingers trembling so violently his grip almost slips. He squeezes his eyes shut and drags in a shaky breath. It doesn’t quite fill his lungs.
A warm hand finds his back.
Lestat startles at first, then melts at once.
Louis doesn’t say anything. He only rubs slow circles between Lestat's shoulders before reaching for the towel hanging nearby. He runs it beneath the cold water, wrings it out, and turns back to him, concern written plainly across his face.
“You’re sweating,” Louis murmurs.
He presses the damp cloth to Lestat’s forehead. Lestat lets his eyes drift shut, the coolness sinking into his overheated skin. Louis moves the cloth slowly across his temple, down the side of his face, then to the back of his neck. By the time he brushes it over Lestat’s collarbone, the knot in his chest has begun to loosen.
“Better?”
Lestat nods.
“I keep seeing her,” he says at last. His voice comes out thin, frayed, unfamiliar, but at least he’s saying it out loud. “I keep seeing her, and Larry is dead. It’s my fault.”
Louis tips his head slightly. Grief softens every line of his face, but beneath there’s more, always more, the softness under his gaze that has always undone Lestat— love, so obvious, though never spoken into words.
It aches to look at him like this, knowing the tenderness in those green eyes will vanish as suddenly as it appeared. Knowing Lestat doesn’t really deserve it. Still, he drinks it in while he can, unable to stop himself. He never really learned how.
“I know you think that,” Louis whispers. His fingers brush lightly against Lestat’s jaw, coaxing his face toward him. He doesn’t speak again until Lestat finally meets his eyes. “But listen to me,” he says, his voice steady despite the worry written all over his face. “Listen to me.”
Something in his tone makes Lestat stop fighting it. He holds Louis’ gaze, waiting.
“My brother jumped off a roof right in front of me. I still blame myself for it. My mother blamed me. My whole family did.” A pause. “But one thing I know for sure: I didn’t push him, Lestat. I didn’t. And you didn’t push Larry. They jumped. They did this to themselves, and nothing we could have said or done would have avoided it. This is not your fault, Lestat. It’s not.”
Lestat breathes in shakily, vision blurry, but Louis looks so beautiful under the studio lights and his head is pounding so, so badly—
“I should have stopped him from leaving. From quitting the band. I thought he would come back eventually, that I didn’t have to…”
Louis doesn’t let him finish.
He steps forward and gathers Lestat into his arms, stealing the rest of the words from his mouth.
And, as it is every single time, it feels like coming home.
Lestat folds into him, starved for it, desperate for the embrace. He buries his face in the warm curve of Louis’ neck, drawing in the familiar scent. Louis’ arms tighten around his back, one hand settling between his shoulder blades, the other cradling the back of his head.
The gentle weight of him anchors Lestat to the present, each slow stroke across his back making it easier to breathe.
Claudia falls silent.
“I feel her too,” Louis admits. “All the time. But I never saw her,” Louis seems to struggle to let the words out, still holding Lestat in his arms.
“Do you wish you did?” Lestat asks against Louis’ skin, strands of his own hair falling into his mouth, his face a mess of blood-stained tears.
“Yeah,” Louis nods, pulling away, eyes meeting Lestat’s. “Yeah, I do.”
His voice cracks on the last word. When his composure finally fractures, Lestat sheds his tears.
“I saw you all the time when I—”
Lestat’s heart stutters.
He bites the inside of his cheek, grounding himself against the rush of emotion trying to swallow him whole.
“Say it.”
Louis swallows hard. “When I thought you were dead.”
“Hm.” Lestat lifts a hand, brushing his thumb over Louis’ cheekbone, catching a tear before it can fall. “When you killed me, you mean.”
Louis flinches as if the words have struck too deep, too close to a still very open wound.
“Yeah,” Louis seems to be in physical pain, his brows pulled together as though every word hurts to say. “I’m—”
“Sorry?” Lestat smiles, but it’s a sad, hurt, broken smile, carrying years of pain and anger and all the love he never managed to stop feeling.
“Louis, stop lying to me.” His voice is quieter now. “I could die tomorrow and you wouldn’t even flinch.”
Louis shakes his head immediately, eyes shining, lips trembling.
“That’s not true,” he breathes out, and the words come out like a plea. “I get why you think so. But that’s not true. Not at all.”
“How do you expect me to believe that?”
Louis looks away. His gaze drops to the floor, mouth pressing into a thin line.
“I lost my mind when I thought you were gone,” he admits. “Not unlike I’m losing my mind now.”
Lestat could die again, really.
Because this is worse. All of this is worse.
Lestat understands New Orleans. He does. He needed to die then, and he understands that— he always has. Lestat was a monster back then. Blood of Akasha or not, that is a fact. There was no other way to cut the cord between them other than ending his life, no way for Louis to leave him otherwise. And Louis had to leave— if not for him, then for Claudia.
Lestat needed to die then.
But now?
“That would be it, Lestat,” Louis says, voice cracking, making Lestat dizzy. “That would be it for me. I can’t deal with the thought. Do you understand?”
Louis looks at him as if he needs Lestat to understand.
“If you were gone… I wouldn’t want to keep going. Do you get that?”
Lestat never wanted to believe anything more.
“Why won’t you show it to me, Louis?” He knows he sounds desperate now, knows he’s crying like a fool, knows it sounds like begging, but there are tears in Louis’ eyes too and there’s no avoiding this, there never was. “Why do you act like this?”
“I haven’t been well,” Louis is still looking down, embarrassed. “I don’t think I’ve been well in a really long time. It doesn’t justify anything, but it’s the truth. And as we’ve established, I’m a selfish bastard.”
“You need to stop this,” Lestat turns away, unable to look at him.
He walks towards the couch. Claudia is not there anymore.
“Wh— what?”
“This, all this,” Lestat turns back sharply, hands spreading helplessly between them. “The way you’ve made an entire home for your guilt, but you still won’t let yourself come home to me.”
The air is so heavy Lestat can barely breathe. His chest heaves, and Louis is looking at him with shock and disbelief, but nothing in the world could stop the words from falling out of his mouth now.
“You protect your grief like it’s something sacred, and treat my love like it’s something you have to survive. You keep tearing yourself apart, Louis— convincing yourself you don’t deserve anything good, carrying every wound like it’s a debt you have to pay, acting like your pain is the only thing you have left to offer. You keep your sorrow close while always keeping me at arm’s length. Always choosing guilt and grief over me.”
He lets out a humorless, heartbreaking laugh. His words seem to break Louis apart, leaving nothing but the raw, aching truth between them.
“I’m tired.”
Tears fall shamelessly down Louis’ cheeks now. He’s shaking his head, but doesn’t dare trying to touch Lestat again.
“I never wanted anything more than I want you,” he sounds weak and ridiculous and desperate but it’s true, it’s true— nothing has ever been more true than that. “But you cling to your pain like letting go would mean you never loved her at all. You let your suffering take up all the space, Louis, and then wonder why there’s no room left for anything else. ”
Louis’ mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
For a moment he simply stares at Lestat like he’s forgotten how to breathe. Louis knows it’s true— Lestat knows he knows, he can feel it through their bond. He can tell the words hit Louis like a blow to the chest, and it takes him a few heavy seconds before he says:
“Do you think I enjoy living like this?”
“No, I think you’re absolutely miserable. And I think that’s exactly the point.”
Louis inhales. He closes his eyes, then explodes:
“If I forgive myself, then who remembers what I did?!” He practically yells. “Who remembers what happened to her?! What I did to her?!”
That makes Lestat pause.
“Louis…”
“No, Lestat, I did that to her. I begged you to turn her, and you warned me, you warned me she’d be at war with herself, and I made you do it anyway. I treated her like an extension of me, and then she died, and I lived with her murderer for seventy-seven years. Who the fuck does that?”
“No, Louis—”
“If I forgive myself, then what?”
Lestat waits.
Once Louis seems to have calmed down, even if just slightly, he takes his hand. His thumb runs over Louis’ knuckles, the tenderness of it such a huge contrast to the fire from seconds before.
Lestat finds his eyes before saying:
“She was my daughter too,” only a whisper. “Do you think I should live like you do? Punishing myself by the hour. Choosing the dead over the living every time?”
Louis shakes his head. A red tear falls down his cheek.
“Then why do you do it to yourself?”
Louis’ lips tremble.
So heartbreakingly stunning, Lestat thinks. No one wears sadness as well as Louis. It breaks Lestat’s heart and makes him fall in love with him all over again.
“I don’t know how to stop,” he admits, clutching at Lestat’s hand so tightly it almost hurts.
“Let me help you, mon cher,” he takes their joined hands to his lips, kisses Louis’ fingertips, his palm, his wrist. “Don’t you want to come home?”
Louis nods, tears falling angrily.
“I’d like that,” he whispers. “I’d like that very much.”
There’s silence after that.
Lestat pulls him closer, slowly, still half expecting Louis to step away, to deny this, to take it all back, to decide this is too much.
Instead, Louis rests his forehead against Lestat’s shoulder and lets himself be held. The relief that moves through Lestat is almost painful— sharp and overwhelming, like his body doesn’t know what to do with this happiness after wanting it for so long.
He closes his eyes.
The guilt is still there. The grief is still there. Claudia is still gone. Larry is still gone. Nothing is fixed.
But Louis is here, and he’s saying yes, and his fingers find Lestat’s hair, brushing through it slowly, carefully, as if reassuring himself that this is real. Then he presses a kiss to the side of Lestat’s neck, soft and lingering, before pulling back enough to look at him.
Lestat’s hands slide from the back of Louis’s head to his cheeks, holding him there, feeling the warmth of him beneath his palms.
Louis touches Lestat’s lips with trembling fingers, eyes fixed on his mouth.
It's a tentative brush when their lips meet. Wet and soft, perfect lips against Lestat's. He goes still, afraid that moving too quickly will break this, afraid that he made it all up in his head and that Louis will disappear along with Claudia’s ghost.
But then Louis’ lips part beneath his and Lestat can taste the blood in his tears and he’s real, he tastes like Louis and he’s real, real, real. Lestat exhales shakily into the kiss, his hands trembling where they cradle Louis’ face.
When they part, it’s only by an inch. Their foreheads remain together, their breaths mingling, and neither of them let go.
Don’t you want to come home?
“Home, this is home,” Louis, unbelievably, murmurs against his mouth, and it's unreal and beautiful and Lestat’s chin drops to the floor. He stares at Louis, mouth parted, in full disbelief. And then there is nothing else he can do, really.
He kisses him again.
And again.
And again.
Home.