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"Lover, murderer, maker...It's a bond that can never fully be severed."
Louis squeezed his knuckles against the arm of the chair, pulled up across from the plush green love seat. He was sitting there, in the house again, for the first time in six years.
His right leg crossed over his left, elbows folded, hands clasped. Past-Lestat would've draped his arms on the back of the chair or one of the cushions, seductively asymmetrical. Louis tried to remember how dark his eyes had been when he'd let go—two black holes watching him grasp at air. He tried to remind himself that Lestat should look small and fragile and apologetic.
Louis tried to ignore the stir of interest in his stomach as he observed how the cut of the white T-shirt clung to Lestat's broad shoulders and also emphasized his slender waist. He looked graceful, like a dancer, in his high-waisted pants. He tried not to remember the breathy, almost pathetic, moans Lestat had let out when Louis had shown up, soaked to the bone in the dark waters of the Mississipi, ready to stake his claim.
He doesn't have to try to remember the smell of smoke in Lestat's golden hair, the rage of knowing it was from his club singer's post-coital cigarette, and the furious tempo with which he'd all but carved his residual grief and anger into Lestat's body.
Six years ago, he'd be smirking at how gingerly Lestat was sitting on the couch. He'd make the joke aloud. They'd look at each other and laugh with their eyes. Now they could only take turns staring.
Now, he struggled to reconcile the lover with the murderer.
He didn't actually look like the monster Claudia seemed to be staring at. There were no emotions warring on her face, it seemed, as he turned to look at her.
There were no emotions visible, at least. Unless you counted severity..
"Rule number six... no lies. And that includes lies of exaggeration," Claudia saw Lestat about to respond and made sure to add "and of omission."
Lestat's full lips settled into stillness as she seemed to enjoy the upperhand, "For instance, if you can fly, tell us you can fly."
Lestat sighed, "Assez."
Louis scratched the wood of his chair arm without meaning to. How he missed the liquid syllables of Lestat's mother tongue leaking out in his most honest moments. He tried not to squirm, knowing it would only anger Claudia more. What would she say to him if he confessed how much he yearned to hear Mon Cher on a hot breath inside his ear once again.
If he told her that he could recall the pain of every broken bone re-knitting itself together, the hot and helpless humiliation of failing to hunt a menial farm animal, and still, somehow, the ache in his chest of being near to Lestat without touching him could rival it all...
"Grand proclamations and portentous looks. Do you think I'm withholding? Go on. Ask your questions. I'll answer them."
Louis felt relief at the familiarity of his maker's regal arrogance returning, and he felt excitement flutter at the potential to finally unearth his full backstory. The excitement was tempered by guilt. This was the moment. Louis stared at Lestat's lips as to avoid his eyes, but all he thought of was the pink of the sky of his final sunrise.
"Did you have anything to do with Paul's death?"
Blue eyes bore into his. The answer isntant.
"No."
Louis' heart beat an awful rhythm of belief and doubt. Lestat repeated his answer, more emphatically, "I would never hurt your brother."
The way he said your brother echoed in the space.
Louis knew Lestat would not be fond of Paul for his own sake, just as he knew that for Louis' sake, he would do almost anything...including turning a charred orphan...
Louis remembered the flash of Lestat's voice through the sound of his own sobs, composed yet composed of nothing but grief: ou will regret this for the rest of your life, as though he was speaking both to Louis and to himself...
Lestat was still gazing at him imploringly, as he so often did—as if they were alone in the world.
Louis remembered the way Lestat lost his composure underneath Paul's inane, erratic questioning at the dinner table. He remembered how he had apologized and smoothly pivoted, appeasing Louis' unappeasable mother and sister and brother-in-law.
He thought, now for the first time, what it must have been like for Lestat to hear, in depth, just how much disdain they harbored towards him and his influence on Louis. That he'd smiled and taken tiny faux sips of flavorless gumbo while listening to strangers call him "a white devil" for, what?..inviting Louis to the theater?
"It's just something I always..."
"Never, Louis."
As their eyes locked, they didn't need to the mind-gift to know what the other was thinking. It was the tone of the St. Augustine's altar. The honesty that brooked no doubt. The warmth like blood itself that bled through the syllables of his name when spoken by Lestat and Lestat alone. Nobody in the world said his name like that. Like a spell or a promise.
Like it was the world itself.
Imperceptibly, Louis nodded, though this time there was no grabbing of the head and assenting bloody kiss to follow.
The fire crackled, just as it had then. But now, they were not alone.
"Who made you?"
Louis resented Claudia for pulling Lestat's eyes away from his.
He was glad she was there. He desperately wanted to know about his maker's maker. Surely, Lestat had not been turned in a church.
Lestat became a statue. He seemed vulnerable, almost childlike for a moment, and Louis shrugged off an urge to defend him from the reasonable probe.
"His name was Magnus." Lestat's eyes were no longer on Claudia or Louis, but on the past itself. As if Magnus' face was carved on the table between them.
"He took me from my room in Paris, as I kicked and screamed."
Louis tried to picture a simple flat, a human Lestat, but he struggled. He'd never known him as anything but preternaturally powerful. The only time he'd seen Lestat afraid was when Louis threatened to leave him. The idea of him screaming out of terror, not during one of his voluptuous or jealous monologues, was chilling.
"He kept me for a week, locked in a room full of corpses...some freshly killed...some bloated and black."
Louis felt nauseous as Lestat's face grew even more distant.
His own turning had happened so fast, as had Claudia's, he'd barely held space in his mind for such a drawn-out conversion. The scene being painted was far more grim than Louis' imagination had supplied. Lestat finally looked up, eyes glistening, a flatly humorous slant to his lips, "But they all looked like me: my coloring, my physique. My own eyes staring back at me from rotting faces."
Without asking, Louis knew that human Lestat's eyes must've been a brilliant blue. He felt a stab of grief knowing he'd never see both versions of his lover's eyes. The before and after.
"He fed on me every night. And then he put me back in the tower with the look-alike corpses."
Louis felt the same discomfort he normally felt when he watched Lestat or Claudia (like father, like daughter) playing with their food. It was hard to mentally reverse the roles and imagine Lestat as the prey. He tried to reconcile the bliss and intimacy of the first time Lestat fed on him—Shall we have a nightcap?...a real offer...the choice to ascend—with the horrors of an abduction and the absolute surety of death...knowing it was coming, but not knowing when...both resisting it and yearning for it...
Lestat, the force of nature (I'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles.) Lestat, the painfully insecure (I heard your hearts dancing!)
"I thought for sure I'd be one of them," Lestat's eyebrows raised, but the lighter his tone, the darker Louis felt. "but instead he turned me into this."
He shrugged his hands as if to encompass all of himself in an uncharacteristically self-deprecating tone. Louis could understand...This...the fangs and frozen youth...This...the unimaginable loneliness...
"No grand history of vampiric origins or physiology, no rules, no counsel. Just a sweeping hand to a pile of money and the sight of him throwing himself into a fire."
Louis couldn't help the pang in his heart for the freshly-turned Lestat. He couldn't help the gripping fear at the feeling this version of the story was somehow still too sanitized.
"And then I was alone."
The fear on his face Louis had seen before...Had caused...
"I thought...I can't drink hot blood...I can't feed on others," there was a nearly delirious hilarity behind his tone that made Louis hold his breath, but he kept his gaze on Lestat, as if that would keep him in one peace, keep him inside the room, where Louis was listening...he was really listening to what Lestat said. I was like you. I too struggled with it.
"I cried." Louis' throat was tight.
"I called to God." Louis could smell the pine scent of the confessional box as his own pleas swam back to him. Please! Help me! I am weak! I wanna die!
"I didn't want this." Screaming at Lestat, That's 'cause you took my life!
Lestat's chin lifted in defiance, "But I have a capacity for enduring." The quiver was more spiritual than physical, but Louis sensed it. "It's why I don't particularly like being abandoned."
The show of both pride and vulnerability coalesced into a bitter taste on his tongue. Louis was crying, or about to. He could not speak.
So Claudia helped him end the interview.
"Kill Antoinette."
Claudia's nails grazed the fabric of his nightshirt as she held his forearm, red eyes boring into his at the top of the stairs. "Are you sure it's worth the risk?"
He gently pried her grip away, holding onto her hand and squeezing it. "There's no risk, Claudia. He ain't gonna touch me."
Even as he said it, Louis could taste the lie. They were going to share a coffin, after all. This whole remediation was based on the fact that it seemed like Louis could not go one single decade without touching Lestat. For once, she didn't call him on it.
"I'll be next door..."
Louis' heart swelled at her desire to protect him. "You got it, sis."
Again, he felt the deceit in his mouth, using the name that would always be Grace's for the girl who would always be a daughter. She left for her own room, now stripped of the pink and frills of her young teenage years. He, sucking in a breath, open the door to his. His.
Theirs.
Lestat was also dressed for bed, though not in his gilded dressing robe, just a simple white tank top and a pair of silky navy pants. Louis couldn't help but recall their first night together in this room as maker and fledgling, the feeling of being a blushing virgin as Lestat stripped to nothing. His naked body. Louis had just recently been reacquainted to it, but in the heat of the moment, he'd hardly savored the sight.
Lestat was not confident in the space as he had been back then. Now, he waited on the gold silk comforter of the bed in the main room, picking at a pillow tassle.
"Louis," he breathed, as Louis closed the outer door.
"Lestat." A moment of gentle silence passed. "Are you..tired?"
Lestat's mouth quirked just a little, "I am, but I think it will be a while before I am able to find real rest."
Louis let the honest admission settle in the space.
"Yeah, I'll uh...be up thinking over what you said tonight."
Lestat looked down. "Yes."
The only sound now was the blaring of insects outside the window.
"I didn't realize.."
After a moment of quiet, Louis sat down on the end of the bed, picking up the thread, "You didn't realize..."
When Lestat looked up, his eyes were red-rimmed, "I didn't realize you thought I could've killed Paul."
Louis felt his own eyes grow heavy, but he considered the wording..could've.
He had seen the vampire in front of mind control a whole room of soldiers with little more than a bloody nose to show for it. One man...Perhaps we wouldn't have, but he certainly could have.
"It was mostly right after, that I thought..I think..I think I needed someone to blame," he recalled his mother's accusations, "someone that wasn't myself."
"It was not your fault, Louis," Lestat reached for his forearm, holding it in the same place Claudia had.
Louis recalled Lestat's ill-conceived statement to him during the funeral procession. Out loud, he whispered, "Believe me when I tell you, your brother longed for the flagstone." He felt Lestat's grip slacken without dropping. He ran a hard stare up the arm to meet the blue eyes, where a real blood tear had formed. "That's what you said to me. During my brother's fucking funeral procession."
A noise came from somewhere in Claudia's room, and Louis realized his voice had grown loud. He looked at Lestat, voice quiet again, "How could you say that?"
Lestat let go, wringing his hands as he had downstairs on the couch. "I shouldn't have said that, it was terribly..gauche of me—" he watched Louis' mouth harden "—no, it was more than gauche, it was callous. I was thinking of my own pain, my own sense of rejection as you avoided me, cast me aside."
Lestat pinched his nose and shook his head, "I should have been more patient. I did not remember what it was like to lose a family member. I will admit, I never...I never loved any of my brothers the way you loved yours, but I...after Nikki, I...I should have given you more space."
Louis swallowed and nodded, accepting this as part of Lestat's authentic remorse.
After a minute, Lestat caught his eye, "I will admit my intervention was..without grace. But you were plotting out ways to kill yourself, mon Louis. I could hear your complete and utter despair. I could not have left you alone in that place forever. When I came to you in the church, it was..." He paused to gather his thoughts. "I singled you out as my potential companion the moment I saw you—love at first sight as the poets would say," he smiled wistfully, now smoothing down the knee of his pants, "and I of course imagined the end goal of our courtship was to offer you the gift, but I had not planned for it be that exact moment. It was more..ardor than calculation, you see."
"And what about Miss Lilly?" The temperature in the room dropped as Louis pinned Lestat with a challenging gaze.
"You killed her, one of the only other people I could trust as a confidante! Were you..were you trying to isolate me?"
"I was trying to replace you!" Louis could hear Lestat's heartbeat speed up, and he stood up to start pacing the room, though there was no aggression in it.
Louis sat and watched, waiting.
"We had finally broken past the thin veneer of friendship, all the cruel disguises. I had waited a century for someone who could—but then you began to withdraw. You began to ignore me completely. I was in your thrall," Louis snorted, remembering the reverse was true, "but your own fears and self-loathing made you hold me at a distance! In your absence, I tried to chase that feeling with her, the closest I could get to you, but it could not equal the passion we had shared."
Lestat paused and let his head drop, "So in my frustration, I lashed out and I killed her, yes." He met Louis' eyes, "You know this of me already. I am cursed with my father's temper."
"When you said that, at dinner, did you really mean Magnus?" Louis watched a nearly invisible shiver pass over Lestat.
"Ah, you remember. Then you'll remember the story of how my father cruelly dragged me away from life in the monastery, dragged me back when I tried to run away with the theater—" Louis field that new information into his head— "and dragged me back from any potential of success whatsoever. Yes, my human father hated me with a vengeance and made that vengeance known every day of my life until I ran away to Paris."
He'd stopped pacing, but now Lestat was waving his hand around, "I'd thought he was a monster! HAH" Lestat's laugh made Louis' skin crawl.
"Both my mortal father and immortal father had tempers, and I have been doubly imbued with their rage, which I have only ever tempered with the help of a grounding presence," he gave Louis a meaningful and sorrowful look then. "Even then, I have sometimes failed."
Falling through the sky, tumbling, freezing, stomach in mouth, insides turned out.
Unimaginable black and red pain, pain everywhere and everything. Louis tasted ash in his mouth.
"You saying you dropped me from the clouds because your daddy hit you?" Louis felt himself stand to full height, "Because your maker...Your maker.." Louis trailed off, rage evaporating.
Claudia would not have held back. Claudia would egg him on, feeding on the wilt in Lestat's shoulders.
But as Lestat faltered, so did Louis. He didn't actually want to hurt him. After everything, he was still...
Louis walked over to Lestat, who was swaying imperceptibly, hands folded in front of his chest.
"Would you like payback, Louis?" They were chest to chest, but a foot between them.
"Should we find a tall tower, so you can feel the joy of pushing me out?" He sounded like he was chewing on glass.
"'Reckon that wouldn't do much to you, with your hidden powers."
Lestat regarded the lessened space between them, slowly letting his arms fall. "I wouldn't use it...If that is what you really needed. If that made you trust me, I would—"
Louis tracked the red stains on his cheeks and reached to rub them away, but they were quickly replaced with fresh streaks.
"Cela aiderait-il?"
"Non," Louis whispered, hands now cupping Lestat's face. "I think we've both been hurt enough."
Lestat's face crumpled at that, but he smoothed it over quickly. Louis watched him tie the mask back on, fascinated by it, and surprised he'd never seen the sutures before now.
"What happened in that tower?" Louis asked, voice steadier than he felt.
"I just told you" Lestat rolled his eyes, feigning aggravation, but his heart wasn't in it. The tears lining the rim didn't help.
"You said he fed on you.."
"Oui, oui, said I was une bonne bouchée," Louis could hear Lestat verging on one of his disocncerting laughing fits.
"For a whole week."
Lestat waved his hands through the air as if conducting, "Should we get our little court stenographer Claudia back in here?! Yes, Louis, a week! Give or take! It gets hard to keep track of days when you're being starved, and tortured and—"
"And?"
"What do you want from me!?"
"Honesty, Lestat. Like Claudia said, no more lies in this house! Not even by omission! You say you love me but you don't let me in!!"
Lestat gave him a long, indecipherable look as both their chests heaved.
Louis could hear the first notes of early bird song. Lestat turned to face the window, gripping its edges."Yes."
It was so quiet, Louis thought he imagined it, "What?"
He stepped closer, but paused when Lestat flinched slightly.
His voice came out grated and raw. He sounded exhausted, "What you're asking me...the answer is yes."
Louis sucked in a breath. "Yes. Every night, for seven days."
His mind raced, and his heart pounded in time to Lestat's. "Yes, he told me to beg for it."
:Yes, I said no up until the point of death, and yes, after I was turned I hated myself as I have watched you.." Lesta's shoulders hitched as he let out a small sob.
Louis waited in shock while he collected himself. "Yes, I could not ever really return to Nicki afterwards....I couldn't bear to touch him, to taint him..."
"Yes, I used the fortune to support my old acting troupe, yes I sent the money to support my worthless siblings and my nieces and nephews, and yes, I grieved as you did when they were, all of them, slaughtered. Yes, I tried to devour only the wicked. Yes, I struggled to separate myself from the rest of humanity. Yes, I walked the earth as a monster without a home until I ended up here in 1910..."
"...Yes, I ruined you like I ruin everything I touch, but no, I did not hunt you. No, I didn't mean to. Whatever little humanity in me still survives, that is the part of me that loves you both."
Louis couldn't say anything, so he held Lestat from behind, stroking his chest in what he hoped was a soothing gesture.
His fingers traced scars through fabric.
Early in their relationship, when he'd asked their source, Lestat had laughed it off, "A pack of wolves."
Louis had grown bitter and said, "Fine then, don't tell me."
As if they still had the mind-gift, Lestat breathing more deeply than before, nodded, "Yes, it really was a pack of wolves. They killed my dogs and my horse. I thought I would die. Perhaps I should've—"
"Don't," Louis closed his eyes and squeezed Lestat against him more tightly. "Please."
"I'm sorry, mon cher," and Louis could tell he meant much more than the comment.
"I didn't care if I lived, and afterwards the townspeople hailed me wolf-killer, even made me a luxurious coat lined with the pelts. And then he read that in my mind and taunted me with it. If I had not killed those wolves, he would not have seen me as anything more than...in facing the beast, I invited more in. I became one." Lestat sighed, turning around to embrace Louis.
"You've only known me as the monster, Louis, but I was not lying when I told Paul that I would've happily lived my life in the monastery. I would've lived and died in the theatre with," he closd his eyes, then opened them again, bringing Louis into his gaze.
:So, you have always been right, in that regard. I did take your life from you. I am too selfish to regret it. Even if you chose to kill me for what I've done, I wouldn't stop you...I wouldn't regret it."
"And how would that help me? Forced to live an eternity without you...It's unimaginable, Lestat. I want you here. I want a fresh start."
The birdsong intensified. "I love you, Louis. I will show you. I will not keep anything from you, from here on out. But tonight...let's rest, mon coeur."
So they laid down in the coffin side by side.
The sun rose, and in each other's arms only that which mattered continued to matter.