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Chapter Text

THE PROPOSAL

“What do you want to do about Louis,” Gregory asked.

As there was a lull in the meeting, it seemed a good time to bring up this topic that had been weighing heavily on his mind for quite some time now. Really, since the moment he’d first spied upon Louis at Trinity Gate in New York, although recent events had brought it all back to the forefront for him.

This particular meeting was a small one, with only a few of the eldest or most powerful of the blood drinkers. Marius, Seth, Fareed, Sevraine, Gundesanth "Santh", Chrysanthe, Gremt, Cyril, Thorne, David, and the Prince. Because there were so few members it made this an ideal time for Gregory bring up this particular petition to Lestat. Being a world-renowned business executive, Gregory had high confidence in his ability to lay this particular proposal out and win it.

The Prince looked at him, a slight confusion graced his lion-like features. “Louis?”

Gregory smiled. “You heard me. I feel something needs to be done about Louis.”

Lestat frowned slightly, “Okay, you have my attention.”

Of course he did. “Well, it’s no secret he’s weak. He’s got your blood and David’s now, but there’s still a ways to go with him, isn’t there? He’s vulnerable, and as long as you leave him that way there will always be a threat. He needs to be self-sufficient; able to defend himself better.”

Around the table there were some nods of agreement as Gregory had been speaking. “He is a liability to you,” Seth spoke. “He’s like an incomplete thing.”

Lestat’s eyes hardened and darted around the table. He wasn’t immediately denying this or telling Gregory what he could go do to himself, so that was a good sign. “So what? He’s my responsibility. And what does that even mean, incomplete?” He glared at Seth. Seth gave no indication of being cowed by it.

“He is a wraith living among solid beings,” Seth clarified.

Lestat slid his leg off the arm of his chair and sat forward, arms on the table. He stared at the tabletop, drew a small design on it with his finger and muttered something in French. Gregory thought it might be something like curse words. Sometimes he didn’t like things so blatantly spelled out for him.

“He’s the consort,” Gregory said more gently. “He’s the other half of the throne. He’s Enkil to Akasha. He’s your weakness, my Prince. The abduction by Rhoshamandes should have been enough to make you see that. How difficult it was to wake him from that sleep; does that not frighten you at all?”

Lestat was silent. He was looking at David, and the two of them were sharing some wordless communication that only close family or lovers could.

In a business proposal, this is the point where one goes in with the selling point and emphasizes what they have to offer. “He needs stronger blood; to be completed,” Gregory said, using Seth’s word. He tapped a finger on the table as he spoke, to punctuate each word. “I think I’ve discussed this with you before. We need you to be strong; and by proxy, we need him to be strong too. He is only half a vampire right now, and stronger blood can make him so much more. He can step out of that doomed state he relegates himself to.”

“And you want to give him this stronger blood, I take it?” Lestat asked, a small amused smile on his lips. “I can’t even get him to drink from me, unless he’s recovering from a suicide attempt. Do you really think you can convince him to take your blood?”

“I know I can,” Gregory responded with an amused smile, sitting back in his chair and spreading arms out on either side of the table before him. Offering.

Seth, Sevraine, Gundesanth and even Cyril laughed. Gremt was amused.

“What’s the joke,” Lestat asked, looking from one to the other of them.

“Nebamun was born to the court and raised to be at the pleasure of the Queen and King,” Gundesanth answered, “It’s in his very nature to do this thing. What do they call it these days? Courtesan, escort, a tom, sex slave –"

Gregory held his hand up and threw an annoyed looked to his old friend. “Thanks for helping.”

Santh smirked and shrugged. “No really, my Prince. He is a professional. He can seduce a tree to fall in love with him.”

Laughter again. Even Seth was smiling, amused.

Gregory rubbed at this his forehead, just between his eyes, and tried not to kick Santh beneath the table. He had to get this back on track.

“He is very persuasive,” Sevraine came to his rescue with a small smile of her own. Gregory would have blushed if he still had it within him to do so. Such false modesty was well beyond him now. He had this talent for seduction and courtship that went above that of even the most blessed blood drinker, and he was not ashamed of it. Sometimes he thought he could see this same talent in Armand. But Armand seemed not entirely able to harness it for what it was worth. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of anger and frustration, which didn’t allow him to completely use this power to his own betterment.

This particular talent was not a thing Gregory felt he could claim was the work of the dark blood, but rather a thing that he’d been born with. Trained to it from an early age when his parents sold him to the court of the Queen and King. This was a talent that the dark blood had accentuated. The same as it highlighted the Prince’s talent for showmanship, or Marius’s talent for leadership or painting. These things they all had as mortals, even if they were not yet aware of them. The blood only emphasized it.

Gregory’s talent was wooing others over with intimacy or just using the right words and body language. Whether it be a dangerous ancient queen, the top CEO of a rival company, or a fellow blood drinker.

Lestat was still looking from one to the other them. “And what does your own wife think of this? What say you, Chrysanthe,” Lestat asked.

She had been uncommonly quiet the whole conversation and now she held eye-contact with Gregory for a moment as they shared their own silent communication. “I’m not an insecure mate, my Prince. I’m used to these obsessions he has. Jealousy is not my nature, or I would not call myself his spouse. He is the best for this job. I know he will be able to win your consort over. I’ve never known anyone not to be charmed by him.”

Gregory gave her a warm smile of thanks and she returned it with her own secret look, which meant, I will add this to the list of things you owe me back for. That list was getting longer and longer.

Lestat glanced around the table again.

“And how will this happen, exactly,” David asked now, leaning forward, looking squarely at Gregory; all but blocking out everyone else in the room. It was no secret that he was quite the suitor to Louis himself. The younger, stronger brother; very territorial, very protective. “How do you really intend to gain his affections so easily? He is not the most outgoing of individuals, you know. He is reserved and shy at the best of times.”

“No, don’t worry about that,” Gregory answered. “I will fall on him like a ton of bricks. There will be no struggle against it, I promise you.”

“You won’t hurt or force him,” Lestat’s voice was suddenly commanding and hard. “I won’t have that.”

Gregory fixed his gaze on Lestat, and placed a hand over his own heart. “I swear to you, this will be the gentlest thing with him, my Prince. I know how to play this game. As Seth and Santh told you, it is in my blood to do this, to read others, to know the exact things to win them over. Please believe me, I love him as I love you. I have pledged myself to you and this Court as surely as I pledged my life to Akasha and Enkil so many eons ago.”

Lestat seemed to ease a little as he listened. This was a delicate wire to walk, and Gregory let his words sink in for a long moment. He clearly had a foothold and it had to be nurtured. Lestat looked away from him, contemplating. It was, however, important to Gregory that all cards be on the table at this point, so he continued. “But let me make this clear as well, I will be swift and aggressive. He will know it as nothing but all consuming and a thing he can’t resist. It is the only way to bring it about with him, as I think you well know.”

Both David and Lestat shared a look, and this time it could be easily interpreted as agreement with what Gregory was saying. Louis was won over with strong, determined seduction only. Perhaps if Armand had been in this room he would have agreed as well. Gregory was glad however that Armand was not in this room, because he likely would also have raised quite the angry argument against this.

Lestat was looking towards the end of the table now, at Marius. The one voice in the room that could easily tip him away from this plan.

“What do you have to say on this,” Lestat asked him.

Marius seemed to be pondering it from all sides. One hand beneath his chin as he leaned against the arm of his chair. He shrugged slowly at the Prince, as if to say he had no real opinion about it at all, but then he did speak. “Louis is your fledgling. This is your choice. I would point out however, that I would never have allowed any of my own children to go as long as he has with such a weakened strength. Yes, it keeps him human but it also makes him a target, as Gregory has pointed out here. And why is being as close to human as possible an ideal for us at all? We are not human.” He paused for effect. Gregory smiled to himself, because Marius too knew the art of words and persuasion.

Marius continued, “More strength, stronger blood in his veins, it will only improve him. Yours and David’s blood have already caused positive changes in him; I think you’ve seen that. But he is not at full capacity, Lestat. Time will eventually get him there, and I know that’s how he wants to play it out.” Marius shrugged lightly again, “Most of the time we don’t get what we want.”

Heads nodded around the table. Fareed, the youngest present, besides David, seemed particularly attentive in this conversation, but shared no opinions.

“Do it, Boss,” Cyril said from his post, standing at the wall behind the Prince. “Do it Gregory’s way, or if not, just let’s force the blood on him. Either way. Make him stronger. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to him again on my watch.”

“No, I can’t. I can’t force him,” Lestat immediately shut the suggestion down.

Something passed over David, and he glared at Lestat for less than a second then back at the table. Ah the duplicity. As if Lestat had not violently raped David to make him against his will. Such dysfunction in that little family at the end of the table there. Really, each brood around the table had their own dysfunction though. Even amongst himself, Seth, Santh and Sevraine there were old grudges and sore topics from six-thousand years prior; from the first Court.

Lestat’s blue-grey eyes held Gregory’s for a long silent minute. He could read the thoughts behind them clearly, even without the mind gift.

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Gregory reiterated in a soft voice. He made every effort to keep his posture and mind open for Lestat to read the pure intentions behind this proposal. This is what the business world calls closing the deal.

“Yes,” Lestat said. “Do it.”

Gregory smiled lightly, and gave the Prince an acquiescent bow of his head.

Chapter Text

LET’S PLAY

It wasn’t more than one night later and Gregory found Louis in the main hall, off in a side alcove reading a book alone; of course. He was nothing if not predictable. Across the great hall a few band members were out, playing some small intricate piece of music; one with a cello, one with a violin. But they were in a world of their own, and Louis appeared entranced in his book, oblivious to the music. He was seated in a straight-backed armchair, hair mussed, in a dark suit with white shirt, no tie at is throat, and that infamous emerald ring on his left hand. Gregory took a long self-indulgent moment to admire the straight posture, the perfect form, the sharp artistic line he cut in the darkness. And this is Louis unfinished. How dazzling would the complete transformation be in him?

For his own part, Gregory had not completely cut off his beard this night. He’d trimmed it close and neat. His black hair also trimmed short, clean and combed back behind his ears. This was his default these nights, as facial hair seemed to be coming back into style once more. He wore only a light touch of cologne. Tonight, he was in a dark grey Armani suit, his black tie loose and hanging at his throat, the first button of his collar undone. He’d been attending a teleconference with some of his company’s branch chiefs in various locations around the world. How amazing was this time, to so easily communicate with anyone, anyplace at all, with just the tap of a few buttons? Gregory loved this age.

But now he had a more personal connection to accomplish, and he was at the beginning, which excited him. He loved having a goal set before him, loved setting out the plan to accomplish that goal. This is what drove him not only as an entrepreneur but as a being who’d survived century after century through civilization after civilization, adapting and participating in all the living world had to offer. He set goals, he worked towards them, he accomplished them. Without this outlook he found life to be dull and not really worth slogging through night after night. There must be purpose.

Now he had this small goal before him to make this young one stronger. This would be an easy enough thing to accomplish, he had no concerns about it. What did give him pause, however, was his own ability to take this more gently than his usual methods. He liked to progress quickly on projects. It was the most efficient way, he felt, to get things done. One had to make decisions fast in his world or they piled up fast.

He approached Louis silently, from behind; deliberately reached into his personal space, and took the book from his hands. Folding it shut and holding it at his side. Louis, puzzled by this unexpected intrusion, seemed at a loss for how to react. He stood, his dark brows drawn slightly in annoyance and then smoothing immediately. “Gregory,” he greeted, voice cool and quiet.

Those eyes… Those eyes.

Gregory gestured to a nearby gold-plated chess table, taking a seat in a beautifully-crafted gilded chair. He placed the book to the left of him on the table. He smiled his most disarming smile and nodded to the opposite position. “Louis, let’s play.” He phrased it as a suggestion, but in such a way that there was no room for a refusal.

Louis seemed at a loss. He played chess often with Lestat. Gregory had watched enough times as Louis easily outmaneuvered the Prince in the game, wining more often than not. But Gregory wanted to know how Louis would manage with an unknown partner. He wanted to play this game that required foresight, logic, and skill; to learn his moves. He needed to get a base read on Louis and himself before he moved all in on the seduction.

Louis sat in the chair opposite, glancing at the book. Gregory smiled again. “You move first.” Louis’s eyes darted to Gregory momentarily and then down to the board before him. His first move a common one. Gregory slid a piece into place from his side. The game progressed quickly, but then slowed as Louis seemed to comprehend this was not Lestat he was playing. Gregory was matching his moves very easily. Louis focused more closely, precisely considering before placing a piece in a new location.

Twenty minutes in and Louis had said not a single word the entire game. At one point he glanced again to the book at Gregory’s side. “Just play with me,” Gregory whispered. Louis narrowed his eyes, but quickly returned them to the game, selecting his next move. Gregory found himself watching this graceful being more often than the board. His thoughts, though guarded, were easy enough for a six-thousand-year old to read. He was perturbed, slightly nervous, a bit annoyed, yet gave very little outward sign of it. In fact, if Gregory was not using the mind gift to read him, he would have found Louis to be a very self-confident and poised opponent. How long had it taken him to perfect this outward appearance so opposite the inner turmoil? And the Prince, being his maker, would of course only be seeing this polished, self-contained Louis, and assume all else was just fine. It made Gregory sad suddenly, to think of the miscommunication, the failures to connect between maker and fledgling.

Louis was watching him, and had been for some time, Gregory realized.

“Your move,” the gentle voice said. Finally, some words.

“Yes, it is,” he replied, holding eye-contact before glancing down to the board. Louis had captured his rook. Now they were playing.

For approximately an hour they continued, Louis threatened Gregory’s king several times over. The soft tap of the pieces being placed on the board the only sound between them. Ultimately Gregory won. Louis seemed to consider how it had happened, and then to file it way; unfazed.

It had been a good game, and Gregory had learned enough to know Louis’s manner and skill. He’d read enough of his body-language and inner dialogue to have already planned out the goalposts for this dance they were about to embark on.

He picked up the book, holding it out over the board for Louis to reclaim, which he did with one elegant hand. Gregory didn’t immediately let the book go, and Louis was momentarily flustered. A dark glare crossed his features before it melted into calm beauty. “Is there something else,” Louis asked. The music from across the hall ended and the silence was loud. Gregory drew this moment out between them. It was uncomfortable for Louis; he didn’t like rudeness; his mind started cycling through what this entire interaction meant. What was the hidden agenda?

Gregory gently let the book go, reaching across the small table between them and straightening the slightly under-turned lapel of Louis’s coat. A thing that had been bothering him since they sat down. He let his hand rest open against Louis’s chest, feeling the steady skip of his heartbeat. “Nothing else. Good evening, Louis.” He stood, gave a small smile, and left him there to digest the entire encounter.

Later that evening Gregory found his Chrysanthe in their rooms at the Chateau, tapping quickly on her laptop. Chrysanthe wasn’t bogged down with a company or a Court title. She was “free” of all such netting. But she kept a very active social life among not only the members of the Court, but also among mortals. She participated in world charities for hunger, women’s rights, child welfare. She was always a cheerful, naïve, loving spot in his nights, his cornerstone.

She glanced up at him as he entered and smiled beatifically. He leaned across the desk she was at and kissed her forehead, her lips, her throat. She laughed. “Okay. I don’t question your love, you know that.”

“Of course, I know that. My ever-patient perfection.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes. Cut the bullshit, please, Greg.”

They both laughed.

“So did you make a start yet?” She asked, genuinely interested.

“Not exactly. Just played a game of chess with him.”

She raised a brow, “And?” She gestured for details.

“And I think this will be simple.”

She snorted, very inelegantly. “Oh, really?”

“You doubt me? I’m injured.”

“I don’t doubt you, my love. I doubt how easy you seem to think this is. Louis de Pointe du Lac? Don’t be so dismissive. I’ve watched him too, you know. He has the Prince and David Talbot wrapped around his little finger. He has Armand equally as besotted. He’s beautiful, intelligent, self-aware. Don’t assume a quiet demeanor means easily won over.”

He let these words sink in. He examined them from all sides. She was wonderful at giving him new views and understandings, and he always took it to heart. But in this case he simply didn’t see anything she was telling him as new information he hadn’t already devised on his own.

“I appreciate your words. All these things I have also considered. I just don’t think it will be a difficult thing.”

“Well, be that true or not, you must also consider the Prince. That’s his favorite you’re messing around with there.”

“I know this Chrys,” he said, slightly irritated that she seemed to think he didn’t know this. “I know what it is to be under the royal scrutiny. I was manipulated and played by the Queen for so long. I walked delicately around the King to avoid his wrath. I always had death looming over me the moment she tired of my services. And I swore I would never be manipulated like that again by anyone again. And I won’t be. The Prince can be angry about this when it’s all done, but he will have a stronger fledgling at his side. Louis will be equal and able to defend himself from danger. I won’t feel bad about it.”

She was silent as he went on this little tirade. She reached over and touched his cheek with an open palm. “So just be careful, is all. Just guard your own heart in this. That’s all.” She leaned in and kissed him. He returned this kiss. He loved her as no other in his life. He would of course guard his heart in this, and he told her so.

She returned to her tapping on the laptop, and he spent the rest of the night watching her and thinking about her words.

Chapter Text

MATADOR

Remaining true to his word to make this swift, Gregory found Louis just two nights later. Lestat had organized a celebration of music in the ballroom, and blood drinkers far and wide were arriving to attend. Several small music groups had surfaced over the past years since the Court came into existence. It was always interesting to hear the variations of vampiric talent, and yet also the similar thread that bound all of them together as musicians of the blood and not that of the human world.

On this night, Gregory was dressed simply in a tunic of black linen, fitted black pants of strong fabric, and boots of black leather. This was casual for him. At his throat was a small diamond pin in the shape of a triangle. Again, he’d simply trimmed his beard and hair short, and ran fingers back through his hair with a masculine scented hair product.

Lestat was in his element at these large gatherings. He was, as always, a bit over dressed in clothing that resembled 18th century wealth, but would easily fit in with modern era apparel. A wine-red long dress-coat with a beautifully colored silk material in the breast-pocket, a starched white shirt with the first few buttons generously open, tightly fitted pants of a darker color, various jeweled rings on is hands. He thrived on the attention.

He’d not brought up the topic of Gregory’s proposal again since that council meeting. But a few times Gregory had caught his gaze passing curiously over him and then to Louis. “You will know when it has begun,” Gregory said conspiratorially in passing this evening, hoping that might at least put his mind at ease to some degree. Lestat seemed as though he had words to speak; yet he swallowed them and turned his attention back to his adoring Court assembly. Ah, denial.

Tonight, Louis was dressed beautifully in something Lestat had clearly chosen for him. An ink-black frock coat with blood-red lining, fitting closely at his waist, and a white dress-shirt with golden threaded patters along the buttons. Silk of blood red tied artfully around his throat and tucked into his shirt; and black onyx boots up to his calves. His black hair combed and slick against his head, just a few loose strands tumbled over his forehead. The entire ensemble reminding Gregory of a matador on the field, waiting for the bull.

Louis stayed close to Lestat most of the night, and Gregory found himself becoming increasingly irritated as the night wore on. Was it Lestat’s doing? Or was it simply Louis being his usual gentlemanly self, feeling obligated to greet and mingle with the visitors to this, their castle. It was wearing on Gregory’s usually relaxed nerves.

He stood near the back of the hall, present but mainly watching Louis. “Neb,” Santh greeted. And there was that amused smirk that had haunted Gregory’s entire first millennium on this Earth.

“Stop calling me that old name. You know I have a new name now.”

Santh’s smile widened. He made a noncommittal sound, which roughly translated to, Nah, I’ll call you what I want.

“Asshole,” Gregory muttered.

Santh laughed loudly, clapping Gregory on the shoulder with a big friendly hand, then trying to massage his shoulders in the most disturbing way possible. “Why so tense? It’s a party.”

“I’m not tense,” Gregory shrugged him away. “Gods, have you still not learned to give a proper massage?”

Santh did that thing where he looked at Gregory like he was the funniest thing in the world, then let his smile drop and pretended to be serious. “Something with your business going south?”

“No, of course not.” Gregory watched as Lestat moved further across the ballroom to interact with a small cluster of fledgling vampires who were having an uproariously good time, laughing and playful. Louis followed.

“Ah, I see. Not making much progress with Enkil, huh?”

“Why must you call everyone the wrong name?” Gregory looked at Santh now, seeing that he also was dressed in tunic rather like Gregory’s, but with designs of thorny red vines running vertically from throat to hem.

“Well, let me point out, you did it first. Right to the Prince’s face no less.” Santh smiled. “And he is rather like Enkil, don’t you agree? Tall, lithe… disengaged.”

Gregory gave Santh a cease and desist look. Santh just grinned. “Enkil liked you, as I recall.”

A coldness spread through Gregory at these words. Enkil had not liked him. Especially when they were all still human. Gregory was the Queen’s lover, and Enkil had jealousy issues. He was violent with Gregory, cruel when he could get him alone without the Queen present.

“He hated me, and you know that,” Gregory muttered. They were speaking in the ancient language, so none of these younger vampires would understand their conversation. Nothing was private in this Court when everyone could hear your every word.

“He didn’t hate you so much when she brought you over and made you a blood god too. He’d lost his rage at you by then. I recall a few passionate embraces he had with you.”

“Forced,” Gregory immediately qualified. “Forced embraces.” He remembered them all too clearly. Enkil holding him with all his strength, threatening him with words, then drinking from him, pulling from him every detail of his experiences with the Queen. And it had been passionate, yes, but also terrifying to be in the King’s arms like that. Because they all assumed the King held the power back then; that it was the King who had the core. Gregory had been an object to them, Akasha and Enkil. Something they owned and used. That was how the world was then, and he’d accepted his role and played it for a thousand years. The same was true for Gundesanth, they used him too.

How odd it was to be here, six-thousand years later, in this very different time. To be speaking of these things that had shaped them both so thoroughly that even now there was emotion tied to the memories.

“We are not in that time any more, Santh. You know that, right?”

“Of course I do, Gregory,” the name pronounced deliberately slow. “Do you know you are not in that time anymore?”

Gregory paused. What a strange question. He was the very definition of a modern human. He was in fact the most connected blood drinker here with the technology and ways of the times. He looked squarely at Santh. “Let’s cut to the chase and you just tell me what lesson you want to impart, please.”

Santh let his head fall forward, and he made an exasperated yet equally amused noise, a great exhalation of breath. His eyes returned to Gregory’s, “You don’t have to convert him, you know. You can just let him go along on his depressed dark road and gain all the strength over time, as he wants. You are not responsible for his safety the way we were back then. This is not the same Court. Let his maker and his brother in blood go on protecting him.”

“And when he gets killed by some stray accident they can’t be there for, or captured and actually slaughtered by another vengeful immortal?”

Santh shrugged and held his hands out to either side. “Then that’s that.”

Gregory stared, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. “I feel like you don’t fully understand what we are trying to accomplish with this Court and the Prince, Santh. That’s his prized jewel of a fledgling. I would compare it to Sevraine or Chrysanthe in my own brood. You suggest just let him be weak, let him die, replace him?”

“No, Gregory. I suggest you just let life happen and stop trying to control it so much.”

“Oh, I see. The Seth mentality. Live and let live and all will be just fine.”

Santh made no response, just stared with those big eyes of his and that air of amusement that went everywhere with him.

“I can’t do that, Santh. I feel very responsible for the success of this Court. This must work for all of us, for the younger ones especially. We can’t just drift apart and land all over the world anymore. And if that means keeping the Prince’s ‘Enkil’ strong so he can stay alive, thus allowing Lestat to continue to focus more on being the royal figurehead that holds this all together, that’s what I will do.”

Santh lowered his voice, even though the language they used could only possibly be understood by Sevraine or Seth if they were listening. “Remember how secret words, that should have remained secret, would go through the King and Queen’s court like wildfire, and the charred earth it would leave behind?”

He remembered, of course. The rumors that ran rampant and destroyed lives. Why was everyone close to him feeling a need to warn him in this way?

“Santh,” he replied, “All my memories are the same as yours. We lived it together. I remember the delicate balance between court gossip and having your throat slit on the sandstone in front of the throne. You don’t need to be concerned on that count. I know how to balance on this wire. I thrive on my ability to do so.”

Santh sighed, shook his head, and pulled Gregory in for a warm embrace. “I think there is a phrase that mortals use in this current time for these situations,” Santh said, as he released them from the embrace. “You do you, Gregory.”

They parted and Gregory felt yet more exasperation. This was really not the big deal everyone was warning him over. He shook off the feelings of being hindered and the disquiet the memories had invoked. He forced himself to converse with others around him, to ask several partners to dance. Louis remained frustratingly elusive, staying mostly close to Lestat, but then moving over to David or Armand.

Gregory accepted an invitation from Marius to go out on the terrace, to breathe the cold clean air.

“How fares it,” Marius asked. He was all in red as well. It seemed red was the theme this evening and Gregory had not received the notice. Marius leaned against the stone railing, looking like the Roman lord he was.

“Well enough,” Gregory lied, placing his arms behind his back and taking several strides to where Marius stood. He looked out over the green expanse before the Chateau, towards the small village where lights twinkled in the windows of various homes, and the little bar that was down there, mortals standing out on the walk, in front, smoking or just chatting with one another.

“I think he senses something,” Marius spoke absently, his eyes on the night sky then glancing over at Gregory. The “he” in that sentence was obvious.

Gregory snorted. “How can he? I haven’t even started.”

Marius smiled, amused. He shrugged. “Well, whatever you haven’t started, it’s rattled him. Maybe take it easier?”

This bothered Gregory. It had not been his intention at all to distress Louis. Sometimes his thousands of years played against his ability to play gentle, and in this he had to be gentle above all else. He’d sworn it to the Prince and to himself. But it also had to be a quick game or no game at all.

“Well, I’m not really sure how much more gentle I can be, my friend. I don’t want to dally around on this for years, waiting for him to feel safe. That doesn’t work.”

Marius considered his words then made an almost imperceptible nod. He reached over and gave Gregory’s arm a light squeeze. “I want to help you.” He smiled and left Gregory alone on the balcony. What Marius had meant by those parting words, Gregory hadn’t a clue. He leaned against the same stone parapet Marius had, and looked up at the stars. They were plentiful tonight, and bright. The lack of city light in this area of the country was something he didn’t mind so much.

Perhaps 10 minutes had passed and he heard a soft footfall on the flagstones. When he looked, Louis was there, in the middle of the terrace, as if he’d been perfectly placed. And just beyond him, inside the ballroom archway, the swirl of red robes as Marius retreated. Help indeed. Gregory vowed to thank him later.

But here was Louis now, placed before him like an offering. A dancer’s pose, one foot in front of the other, arms at his sides, posture straight and alert. There was a hint of black eyeliner artfully applied along his eyes; highlighting their beauty, as if that was even necessary. Another touch by Lestat, obviously. Gregory again thought of a matador on the field, and he felt something catch in his chest.

“Good evening,” Louis spoke in that touchingly warm voice. He was obviously surprised to be just suddenly there, and he thrummed with nervous energy. Gregory could almost taste the anxiety in him. What had Marius done? Simply picked him up and placed him on the flagstones; or perhaps fed him some mistruth about wanting to speak with him alone outside? In any case, Louis seemed a trapped animal, standing in the spotlight of the moon but unable to retreat. Those firmly ingrained manners were the only thing holding him in place. Gregory couldn’t help but chuckle at the whole situation. Louis frowned, irritation about to override the anxiety.

The subtle strains of music from the ballroom drifted out to the terrace, an acoustic guitar, a few horned instruments in the orchestra. Gregory reminded himself, go easy.

“Good evening,” He replied with a welcoming smile. The one he used when introducing himself to a new company branch chief, or an audience of employees at one of the many conferences he often spoke at. “Would you like to look at the stars with me?” He asked. Truly making it a question and not an underlying order this time.

Louis glanced to the sky, to the surrounding countryside, back to Gregory. His green eyes moved up and down, taking in the relaxed form Gregory was forcing himself to present. “I suppose,” he said. He walked gracefully to where Gregory stood at the stone railing. It was an unconscious catwalk that Gregory had to admire.

They both looked up at the stars. “The one thing that doesn’t change, besides ourselves,” Louis said. This was the first full sentence he’d heard him speak.

“Oh, but we do change,” Gregory said softly. “You know that.”

Louis made no reply. “The stars are changing too. The north star of this day is not the same north star I grew up with.” No response from Louis. Gregory continued, in a relaxed manner, speaking of the stone circle at Nabta, built well before even Gregory was born. He spoke of the astronomers of his time who predicted the flooding of the Nile simply by reading the stars. He spoke of the three seasons of the Nile; Akhet, Peret, Shemu, and that he still thought of seasons in these terms. For some long while he spoke quietly of such things and Louis listened, his nervous energy dissolving. “But I understand what you are saying,” Gregory continued. “These stars anchor us to this planet and keep the flow of time from making one entirely insane. These are the same stars I looked up at as a boy in Nineveh, when there was no such thing as false light to dim them.”

“And do you think often of it? Your mortal life?” Louis asked, almost timid, but genuinely interested.

Gregory thought for a moment on his answer. He turned to find Louis’s eyes on him, and it was disarming enough to give him pause. “No, I don’t. It was an unpleasant thing to be alive back then. Little of it was pleasurable. Do you think of yours at all? Be honest. Do you even have a clear memory of being mortal anymore?”

Louis didn’t have to think, just shook his head. “No.”

Gregory smiled. “No,” he agreed. “Perhaps the only real clear memory of my mortal self was the night I was made. I think that holds true for most of us, don’t you? I have little memory of the rest. Just that I existed as a mortal for a short period of time.”

“A butterfly trying to recall life as a caterpillar,” Louis said. This was sweet, and made Gregory smile.

They both gazed at the stars for several minutes more. “Time moves fast,” Gregory said suddenly. Really not even certain why he spoke those words, except that it was true. “My life has moved very fast, even when I think it is slow. Look at me here, an ancient Mesopotamian in the twenty-first century.” Louis looked at him, a soft smile on his face. “I’m thinking of going into the business of stars next,” Gregory said. This was a thing he had not dared to speak to anyone yet. Not even his spouse, Chrysanthe. Eventually he would need to retire himself from the pharmaceutical company and lay low long enough for his face to be forgotten. His perpetual youthful visage could only last so long in the mortal world before it was noticed and questioned.

“Stars?” Louis asked. “How is that a business?”

“Astrophysics. Space exploration. Satellites. The future.”

Louis gave a soft dark laugh. “If there is a future.”

“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic,” Gregory laughed too. “I have been alive for six-thousand years. There is always a future.”

Louis pondered these words, one elegant hand rested on the stone parapet before him, that emerald ring sparked in the moonlight. Gregory again found himself entranced with the grace, the straight line of his posture, the poise. Louis turned his head and fixed on him suddenly, laser-like. And again, he was momentarily at a loss for words. “I’m sorry, Louis. I have to say something to you that perhaps you’ve heard every night of your existence and now find tiresome.”

A curiosity crossed Louis’s face. “Yes?”

“Just that you have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.” He held a hand out, to still the immediate derisive reaction Louis had. “No, no, my friend. I have been around for quite a long time, so that’s saying something.”

Louis looked away. “Yes. Well, it is in fact a thing I have heard every night of my life. My eyes; the bane of my existence.”

Gregory laughed. “I can imagine.” He stared again.

“But thank you.” Manners. Such perfect manners.

Louis looked away, pondering the stars once more. Gregory decided to let him have these private thoughts and not use the mind gift tonight. “Now I have a question for you,” Louis said, his gaze returned to Gregory.

Gregory raised a brow, inviting it. “Please ask.” He was thrilled to be getting this much conversation out of the famously non-talkative Louis.

“Why are you doing this?”

Ah. That he had not expected. Not at all. Facing the bull head on, my beauty. “What am I doing, exactly,” Gregory asked; hedging.

Louis gave a slight sigh of annoyance and then, “This,” he waved a hand between them. “This courtship you seem to be attempting with me.”

He couldn’t help the burst of laughter, because Louis’s pronunciation of “courtship” had a certain edge of distaste to it. As if he found the word itself unpleasant. Gregory didn’t immediately answer. He looked away, gathering the right response.

Louis, taking his silence as a non-answer, continued, “You see me with Lestat.”

Gregory laughed again. “Yes, everyone sees you with Lestat.”

Louis’s dark sharply drawn brows knitted. Confused by the response.

“Louis,” Gregory continued, “I think that you’re clinging to a human institution. We have those we are closest to and we have those we remain with through centuries, or return to over and over again. But we don’t remain, exclusive, ever. Please name one couple who has.”

Louis looked away, rebuked. Gregory put a hand out and touched his arm lightly, then dropped away. Go easy. “You are not strictly with Lestat. I know you are very close with David as well. Before that, Armand. Lestat has any number of suitors in this Court chasing him, you know that too. Your argument holds no water. Besides, why does he get all the fun, all the passion? When is your turn?”

Louis was uncomfortable now, but Gregory was not going to let him off so quickly. Especially as he was the one who brought up the topic. He moved a little closer. Surprisingly, Louis held his ground. “I am courting you, yes. I want to know you, to talk with you. Perhaps more.” He paused for these words to settle in. “Just play with me, Louis,” Gregory said, placing his hand beside Louis’s on the parapet; fingers just touching.

There was a quickening in Louis. Barely perceptible, but Gregory’s trained eye saw it. A small opening. Very slowly he leaned in, offering every chance of escape. He placed a kiss against Louis’s forehead, just atop one perfect eyebrow, and then lower, on his lips. There was no pull-back, no resistance. It was chaste enough that it could be written off as nothing but friendly affection. Or Louis could choose to read it for exactly as Gregory intended it; the prequel to a future passion. He stepped back away, returning personal space to him.

“I’m going to go now. You can come along with me, or you can stay here. Have a good evening.”

Louis looked like a rabbit in a trap, but there was no instinct in him to flee now. That much Gregory could read. He enjoyed the sense of accomplishment as he turned away, leaving him there on the terrace to work through it.

Chapter Text

DUBAI - PART 1

One night later it occurred to Gregory that he would need to remove Louis from the Court if he was going to get anywhere with him. Lestat was a distraction for Gregory and an object of safety for Louis. As luck would have it, Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals was invited to a world health conference that week. Gregory let his assistants know he would be attending and to make all arrangements for himself and a plus-one to attend. This was a perfect excuse to get Louis alone, no outside distractions from other blood-drinkers.

He wanted to let Lestat know first though. Gregory knew Court politics all too well. It would be improper to abscond with the Court consort with no warning.

He found Lestat in the village below the Chateau, in the little bar where the villagers went nightly for socializing and drink. Sometimes Lestat went there to revel in his popularity among them. Gregory understood this need. It was really the reason he made himself publicly visible to his own employees. He needed the human validation and love. Lestat was at the back of the bar, at a table with several mortals, regaling them with stories of his travels in various parts of the world. They were enthralled. How easily he played them. For him it was second nature; just as it was for Gregory. His eyes brightened at the sight of Gregory’s entrance and he gestured broadly for him to take a seat at the table.

“Ah! My trusted advisor,” Lestat laughed and introduced him around the table. Gregory accepted a mug of beer with a large head of foam on it. For some while he sat and listened to the talk at the table and contributed to the jovial conversations. The humans eventually splintered off and away from the table, leaving him alone with Lestat. Lestat was dressed this evening in a simple black long-sleeved t-shirt, a dark suede coat, and jeans. Relaxed.

“Are you doing well?” Lestat asked with honest interest. “How is your blood kin? How are Davis and Flavius? I have not seen them at the Court lately.”

“I am doing well,” Gregory answered. “Both Flavius and Davis are in New York. Davis has been longing to see all the Broadway plays. He is dragging Flavius along.” Lestat smiled at this.

Gregory leaned his elbows on the table in front of him, the now flat mug of beer before him. “I want to let you know, my Prince, that I intend to take Louis away for three or four nights at least.” Lestat visibly froze. Not a topic he was excited to discuss. Denial was a powerful shield. “I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable, but I want to keep you abreast of it. What do they call it these days? Transparency.”

Lestat looked away, nodding lightly, his fingers sliding along the condensation on the glass in front of him. “Where?”

“Dubai.”

“Why there?”

“Because I have business there.” Gregory paused before he admitted to the next part, “And because it is a familiar part of the world for me, and a not familiar part for him. I need him to see me as the safety, not you.”

Lestat was still, but fixed on Gregory, a small narrowing of his brows as he took in the words. “Be careful, Gregory.”

“I’ve told you, you don’t need to worry for him,” Gregory spoke softly.

Lestat laughed abruptly, surprising him. “I’m not worried about him, my friend. I’m worried about you. Don’t fall too hard. He will rip your heart out and watch you bleed on the floor. Or just stand by while someone else does.”

Something like a chill passed through Gregory at this premonition. It was unusual for Lestat to express such a pessimistic view. He didn’t know how to respond. This was his third warning to be careful for himself. Before he could probe the topic further, Lestat smiled fiercely, almost maniacal, and held his glass up in salute. “Have fun!”

Gregory briefly considered offering to recant the proposal if the Prince was this distressed over it, but Lestat had already waved him away from the table, wanting nothing more to do with it.

And the following night Gregory sat in a private jet, worth more money than some small countries. Both he and Louis relaxed in rich leather chairs, a table of Italian marble between them, and everything gilded in gold or similar expense. It was an extravagance Gregory enjoyed. He loved money. He loved everything being catered to him. A throwback to his life as the King and Queen’s chosen favorite, the vizier, captain of the guard. The slaves, farmers, laborers bowing before him as he passed. Gregory never once felt shame or guilt over it. He wallowed in luxury and enjoyed every minute of it.

Louis, however, seemed ill at ease. But that may have been the flight Gregory had to take him on from Paris to Cyprus, where they boarded the plane for Dubai. Louis had been uncomfortable in unfamiliar arms, so high up above the Earth, and at a speed which was probably far stronger than Lestat used when flying him anywhere.

“But why don’t we just take your jet straight from Paris,” he’d asked quietly. Gregory was standing on the edge of one of the Chateau towers, and Louis was there, reluctant to step up and into his arms for this flight.

Gregory was sending a last-minute text off to one of his assistants about having the jet ready in Cyprus when they arrived. He placed the phone in his breast pocket and took in the sight of Louis there. He was dressed for the arid desert weather in a long white linen tunic-shirt that fell loosely and was open at the collar, a light pair of jeans, and clean white sneakers. The overall effect was that of a rich student on a weekend vacation. Gregory remained in his usual business attire, dark suit, blue satin tie with a jeweled pin of sapphire in it, a couple rings on his fingers.

“Because the plane will take too long from Paris to Dubai. Do you want to sit on a plane for 7 hours?”

He could see the next question was obvious and cut it off before Louis could ask. “I cannot just fly us all the way there. I must arrive in Dubai by plane. I have a human persona to keep up. We will meet the private jet in Cyprus and from there it is a short flight.”

Louis looked away. It had been like wrangling a cobra to get him to agree to come along on this trip. The suggestion of many art galleries was what won the deal.

Gregory held his arms out now in offering for Louis to step into them for the flight. Louis made no move; resisting. He dropped his arms. Gregory reluctantly used the mind-gift on him again, Trap, is what his thoughts were saying. He was bathed in suspicion and moonlight, eyes darting to and from Gregory.

Gregory sighed. Why was he this way? Was it with everyone outside his main circle of kin, or was it just Gregory specifically?

“Louis, what’s it going to take to get you on my flying carpet, really? Do you need a sworn statement?” He held his right hand up, “I solemnly swear not to drag you into a lion’s den when we arrive. Tell me what the price is and I will gladly pay it a hundred times over just to have you with me for this one small occasion.” Louis still hesitated. “You can come back at any point. I will personally place the plane and the pilot at your order.”

That seemed the ticket. Louis took a deep breath, then stepped up on the parapet and into Gregory’s arms. There was a very slight height difference between them. Gregory had been tall in his time, but as centuries passed, he became shorter and shorter. He stood just an inch less than Louis, though it was barely discernible. He made up for it in overwhelming strength and power; taking firm hold of Louis, wrapping an arm around his waist, and another around his torso, feeling Louis slide his own arms around Gregory’s shoulders. Last time he’d flown with him, Louis has been passed out from his ordeals with Rhoshamandes, and he likely had no memory of the flight back to the Chateau in Gregory’s arms. During that flight Gregory vowed to fix this weakness Louis insisted on maintaining.

Now he smiled at Louis as they stood on the edge of the tower. “This may be a little more forceful than you’re used to with the Prince, but we have to get there fast. Hold very tight.” Which was actually unnecessary, because Gregory would do all the holding. But hey, why not encourage him to get familiar?

Before Louis could reply or back out again, Gregory launched them straight into the night sky at an alarming rate of speed. Louis clung tight enough to crush an average man, human or blood drinker; but Gregory was an Ancient and it felt like little more than an aggressive hug to him. He placed a hand on Louis’s head and pressed it against his shoulder, to shield him from the violence of the wind. He should probably have forced a jacket on him before this trip, but it was too late now.

So here Louis sat now, opposite Gregory on the plane, windblown and still beautiful, but in a bit of a stupor from the shock of the flight. Gregory tried to distract him with conversation about art. Louis loved art, and Gregory used it to his advantage to wedge his way into conversation; to hear actual fully articulated sentences and see some sparks of passion as Louis discussed the great impressionist artists of his own timeline.

As Louis spoke, in that slow thoughtful way he had, Gregory thought about Lestat’s parting words again. “Be careful, Gregory.” Was this just Lestat projecting his own experiences, or was this true advice? Louis was notoriously a quiet individual, introverted, thoughtful. Gregory could see nothing of malice or passive aggressive tendencies in him. Anyway, it didn’t matter; he had no intentions of falling that far for this one. He wanted Louis to be strong, to take his blood several times and to be a more complete, self-sufficient being.

The jet made a smooth landing in Dubai, Gregory watched Louis closely as his eyes fixed on the view outside the window. He took in the view; the city lit up at night, lights sparkling off the gulf waters, the creek and the canal snaking through the city, buildings and skyscrapers of incredible architecture rising in the sky. As they departed the plane, and stepped into the dry heat of the desert night, a rush of mortals greeted Gregory, as if he were royalty here. He supposed his wealth and fame in the business world had made him a prince of sorts.

Louis was uneasy with all this attention and got lost in the crowd of mortals vying for Gregory’s attention; speaking in different languages of the world, giving Gregory business cards, shaking hands, offering assistance in any way during his stay here. He pulled Louis through the group with him. They made it to the company car where his main assistant, Malik, was waiting with copious notes and details about the conference and other matters. Gregory listened attentively to all the news and rattled questions off, both of them speaking Arabic.

Louis stared at them, he was unfamiliar with the words. He looked out the window to this city he had no prior experiences in whatsoever. He was still rattled from the flight. He was a fish out of water. Gregory tried not to be too proud of himself for making this move.

They settled in the suite of rooms he owned in the highest hotel the city had to offer. The rooms had an entire panoramic view, which Louis seemed enthralled with. “How is this possible,” he whispered to himself. Gregory did not answer, but watched him stand there, silhouetted against the city sky lights, trying to fathom the enormity of it all.

Gregory’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he took the call, speaking quickly to his assistant again on the other end. Yes, he would be at the conference first thing tomorrow evening. Yes, he knew he would be one of the first speakers, and then he would have a quick meeting with several of the other prominent attendees.

When he hung up, Louis was walking lightly around the rooms, touching things, glancing again and again to the view out the windows.

“Let’s go out,” Gregory announced.

“Where?” Louis asked, timidly.

Gregory made sure he had cash, phone, key card and then held the door open and gestured Louis through it. “The City. Clubs. Humans. Blood. Come along.”

They found their way to the busy nightlife section of the city, where the young twenty-somethings went to dance, drink and mingle into the late morning hours. Gregory found one of the more expensive clubs for them and payed their way in with fists of cash.

Clubs were not a thing Gregory enjoyed, especially not these types. Loud, flashing electric lights, aggressive thumping bass sounds that shook the very walls and foundations. But it was thick feeding ground and easy picking here for quick blood that didn’t lead to kills; which he thought Louis might prefer. Immediately upon entering Gregory dragged Louis out to the floor where all the bodies were in a giant mass movement that made no sense whatsoever. It was disorienting, even for a vampire. Louis grabbed his wrist, so as not to lose him in the crowd; which was a little silly. They would find each other again outside. But it was endearing in a very human way, and Gregory allowed him to hold on; being the safety object.

Louis was not into this dancing at all. It was not proper eighteenth-century waltzing, or ballroom. It was wild, unpredictable, all over. The music was not music but loud beating and pulsing. Gregory forced him into it anyway, if only to make him participate in modern life. He even shook him a bit and danced around him like a complete fool, just to get a smile out of him and make him move too. Louis glared. Gregory leaned in and yelled against his ear, “Get out of the fucking eighteenth century, please. Come here to the present with me.” Louis scowled; absolutely irate. Gregory laughed.

A few young women danced between them and made vaguely suggestive moves, but nothing overt. Gregory laughed more and leaned down, quickly drinking from one of them. She swooned a bit in his arms and he pulled her off the floor and placed her at a table with some drinks in front of her. Over on the floor Louis was doing the same with her friend, the lights flashed and danced over their forms, making it almost impossible to discern what was happening. Gregory went and helped this girl over to the table her friend was out.

They left the club quickly after and explored the other areas of this part of the city. “Are you mad I took you there,” Gregory asked, as they strolled past store shop windows full of expensive jewelry and gold trinkets of every possible object imaginable. The streets were full this evening, tourists of every country meandering slowly along the walkways, enjoying the wealth and beauty of the shops.

Louis glanced at him, his eyes dark. “I just don’t like those places. It’s too loud. The light hurts my eyes.”

Gregory leaned back against the window they had stopped at, and Louis examined the objects inside. He’d heard some talk from Fareed that Louis had a light sensitivity that went beyond the norm for blood drinkers, and then there was some hypothesizing that perhaps vampires with particularly striking eye colors had this same problem. Was it somehow related to the dark blood and how it worked in the iris of the eyes and the vision? The idea was filed away. The projects Fareed had his scientists working on were too numbered. Too many to keep up with at this point. Some had to be placed aside for later.

“It’s not too loud if you have stronger blood, you know. Sounds are not so irritating, light not so harsh.”

Louis almost rolled his eyes, but then caught himself. “So I’m told.” He turned from the window and started walking again. He was rattled and irritated and showing it. Gregory grabbed his arm, perhaps a little too forcefully, but Louis stilled and looked at him, refusing to show pain.

“Louis, you need to be stronger. I know you know this.”

Louis glared. Well and truly angry. “Is that what this trip is? Force your blood on me? I hear the Court gossip.”

“No,” Gregory sighed heavily. Though how much easier that would be, he thought to himself. He let go of Louis’s arm. “This is me getting to know you and you getting to know me.”

“To what end?”

Gregory crossed his arms on his chest and looked away, then back again. It was hard to look at him for too long. What a sharp-edged beauty he was. How did the Prince resist this every night? How intimate was he with Lestat? Did they do anything other than walk and talk? Thus far, Gregory had seen no evidence of anything else between them. Yet, Lestat referred to him as a lover.

He was waiting for an answer to his last retort. With another sigh, Gregory reached one finger out and smoothed it over the arch of one angry brow on Louis’s face. “To no particular end. Just for the pleasure of your company in mine,” he answered softly. “I promise you.”

Louis glanced down and then back; soothed a bit. They began walking.

“I apologize,” Louis said. “I’m a little unnerved around you.”

Gregory expected that. Most younger ones were, though he made every effort imaginable to be as approachable as possible.

“Do I frighten you?”

They turned a corner and walked through stalls of magazines and newspaper vendors, candies and beverages, trinkets and electrical gadgets that even Gregory couldn’t place a use for.

Louis had not answered. “Now you concern me. I hoped for an immediate denial. Am I really so intimidating?”

Louis stopped walking and was watching a man across the street. “No, you don’t frighten me, really. But you have this heavy energy that I can feel. Like that vibration in the club just now. It resonates inside, from you to me. It’s… unrelenting.”

This was typical, common for elders to have such an effect on the younger. Perhaps from the blood being so close to the original source, and it called to that of the younger ones in some way. Another research project Fareed had to backlog.

“And what does it feel like in you? This energy from me?” This topic was so right in line with Gregory’s ultimate intentions. He thanked the genius stroke of dragging Louis to that club.

Louis was not answering again. They passed through strolling tourists and more street vendors, crossed a street of honking vehicles to get to a less populated street.

“You are not answering me,” Gregory pointed out.

Louis stopped walking, his focus on a café a few yards away. Then those eyes fixed on him sharply, still some anger there, and something else. Gregory found himself loving that, and understanding now why Lestat taunted him so much. To get this passion out of him. But it shouldn’t have to be that way. This emotion should be just available and not something that had to be always teased and cajoled out of him.

“I’m not answering your question because these questions are all leading and obvious.”

Gregory laughed. “Are they? Humor me with an answer anyway, please.”

Green eyes flashed at him. “It feels like electricity. Like you are burning me from within.” He turned and walked off to the café without a backward glance.

Electricity. Gregory found he didn’t know how to feel about the answer.

Louis was hunting, and Gregory wondered that he hadn’t understood this earlier? So rare was it that he actually hunted any more himself. It became clear when Louis stood outside the café he’d been watching a moment ago, fixed again on that same man from a few streets back. This man was in the café, at the back with another man. They were making an exchange of cash. Sex slave traffickers. The one would take the other back to his own contact, and that one would lead this man to where ever this den of slaves was and let him have his choice among them.

Gregory was too busy watching Louis change from poised, well-mannered, gentleman to hunger-driven, out for the kill. Quite a seductive thing to witness. Another one of Lestat’s pastimes he understood all the better now.

They both followed the two men out into the streets. They were large men of no particular interesting physical appearance. They were going to get a car and head to another part of the city, Gregory sent a small mental suggestion they should first walk down another street, and then turn down an alleyway towards a walkway along the water. They did so, Louis none the wiser that Gregory had done that for him.

Louis followed them into the alleyway and Gregory stayed a few feet behind, captivated by this phantom of death before him. One of the men became confused as to why they had detoured to the alley. He turned around and the other stopped and turned with him, asking what was wrong. They both saw Louis there, and Gregory just behind. One spoke to them, asking why they were following and telling them to leave. Louis didn’t understand the foreign words, but he gave a short dark laugh, which only served to anger the man more.

Gregory told the man, in his language, that they were in danger here. The men were both incredulous and mad now, moving to push aside Louis and leave the alley.

Louis grabbed the first one and shoved him back, then went after him, attacking and biting into his throat in quick succession, the man made a guttural scream then silenced. The anger evaporated from the other and fight or flight took over. Gregory grabbed him before he could get too far, slicing into the jugular and reeling in the hot blood, the images of all his dark life spilling out. When he opened his eyes, Louis was staring at him, eyes still glazed with the recent kill. It was an enormous intimacy. Gregory held that eye contact as long as possible, forcing Louis to look away first. He reached over and took up the other body quickly ascending into the air to dispose of them both. He dropped them in the Gulf, the most efficient way.

He’d been away only a few minutes, but Louis was out on the canal walkway, eyes on the horizon where a distant fireworks display was happening. Small splashes of colored flames filling the air and sliding back down to the Earth; far away sounds of a crowd and applause. It was late enough that this area of the walkway was devoid of all humans and they had it completely to themselves.

Louis was a model on the runway, the warm breeze billowing the white shirt against him, his hair dancing in it, one hand artfully over the railing of the walkway. Gregory approached quickly, giving him no chance to step back, and captured his mouth in an impassioned kiss, the blood from the kill still on both of their tongues. He held Louis in place, hands on his upper arms. Surprisingly, Louis did not pull away from this sudden affection. He stepped into it, against Gregory, and made the very imperceptible sound of pleasure in his throat as he returned the passion.

Gregory felt his own pulse pick up. He was the first one to pull back, staring into Louis’s face, trying to read the emotions there. He couldn’t quite see anything beyond the remaining lust of a kill and a shared heated moment; but how beautiful he was.

Gregory slid a hand behind Louis’s head and pressed his lips to his ear; whispered words of need and want in ancient languages fell from his lips. He kissed his temple and stepped away from the lust of this, afraid he might tear into Louis here on the open sidewalk. This was not how he intended this night to go. He’d intended this to happen perhaps later in the trip, not this fast. It was unlike him to lose control this way.

Louis was a little breathless, a little unsteady, staring back at him. Shocked.

“What does that mean, those words?” His voice hoarse, deeper than usual.

“What do you think those words meant,” Gregory asked, almost smiling.

The blood colored Louis’s face beautifully.

Gregory let his smile widen. “Yes, you’re probably right.”

Louis looked away abruptly. At the canal waters; at the horizon of lights. “This is insulting to their laws, to do this here in this public place.” Ah, the gentleman was back.

Gregory nodded a little, running a hand back over his own hair, looking around him now. But they were completely alone here. No witnesses. “To be fair, the murders might also be insulting their laws,” he said.

Louis laughed, and it was the first Gregory had heard it. This was an amazing thing to have captured from him so quickly. That kill, the kiss, the laughter. He couldn’t help but lean in and kiss him again, more intentional. Lingering, warm, slow, until he could no longer recall how it had started. He pulled back.

“I would like to go watch that show. Can you handle fireworks?”

Louis gave a nod, and a quiet answer, “Yes, I think I can handle that.”

Chapter Text

DUBAI – Part 2

The conference was more involving than Gregory intended. Over the following nights he’d spent the first half of each evening giving presentations; participating in round-table talks with other entrepreneurs, pharmaceutical producers, world leaders; or just dealing with his own company’s business issues in nearby Abu Dhabi. When the evening of work wound down, he and Louis would go out and explore the city more, or he would fly them to other nearby cities to hunt. Inevitably it would end in some passionate exchange that left both of them dizzy with the heat and intensity of it.

This chemistry between them was not something Gregory had anticipated when he made this proposal to the Court. It was not part of the plan at all. Both Chrysanthe’s and Lestat’s words of warning hung over him. He was determined, to keep it all controlled; not to fall for Louis. He was six-thousand years old, for fuck’s sake. He could do this and remain detached.

“I’m sorry this is so boring,” he said on the third evening, as he and Louis rode up yet another elevator to yet another conference room full of physicians, scientists, researchers, businessmen like himself. He’d already given one presentation this evening and was on his way to another.

“It’s okay,” Louis smiled lightly, dismissive. Tonight, he was in a dark suit, sans tie, collar open. Gregory admired the relaxed businessman look on him.

Gregory himself was dressed in his most expensive Italian suit, gold watch on his wrist, silk-tie with diamond pin. He’d woken early to trim his hair and beard close and neat, while Louis remained still dead to the world on the bed in the back room of their suite. A room that received no sunlight during day hours.

Here in the elevator, with Louis beside him, Gregory wondered if he should have had a car take him to the art museums, instead of having him tag along for all these meetings and lectures.

His young gifted mortal assistant was standing between them, rambling on about the schedule they had to keep this night. “And then, after Mr. Gates is done with his presentation and you have completed yours, we have set up a room for your meeting, and –”

“I know, Malik, you told me this part already.” Gregory laughed at the look of apology on Malik’s open and innocent face. “It’s okay. You get so excited about these things, I know.”

“I do. I get excited,” Malik said to Louis. Louis gave him a radiant smile and Malik became momentarily unfocused, lost his momentum. Spellbound.

Gregory exchanged an amused look with Louis. These conferences were normally a thing Gregory enjoyed as much as Malik, but this time around he found he wanted simply for it to be over so he could go back out on the town with Louis, continue with the plan, see how much further he could get with it tonight.

These embraces they shared were intense, but there had been no real blood exchange, and this was a thing he wanted to accomplish before this trip ended. Before he returned them to the Court, this connection had to happen. He felt it like a looming deadline he was racing to complete.

“Will you be sitting in the back again, Mr. du Lac?” Malik was asking as they exited the elevator and walked into the expansive conference area.

“I suppose,” Louis replied, nonchalant, drifting off towards the back of the seating area. Women, and a few men, were watching him as he passed. His very presence was hard to ignore. Gregory found himself fumbling occasionally during the presentations, when he would look up and catch Louis watching him. It was ridiculous.

Gregory was shepherded off to the podium, given a bottle of water he would never touch, and the small remote to control the slides as he spoke, which he handed off to Malik to deal with.

This was a presentation and question-answer session on new product developments in Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals. Boring to the average listener. As he came to the end of his talk and was taking questions from the audience, he realized Louis was gone from the room. A quick scan told him he was still in the building somewhere, but not even on this same floor. And why should that matter to him? Louis was a grown vampire who could care for himself. There were no other blood drinkers in this city right now that could be a threat.

Yet Gregory found himself ill at ease with it. He stumbled on answering a few of the questions and Malik had to cover him a few times. This only served to frustrate him further. He ended the question-answer session earlier than he should have, which gave him time to go find Louis before he had to come back and do the closed meeting with Gates.

A quick scan of mortals told him that Louis was seen going to the very top floor of this particular building, in an empty and open observatory area, before giant windows looking out on the city night. Gregory rode the elevator up, shaking hands absently with conference attendees and business acquaintances who were going to other floors.

The observatory was in fact empty of anyone but Louis; closed to the public.

“What are you doing up here,” he asked, perhaps a bit too abrasively, as he approached.

Louis was just hanging up his phone. He didn’t seem particularly surprised to see that Gregory had found him here. “Just talking to someone.”

“Who?”

Louis’s brows knit, and he was silent. “David. I was talking to David. Am I allowed to speak to my brother?”

Gregory realized how possessive he was coming off. As if Louis were one of his employees. He inwardly cursed himself.

“No, of course you can talk to whoever you want. I’m sorry. You were just gone. I was concerned.”

Louis didn’t buy this cover, but didn’t argue it either. “Are you done,” he asked, putting his phone away.

“No. I have one more meeting. This is the last night of the conference. I’ve got us scheduled to tour the Louvre in Abu Dhabi when this is done.”

Louis smiled lightly. “I would like that.”

Again, silence.

“I’m sorry,” Gregory apologized. He couldn’t even explain it, this feeling, this need to be like a guard on duty at all times; and he didn’t want to look too closely at it himself.

Louis glanced away. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” He held his arms out to demonstrate he was still whole and alive.

“You’re annoyed,” Gregory observed.

“No,” Louis crossed his arms on his chest, belying his denial. And for some reason Gregory found this amusing, but kept it to himself. “I just don’t like being constantly shadowed like that. It harkens back to my first 70 years, when Lestat controlled my every move. I hate that feeling.”

“I’m sorry,” Gregory apologized a third time, more sincerely. He stepped close and kissed Louis’s temple. “I was worried,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“You were just gone. Just gone. I can’t explain it. I reacted. I have a guardian instinct, Louis.”

“You knew I was still here somewhere. You are strong enough to know even if I am suddenly on the other side of the city. The other side of the continent even.”

“Yes, true,” he agreed “Again, I can’t explain it. I wanted you in my line of sight. I want to know where you are.” Now he held his hands out to his sides in his own gesture of, that’s just the way of it.

Louis frowned at him. “Don’t be like that, Gregory. Don’t.”

“Louis, I apologize,” he said again, tense. Damnit, why did this man have this effect on him? He was not this way. This is not how he was in any of his current relationships. He sighed heavily; another thing uncommon for him, yet he found himself doing it regularly the past several nights.

Reluctantly, Gregory examined this within himself. He could see that it was in fact old patterns from all the way back to his first centuries. Be the guard. Protect the power of the throne. But how to make that clear to Louis in this modern era personal freedoms.

Was he handling this wrong? Was he not making the right moves; reading Louis incorrectly? Should he have been playing this thing out differently all along? Chrysanthe had been so right. This was not as easy as he’d anticipated it would be.

Louis was looking away, towards the windows, arms still crossed on his chest. Thinking. Distant.

Gregory skimmed his surface thoughts, which were a jumble of emotions. Confusion, irritation, longing, nervousness, disappointment. It was that last one that crushed something in Gregory. He reached out and touched Louis’s arm, just to get his attention focused again. “Louis,” he spoke gently, trying to regain eye-contact. Louis turned his head and fixed on him. “Give me a chance to make some mistakes here. You’re not the easiest to read, even with my millennia of experience.”

This was speaking truth all around, and Louis could sense that. His stance loosened. He leaned in and kissed Gregory. The first time he’d initiated. “Okay,” he whispered. “You have only a few chances to make mistakes.”

“Only a few?” Gregory smiled. “You run a tight ship, sir.”

“I have high standards to maintain.”

They both smiled at this.

Malik dashed out of the elevator, breathless. “The meeting! Mr. Gates is waiting!”

Gregory made an all-encompassing gesture of the weight of the world being on his shoulders, but in a comical way. Louis laughed. Malik looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, sir.” It was unusual for an entrepreneur of Gregory’s status to have such a young assistant, but he liked having youthful enthusiasm around him. He surrounded himself with it whenever possible, learned from it, used it to keep himself always in the current trends. Malik had graduated top of his class from Harvard Business School just last year, but already he was a huge asset to Collingsworth.

Malik was at the elevator, holding it for them.

“Yes, let’s go talk with him. You can take selfies with us and post them to all the social media,” Gregory laughed.

They boarded the elevator and Louis shared another amused look with him as Malik began furiously texting various people, and speaking excitedly about all the talking points he needed to remember to hit in this meeting.

It was nearing midnight before they made it to the museum in Abu Dhabi. Gregory had flown Louis there within minutes. Louis was animated as they entered. The museum was open only for them, a few night guards walked the floors, but otherwise no one. Louis loved art and history and it showed. He wanted to see everything, read everything, talk with Gregory about everything.

Specifically, at the very beginning, in the first rooms, where there were objects from Gregory’s own time in history. Mesopotamian statues, artifacts, mosaics. Gregory found himself flooded back six-thousand years to a time he’d buried mentally and emotionally. He was explaining old ancient things that he’d never expected to have to remember at this point in his existence. Things that went all the way back to mortal life.

Louis was watching him closely as he spoke about the meanings of some of the patterns and symbolism on the wall tiles, the code of Hammurabi in the old cracked tablets, the cuneiform writings and how to read them, purposes for various tools on display, the names of Gods he’d long ago forgotten. The whole thing was becoming emotionally exhausting actually, and as they moved onto the objects from Egyptian lands he began to slow down in his explanations or to simply shrug as if he was unsure of things, though he was not.

Finally, they went in different directions, Louis off to explore another room. Gregory remained in the current one, looking at an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic display, feeling something he couldn’t identify. Dread perhaps. Knots in the pit of his stomach. Memory of his existence in those times. Of the weight of Akasha’s dangerous affection for him. Enkil’s tall quiet presence always just behind him, manipulating, threatening. And even the persona of himself in those first years coming back to him now. The constant need to guard them, the two that threatened his life nightly. What a tangled dysfunctional world it was. He remembered the horrors every night, blackness with no lights. The coercion and threat at every turn if he didn’t do as commanded and visit terror on others in the name of the King and Queen. Monotony of the same unchanging violent existence, night after night after night.
And humanity itself made little change in those first eras. It was the reason he ultimately buried himself deep in the sands and didn’t rise again until the third century.

Louis was quietly at his side and he’d not noticed the return until he was gently nudged. He looked away from the hieroglyphs and realized his vision was tinted in red. Crying. Stupidly crying. He wiped at his eyes rapidly and shook his head to clear his mind of these dark thoughts.

“We shouldn’t have come here,” Louis said softly, placing a hand on his arm, concern all over his handsome features.

“No, it’s fine. We could just skip ahead a couple thousand years. It worked for me last time.” And he couldn’t help but laugh at his own joke, wiping his eyes again. Louis smiled too.

“So let’s just go to my era, and you can grill me until I cry. It won’t take much, I’m pretty easy like that.”

Gregory smiled, looking at Louis’s gentle face, feeling a warm calm settle within him again. “No, I won’t make you cry. It goes against my grain to do that,” he said, taking Louis’s arm and walking with him through several rooms until they reached the Voyages and Discoveries room and found things to marvel over that were not so personally disturbing to either of their histories.

After the museum they hunted again. Gregory had not done this much hunting in a very long time. He didn’t kill nightly like this; he didn’t need it anymore at all. And it seemed almost excessive, gluttonous in some way, but also irresistible. Louis was a flawless killer, impossible not to watch and follow along with. And ultimately, it led to the thing Gregory was after, the intimacy afterwards. This time he’d gotten them both back to the suite at the hotel before anything happened.

Out on the balcony, he kissed Louis, so familiar to him now. Kissed his face, his eyelids, his cheeks, then back down again. His lips at Louis’s throat, kissing, licking over and over, sliding one hand up into his hair, pulling a fist-full of it back so more of that ivory skin was available. Louis was breathless against him, and Gregory found himself on the edge of it as well. Unusual, because he didn’t actually need to breathe much anymore. He paused just above that pulse-point, hovering over what would undoubtedly be very sweet, luscious blood; just there beneath the skin, against his tongue; teasing. Louis stilled, hands bunched in Gregory’s shirt and coat, eyes half-lidded. Gregory, licked and received a very satisfying catch in Louis’s breathing.

“I’m just really trying to resist here, Louis,” he whispered against his throat, voice thick.

“I can see that,” Louis breathed; almost laughed. “You’re doing great.”

Something about the way that was worded, the slight tinge of amusement, made Gregory pull back and look at him more closely. He was impassioned, for certain, but there was something else there. Something too aware, considering the heat of these circumstances. Sly. Calculating.

Anger burned through the passion, the heat of it fueled into a fire inside of him. He grabbed Louis’s hair more forcefully and jerked his head back, to look into his eyes. Louis hissed at the pain, and Gregory quickly let go, remembering his strength could easily snap a young one’s neck. He cursed sharply in ancient, something that would loosely translate to, “You fucking little tease, don’t you dare manipulate me!”

Louis couldn’t possibly understand the words, but the meaning was unmistakable and he flinched, went still, fight or flight kicking in. “Don’t,” he said. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“And in what way was it meant?” He glared. Louis was silent, and Gregory continued waiting for some response, anything.

Louis drew a slow breath, ran a slightly shaky hand back through his dark hair. Gregory couldn’t help but read every thought racing through him right then. Some of them calculating, most of them panic-driven. And this threw ice on the heat of his anger more than anything else could. He’d made a vast mistake here. He’d let emotion get in the way of this entire thing. And now Louis was trapped and panicked. He’d done the opposite of what he’d sworn to the Prince not to do. He’d inadvertently intimidated the hell out of this one and driven him into a corner.

Gregory stepped back, gave Louis space. He rubbed his face in his hands, telling himself to calm. Calm down. Breathe. Even though you don’t need it, breathe. But Louis wasn’t moving to safety. He was standing still, watching Gregory have this melt-down moment. Oddly brave of him.

“What do you think we’re doing here,” Gregory asked finally. Very curious to know what Louis thought this was between them at this point.

Those green eyes sparked, dark brows narrowed in confusion. “We’re playing. ‘Play with me, Louis.’ Those were your words.”

Gregory felt all his plans for this entire project go right down the drain, as they say. Oh, Chrysanthe had been so right. She had been so on point with this one. He even laughed in a hard, humorless fashion. He turned away, went to the balcony railing, and looked out over the city lights. What now? Admit defeat and take him back? What a fucking waste of time this had been.

But then, he felt Louis there beside him at the railing, touching his arm, and he looked at him. His face was not that of a manipulating monster at all. He was just Louis, handsome and poised and sweet. He leaned in, placed his lips against the side of Gregory’s face. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you. I wasn’t taunting… not really. I want this. I like you. There is something between us, I have to admit. You don’t have to play these games with me.”

Gregory turned to him. These words he had not expected at all. It was an offer, a chance back onto the raft floating out in the ocean. He pulled Louis close again. How could he resist such an invitation? Louis slid hands up into the collar of Gregory’s shirt, pulling him close again, and kissed just under Gregory’s jaw. “You had it wrong,” he whispered, “I was teasing, but it wasn’t serious. I didn’t know it would anger you so much. I won’t do it again” he whispered, in French. He kissed Gregory’s tense jaw again, his cheek, his lips. Gregory returned this affection, feeling the anger slowly dissipate. Louis tilted his head just so, his throat exposed. Lust crested in Gregory. “Please,” Louis whispered.

He was not going to wait for further permission. He grabbed Louis, pulling him vise-like against himself, biting hard into his throat. Perhaps harder than he intended, but some anger was still there, mixed with want and need, and it couldn’t be helped. Louis gasped, said something that sounded like his name, almost struggled, then went silently into a heavy, deep swoon, completely limp in Gregory’s arms.

He couldn’t process beyond that, because the blood, this blood he’d been yearning for, for far too many nights now, was finally his. He drew on it hard, the visions at first of lights, colors, humid green lushness, someone singing gently a French lullaby; and woven within it all, Lestat. But as quickly as that sense of Lestat appeared, it also disappeared. Then it was just this strong feeling of familiarity; like he knew this soul inside Louis and always had, and the rapid rush of Louis’s heart speeding against his, dragging them into a dizzying spin that he had to finally let go of for fear of hurting Louis. He pulled back, licking his lips of that rich sweetness. Louis was only half alert as Gregory held him still in one arm, chests pressed together. His green eyes were unclear, trying to focus, trying to come back to reality.

Gregory stared down at him. What was this? Why was this so fierce, so feverish between them?

A small vibration in his breast pocket distracted him, and Gregory cursed. He was expecting his assistant to call, but didn’t think it would be just yet. Still, he had to take this call if it was in fact him. Holding Louis, one arm around his waist, Gregory took his phone from his pocket. Lestat’s name flashed on the screen. The possibility of ignoring the call crossed over him. But he couldn’t ignore it. That would potentially set off alarm bells in Lestat. Besides, Gregory was doing nothing wrong here. He was doing exactly what he said he would do, in fact.

He easily carried Louis back into the main room of the suite. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” he whispered against Louis’s ear, though he didn’t think Louis was really processing outside sounds right now. Damn this bad timing. He placed him in a comfortable chair, let his head fall against the arm of the chair, eyes still half-mast.

Gregory answered the phone, and went to sit at his desk on the opposite side of the room, “Good evening,” he greeted. Hopefully Lestat would be oblivious to the sound of blood still in his voice. “How are you?”

Lestat was merely calling about some Court issue, or so he claimed, and they spoke for some time about it. Gregory tried to stay focused on the conversation, but the reality was he was still tasting the blood; feeling it in him. His mind was spinning, trying to recalculate and rebound on what he’d thought this would all be with Louis. How had he allowed himself to get so enraptured like this? Was this Louis’s passive manipulations; something Gregory hadn’t even seen happening until just a few minutes ago?

Gregory tried to end the call as quickly as possible, telling Lestat he had business to attend to with his assistant.

“No, wait,” Lestat interrupted him before he could end the call. A heavy pause followed.

“He’s fine,” Gregory said, watching the ‘he’ in question slowly come around now. Louis lifted his head, looking dazed, unfocused, swaying slightly. Seeing Gregory across the room, his brows knit then relaxed as he lay his head back down against his arm on the chair arm, holding eye-contact with him through the rest of the call. If he recognized Lestat’s voice on the other end of the line, he gave no indication. Louis was beyond pale, drawn, hungry. They would have to go out and hunt again before morning light took over.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Gregory told Lestat. This seemed to pacify Lestat and they exchanged goodbyes.

Chapter Text

ECLIPSE

Gregory found himself immediately regretting the return to Court. Louis disappeared into his own rooms in the Chateau, to the books in the library, off to Paris with Lestat, or just anyplace where Gregory wasn’t. His avoidance was blatant. The few times they would be in the same rooms, the chemistry between them was obvious enough that others were reading it, but Louis would find some excuse to exit, and off he went.

Even in the occasional council meetings Louis attended with the rest of them, he made little eye-contact with Gregory. He kept his comments to the minimum before escaping at the end of the meeting.

During one such meeting he was seated to Lestat’s right, as always, gazing at the murals of wild flowers along the opposite wall. The topic being discussed was the library renovations, and it seemed something Louis in particular should have had an opinion about, but he remained silent.

“Perhaps we could have a new wing on the library,” Gregory suggested. “With a classroom area where elders could hold lessons with small groups of fledglings, or anyone really. Teach money management, how to find shelter and live beneath the radar in the mortal world. Book clubs, even. What is your opinion, Louis?”

Louis remained silent. Lestat nudged him beneath the table. Louis looked at Lestat, who nodded down to Gregory’s end of the table. Gregory had one arm stretched on the table, slightly towards the opposite side where Louis sat, as if he could reach that far to Louis, to get his attention. They made eye-contact for a silent stretch of seconds. Gregory had a vivid memory of the last night, out on the balcony with him; the feel of his body, the thirst for him, his blood.

“I’m sorry,” Louis asked, realizing that every head in the council room was turned towards him.

“Louis,” Gregory said quietly, with the barest trace of irritation, “I’ve been speaking to you for the past several minutes.”

Louis stared. “I’m sorry, my mind was somewhere else.”

Gregory sat up straight in his chair again. “Obviously.”

Impossible for anyone in that chamber to not pick up on the tension between them. Armand, down near Lestat’s side was particularly disturbed by it, looking between Louis and Gregory several times, then to Lestat. Lestat was watching just as intently. What did he think? That there had been some quarrel between them? That Louis hated Gregory now? Lestat raised a brow, shrugged, moved the topic on to the next item on the agenda.

After this meeting, Armand filed out of the room, hot on Louis’s heels. As other blood drinkers were slowly exiting, Gregory remained at the table, making a few notes on his laptop about some items they’d discussed. He felt eyes on him and looked up to see Santh watching him from the other side of the table, hulking and blond, with his shaggy beard and large green eyes. “Nebamun, did you break Enkil?” Santh chastised in a stage whisper.

Marius was seated beside Santh, and obviously just as curious. Though Santh spoke in Ancient, Marius understood. He’d essentially inserted himself in their little group of Ancients, had started picking up the words over the years, speaking them himself. In fact, they humorously referred to Marius as their Roman/Egyptian brother, because he not only cared for the King and Queen so long for them, but he also socialized more with them than any others at the Court now.

Santh looked expectantly at Gregory, waiting for an answer. Gregory’s first instinct was to tell them to mind their own business. But he realized where he was sitting, and this was actually not entirely his own business, this was Court business. He’d made it that by posing it as a proposal to the Court in the first place. Gregory found a few others still around the table, also waiting for a response; Santh, Marius, Seth, Fareed, Chrysanthe, Sevraine, and even Jabare had joined them.

What had happened? What was his answer to be here? He could think of nothing truly terrible that should be reported about it. They had made a very strong undeniable connection that last night. But now he was being treated like the black death, and it stung a bit, if he was honest with himself. He allowed these surface thoughts to be easily read by the others here. He shut his laptop and folded his hands on top of it, looking at Marius and Santh.

“We had a pleasant time, we connected. Now he is obviously avoiding me.” He held his hands open, in a gesture of confusion. “I can think of no reason why. Particularly after what we shared the last night.” He looked off to the head of the table where Lestat usually sat, but now it was empty. “I regret bringing him back so early,” he muttered.

“Take him away again,” Seth suggested. Fareed was sitting at his side, listening intently.

“I don’t know that I can convince the Prince to let me do that again,” Gregory said.

“Just take him,” Seth said. Fareed was visibly bothered by that.

“He is not an object, Seth,” Fareed said sharply. Rarely did he speak against Seth, but in a few instances when he felt strongly enough, he would do so.

“I will run the interference with Lestat,” Marius said. “If you need that.”

“Again, not an object,” Fareed quipped. All of them looked at Fareed, but Gregory knew that none of those here took his words as anything other than the opinion of a young man born in the twentieth century. He was speaking out against a room full of ancients, raised in times so far back that things like human rights and real freedom of choice were concepts only Gods or royalty held to.

They, including Marius, struggled nightly with this concept here in the Court. Especially in this world of blood-drinkers, where the one who made you could kill you simply because he or she sired you, no questions asked. The younger generation of vampires petitioned weekly to re-write that one, and sometimes they took up these petitions and had long public debates with the younger ones, but after thousands of years of one law and one law only remaining firmly in place among the undead, it was hard to turn that ship around.

Gregory felt like he should be feeling some pang of guilt about this, and he tried to find it but rarely could.

“His thoughts were tangled,” Sevraine said of Louis. “I sensed disquiet in him, but nothing more. He is perhaps just uneasy being in this surrounding again. How is he going to carry on a love affair with you when the Prince is right there beside him, and an entire Court watching.”

Gregory frowned. “Has this become public knowledge so quickly?”

“Oh, the genie left that bottle pretty quickly,” Santh replied with a grin. “I did warn you.”

Gregory sighed. So that was that. Now he did have to get Louis out of here again, if he intended to continue this thing.

“What is wrong,” Chrysanthe asked. She’d been silently beside him the whole while. “You are hesitant, which is not at all your character, Greg.”

He smiled at her, took her hand and held it, while rubbing at his forehead with his other. “I don’t know why. I wonder if I’ve overstepped in this.”

Santh laughed from the other side of the table. “You love him,” he blatantly pointed out.

All of them were watching Gregory intently.

“No,” Gregory immediately denied. “Not like that. Yes, I love him, as I love all of you, as I love Lestat and many others. But it isn’t…” he trailed off. Was it more though? Was that it?

Lestat wandered back into the council room and all eyes turned to him.

“What’s this? Should my ears be burning,” he asked.

“Not at all,” Marius answered. “I wanted to talk to you about the new cells down in the dungeons though.” Marius was always so good at distraction. He stood and took Lestat out of the room.

“You’ll figure it out,” Chrysanthe said, leaning over to kiss his cheek and hug him gently, holding onto him. “He’s more than smitten with you already. It is frightening him that you have this effect. That’s what I read in him.”

He turned to her and lay his head against hers, buried his face in her soft bronze hair, the familiar sweet smell of her, the soft beat of her heart. He loved her. Loved her so much it hurt sometimes. He longed to be with her in some other place now. She was a balm to him. He shut his eyes and blocked out all the others, and drowned himself in her familiar loving presence. Minutes later when he looked up, they were both alone at the table.

---
Gregory wanted to talk to Lestat again. Wanted to continue with this transparency he’d sworn to keep. Later that week he came across him, alone in Paris. Well, as alone as Lestat could be with two bodyguards trailing him from the rooftops. Lestat had been talking to Amel in a café, and they’d just parted ways. Gregory watched, standing beneath the awning of a closed store, watching Lestat leave a generous tip on the table, then leave the café. He saw Gregory across the street and approached with a smile. They kissed on the cheek then embraced for a long moment.

“I’m happy to see you here,” Lestat said, enthusiastic as always. “Let’s walk.” He took Gregory’s arm and they started down the street. There was a very light drizzle of rain, making the pavements glisten in the lights, and random cars passing with wet tires on the pavement, tiny droplets all over his and Lestat’s hair, sprinkled on the shoulders of their coats.

“What has he told you,” Gregory asked, getting right to it.

“Hmm?” Lestat looked at him then away. “Nothing. I know nothing other than you took him away for four nights. Now he’s back. You are awkward around one another.”

Gregory laughed mirthlessly. “So you know about as much as I do.”

They paused in their walk, turning to look at one another.

“Something must have happened,” Lestat said. “What was it?”

Gregory shrugged. He would tell him what he could, and perhaps Lestat would have some advice on this matter. Or perhaps he would just tell Gregory to call it all off and that would be the end of it. Gregory secretly didn’t think he could call it all off now. It was too late.

“We went to a business conference for my company. We hunted together nightly. We had some close moments, some bonding moments. That last night…” He trailed off, not sure Lestat would want this bit of information, but he wasn’t looking away or indicating otherwise. “I drank from him. All was fine after. We came back here the next night. Now he avoids me.”

Lestat looked away then, processing. He seemed slightly frustrated, as Gregory did. “I thought you said you would not have any resistance. That it would be swift and aggressive, then done.”

Gregory felt a keen sense of having let the Prince down on this.

Lestat placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. “I’m not chastising you. I just am saying, it’s not easy with him. It’s never easy with him. Who knows that better than I?”

The rain was soaking into Lestat’s hair, turning it a darker gold. They shared a long silence, both in their own thoughts about Louis. “I don’t blame you if you want to give up on this,” Lestat said. “He’s fine. He’s with me, he’s with other stronger ones at the Court all the time. No one will harm him again. Cyril keeps an extra eye on him now too.”

Gregory felt his jaw tense at this suggestion. Failure, a thing he didn’t take lightly. He didn’t just quit like this. A light breeze blew the drizzle of rain across them more strongly and they both turned away from it. Perhaps Lestat sensed this frustration in him, because he remained silent just watching Gregory. Waited for him to make a decision; any decision.

“No, I will keep trying with him,” Gregory said.

Lestat shrugged. “Well, I don’t expect you will get anywhere.”

Gregory almost laughed at the absolute certainty in Lestat’s voice. “You seem convinced. Why so?”

Lestat did laugh, held his arms out then dropped them. “Because I have known him for 250 years, Gregory. He’s only going to let you so close. He barely lets me in, and I’m the most amazing person in the world!”

They both laughed at his shameless self-confidence.

“Well, my friend, now you are challenging me,” Gregory said. “I will get him to take my blood. I will win him over at least to that point.”

Lestat seemed suddenly serious and then a little sad. “I’m not sure if I should wish you luck or pray against your success.”

Gregory nodded, sympathetic to this. “I understand the tumult of this situation for you. I will end it if you say the word.” Please don’t say the word.

Lestat was silent, looking off into the drizzle of rain falling in the distant light of a street lamp. Gregory tried to place himself in Lestat’s position. What it this had been Chrysanthe he was offering to another blood drinker for some greater good? Offering her perhaps to Lestat, to have as his lover. He felt a pang of jealousy, yes. He also saw the hypocrisy in it. Both he and Lestat had those they shared blood with outside the main few they called spouses or partners.

Lestat had even been Akasha’s lover for a time. That was one thing they shared; Akasha. And now Louis too.

Lestat’s blue-grey eyes returned to him. Some final decision reached. “No, I won’t give the word. He won’t take it from me without being forced or on his deathbed and needing it. So if you can do it lovingly, then that’s what I want. I want him to be strong. I want him to be by my side for the rest of my time on this Earth.”

“Enkil,” Gregory said softly.

Lestat’s eyes darted to him then, narrowed slightly. “I know you and the other Ancients call him that. But I’m not Akasha and he’s not my stone mate, silent on the throne. He is my beloved. I grew up with him in my first years on this dark road. I chose him for that.”

Gregory smiled. “And what makes you think Enkil was not the same for her? He chose her. They grew up together too. It’s not meant as an insult, I hope you know, my Prince. We mean it only as you are both inextricably tied to one another, as the original King and Queen were. There was no Akasha without Enkil, and vice versa.”

“And what was he like, really? Enkil? I only knew her, and she gave me very little on him.”

Gregory hated this conversation suddenly. He looked away, swallowed his first instinctive words that he didn’t want to talk about it. Why was he being taken down this historical memory lane so often lately?

“He was the King. He was the one to fear more than her. He was tall, like Seth. Silent, calculating; again, like Seth.” Gregory laughed a little at how much Seth took after his father actually. “He was strong, easily angered if anything or anyone threatened the Queen.” Gregory paused, remembering that temper all too clearly. “Loyal to a fault, stayed always beside her and was solidly in her corner on all decisions made.”

Lestat nodded, took a breath, and looked away. Thinking.

“The blood could change him more than strength-wise, you know,” Gregory said. “He may no longer be that timid bookworm you so cherish.”

“I don’t cherish his timidity,” Lestat quickly corrected.

And they both stared at one another, shared something. A mutual understanding. And perhaps Lestat sensed in Gregory that there was some feeling there for Louis that even Gregory didn’t admit to himself yet. “I’m going to warn you again, be careful with yourself. He’s not innocent to the ways of seduction, Gregory. He knows beauty is power. He lived with Armand for decades. That crazy has to have rubbed of on him in some way.”

Gregory smiled at that. “I’ve discovered that about him already. I can handle it. I promise you.” He leaned in and kissed Lestat. They parted then, and Gregory felt a renewed determination.

---
“Why are you avoiding me,” Gregory asked point blank the next evening. He found Louis out in the Chateau gardens, actually alone for once.

Louis’s back stiffened slightly at the words, but he continued with his slow walk along a path that wound around the gardens, through patches of flowers in various forms of bloom and color. Gregory caught up to him and they both walked silently for a time before Louis replied. “I’m under constant scrutiny here. Even now. Young ones darting in and out of here taking photos with their ridiculous phones. Others just curious to see what the Prince’s favorite is doing. They’re listening right now as I say these words. Nothing here is private, Gregory. Nothing.”

This was not news to Gregory. He knew it of course. He found it slightly bothersome as well, but not enough to cause him to censor his life over it. “So what if they are? Let them. Is this the reason for the avoidance? Or is it something else?”

“What else would it be?” Louis seemed genuinely curious.

Gregory looked away and back again, because it was difficult not to step in and kiss him. To take what he wanted from him here in this beautiful garden of flowers, under this moonlight. They shared a long minute of understanding, and something relaxed in Gregory. To know this was the only issue. This fear of being seen that Louis had.

“I ask again,” Gregory said. “Why does it matter?”

Louis looked confused. “It’s not their business.”

Gregory smiled at this need he had for strict, proper adherence to decency in the public eye. Such an eighteenth and nineteenth century value. And not at all an ancient value. How different they were, yet how well they fit together.

“Well, you are a pretty prominent member of the Court. You’ll have to learn to accept the public scrutiny eventually. What is it that you don’t want them to know?” He decided to make Louis twist a little here.

Louis continued walking, looked away, towards some forms that were moving along the opposite side of the gardens even now. No one Gregory knew by name. In fact, Gregory could count some half dozen blood drinkers nearby. Some in their own little worlds, disinterested. Others, actually curious about what was being spoken here, as Louis had said.

Gregory stopped Louis, wrapping a hand around his arm. He stepped into his personal space and finally got some eye-contact. “What is it? The attraction we have? What we did together?”

“Don’t,” Louis warned, his voice low and threatening, his eyes flashing in the moonlight. Gregory stepped back, letting go of his arm. They stared at one another for another long silent pause and it was weighted. He felt that same pull towards Louis that he’d had back in Dubai; overwhelmingly strong.

Gregory cursed in ancient and growled, “I have to get you out of here again.”

Something like fear dashed across Louis’s face. Gregory was not sure he’d actually seen it, so fast it disappeared.

“What’s wrong,” he asked.

Louis was looking around now, at the primrose, at the thorny rose bushes, up at the stars. “Nothing is wrong. You frighten me still sometimes. You have a very heavy presence and I’m not sure you realize it.”

Gregory reflexively took another step back. “I do know this, in fact.” He ran a hand back through his hair and glanced over at the passing couple of young blood drinkers on the other side of the garden, then back to Louis. “I don’t ever mean to intimidate you.” He paused and thought about that. “Well, no, that’s a lie. We said we wouldn’t play games anymore, so I admit it. Occasionally I do mean to intimidate, because you are sometimes so shy and hard to reach, and I do use it to make you communicate. But never to intentionally frighten you.” Louis was listening intently, so Gregory continued, “When I was brought into the blood, I was Captain of the Queen’s Blood. I think you know this already. My position for over a thousand years was to oppress and terrorize, to protect the throne. This is a nature I have now, as a consequence of age, strength in blood, life experience. Hence, I intimidate. I fight it every night of my life, Louis.”

Louis was thinking about the words, examining him as he spoke. Then he seemed to come to some decision, made a vague gesture with his head that Gregory should follow him.

They moved out of the garden, back into the castle, through several parlors. Blood drinkers were throughout the rooms, talking in small groups, reading quietly. Louis took them up one of the back stairways, winding through one of the towers, down a walkway of ancient stones, and finally to a door, which he unlocked with a key. A very human thing to do. He gestured Gregory to enter first and he did so, seeing now that this was a small set of rooms he had never visited. The walls lined in bookshelves, a large hearth with a fire burning in it on one side of the room, simple furnishings of comfort, a desk in the corner, a large comfortable looking bed at the far wall.

“Do you keep these rooms,” he asked Louis now. He made a circuit around them, taking it all in before returning to where Louis stood in the center of the main room.

“These are mine, yes. No one has the key but me.” His eyes glanced around the room and returned to Gregory, “Yes, I know vampires don’t need keys.”

“I didn’t say it,” Gregory smiled.

Louis continue, “The point is, it’s mine and no one comes here unless invited.”

There was unspoken meaning there. No one would be interrupting them here.

How pretty Louis was this evening. Which was rather an obvious and boring statement. He was beyond beauty every night. Gregory had come to understand this about him. It was like saying the sky was blue during the day. Of course it was.

They stared at one another for a stretch of silence; the unspoken words were pretty clear. We are alone in this room. There is at least a semblance of privacy. Who makes the first move?

Gregory waited, a small smile on his face, hands clasped behind his back. He would not intimidate this time. Louis would have to initiate.

“It’s hard for me to do this with you, for some reason,” Louis spoke softly. “I don’t know what the hurdle is.” His eyes darted away, in the manner of one going inward with thoughts. Puzzling something out.

“But you want it,” Gregory asked, just as soft voiced.

“Yes.”

The immediate response warmed Gregory.

“Let me take you out of here again. Let’s go to some place on the other side of the world where no one else is.”

“See this is what frightens me,” Louis said. “That I would indeed just go off with you that easily, and this thing you have kindled between us has been burning just a little over a week.”

Gregory laughed softly. “That’s the thing that frightens you?”

Louis looked away again, cheeks slightly flushed.

“Louis,” Gregory said, reaching out to touch his shoulder briefly. “That’s not frightening. That’s exciting.”

Distress crossed that handsome face and Louis looked away again. “You scared me on that balcony, the last night in Dubai.”

Gregory nodded, feeling something like shame. “I know I did. I’m sorry. I was too aggressive with you. I lost control of it.” He shrugged a little. “I wanted you.”

Louis thought about that for a moment. “I can think of only one other instance in my life when this,” he waved an elegant hand between them, “has happened so rapidly and with such strength as to sweep me along like this. And that changed my entire life course, for good or for bad.”

“Lestat,” Gregory said.

“Yes,” Louis whispered.

This whispering was rather amusing to Gregory, because absolutely anyone in this castle could hear if they so desired to listen in.

Gregory smiled again. “So, I’m giving him a little competition. What’s the problem?”

“No,” Louis said sharply. He leaned closer, looking meaningfully into Gregory’s eyes and sending a telepathic message. You eclipse him.

There was a quickening within himself as Gregory processed these words. This was the real reason for the avoidance. Not so much the public gossip they had become, but this. Again, Chrysanthe had been right. Louis was frightened that he could have such passion for someone other than Lestat.

Gregory would use this to his advantage, of course.

He looked just as meaningfully at Louis. “So allow me do so. Worship me, Louis.”

Louis seemed to take these words in, to think on them, then to throw caution to wind, just that fast. As if all he needed was that one small nudge. He leaned against Gregory and they kissed. Gregory slid his arms around him, pulling their bodies closer. Gregory bit his own tongue with one fanged tooth, tasting the iron strength and feeding the drops that appeared into this kiss. A slight tremor slid through Louis body and this thrilled Gregory more than anything. He walked them back toward the bed, pulled his own coat off and then Louis’s; tossing both to the floor. They fell on the bed.

This was a little more controlled than the balcony embrace, but no less full of feverish need. Gregory kissed along Louis’s exposed throat and when he’d reached just below the line of his jaw he bit in, less violent this time, holding Louis’s head in the opposite hand, feeding on him with a slow deliberation that had them both weak, making small sounds of need as the pleasure was drawn out, edging on pain. Gregory saw more distinct images in the blood this time. Memories, sunlight, brother and sister, mother and father, everything sweet and innocent from a childhood before it can be crushed by adults. It spread out and then dissolved in the blood as he drew it into himself. And this time, before he could get too carried away with it and take too much, Gregory withdrew. He licked at the small wound until it healed. Again, he pierced his own tongue with a fang and let the blood mingle with Louis’s, then kissed him, sharing the taste. This elicited a very satisfying low, needful humming in Louis throat.

If he tried to, even now, Gregory thought he could seduce him to take his blood. But he didn’t want to do that under this roof, with all the ears potentially listening in. And especially not with Lestat so close. So he laid his head on the pillow beside Louis and they remained silent, looking into one another’s eyes. Thinking and coming down from the intimacy.

“Why were you crying in the museum,” Louis asked softly.

“What a strange question to ask right now,” Gregory responded.

Louis shrugged one shoulder. “Seems like a perfect time, actually. I just gave you my early years. Share yours.”

Again, these things they whispered, because Louis apparently did so when he was having high emotion. Gregory found this charming. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling rafters, listened to the fireplace crackle, felt Louis’s eyes on him, and tasted the sweetness of the blood still in his mouth.

“At the museum I was back in Nineveh, back in Saqqara, in Egypt; the ancient world that shaped me. Most of the time I don’t really remember myself that far back, Louis. I only recall circumstances, actions I took, sometimes the words that I spoke. I feel no connection to it. But the artifacts and objects in the museum, it all flooded in. I remembered it vividly; felt I was there again. I don’t like that part of my life, Louis. It shaped me, but I loathed it. That was Nebamun.” He gestured lightly to himself, “This is Gregory.

Louis’s eyes were still on him, intent, almost fierce.

“Something happens as you age, and especially if you have a long period of time sleeping in the Earth, as most of us do. You shed yourself, like a snake sheds skin. You become a new person.”

He turned his head and saw Louis was frowning slightly, thinking. “I wouldn’t want to shed myself,” he said. “That sounds horrible.”

“No,” Gregory interjected quickly, touching Louis’s arm. “It’s not horrible. It’s growth; it’s what helps us survive this eternity we are in.”

Louis glanced away, thinking again. He touched the coverlet beneath them, traced a pattern in it.

“I think that you have already gone through this transformation once,” Gregory said, and Louis fixed on him again. “When you made that attempt to take your life. When you were dead for those hours, out in the sun, and Lestat and David brought you back again. You were different, were you not? You are not the same Louis that laid down in the sunlight.”

Small nod of agreement. “No, I’m not.”

“So you have already done this. The difference is you did in one day what takes most of us a few hundred years or more to do.”

Louis said nothing, but Gregory could see this had not entirely been news to him. Both of them remained quiet then, Louis watching him, and Gregory listening to the fire, the sounds and voices of the other blood drinkers throughout the chateau, the soft beat of Louis’s heart.

“I want you to be stronger,” he said gently, eyes glancing over at Louis, who made zero response. Minutes passed. This was a thing with Louis, apparently. Don’t respond to what you don’t want to acknowledge. He’d done it repeatedly in Dubai, and now here. “Louis,” Gregory said. “Tell me what you want to say to this. I need your thoughts.”

There was a great sigh, and then Louis turned onto his back, hands crossed on this abdomen, eyes unblinking. “Why is this an obsession for everyone? My strength?”

“Because you are the other half of the throne. You are surrounded nightly by beings hundreds of times stronger than you; a deer in the midst of lions. I’m not sure how much clearer you need it to be. Rhoshamandes should have been more than enough to convince you.”

“I know this. This weighs on me more than you can imagine,” he said, irritated.

Gregory expected that. He turned back on his side, raised up on one arm, and looked seriously at Louis. “What is it that is stopping you? I will offer my blood right now if you will take it, but I know that you won’t. What is the real reason?”

“I need to have some way out of this life. Lestat’s and David’s blood have already made it impossible for me to die by one day of sunlight. But perhaps by some other means it is still possible.”

The horror these words instilled in Gregory was almost more than he could endure. He was aware of frowning heavily at Louis, possibly even glaring. What a terrible outlook to have. Did the Prince know this was the reason? If so, how did he let this attitude remain in one he cherished so deeply?

“You’re giving me the same look of disgust Maharet did, when I turned her blood down too.”

“Maharet offered you her blood, and you denied it with those same words?”

Louis shrugged lightly. “More or less. And then I was an insect to her. Something to be disregarded. Something less than. Do I have your same revulsion now?”

He looked back to Louis and saw the expectation of rejection there, the purposeful blank look on his face.

“No,” Gregory immediately reassured. “No, you are precious to me.” He kissed him. Placed a hand on his chest and felt his heart beating beneath it. “You’re seeing me react to the idea of you doing anything to take your life away. I thought you’d learned your lesson on that already. Why do you still think this way?”

Louis became uncomfortable, Looked around the room, anywhere but at Gregory. “I don’t know. It seems to be a character flaw. I need an escape always available.”

“Escape from what?”

Louis was silent. It seemed this was another case of him refusing to answer what he didn’t want to face. Gregory left it alone, because it was a deep well to be explored later. He slid closer on the bed and pulled Louis against him, kissed the soft dark hair and then his throat again. Louis lay still, slid his hand over Gregory’s, where it lay on his abdomen, then fell into a light sleep.

Chapter Text

SPEAKING IN ANCIENT

“I want some of the hormone injections.” Gregory was in Fareed’s Paris office, seated in one of the chairs in the lounge area. Fareed was busily typing away at his computer, oblivious to Gregory’s arrival until just that moment.

“I’m sorry,” He asked, his green eyes looking up from the computer and taking in Gregory’s presence. Across the room Seth sat in his usual posture of stillness. Just listening with that half-smile he always had. Gregory worried sometimes that Seth was turning into the statue the King and Queen had eventually become, but he couldn’t enliven him, couldn’t make him more active than he was. Fareed was the only tether Seth seemed to have to reality right now. And for that Gregory was glad, because it kept Seth present, at least most of the time.

“The injections. The ones that you used to get the DNA from Lestat to create Viktor. The ones that create the ability to experience human passion again. I know you heard me the first time.”

“Why,” Fareed asked, moving aside from his computer screen and focusing now only on Gregory. “Tell me why.”

“I think you know why.”

Fareed leaned forward, arms resting on his desk, full eye-contact with Gregory. “No.”

Across the room Seth made a subtle movement, a small sound. Fareed glanced that way, then straight back to Gregory

Gregory couldn’t believe it. He blinked, almost laughed even. “No? Did you just say no to me?”

“You heard me. No. I won’t be party to whatever it is you are manipulating with Louis.”

Again, Gregory was dumbstruck by Fareed’s bravery on this.

“Well, first of all, why do you assume it’s for me and Louis? Perhaps I want to have a night of passion with my wife.”

Fareed laughed, and it was so out of the ordinary for him that Gregory had to pause his feelings of exasperation and simply enjoy the sound of it. He smiled at Fareed even. Such a gift he was to their world.

“No,” Fareed said again. “You are just fine with your wife. This is for use with Louis. I’m not so naïve, Gregory.”

Seth stood and quietly drifted out of the room. Gregory and Fareed had a staring match. This little fledgling, Gregory thought to himself. He already held so much power, over an entire army of blood drinkers, at the young age of no more than 35 years. Seth had created that. Not for the first time, Gregory wondered about Seth’s motives. They were so far removed in time, but Seth was still the offspring of the King and Queen, the rightful heir to everything; even the throne Lestat claimed. Seth was a Prince in full-blood. Was there even the slightest temptation in him to seize that position from Lestat?

As he sat there, having these dangerous thoughts, Seth returned and placed in Gregory’s hands two small boxes with vials and some syringes. “I assume I don’t need to tell you how to use these, as you are the lord of a great pharmaceutical empire after all,” Seth said, deadpan.

“Seth!” Fareed was incensed.

Seth had only to hold a hand up and glance to Fareed, a move that was purely King Enkil six-thousand years ago. Fareed closed his mouth and quietly fumed from behind his desk.

“Thank you, brother,” Gregory said and received a small nod in return before Seth drifted back to his seat.

Gregory placed the items in his coat pocket. He stood and approached Fareed, leaning palms down on the desk, looming over him. “Fareed, I love you and I love that you are so protective of your fellow blood-drinkers. But I am not hurting Louis. I swear to you I am not. He has full autonomy in this. He has every exit open to him at all times. All I’m doing here is a subtle art of seduction that lovers the world over have done for all of history.”

Fareed listened to these words.

Gregory smoothly leaned across the desk and kissed Fareed slowly. “It is the same thing I used on you when I first met you and we shared blood. Look at your maker over there watching us with full consent.”

Fareed glanced across the room. Something softened in him. His eyes returned to Gregory. “If you are going to use those injections, just know the first time is going to be the most unsatisfying experience of your life, because it has been so long. The second time may or may not be better. I have at least had time to perfect that particular formula since that experiment with Lestat. It’s a little cleaner, a little smoother in the system.”

Gregory smiled at the advice. “Thank you.”

---
They stayed at the Court for another week. Mostly because Gregory couldn’t think of where to go next, and also because Louis was being pleasant with him again in public, warm even. There had been a few trips to Paris together to hunt, a few days sleeping together in that private chamber Louis kept. There was no doubt they were the talk of the Court right now. Time and again he found young ones and even some not so young looking at Louis and then over to him. Every so often he would catch the whispered words of curiosity about it.

“Do you think the Prince knows?”

“Of course he does, he’s got ears and eyes like the rest of us.”

“Why is he allowing it? Are they no longer together?”

Gregory turned his senses away from it. This was a byproduct of having a Court. Everyone knew your business, and as he’d told Louis, you had to learn to live with it. Which Louis had been adapting to remarkably well. He now allowed Gregory to get close in the great hall during group gatherings, returned his smiles, exchanged a few whispered words here and there.

The issue was really not the young ones gossiping, it was the older ones. The ones who had not been in on that original council meeting where this plan had been approved by Lestat. Ones like Armand, who made no effort to hide his disapproval with what was happening, and seemed to harangue Louis nightly about it, but wouldn’t confront Gregory directly. Gregory found out later that Lestat had to take Armand aside, explain it to him, and give him a cease and desist order.

And then there was David, who had been there in that meeting, who was not disapproving so much as overprotective with Louis. But David had been at the Court only a few nights before taking off for some other business. Whether that was real or a made-up excuse, so he didn’t have to witness what was happening, Gregory didn’t know.

There were the not so subtle things as well. Such as when Santh caught Louis’s eye in a council meeting and gave him the most achingly beautiful smile, such that it had even Gregory’s breath catching in his chest. Santh could steal the heart of absolutely anyone when he so chose. Gregory had to firmly kick him under the table and hiss in Ancient, “Don’t you dare fuck this up, Santh!” Of course, Santh gave him only the most annoyingly relaxed look in return. Louis had been flustered, then irritated, then excellent at pretending it never happened.

One particular evening Gregory was in his own rooms, reviewing slides for an annual report his company had coming up. Chrysanthe had left to meet up with Flavius and Davis in New York. There was a knock on the door and Gregory knew it was Louis just by the sound of his step and the beat of his heart. He called out for him to enter.

When he entered, Louis was glancing around the room, standing just inside the door. Gregory looked up from his work, taking in the demeanor. “What is it,” he asked, standing and going to Louis, urging him further into the room.

“Nothing. It’s stupid. I don’t know why I came here. I’m bothering you. It should go.”

Gregory laughed. “So many disqualifications before you even take a seat.” He gestured openly to a couch and they both sat, facing one another. Louis was simply dressed this night in dark jeans, white athletic shoes that mortals wore in this day, and a white button-up shirt untucked. Relaxed.

“Hi,” Gregory said softly and smiled. Louis blushed lightly and looked away.

“Hello,” he replied.

Gregory leaned in and kissed him, slowly. Touched his soft hair. “What’s wrong? You are all nervous energy.”

Louis sat still, eyes downcast, thinking. “I may have angered Lestat towards you, inadvertently.”

“What do you mean? How could that be?”

“I don’t know. Just that he is acting different towards me. He is… on edge. I can’t describe it any other way.”

“And you think we caused this in him somehow?”

Louis paused, thinking. “What else would it be?”

Gregory shrugged. “Any number of things. He’s got that hair-trigger temper. Anything in this Court could have upset him, but you think immediately that it’s what we are doing?”

Louis sighed, placed an arm on the back of the couch, still facing Gregory. “I just know him. I’ve been with him for so long. You and Chrysanthe, you must know what her moods mean and when you’re in the dog house, to use a modern phrase.”

Gregory smiled widely at that. “Yes, I know exactly what you are saying here. What do you think should be done to alleviate this? Should I speak to him?”

“No,” Louis said firmly and held a hand out to him with a very serious look on his face. “No.”

Gregory paused, uncertain about his next words yet saying them anyway. “Well, to be honest, I have already spoken to him about this.”

Louis stared at him and Gregory could feel the shock and then the anger, his eyes eclipsed into a dark green. “Why?”

Gregory shrugged. “Because he is the Prince and I am not. I am in his home. I am essentially working for him. Now I’m having this relationship with his consort. It would have been far worse to keep it hidden or unacknowledged.”

Louis thought this over, but was obviously irritated by this news. He leaned towards Gregory, “Don’t do that again. Is anyone he has affairs with coming to me and getting my permission? Why does he get that distinction?”

“Why indeed,” Gregory agreed, enjoying this sudden burst of self-assertion in him. But it was a little different here, even if it was lop-sided logic. “Forgive me Louis, but my own history of walking a tightrope in court politics has me erroring on the side of self-preservation in every move I make, even in this modern-day court.”

“What does that even mean,” Louis asked. Focused now, eyes clear and piercing as they narrowed in on Gregory; pinning him.

Something in the way he asked had Gregory suddenly wanting to retract the statement, but he couldn’t; it was already out there. Sometimes he could see flashes in Louis that raised in him sensations and feelings that had been buried in shadows for thousands of years. Alarm and dread and need all in one. It was like a glimpse of who Louis was really supposed to be would spark and then be just as suddenly gone. Gregory saw it just then. Caution, I’m watching you. Silent power.

But then it was gone and Louis was just his usual self, sitting there passively. Gregory realized he was failing to answer Louis’s last question. “It means nothing,” he said. “I’m overstepping, I’m sorry. I will not speak to him again about us.” This was probably a lie, and Gregory knew it, but he was no stranger to lying. He lied daily in the business world. He was amazing at it. But in this instance a pang of shame flittered across his conscious.

Louis seemed to want to ask something else, but he censored it. “You want to know what his reaction was when I told him about us,” Gregory stated.

Louis looked away then back again, neither confirming nor denying that’s what he wanted to know.

“He was hesitant, but he was fine. He would be a hypocrite to object to it, after all.”

Some emotion Gregory couldn’t read swiftly crossed over Louis. His fingers moved slightly on the back of the couch, and his eyes darted haphazardly around the room. When he skimmed his thoughts, Gregory found that Louis was on the edge of some inner precipice. Some conflict he was preparing to overcome. He watched, fascinated as this played out right in front of him.

Finally, Louis whispered, “Take me out of here again, please. I want to go far away from here and be with you.”

Ah, well that had been a little easier than he’d anticipated. Gregory made a small nod, thinking of where to take him. He should have planned for this, but honestly had not expected Louis to be here at this point so quickly. Perhaps he had Lestat to thank for the nudge.

“I have a few company transactions taking place in California that I would like to be present for. How’s that?”

Louis nodded. “Anywhere. Now.”

He smiled at Louis. “Yes, relax.” He stood, placing a kiss against Louis’s head. “I have to tie up some lose ends here. We’ll be gone tonight, I promise.”

------
7:00 PM, Friday night, San Jose, California. Gregory landed them on the roof of the hotel he owned in this particular city. Louis was asleep in his arms. The flight had been long and young ones tended to still be affected by what mortals today called jet lag. He’d flown them backwards in time and gained a day.

As he stood on the roof of this particular hotel Gregory scanned the city for other blood-drinkers, making certain they were alone here. He found none. Most of the vampire world was heavily populated in Europe or Asia now, which made finding unclaimed U.S. cities easier than it used to be. San Jose was not a big city to draw in vampires anyway. It was not a distinctly popular or interesting city, yet it was a hub of Silicone Valley, and Gregory always had business in this area.

Louis lifted his head from Gregory’s shoulder and blinked sleepily. He moved to step away and weaved dangerously. Gregory steadied him with both hands on his upper arms. He laughed. Louis smiled.

“So let’s go see our penthouse, and then I have a party for us to attend.”

“Party?” Louis asked.

“Birthday party,” Gregory confirmed.

The rooms were immaculate and large. There was clothing there for them, which Gregory had called ahead to several assistants to have ready. The bedroom was tucked at the back of the suites, well away from all windows or potential for daylight rays. He’d given the staff strict orders not to be disturbed unless called for.

Gregory checked his own appearance in the mirrors. His hair was perfectly trimmed short, slightly spiked from the wind of the flight. He’d trimmed the beard particularly close this evening. His skin was losing its darkness though, and he would need to spend a few days sleep in the sunlight soon to gain it back. He removed the coat and sweater he’d worn on the flight over, went into the closets and found a darkly colored tunic with priest-like collar and silk buttons up the front and put that on. The denim pants and boots were fine, so he left that.

“So let’s go to this party now. Are you ready?”

Louis looked a little flummoxed. “You’re going to let me go like this,” he asked, gesturing to current clothing. Jeans, untucked and wrinkled white dress-shirt, and scuffed sneakers.

Gregory eyed him up and down. He was rumpled from the flight, but so beautiful.

“Are you comfortable in that?”

Louis blinked, slightly confused by the question for some reason. “Yes.”

“Then I love you in that. Yes, let’s go.”

They hunted first. Found a bar in a seedy section of the city, full of evil humans, easy pickings for a vampire. It was a bonus that these humans were particularly drunk and drugged, as the blood gave Louis a mild uninhibited attitude afterwards which Gregory found charming and perfect for the evening he had planned ahead.

The party was in one of the main event ball rooms of the same hotel they were staying in. And it was already full of familiar faces to Gregory. Associates and employees from around the globe, and also many young mortals he did not know so well. It was a large event, perhaps a few hundred or more mortals. The ceilings were low in this room, giving it a close, amiable feel. There were chandeliers of light giving everything a warm dark glow. But also there was music, modern music that young mortals of this day enjoyed. There was a dance floor, an open bar, food, and at the center of a large table was a beautifully decorated cake. Tall, thin candles adorned this cake, colorful balloons bounced along the low ceiling. Somewhere, a machine was blowing bubbles across the room; they caught on the air of the ventilation, dancing around before bursting into droplets of water.

“My favorite boss! You have come!” Malik shouted, and wrapped arms around him. He was drunk already and Gregory held him, kissed his head, let him go with a smile.

“You have other bosses,” he asked. He discreetly placed in Malik’s suit pocket an envelope in which a bonus check worth a large amount of cash was signed.

“No, I have only you.” Malik smiled, eyes bright with drink, his tie askew, his collar unbuttoned and his hair ruffled. “Mr. du Lac! You are also here for my birthday! I’m so happy!” He wrapped his arms around Louis too.

Louis accepted the drunken hug and patted Malik on the back. “I am, of course. What age are you now?”

Malik leaned in close and whispered, as if it was a distressing thing to admit his age. “Twenty-five.”

Louis nodded and looked appropriately upset on Malik’s behalf.

“Twenty-five years?” Gregory made a low whistling sound. “It’s all downhill from there, Malik.”

Malik covered his face with his hands and shook his head, “Oh my God, I know. I know it is!”

They all laughed.

Gregory took Louis around, introducing various associates, all of whom were drunk by this point in the evening and much more relaxed around the boss than they usually were. Eventually Louis drifted away from him and seemed to find a niche with a small group, allowing himself to be drawn into the laughter, the music, the glee of the young mortals. It was a good gathering, but eventually they found themselves pulled out of it, and taken along to another party, at the house of one of Gregory’s employees. These mortals were so far into drink and some recreational drugs that they were past concerns about who Gregory was to them, and he loved this. He threw these parties a few times a year, just to get them all this comfortable, mingling, connected with one another. It helped them work better. It made the company a place they wanted to be and not a place they just went to for a livelihood.

Louis took small drinks a few times from these lively mortals, keeping that inebriated blood flowing in his system. They all loved him, the females and a few of the males wrapped around him, kissing him, petting his soft dark hair. They pulled him into dancing, they poured alcohol for him that he never really drank. And they did the same to Gregory, and he laughed, kissing their warm skin, drowning in the sounds of their hearts and the blood within them.

As the night wore on into morning hours they were pulled along to a few more locations, a loud bar where women stripped and danced to loud thumping music. Then off to another bar, where the mortals sang truly terrible renditions of popular music; a thing they called karaoke. They forced the microphone on Louis at one point, and Gregory found himself entranced as Louis sang a beautiful piece. He handed the microphone off to Gregory, the mortals chanting his name to encourage him to sing too. He didn’t know this music well, they selected something for him and it was at least familiar enough that he could wing it, using vampire talents to mimic quite well. It earned more drunken cheers and catcalls from the mortals. Louis laughed at him.

They took leave of the mortals, as it was getting closer and closer to sunrise, and wound their way back to the hotel penthouse suite. They ended on the bed, Louis beneath him, warm still from all the blood of the evening, feverish and slightly more aggressive than his usual self. Gregory found himself kissing him over and over, feeding the blood into these kisses until they came to that place where it was a decision, stop and cool off or go to the next level. Gregory remembered something.

“I have something for you… for us. Something I want to try with you.”

Louis looked up at him, eyes bright green, lips red with the stain of blood, disheveled, aroused. “What?” His voice was deep.

When Gregory revealed the injections from Fareed’s labs, Louis became immediately suspicious but not entirely refusing. “But why? This will be dissatisfying and messy at best.”

Gregory laughed at his words and then pretended to be hurt. “I’m insulted Louis that you have no faith in my sexual prowess. I was the Queen’s concubine, you know?”

Louis laughed a little. “I think concubines are only women.”

“Not in my case,” Gregory smiled.

Louis looked at the little vial of liquid in Gregory’s hand then back up at him. “I’m just unsure how much prowess either of us has after so long. I mean six-thousand years, Gregory. Are you sure it will all still work for you,” he teased.

“Let’s find out,” Gregory laughed again and dug out a syringe.

Louis lay there and watched, unsure, but did not stop him from proceeding.

It was indeed dissatisfying. Just as Fareed warned. Unpleasant and messy, as Louis predicted. But also hilariously funny, because the two of them were equally matched in awkward fumbling and confusion about the whole process, and it all had ended so very, very fast. Gregory cleaned them both off, and they cuddled beneath the blankets, which was perhaps the best part of it.

“Why is your skin so warm all the time,” Louis asked in a whisper, sliding fingers along Gregory’s shoulders, his chest.

“Sunlight. I sleep in the sun. I thought you knew that.”

“No. How would I know that, I’m asleep before you. Every day you do this? Where?”

“Not every day. Just several nights a week usually. I have places on rooftops, safe from being found. The sun only burns me a bit now, but it keeps my skin dark enough to not frighten mortals away. And warm too.”

“Why do you have this scar on your side,” Gregory asked, running a hand along Louis’s flank, where he’d noticed a sharp white line slightly twisted along his lower rib. “It had to have been deep for the dark blood not to heal it when you were made.”

“Stabbed in a barroom brawl,” Louis said matter of factly.

Gregory tried to see Louis as a young quarrelsome mortal man of the eighteenth-century, frock coats and cocked tricorn hats, the plantation lord. How far he was from that now. Was it still in there somewhere though? Had Lestat even known the possibility that the vampire version of Louis would not be that angry, emotional young man he’d found in the taverns that night?

“Speak to me in Ancient. I like languages,” Louis whispered.

Gregory smiled, leaned down and said words against his lips, loosely translating to, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Louis kissed him, slow and drawn out. Gregory could feel the magic of that injection working again and could sense it in Louis as well. He slid against him, pressing him into the mattress, licking along his throat. Louis’s heart rate was speeding up, his fingers in Gregory’s hair, encouraging.

The second time was far better and satisfying on at least a basic level of deep connection. When it was done Gregory stared down at Louis, waiting for his breathing to return to its normal rate, watching those green eyes focus back up at him. “Drink from me. Take my blood,” Gregory said in an ardent whisper.

Louis’s brows narrowed in a frown as he shook his head lightly in Gregory’s hands. “No. I told you I don’t want it.”

Rejection, again. It was beginning to sting now. Perhaps Lestat’s forewarnings were correct after all. He would never get this final intimacy with Louis. He lowered his head, and buried his face into Louis’s shoulder, closing his eyes and letting all the weight of his body lay against him now. He sighed heavily.

They fell asleep this way.

Chapter Text

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

There was a meeting with the president of one of Collingsworth Pharmaceutical’s rival companies. If someone had told him all it would take to finally get Louis to agree to take his blood was one simple business meeting, Gregory would have done this first.

It was all too typical. Too many corporate lawyers, assistants, accountants, all in sharp business suits. A lot of tapping away at laptops the whole time. And too many coffees being delivered by interns. Gregory had warned Louis ahead of time that he should probably just go find some other entertaining thing to occupy his time for the next few hours. He’d politely declined to do so.

“This is mergers and acquisitions. It’s going to be the dullest two hours of your life, my friend,” Gregory warned again as they were stepping into the elevator. Gregory selected the button for the top floor, then quickly took out his phone to scan through some last-minute messages.

“Are you merging? Or are you acquiring?” Louis asked with a slow drawl.

Gregory hesitated, looking from the phone in his hand to Louis’s beautiful face.

“How do you make that dirty?”

He graced Gregory with a smile and glanced away; suddenly shy again.

“I like watching you work,” Louis quickly changed the topic.

“You like watching me manipulate the human herd to my own personal gain?” Gregory stole a kiss from him quickly, before the doors opened on their floor. “That’s sweet,” he whispered.

They were both in expensive suits and ties tonight. Gregory’s all black, Louis in dark blue. Malik immediately took Louis to an area of comfortable chairs at the back of the room, before the floor-length windows, and away from the long meeting table. He gave him a mug of coffee, which Louis wrapped his hands around but never drank.

Gregory took his place at the end of the long dark mahogany table, and his rival was already at the other side. They were accommodating Gregory’s schedule, having this meeting well after normal business hours. His own employees were used to this.

“I’m sorry we have to do this after normal hours,” he apologized to all present, unbuttoning his suit coat as he sat and making sure his laptop was all set up, hard copies of all the documents they would need spread out before him.

“Oh Gregory, we all know you’re a vampire,” the president of the rival company joked as he opened the file in front of him and took an expensive pen from his pocket. This statement received some amused chuckles from around the table.

“It’s true, I am,” Gregory confirmed, taking out his own gold-plated pen. More laughter, but never any real belief that he was telling them fact.

“Which explains why you’re sucking the life out of my company here,” the rival said.

“Your brokers contacted my people,” Gregory pointed out. “You need me. I can make you stronger. You know that.”

Back and forth with this sort of talk. Liabilities, assets, risk structures, caps, purchase agreements. Until finally Gregory had worn this man down for everything he needed and essentially acquired every inch of his company for his own.

As he was shaking hands all around, accepting business cards and last-minute details, he suddenly realized Louis was gone. He hadn’t seen it happen, and this set off all the old instincts in him.

“Where is Mr. du Lac,” he asked Malik.

“He just left, like half an hour ago. I don’t know where he went.”

Gregory felt his jaw tense in irritation. How had he missed him walking out? Why didn’t he send a mental note as to where he was off to? Gregory scanned the city and found no images of him nearby, but also no signs of any other vampires. He exited the building himself, stepping into the cool evening air, the late traffic sliding along the streets. He walked along the city sidewalks of downtown, scanning, searching. Then he found that familiar presence, out on the edge of the city limits, wandering empty streets. Just wandering; not hunting, not doing any particularly productive thing. He debated with himself. Every fiber of his being told him to go collect Louis back up, keep him within sight. Guard him. The rational part of his brain recalled how angry Louis had been in Dubai when he’d done just that. He’d promised not to do it again, and he wouldn’t. But the next 5 hours tore at his very last reserve of patience. Again and again he scanned to locate him, to make certain he was not in danger.

An hour before dawn he couldn’t hold off anymore. He flew directly to where he now knew Louis was. In a wide-open empty lot of dry yellowed grass, just outside the city limits. He was struggling with some inner turmoil. Walking with no real direction. His thoughts jumping from the business meeting earlier that night, to Gregory, to Lestat, to his own self, and back around again.

Gregory tried to read him more clearly, to understand this furious state he was in; the reason for it. A mergers and acquisitions meeting? Really? How could that be the trigger? But Louis’s thoughts were like a great sand storm. Impossible to catch any one of them and make sense before the next ones spiraled in.

Louis saw him and stopped his pacing. His eyes sparked in the lights from the city, his face angry and beautiful. “You’re playing me! You’re playing me just like you did that man you overtook the company from!” He began pacing again, tossing glares at Gregory.

“I’m what,” Gregory asked, perplexed. “This isn’t true. I’m not playing you. Why do you have this idea suddenly?”

No response. Gregory sighed heavily, looking towards the horizon, then back to Louis’s distressed form. He’d never seen him this emotionally charged. It was almost frightening.

“I don’t understand where this anger is coming from? Louis why are you out here? Dawn is coming.”

Louis waved him off angrily, “Let’s just go back to the hotel. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“We didn’t talk about it at all!” Gregory fumed suddenly. If he was going to be accused of something, he wanted full discourse, not more of this avoidance Louis was so talented with. “We’re here and we’re talking! Speak to me!”

Louis froze and stared at him, shocked by the violence of his tone. He stepped away, paced a circle again, his thoughts racing.

Gregory waited, hands unconsciously fisted at his sides.

Finally, Louis threw his hands up and dropped them, turning to face him again. “Gregory, everything I just witnessed back there in that office building, you at that table, subsuming that man’s life, telling him it’s in his own best interest, you can fix it all for him. Don’t you hear any of it when you’re saying it, or is it all just rote now? Just a script for you?”

Gregory frowned. “I own a giant conglomerate, Louis. I acquire other companies and make them stronger… And you equate this with me wanting you to be stronger? These are two different things. One is a thing I do to accumulate wealth and power in the mortal world, the other is a thing I want for you so you will stay safe and alive for as long as possible.”

“Are they so different?” His eyes were huge and bright, waiting for a response, he was flushed and beautiful from the high emotion of this outburst he’d placed himself in. Gregory could think of no appropriate response. He didn’t entirely understand what the question was. Again, he ran the facts over in his mind and couldn’t find the real issue. Louis seemed to understand there would be no answer from Gregory on this. He made a sound, half irritation, half distress. “I want to go back to the Chateau. Take me back now.”

“No.” Gregory would not give up on this now. Not when he was so close. “I absolutely will not.”

Louis was shocked. He all but stood with mouth open, unable to comprehend that Gregory would deny this request. “So I’m your hostage? Then I will go back on my own.”

Gregory laughed at the childish tone. “No. You’re not going back at all. We aren’t done here.”

This apparently caused Louis to lose steam in his tirade. He gave a great sigh, turned away, rubbed his forehead with one hand and then stood perfectly still. Just gazing at the distant city lights. A highway was close enough to this field that Gregory could hear the whiz of the tires on the blacktop as the cars and semitrucks flew past at great speeds. Crickets chirped all around in the dry grass.

“He never really sees me,” Louis whispered.

Gregory thought about those words for a moment. “Sometimes we don’t see what has been in front of us for so long,” Gregory answered. “I see you.”

“Why didn’t he fight for me, even just a little? When you told him about us?” Louis’s voice was so quiet, devoid of emotion. Gregory strained to hear each word.

He watched Louis there in the predawn-darkness. He was defeated, all the fight gone suddenly. Gregory stepped closer, reached out a hand, placing it on his shoulder, sliding this thumb against the cool silken skin of his neck. “Louis, he and I agreed I should do this,” he answered quietly.

Louis stiffened slightly under his touch. “Does no one ever just take my own wants into account?”

“No.” It was a pretty simple answer, because the truth was they just did not. “I’m sorry, Louis, but it’s just hard to watch you struggling with this when I know you’re not the being you are meant to be. Once you have enough of that strong blood in you, you’re going to be able to tell him or anyone exactly what you do or don’t want and no one will disregard it ever again.”

It seemed at first that these words were not going to have any effect on him, but then he did turn to Gregory. Focused on him completely. “And this is all you want. You are not going to give up on it, are you?”

Gregory felt his heart stop, aware that this was the edge of a cliff he was about to tumble them both into if he didn’t move the right way. His hand stilled on Louis’s shoulder, he squeezed lightly and held eye-contact. “This is not all I want. I want my blood in you so you’ll be mine even after you are his again. I want you, completely.”

Louis looked away, gave a slight nod and a short outtake of breath, then back to Gregory. He stepped close, sliding one arm up around him, his fingers tangling in Gregory’s hair. The other went around his waist, pulling him against his body. Louis kissed his lips, then his throat. “Okay,” he whispered against him, gripping Gregory’s hair into an almost painful fist. “Okay.” He bit in sharply.

To say there was an immediate reaction in Gregory would be an understatement. He let himself go limp as Louis drank completely, holding him like a victim, taking in draught after draught of the powerful blood, softly humming against him. Gregory sent encouragement, even as he fell into a trance with Louis. Drink, keep going, take all of it, he thought over and over. He sent visions to Louis in the blood of all his love for him, of never being at the mercy of another’s strength again, of being powerful and strong.

Soon they lay down in the yellowed field, Gregory staring up at the endless blanket of stars as Louis continued drinking.

It ended only when Louis passed out from the onslaught of so much powerful blood at once in his system. Gregory lay still for quite a long while after, watching the stars, Louis against his chest, the dried grass sharp and prickling beneath him. Thinking about all of it. That he had finally reached the goal. That he could tell Lestat he’d done so.

But perhaps not just yet.

He knew what would come next. Louis would be ravenous for it now. For some time he would crave and want and be completely at Gregory’s will. It happened this way with the young, when they had the first taste of such pure strong blood. Although he’d had Lestat’s blood, but that was far removed from the blood of a vampire who was only fourth born to the Queen. Lestat himself had described it perfectly in Queen of the Damned, when Akasha abducted him after the concert and fed him her own powerful blood. His world narrowed down to the blood and only the blood, and all the passion that went with it. Gregory wanted no interruptions for the next several nights.

Back at the hotel he placed Louis on the bed, removed his boots, his suit coat and tie, then did the same for himself. He pulled the heavy duvet off the bed and climbed up next to him, covering both of them with it, and waited for the day’s sleep to overtake him.

---
The nights merged one into another. Gregory found he’d completely underestimated how strong this would be in Louis. The need, the feasting over and over on his blood; enslaved to it. Many times over Gregory would pull him off, stare into his eyes and whisper the words to put him into sleep, just to quiet the lust he seemed unable to get under control. For hours they would sleep and then Louis would wake and wrap around him, sink fangs into him and draw as if he were the only source of nourishment in the entire world. Again and again Gregory slid into what seemed like a never-ending swoon from it as Louis gained in strength and pull and would hold him down, drinking ceaselessly. He’d whisper to Louis, encourage him to keep going, try to calm him, slow it down, or just lay there and let him do whatever the hell he wanted. There was no control over any of it at this point.

As the nights passed his phone rang on the bedside table repeatedly, until he finally turned it off. It filled up with voice mails and messages from work, from Chrysanthe or his other blood kin, or from the Chateau. He answered only one text from Lestat in the first few nights. All is fine. Progressing. However Lestat chose to take that, Gregory couldn’t be bothered to care. His ability to track the real world anymore was just gone.

It slowed at last and became less feverish. Louis was more aware, controlled as he fed. Strong. So very strong. In fact, Louis transformed into someone altogether different and Gregory struggled to understand this new Louis. The feeding morphed into something else. Something not just meant to give Louis strength. It was intimacy now, sharing the blood back and forth, drinking from one another at the same time. And finally, one evening, Louis lifted his head from Gregory’s throat, his lips stained in the blood, his eyes bright and extremely clear, his skin like fresh snow in the moonlight. He was fierce and alert. He stared down at Gregory with an intensity that sent a snake of fear through him. Gregory didn’t fear, ever, but here he was feeling it and trying desperately to remember when he’d last had this sensation of being at the mercy of someone over him.

Louis placed one smooth finger against Gregory’s forehead and slid it slowly down to just between his eyes. He whispered one word, “sleep.” As he felt the oblivion slide over his consciousness, Gregory remembered where he’d felt this insecurity before. Enkil.

The following evening Gregory woke abruptly as the sun was just dipping below the horizon. He climbed from the bed where Louis still lay dead to the world. In the bathroom he stared at his reflection in the mirror. He’d tried to make it into this room to shave and trim each night before Louis woke, but it had become a ritual he couldn’t keep up with at the end. Somewhere at the beginning of this entire torrid affair clothing had been removed entirely. His hair was entirely grown out. He looked hallow, a little crazed, a little too much like his original self. “What have you done, Nebamun,” he asked his own reflection. How would this play out back at the Court? There was no predicting how Lestat would take the amount of change in Louis.

Now Gregory took up the sharp bladed scissors and began the hair cutting ritual again. Letting it fall into a pile on the floor. He trimmed the beard short again. He would gather the hair up and set it ablaze with his mind, out on the roof later. He showered and dressed in a long-sleeved shirt of soft gray material and a simple pair of pants. In the mirror he almost recognized himself again.

A very slight sound came from the other room and he glanced over his shoulder to find Louis was up, out on the balcony in a pair of jeans, but otherwise bare chested and barefoot. Just staring at the horizon. The sun had only just set and the sky was illuminated in pink and orange and darkening blues. Gregory went out to him, sensing now that low vibration that all the truly strong possess. It was unnerving and incredible at the same time, to see the transformation in him. His green eyes were like true emeralds in his skull. It had been difficult before but would be impossible for him to pass them off as real eyes now to the mortal world. His skin was a bleached ivory, giving his sharp black eyebrows and the black lashes framing his eyes all the more depth. His hair had an even sleeker shine to it, so that it was almost a blue-black now.

He turned his head and fixed on Gregory with a sharpness that froze Gregory to the spot. Louis spoke and broke the spell.

“The sky is still light.” Even his voice had a more seductive deep timbre to it. Melodic.

“It is,” Gregory agreed to the obvious. He looked at the sky, realizing now that Louis had not seen a blue tone to the sky in centuries, and this was perhaps a momentous thing for him. Louis was mesmerized. They watched the sky darken over the next ten minutes or so.

“Can you hear the voices at the far edge of the city? Can you hear the distinct words being spoken in the houses?”

Louis tilted his head a little, eyes focused on Gregory and then not. “Yes,” he replied softly, listening.

“You are so strong now,” Gregory whispered. He didn’t even know why he made this statement, so obvious was it. He wanted only to say it though, to draw them both to the truth of it. That he had done this to Louis. He had given him this new life experience. “My blood is in you,” he whispered, more for himself than Louis.

Louis smiled a little, a flash of his old self appeared. “Yes, it is.” His eyes slid over Gregory, seductive. “And I want you all the time. Like a drug.”

Gregory stilled, waited for what he expected to be another feeding frenzy. But it didn’t happen, and he took a breath, daring to look away at the skyline. “It’s like that in the beginning. Remember Lestat’s descriptions of his time with Akasha?”

Louis’s eyes moved away from him then. “Yes.” There was some meaning in the word, but Gregory couldn’t decipher it. He couldn’t read Louis’s feelings or thoughts anymore at all.

“It will pass, the craving. You’ll be able to control it.” Gregory paused then continued, “Until then… I belong to you.”

Those green eyes fixed on him again and the soft smile was there. They shared a mutual understanding of what that meant, and the memory of the past week, drowning in that joining. Louis looked away and Gregory found himself taking another deep breath.

“What do you feel like now?” He wanted to know what Louis was thinking. How was he experiencing this new awareness and power?

“Awake,” was all he said. He seemed entranced with the city lights and sounds. Finally, he spoke again, “I feel awake after being asleep for centuries.”

Gregory found himself in awe. Struggled even to imagine what that was like. “I had not expected quite this drastic of a change in you, to be honest. You are a different person now. You may be stronger even than Lestat.”

Louis was oddly not affected by this news. He gave a light shrug. “Good.”

A sliver of doubt about what he’d done here came into Gregory again. Lestat may not take this drastic change so well at all. He’d wanted Louis strong, yes, but perhaps not to this level. He was well and truly on Lestat’s playing field now, equal if not greater.

The hotel room phone rang abruptly, breaking the gravity of the moment. Gregory left him there on the balcony and went to answer it.

“Mr. Collingsworth, sir? There is a call for you from France, shall I transfer?”

And reality crashed in. Gregory knew Louis had heard that and yet he remained still on the balcony, back to the room. “Yes,” Gregory replied.

It was not Lestat. It was Marius. “Gregory,” he said as soon as the transfer went through. “So you are still alive?”

Gregory gave a half laugh. “Of course I am. I’m sorry I wasn’t answering my cell. I’ve been… indisposed.”

Long pause of understanding from the other side. “I would imagine. You may want to check your messages though. You may even want to start on your way back here. He’s threatening to come out there himself and collect Louis back.”

Now Louis did enter the room and stood there, a rock, watching Gregory. He reached out and took the phone away. Gregory watched, rapt.

“Marius, it’s Louis. Tell him I’ll be back when I’m ready to be back and no sooner.” It was not a request, or a suggestion. It was an order. Marius was silent, and Gregory could only imagine the thoughts flying around that Roman head right then. It had to be a shock to hear Louis so suddenly authoritative, when he’d left the Chateaux as passive and quiet.

“I will tell him,” Marius acquiesced. Louis abruptly hung up.

Gregory wanted to laugh. He and Louis stared at each other. Then they did break into laughter. Laughed until it became almost impossible to stop. Until they both fell onto the couch with it. Eventually they calmed.

“He’s going to come here for certain though. After that,” Gregory said. He turned his head against the soft fabric of the couch. Louis was staring up at the ceiling lights, his eyes fractured into a kaleidoscope of greens that made Gregory’s breath stop.

“He won’t. He’ll wait for me to return. He doesn’t come retrieve unless he knows I’ll go willingly.”

Gregory reached over and touched his cheek, silken stone now, like his own skin was. Louis leaned into the touch, turned his head and kissed his hand. He reached for Gregory. They shared the blood again, and again, but the frantic pace of it was gone. They were lovers now.

------
The following night they went into the city and hunted. Louis, ravenous, took three victims within an hour. Gregory, had been out a few times over the past nights already, just to replenish what he’d been giving Louis. But now, with Louis at his side for the hunt, he found himself equally as voracious, ruthless. Killing with abandon in front of him. Louis seemed fascinated by this; watching as he tore too violently into necks, sucking in all the heat of victims’ lives, draining the bodies of all blood too quickly. Even tearing out the hearts and licking them clean as blood dripped down his wrists.

Afterwards, they walked the empty streets of sleeping neighborhoods. Louis was quiet, which was completely familiar to Gregory. Comforting even. But there was something else to it. Something weighted and too heavy for Gregory to inquire after. He let it remain Louis’s alone and didn’t ask.

“Let me teach you to fly,” Gregory broke into the silence. He smiled at Louis, held his arms out for him. Louis paused, much like he had that first night on the ledge of the Court tower. Gregory raised a brow. “You aren’t afraid still are you? I know you could fly before, you just refused to do so unless threatened. You flew with Rose to save her as a child from that terrible school.”

Surprisingly, Louis smiled back. “I’m not afraid.” He looked around them at this neighborhood. A dog was barking behind a door somewhere. A husband and wife were arguing about money. A child was talking to itself, playing make-believe beneath the blankets of a bed. A gentle breeze blew through the air around them. Louis looked back at Gregory, “I’m not afraid,” he said again. Gregory dropped his arms and stood, waiting for the rest of an explanation. “I don’t like to do it myself. It’s just… so foreign. Something for beings with wings. We have no wings, Gregory.”

Gregory laughed at this logic. “We don’t need wings. We are spirits of the night. Let go of that human notion. Many things take to the air that do not have wings.”

“How long have you flown? When did you first fly,” Louis asked. He seemed truly interested in this information, almost leaning towards Gregory for the answer.

Gregory tried to remember this part of his history. He looked up at the black sky and forced his mind back through the millennia. When had any of them first found this gift for flight? “You know,” he said now to Louis, “I can’t remember.” He shook his head a little. “It’s disturbing, isn’t it? I can’t remember such an important event?”

Louis frowned a little. “Do you have any early memory of your flights at all?”

“Oh of course. I know it was within the first centuries. I know Santh and I used to go out and see how far we could go up. I remember flying with Santh mostly.” Gregory thought of those nights. How young they had been. How certain they were that they were both Gods with the Queen’s and King’s blood in them. Nothing was off limits. They took what they wanted with no apologies or shame. And how much easier it had all been for Santh to adapt to. He’d maintained that same excited personality to this day, six-thousand years later. Whereas Gregory had gone through many adjustments and rebirths into what he’d become now. “I wish Santh was here now. He would be so much better at teaching you.”

Louis’s eyes narrowed. “Teaching me what, precisely?” And here again, Gregory got that glimpse in Louis of powerful calculation. Of mining for information that Gregory couldn’t guess at. He was no longer the shrinking violet.

“This. All of this,” he said, holding his hands out to encompass everything they had been doing and would do. “I think you might have connected better to him. He was the King’s guard, you know. I was the Queen’s. He’s so much more passionate about things, enthusiastic all the time. He’s rather like Lestat, actually.”

Louis stared at him. The placid blank look on his face was a little too Seth-like. A little too Enkil before the torture begins. “If I wanted to be with someone like Lestat, I would be with Lestat right now.”

Gregory nodded and glanced away from that probing laser-like countenance. “Of course,” he agreed, feeling almost like he should bow or beg forgiveness.

Louis went back into his own thoughts. Gregory waited patiently beside him, scanning the night again. At last, Louis spoke again, “Let’s fly then. I would like that.”

Excitement rushed over him and Gregory rubbed his hands together with a sly grin on his face. “Excellent! Beauty first.” He gestured to Louis.

Louis smiled lightly at that. “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said softly, eyes making a slow perusal of Gregory, setting off a low heat deep within his being. Louis stepped lightly back from him and looked up at the stars. He seemed to be steeling himself against something, glanced once more at Gregory, and then was just gone. Vanished so quickly that Gregory couldn’t even find him up there in the skies when he searched. He didn’t need teaching at all.

Gregory ascended, spiraling upwards at great speed. So far up that when he slowed and looked back down he could see almost the entire coastline of the United States, with all its tiny night lights sparkling, and some of the ships out there on the ocean’s coast.

Something brushed rapidly past him and Gregory had to correct his own path. He would have yelled out an insult if he thought it could have been heard over the rush of the air between them. He dived downward, spinning dangerously towards the Earth. And it shouldn’t have been such a shock to find Louis just suddenly there beside him, but it was. They both aimed for the ocean, slowing just before hitting it, then sliding along, dolphin-like, just above the waves. Occasionally weaving around one another.

When had he ever flown like this recently? Just for the sake of fun? It had been too long, and it was childish and playful and revitalizing. For hours they did this. Gregory climbing high up towards the moon and all the little satellites circling the planet, then diving down and speeding along the coastline, Louis always at his side or sometimes choosing the path himself and forcing Gregory use all his skill to keep up.

Earthbound again and back at the suite, they used the second vial of the hormone magic. There was no awkward fumbling, no quick endings. Both of them were completely in sync. Memories flitted across Gregory’s mind of the times he’d done this, eons ago, with the Queen. But they were shallow and full of the aggression most all young males have. Tinged with fear on his part, due to the imminent death sentence every lover before him had, on behalf of the King’s jealousy. But this was not that at all. And it was not the hunt or the kill. It was an innocent thing, nowhere near the ecstasy of the blood, but still deeply connecting in some primal way.

And Louis was not the same Louis as the last time they’d done this. This was remarkably slow paced as he watched Gregory, fascinated by every reaction he dragged out of him. In the end, Gregory lay there beneath him, drained, tired even. Louis held Gregory’s head in his hands and he stared down at him. His eyes were fierce again, boring into him. “I really like it when you do that,” he stated, as if he was wondering at it.

Gregory laughed, almost breathless, “Well, it’s all coming back to me.”

Louis kissed him, and there was the blood in this kiss, and it was slow and sweet. “I love you,” Louis whispered against his lips.

Gregory felt a small shiver slide down his spine at these words. He slid his hand up through Louis’s soft hair. “I’m told it doesn’t really count when you say it after sex,” he whispered back.

Louis kissed his cheek, stretched out next to him on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “Then I will say it again later.”

Gregory turned his head on the pillow and watched him there in the stillness of the room. The only sounds were the few electrical appliances, the fans, the tick of a clock somewhere. Louis’s skin all but glowed in the darkness now, his beauty was a hundred-fold. Gregory wasn’t sure if that was his own love-clouded judgement or if it was reality.

“We will go back tomorrow,” Louis stated.

Something sank in Gregory. Of course, he knew they would have to return to the reality. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Closing his eyes, he replied softly, “Yes, my King.”
 

Chapter Text

RETURN TO THE COURT

Louis arrived at the Chateau first, but only by a minute or two. They both landed on the east tower, the one least used by the rest of the inhabitants. Louis approached from across the stone roof. His clothing tonight was a long black trench coat, with a double-breasted line of embroidered silver-thread buttons along the front, giving a bit of a military look. Beneath the coat was a black high-collar dress-shirt, buttoned at the throat, no jeweled pin or any other color to distract from the solid black. He wore fitted dark pants and boots that shined like onyx. His skin was pearl white in the moonlight, his eyes the sharpest green Gregory could recall having ever seen them. Louis took him in his arms and they held one another in what was bound to be the last embrace before the real world rushed back in.

Reluctantly, Gregory sent a mental message to Lestat that they were here and only he should come out to greet them. He didn’t want a big crowd of gawking fledglings here.

Gregory smoothed his fingers through Louis’s windblown hair until it was combed back neatly, curled at the collar. They kissed tenderly. “I love you,” Louis said, with a small smile on his lips. “So it counts now, right?”

Gregory chuckled. “Yes, it does.” He pressed a kiss against Louis cheek and softly spoke into the hair at his temple, “I am yours.”

Louis held him for a moment more and seemed moved by the words, unable to do more than nod a little. He stepped lightly away, walked over to the other side of the tower, boots making a barely audible tap on the stones. He placed one elegant hand on the parapet, looking out over the landscape; that emerald ring catching the moonlight. Waiting. Gregory had a flashback to that night outside the ballroom just weeks ago, when they’d stood together and spoke of courtship and the stars. Gregory felt a bit like he was handing off a bride to the groom here. His entire soul filled with a bitter-sweetness and heartache. He blinked at the threat of tears and looked away from Louis, up to the night sky. This was the worst. The absolute worst part.

Lestat came through the door alone, out onto the flagstones of the tower, no less breathtaking than Louis. He was in a poet’s shirt of dark blue, dark jeans, ankle boots. His white-blond hair pulled back in a loose tie, strands falling artfully about his face. He was a lion; blue eyes clear and bright in the moonlight as he saw Gregory first. He smiled, but Gregory could see it was a little forced. Irritation radiated off him.

“I’m sorry, we were gone longer than I anticipated,” Gregory apologized smoothly with a very light bow. “It was just no longer all in my hands.”

Blue eyes narrowed slightly, confused. Gregory glanced over the Prince’s shoulder, and Lestat turned to find the vision that was Louis. There was an audible gasp at the sight, which Gregory totally understood.

Lestat approached him, reached a hand out slowly and touched his face. A long silence. Then, “What happened to you?”

Louis glanced over to Gregory. Lestat’s eyes also darted over to him but then back to Louis quickly. Lestat stepped back from Louis, taking him in more fully. The air was tense around them and Gregory couldn’t take his eyes off the show. How beautiful and perfect they were together. One all bright color and gold light, the other dark and fierce.

“Don’t start crying,” Louis ordered suddenly.

Gregory could read from Lestat’s body language that the strong authoritative voice was the biggest shock of it. He wiped at his eyes quickly. “I didn’t expect this,” Lestat replied.

“Didn’t you,” Louis asked, a little too sharp.

Lestat seemed confused with that and didn’t respond.

Louis and Gregory shared a look, which Lestat saw, and he turned to face Gregory now, still irritated but also too much in shock from Louis to do much about it.

“Well, you can’t go back, can you,” Louis said. He was being harsh here and Gregory winced inwardly.

Lestat’s brow furrowed. “Why are you speaking this way to me?”

Louis was silent. An unreadable statue.

In the doorway entrance to the tower Gregory caught a glimpse of Chrysanthe, standing silent in the shadows, watching everything. Their eyes locked and cool water washed over him at the sight of her. She knew him well enough to know exactly what he was going through here. Exactly what had transpired with Louis over the past week. It had been only a slightly less passionate play with her when he’d first come across her thousands of years ago.

Lestat and Louis were having some emotional wordless exchange of their own over there.

Gregory broke the silence, “If you two have no need of me here, I’ll be going now.”

Lestat turned, blue-gray eyes flashed and fixed on him. “I want to speak to you later,” he said. There could be no misinterpreting what that meant. There would be a serious exchange.

Gregory bowed again. He went to Chrysanthe and they moved down the stairwell a few flights, then he took her into his arms. She was light and small compared to Louis, but so very familiar. She wrapped around him. He was absorbed in her gentle, accepting presence.

“Are you well,” she asked.

He held her head in his hands and kissed her. “I’m… A little bereft.”

She smiled a bit sadly at him, that charming dimple appearing in cheek. “You got too attached. The Prince was sensing it, the longer you were away. I was getting so nervous for you.”

Gregory knew this. “I couldn’t help that,” he replied, knowing full well that both Louis and Lestat could easily hear these words. “Let’s go.”

---

The impact Louis’s transformation had on the court was immediate and profound. There wasn’t just one monarch now, there were plainly two of them. Gregory entered the council room the following night, and found the rest of his ancient colleagues at the far end of the table in their usual spots. They all eyed him as he took his seat. He smiled pleasantly at each. Lestat and his entourage had not yet arrived.

“I’m surprised you’re still breathing, Nebamun,” Santh said, half teasing, half serious.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

They all made varying sounds of amusement.

“I saw Louis on the way here. How did it get so far with him,” Marius asked. “Was he that ravenous?”

Gregory looked directly at him. “Obviously.”

Marius shook his head a little.

“I let it get away from me. It’s my own fault,” Gregory said.

Santh smiled knowingly and shook his head. “You’re in deep, my friend.”

“I am,” he agreed mirthlessly. He’d had enough of talking about this last night with Chrysanthe, in their chambers. Enough explaining it and defending it and replaying it all. Now he was going to have to go through it again here, in this room. Others, younger ones, began to trail into the room and take seats. Armand, Jesse Reeves, Pandora, Bianca, Gabrielle, David. Fareed came in and sat beside Seth, giving Gregory a cursory look over and then a kind smile.

Lestat entered with Louis close behind. Gregory’s heart leapt traitorously at the sight. Some of the members here had not seen Louis until just this moment and shocked reactions were visible along the entire length of the table. He was so visibly changed, bleached white skin, eyes too brightly dazzling green. Louis was all in black again, hair shining even in the dim light of this chamber. Poised and indifferent to all eyes on him.

Seth’s slow gaze moved appraisingly over Louis and then to Gregory. There was an uncharacteristic amusement there. “Nebamun,” he chastised softly with a shake of his head.

Louis took his usual seat to the right of Lestat. David, who was seated to the right of Louis was taken aback by the new image beside him, but Louis placed a reassuring hand on his arm and David, still a little shaken, relaxed slightly but continued to examine him.

Armand was most visibly shaken. He made a small gasp, said Louis’s name beneath his breath, and then sent a furious glare towards Gregory. “What happened?”

“It seems obvious,” Santh quipped with a smirk.

“I received blood from Gregory,” Louis explained in a clear, strong voice to the table at large before looking back to Armand. “I took it of my own will, Armand. You don’t have to defend my honor. In fact, you should probably be defending his before mine.”

Armand opened his mouth to make some argument, but seemed to think twice about it after seeing the seriousness with which Louis was looking at him. He sat back, sending another angry glare to Gregory, which Gregory returned with placid calm. Armand remained silent, though still distressed.

Lestat scoffed a little at the entire exchange. Louis sent him a withering glare, to which Lestat held his hands up, a mock gesture of defense. “Relax,” he said softly to Louis.

Louis glanced away. Sighed. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Gregory would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in their rooms last night. How had Lestat been adjusting to this new Louis? Almost as if he’d heard these thoughts, Lestat sent a very quick glare to him at the other end of the table. One that left no room for interpretation. I’m going to tear you apart later.

Gregory remained still, giving no sign he’d understood the look.

“You’ve really fucked up the dynamic here, Gregory,” Lestat said in a scolding tone.

“Don’t speak to him that way,” Louis immediately responded; his voice low and dangerous.

“You don’t have to defend me,” Gregory said, and immediately regretted it as all eyes turned from Lestat and Louis to him now.

The room was silent. No one breathed, no one moved, no one blinked an eye.

“Get out. All of you,” Lestat ordered.

“Short meeting,” Santh said, giving Gregory’s shoulder a light squeeze of encouragement as he stood. Everyone filed out quickly.

Marius shoved Armand out of the room ahead of himself. Turning to close the doors as he left, he gave some parting words, “All I ask is that you don’t immolate one another in here.”

With that the click of the doors echoed across the empty council room. The three of them alone. Silent.

“Why didn’t you call me and tell me what was happening,” Lestat demanded, looking from Gregory to Louis and back again. “Either of you. Answer me!”

“Because I didn’t want you to stop it, and neither did he,” Louis responded evenly.

Lestat was silent.

“I’m sorry it went down this way, Lestat,” Gregory started, only to be stopped by one raised hand from Louis.

“Don’t defend yourself, Gregory. As I understand it, you two had a deal? Isn’t that how it happened? An gentlemen’s agreement before the council?” His voice was low and even. His eyes moved from Lestat to Gregory at the other end of the table. “Let’s make sure Louis is strong enough to defend himself, so we don’t have to. Let’s teach Louis to be a better vampire, because he’s not quite there yet.”

“It’s not like that, Louis,” Gregory tried to explain. Louis held his hand up again for silence. Why that one simple gesture should be so effective, Gregory couldn’t say. Just that it was. Neither he nor Lestat spoke.

“The sad thing is, I’m not surprised it all happened that way. It seems like the kind of thing you would agree to, Lestat. Fix Louis; he’s broken. Too shy, too bookish, too weak.”

“That is not what we said,” Lestat replied quietly. “Don’t do this, Louis.”

“But you, Gregory,” Louis continued, ignoring Lestat’s words. “You I’m struggling to understand still. Your motives for wanting this.”

“The only motive was love,” Gregory said.

“Oh please,” Louis all but scoffed. “No, it wasn’t. It was a power play of some sort. You love power and attention more than Lestat.”

Silence.

Louis stood and walked around the table, down to where Gregory sat. He leaned across the table and fixed him with that dark intensity. “Was any of that real? What we did? Or was it all a script, just like you use to take over all those companies?”

“Louis,” Gregory said earnestly, blocking out the fact that Lestat was sitting there watching them. “I love you! I love you very much. That is not scripted. I swore I wouldn’t fall for you, but I did.” Gregory raised one of his own hands, to try and still Louis, keep him focused on his words. “Listen to me. You are overreacting to this --“

Louis stood up tall again, eyes burned with true rage now. “Don’t tell me what I am or am not feeling!”

Gregory froze, trying to curb his own flashback to eons past, all too familiar with what would happen next. He sat perfectly still, waiting.

Louis stormed away from the table, one hand sliding back through his hair angrily, his back to them for a long moment. It seemed he was having some inner dialogue to calm himself perhaps. But that was not the case at all. He turned abruptly, took hold of the edge of the heavy council table that ran the length of the room and flipped it over, chairs smashing onto the floor beneath it as it made a giant crashing sound. Both Gregory and Lestat jumped back in an instant and moved to the walls of the room. Louis went on a small tirade around the room, destroying priceless vases, statues and other items that adorned various sections of the room, throwing a few of the chairs against the walls so that Gregory and Lestat had to duck out of the way.

“Louis! Stop this!” Lestat demanded, trying to grab him by the arm and hold him back from anymore damage to the room. Louis shook him off with little to no effort, and Lestat, shocked by the demonstration, stood there in the center of the room, at a loss for what to do.

Louis was furiously brushing dust off his clothing from the splintered furniture and shattered clay and pottery. Lestat was frozen in place, not wanting to set him off again. Gregory took a hesitant step towards Louis, but received a warning glare in response. “Stay away. Both of you, stay away.” The voice was smooth and cold. Louis turned on his heel, drew the doors open and exited swiftly. As they stood there in the settling destruction, Gregory could hear and feel the distress of other inhabitants of the Chateau quickly moving out of Louis’s angry path.

“Well,” Lestat said in a strangely calm voice, “at least he didn’t set anything ablaze.”

Lestat was not looking at Gregory. His jaw was tense, his own frustration obvious.

“Lestat, he is angry right now, just as you are. He’s got centuries of pent up frustrations to get out. But he is never going to be in danger again!” Gregory picked up one of the chairs and set it right amongst all the rest of the damage. “I swear to you he is going to calm down from this and be a more familiar Louis again.” He watched Lestat’s troubled profile. “Lestat,” he continued, “You can’t tell me he isn’t absolutely breathtaking as he is now, with or without that anger he’s working through.”

Lestat stared at him for a long moment. When Lestat spoke, his voice was low, “You’re completely in love with him, aren’t you?”

Gregory crossed his arms on his chest, glancing away from him. Dust particles were swirling on the air in the room. “I am, yes.”

Lestat laughed, but without any real joy in it. “I warned you. Several times I warned you.”

“Lestat, you can’t control love. You know that better than any! I would implore you again to think about your time with the Queen. Tell me you didn’t love her even after that terrifying adventure she forced you through.”

Lestat shook his head, jaw still tense. He was brushing the dust from his own clothing. “So now what? How am I supposed to handle him?”

“You don’t handle him,” Gregory replied quietly. “You never have to do that again. You just let him be who he is.”

Lestat approached, stepping gracefully over the wreckage on the floor. He took Gregory in his arms, and for a moment Gregory expected some other violence to occur in this room. For Lestat to attempt to do some physical harm. Instead he kissed him, then spoke, “Leave this court. I can’t look at you.”

Chapter Text

I NEED YOU

Why Gregory felt compelled to return to Dubai, he couldn’t say. Just that he was most at home in this part of the world, and what he needed over the past year was a place to feel at home. He and Chrysanthe had set up home in a tower he owned. He’d transferred all his personal business here. He’d even relocated some of his most trusted employees. In a sense, he’d done everything possible to place himself in a world as different from the Court as possible. The only downside being the constant reminder of those nights he’d spent here with Louis.

It was impossible to get Louis off his mind. Even after a year away. It was impossible to get Lestat off his mind as well, but Louis was the overriding ghost that haunted him. He received messages from those still within the Court. It was not unlike eons past when he would get updates while he was out on some crusade, chasing down first brood mavericks. He would get bits of information from those loyal to the Queen and King. Only now his information came from text messages or phone calls, and sometimes in person. And the information was not weeks or months old; it was instant.

Santh often visited him in his exile. He would say things like, “Lestat is ever patient with the change. Louis is more and more his old self, yet not.” And Gregory could understand that easily. He would never be his old self again. Never. He would be always another version of it. He never heard from Louis though. And that stung most of all. Because the months it took to get over the heartache of losing him so rapidly, of losing the Court itself, was almost more than Gregory could handle. And for some while he’d considered going into the ground for a brief rest. Chrysanthe had not allowed it. She had kept him distracted with anything and everything. She had insisted on constant participation in the mortal world. Travel, entertainment, business, anything. And eventually Gregory had come back to himself with her at his side. How could she be so patient? What had he done to deserve her? His other family came to stay with them now and then too. Avicus and Zenobia, Flavius, Davis. He all were together here, and he could now and then forget Louis and forget Lestat and forget the Court. He had the mortal world to make his footprint in after all.

So it was a shock when one early evening, as the skies over the gulf waters were fading from purple blue to dark black, that he should turn his head and find Louis watching him. Gregory was in a café he visited often, scanning the crowd for a possible evening hunt, and checking messages on his phone. A cup of black coffee was before him, and all around were the languages of this land. Arabic, Hindi, English, Bengali, Chinese.

And there was Louis, just there in the middle of the bustling café. Still as a statue. Far too green eyes fixed on Gregory. He tried not to let the thin composure he’d recovered over the past months slip as he laid eyes on Louis now. It was impossible not to though. There was the immediate leap in his heart rate and the connection fell right back into place. Of course.

Louis glanced around the café and then made his way to Gregory’s little table. Glided over like a spirit. “I assume this seat is available?” A gentleman always.

Gregory nodded, “Of course.”

It was eerie to see him here so suddenly. A vision, all in black. He crossed one leg over the other and folded elegant hands on his knee, eyes fixed on Gregory. All as if it had simply been a single night ago that they’d last seen one another.

“Louis,” Gregory said quietly.

“I only wanted to see you,” Louis replied to the unspoken question.

“And so you see me.” Gregory felt awkward, and that was not a thing he was accustomed to. When had he ever felt this way in recent history? He couldn’t even think of a time. “How is Lestat,” he asked.

“He is well. He… has been adjusting.” Louis smiled a little. Gregory’s heart broke a little. Silence fell between them. Then, “I miss you. I want you back at the court.”

This, Gregory had not expected at all. Had he heard correctly? His eyes narrowed. “Me? You want me back at the court?”

“I said that,” Louis replied softly.

“And how is Lestat going to take this? I was exiled.”

“That was never permanent, Gregory.”

The simple sound of his name sent a warm thrill through Gregory. He looked away from him then, finding it too hard to think otherwise. “I am settled here now, Louis. I have my little family here with me. My business.”

Some fleeting emotion passed over Louis’s beautiful features then. Something Gregory couldn’t read. A mere narrowing of the fine brows, a quick blink. He leaned forward then, making sure of eye-contact. “I need you around.”

How far he had come from that timid bookworm, Gregory thought. That he would come all the way here and speak so openly as to what he needed. Gregory dropped his head suddenly to his hands and rubbed his face. Such a human thing to do, but he still did this in moments of great distress. When he lifted his head again, Louis was there. Looking at him with something like concern. “I can’t resist you. I think you know that,” Gregory replied. “You broke me,” he admitted now. “You stole my heart as few have done before. I am a different person with you… I am Nebamun. It’s a little unnerving.”

Louis reached out and took his hand. Their skin so alike now. Louis’s still bleached marble white, and Gregory’s was dark with the sun, but the smooth, poreless texture and the strength in the hands, the same. “You did the same to me. Am I not completely changed?”

Of course, he was. That had been the plan from the start. “And you forgive me for this? For what we chose to do to you?”

Louis looked off for a moment. “I think I told you when I first came out onto that balcony and saw the sky still blue before it turned black. I felt I had been sleeping for centuries and was suddenly awake. How could I resent what you did? I was angry that you made the choice to do it without consulting me first. That was the anger.” Louis smiled lightly; brushing away all the darkness. “So yes, I forgive you and I forgive him. He knows that. He wants you back as well. He won’t fight it.”

Gregory wanted this, of course. He had an immediate urge to pounce on this offer and agree to return this very night. But he had his whole life here now. They were just settled here, and he couldn’t see uprooting them all again. “I will come to the court to visit often, of course. And how do you want Gregory and Louis to be when we are back at Court?”

“I don’t know how we will do this.” Louis smiled again; a thing he apparently did more often now. Gregory had to return the smile, because it was so infectious. “We’ll just play for awhile and see how it goes.”

“Of course,” Gregory immediately agreed with an infectious smile of his own.

//end