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Chapter Text

November

Louis sat in one of the velvet chairs in the back parlor, hands clutched in his lap like a child anticipating a scolding, letting his gaze drift serenely around the room. It looked the same as it had last time he remembered being here all those months ago, save for the immense new rug near the door covering the scratch marks on the floor. The doorframe had been replaced already. He was sure of it, even though it looked identical to the old one, because he remembered enough to know it had been splintered beyond repair. Replacing the floor must have proven more difficult, if the number of people Lestat had berated over the phone in the past week was any indication. 

Lestat had been there, leaning against the doorway and filing his nails; the first thing Louis saw after opening the coffin lid. “You’re awake!” he’d said, like he had for the past God knows how many nights. Like he always did, before sweeping Louis away, setting him down in front of the vanity, facing away from the cloth-covered mirror.

Talking to him the entire time, Lestat dressed Louis. A billowing white shirt and waistcoat, the ersatz apparel of a contemporary 18th century man, though the modern cut of the trousers and polyester tag went some way towards dispelling that particular fantasy. “You always did have the worst taste in clothes,” he might have blurted out, guiding Louis’ limp hand through the sleeve of his shirt. “Just as well I should pick something out for you, I suppose. Though this one almost looks like something you would choose back in the day, before you started wearing your horrible sweaters.” He went on like that as he did up the buttons of the waistcoat, babbling only occasionally interrupted by his own tangents and rhetorical questions. Only once he was done did he fall silent for a moment, taking a step back to evaluate his handiwork before starting up again as he reached over Louis’ shoulder for the silver hairbrush on the table.

Ironic, wasn't it? Louis remembered not too long ago when their roles were switched, doing the exact same thing for Lestat whenever Louis came back to find that Lestat had wandered from the church to their flat. He remembered picking out clean clothes  from Lestat’s overflowing wardrobe, taking more care in his selection than he ever had for himself, running a finger through the silk and satin and velvet of the shirts hanging there until something caught his eye, all the while Lestat sat on the bed like an abandoned china doll covered in a thin layer of dust ( who’s dusty now. ). Twice, Lestat had even laid out a piece of clothing on the bed before Louis found him, which he wrongly interpreted as a sign of improvement. He remembered brushing the dust from his fine white-blonde hair with that same brush, always starting from the bottom and working his way up (“ You are going to hurt her if you start at the top, here, give me the brush. See Louis, like this, you have to start at the ends and work your way up. Did no one ever teach you how to brush your hair? ”). He remembered unseeing eyes staring straight ahead as he spoke in that same voice Lestat used now, talking about anything and everything he could think of, not quite talking to himself but also not holding out hope for an answer –or any sort of acknowledgement really.

That part he did remember, very well in fact. Hands, which must have been his own, straightening the lapels of Lestat’s coat or tucking away a stray curl. But the memories felt... off. Distant somehow, as though he were remembering  something that had happened to somebody else. Like someone had described the scene and his mind had simply supplied him with the image. But the hands were all wrong, too soft and too pink, and everything looked blurry, like he was seeing the world through fogged-up glass. Remembering was hard. Unpleasant. He would rather not, if it was all the same.

Things that had happened since were easier to remember. Focusing on things that had happened since was easier; on what was happening right now. Right now he was waiting for Lestat to come back. He had gone hunting, probably trying to find a murderer or rapist or white collar criminal for them. This time he had even invited Louis to join, lingering uncomfortably once it became he would be hunting alone again. 

“ I’ve picked up a few CDs you might like ,” Lestat had told him before leaving, “ they’re in the study, near the stereo. You just have to put them in and press play. ” Louis had nodded in acknowledgement, nodded again when Lestat said he would be right back and to make himself at home, and pretended not to notice the way he hesitated by the doorway on his way out.

Louis could go wherever he wanted; to the office, to their room, from the front door all the way to the courtyard if he so wished. Louis could leave right now, could go wherever he could think of, anywhere in the world.

Louis stayed there, sitting quietly on the velvet chair in the back parlor, watching the pale marble-like fingers clutched in his lap, waiting for Lestat to come back home. 

May

My blood might make a monster of what's there. That is what Lestat had said, what he had told Merrick. He wished he hadn’t been right.  It was almost worse to think it had actually worked only to find himself thwarted; the rug pulled out from under him, the bright promise of his success crushed to fine dust; insert here whatever metaphor is best suited to describe the feeling of plummeting through the air he felt once he realized just what they had done. 

But that’s no way to begin a story, is it? Lestat should know better by now. Let’s start over, chronologically this time. 

This story begins, as they usually do, with Lestat. Let's not linger too long on introductions or prefaces, you know by now, or should know at least, all about Lestat, his blonde hair, his gray eyes, yada yada, et cetera and so on. Let us also skip the recapitulation of prior events, his little scuffle with satanic forces and the somewhat involuntary live reenactment of Sleeping Beauty that followed. 

And cut out the part where Lestat wakes up in the dark, next to an abandoned book on the cool stone floor of the chapel that had served as his mausoleum, certain that the tightness in his chest and the chill in the back of his neck meant that there was something very wrong with the world. There's no need to describe the way he ran –jerky and stiff from inactivity but with every ounce of his inhuman speed– through the dim New Orleans streets, chasing the last rays of the setting sun all the way to Rue Royale; or how he stopped at the carriageway gate, all at once, as if held back by an invisible barrier, before stepping through it. He might have said something, he wasn't sure, and so neither can you be. None of those things mattered though, because his eyes were fixed on the familiar coffin in the middle of the courtyard.

He did not recall walking up to it, but he must have. Lestat found himself a few steps away, close enough to see in detail the charred, mummified remains lying in Louis’ coffin. The silk lining was burnt enough that trying to guess what color it had been was entirely pointless. And lying there was Louis; with his hands over his shoulders and his eyes shut. He didn’t even have the decency to look distressed in death, no, not his Louis. He would have looked peaceful , if it weren’t for the way his skin was burnt coal-black and shrink-wrapped around his bones. Lestat wanted to look away, to run away and pretend he could come back to find Louis reading in his chair in front of the unused fireplace. 

Lestat couldn’t stop himself from shaking, though he knew David was watching him, was trying to shrink into the little metal staircase he had been leaning against as if the shadow the balcony cast on it were enough to obscure him from view. He was silent, trying to provide no explanation or excuse for the scene in front of them. Hopefully he knew better than to try. The witch was there too, Merrick , a newborn all dressed in red, talking to him as if they knew each other, like all fledgling readers did when they met him for the first time. She stood there inviting him to touch Louis like the permission was hers to give, begging him to do something while Lestat just stood there, rooted to the spot.

“Come and listen,” he called, “I can't hear him, never could. Listen and tell me if he is here. Listen and tell me if he wants to come back.”

Sometime in the eighties, a drunk guy in a bar had tried to explain to Lestat a scientific thought experiment. It went a little like this: you get a cat and you put it in a box with something that may or may not kill it if you just give it enough time. Once the box is closed, you supposedly have no way to know if it's still alive or not, which somehow means the cat is simultaneously dead and alive; at least until someone opens the box and figures out whether or not they would need to buy more cat litter. Lestat hadn't understood what exactly the experiment was supposed to prove, other than that the freaks from PETA might have some points after all. Something to do with waves, Copenhagen, and a fair number of German-sounding last names if he remembered correctly, but the drunk man hadn't lived long enough to finish his explanation.

At the time Lestat had not paid too much attention to the proposed experiment; his solution had been simple, much to the drunk man's dismay: just open the fucking box already. What was the point in stalling, he had thought, when the cat's fate has been sealed and the only thing you can do is get him out of his box, whatever state he may be in, and hope you aren't too late. 

If it didn’t work, he would never know if Louis was gone for good, just dead and gone, or if, like Merrick said, Louis was there and wanted to come back but they could not bring him back; trapped, but alive and suffering, whatever courage he had summoned having dried up, leaving him with no choice but to wait for another sunrise, and another after that, on and on, simply hoping it would eventually end. 

He kneeled on the stones of their courtyard strewn with pink flowers from the Queen’s Wreath and bougainvillea and reached out to touch a scorched hand. They didn’t know, couldn’t know what Louis might have chosen, but he wished he could keep the box closed just a little longer now, if only to pretend both outcomes could be true for a little while longer. He wished someone else would open the box for him, just this once. And even if it did work, there was always the distinct possibility that Louis would simply hate him. 

With that last thought, Lestat bit into his wrist.

Nothing happened. For several seconds, then minutes, he knelt by the coffin and bled and bled and bled from the ever-healing gash, yelling at the others to help damn it , and waiting for anything to happen. Then came the vapor, a cloud that smelt of sulfur and metal fog rising from where the blood fell on Louis, disappearing so completely Lestat could not know if it boiled off or simply soaked into the skin, like water absorbed by a sponge through every invisible pore. David and Merrick followed his lead, both bending over the edge of the coffin letting the blood run down their wrists and onto the hissing, steaming form. Kneeling like this, Lestat thought, we may as well pray. Louis might have appreciated the gesture at least, but he decided against it –best not to, lest someone actually hear him. 

Then, after a small eternity of nothing, there was a pop! , and the blackened surface of Louis’ upper arm, the one nearest Lestat, split open like tectonic plates moving apart, forced from each other by the white skin bubbling up from underneath. The rift lengthened, down the limb all the way to his fingertips and up towards his collarbone. More of them blossomed soon enough, running up and down his body, criss-crossing across the skin until they converged, growing, slowly splitting apart like the skin of a snake, the chrysalis of a butterfly. Lestat could have cried when he first moved, little gestures at first, a twitch of his nose, a finger curling inwards; then bigger spasms, crinkling the shedding skin around his joints like tissue paper before flaking off entirely as his limbs stretched and contracted. 

Finally, Louis sat up, stiffly and all at once as if he were the marionette of a novice puppeteer. He made quite the sight, entirely covered in blood, his burnt clothes drenched through and all but dripping with the stuff. 

Lestat could not find it in himself to care about the slack jawed expression on his face, or the way his head hung limply to one side, or even that his eyes slid past him entirely, seemingly unable to focus on any one thing. He just pulled Louis close to himself and felt nothing but relief, cradling his head with a hand, as one might support a newborn’s head.

"Drink now, Louis," he commanded hoarsely, drawing a nail against his own skin before guiding Louis’ mouth to his clavicle. 

He was still for a moment, cracked lips half-parted where they pressed against Lestat’s skin making the absence of breath all the more evident. Louis lapped at the wound, hesitantly at first, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do, then eagerly once he got a taste of the blood, probing the wound fervently with his tongue to keep it from closing as he swallowed. 

The pleasant detachment of being drained set in almost at once, making everything around him — the way the edge of the coffin dug into his side; Merrick and David still bleeding over them; absolutely everything, everything but the fledgling under him— feel hazy and distant.

"Harder, yes, take it from me," Louis’ heartbeat was steady now, Lestat could hear it, feel it beneath his hand as he pulled Louis even closer.  "Harder, more of it, take it, take all that I have to give." 

Then came the teeth. Evidently encouraged by Lestat’s words Louis veritably pounced on him, biting until Lestat saw white, widening the small slit-like wound into a gushing fountain of blood, switching his focus between sucking and re-opening the wounds as needed. Occasionally, he would drift too far down and bite around Lestat’s clavicle, teeth gnashing on bone in a way that sent a chill up Lestat’s spine,  before returning to the more conventional source. “Très bien,” he sighed, distantly cognizant of first David, then Merrick slumping to the ground, each with a dull thump. They stayed like that for some time, silent except for the squelching sound of tearing flesh, the wet gulping of Louis swallowing mouthfuls of blood, and their own heavy breaths.

He let this continue for several more minutes, splayed on the ground, surprisingly dizzy from the rapid blood loss and lost in the rhythmic sucking of a bloody and half-clothed, but increasingly healthier-looking Louis. Lestat watched his beloved go from skeletal to wraithlike, plateauing somewhere around horribly starved before starting to look somewhat like a person again. Only then did he deem their efforts successful.

“D'accord Louis,” he cooed, petting the head of now shiny dark hair that leaned heavily on his shoulder, just as firmly attached to his neck as before with no indication of letting go “you’re all right, let go now.” 

Louis did not acknowledge he had spoken at all, other than inching up his jugular, gnawing with renewed intensity once he had settled with his head tucked under Lestat’s jaw, teeth grazing against his esophagus as he burrowed a little deeper into the muscle of Lestat’s throat as if he were looking for something beneath the skin.

“Louis?” He tried calling again to no effect.

Tugging Louis by the shoulder, gently at first, just trying to get his attention, then harder once he realized his teeth were still firmly lodged in him, proved just as unsuccessful. “ Louis ,” the commotion had caught the attention of the two vampires sprawled on the ground, who began to stir. “Louis, ça suffit .”

Something wasn’t right. 

Something wasn’t right and he had to get Louis off him. Not out of concern for his own well-being; his little vacation from reality had seen him slumped on the church floor for the better part of several years with little to no feeding, dispelling the idea that he could die from something as mundane as blood loss, though the specifics of vampire physiognomy remained a mystery he was not particularly interested in solving. If he had been a fledgling Louis might very well have sucked him dry already, he was sure of it. 

No, Lestat needed to look at Louis. He needed Louis to look at him. 

Trying not to panic, Lestat redoubled his efforts and, with one hand on either side of him finally managed to tear Louis away, letting out a quiet gasp as the blunt teeth, still closed around a lump of flesh, ripped his throat open. Louis fell limply onto the ground, covered in a thin layer of blood, like a newborn baby or someone in a horror movie. He snapped his teeth in the air, lips drawn back in a snarl. Streaks of gore trickled down his chin from a mouth still full of flesh. 

And Lestat could only stare at him; could only watch Louis chew and swallow his prize as the blood flowing from his own neck slowed to a trickle and finally stopped once the wound closed. From the corner of his eye he could see Merrick drowsily lift her head towards the commotion, could pinpoint the moment she realized what had happened from her wide-eyed expression seconds before moving to shake David awake. It took some time before he let himself be roused by Merrick, but once he had gotten his bearings, David’s reaction was less discrete. Once his gaze fixed on Louis he yelped, quite loudly.

In an instant Louis was on David, not running over so much as clumsily launching himself at him at a speed many vampires would be hard pressed to match. His talon-like nails ripped into David’s skin as easily as they did the shirt that covered it, biting at his clothed shoulder and spitting out the bloodied shreds. David, shocked and still recovering from significant blood loss, was slow to react. 

Lestat watched David raise his hands towards either side of Louis’ head as if in slow-motion, legs kicking at Louis as he tried to get up and flee — Lestat moved without thinking, knocking his youngest fledgling flat on his back across the courtyard, before wrapping an arm around Louis’ sticky shoulder from behind holding him back from leaping at  at his victim again. 

All three vampires remained frozen in their new positions –Merrick, still dazed, standing near the coffin, David splayed on the ground and Lestat kneeling once again, now restraining a wildly flailing Louis– in complete silence as the gravity of the situation sank in. 

“I think that you should leave,” Lestat finally said, just loud enough to make sure he was heard, his voice still hoarse from disuse. 

Then came a cacophony of protests. “But Lestat–” “We should never have– ” “–destroy it–” “–oh God what have we–” “ –maybe fire–” 

“David, Merrick. Leave us. ”

An inappropriate bout of laughter bubbled up from somewhere behind his lungs as Lestat listened as their footsteps faded, though it quickly gave way to tears. Illuminated only by moonlight, he lay there panting on the damp ground, still holding on to his squirming blood-slick fledgling like a drowning man clinging on to a life vest, and cried.  

Sobbed, really, each spasmic movement of his chest punctuated by a choked off wheeze that made him grateful not to have an audience. He cried until Louis stopped struggling against him, apparently having lost interest in the movement beyond the carriage gate and instead wriggled around in his arms to face him. Cried until he felt something wet swipe against his face. Then he laughed, as Louis tried to lick at the bloody tear tracks that covered his cheeks. 

He should have despaired at the situation. Should have laid down on the damp stones (had it been raining or was this just dew?), slumped over and stayed there for the rest of time. He would have if he had thought about the situation for any longer. Everything about it was utterly ridiculous. 

Instead he cried some more, laughed again, and got up. 

Getting Louis anywhere in the ballpark of clean took some effort. Despite his earlier burst of activity Louis either couldn't or wouldn't walk on his own, and reacted poorly (tried to claw his eye out) when Lestat tried to pick him up in a bridal carry. Compromising, Lestat slung one of Louis’ arms over his shoulder and shuffled the both of them through the house, disregarding for the moment the trail of red-brown footsteps left in their wake. Even once Lestat had managed to wrangle him into the bathroom, he seemed entirely uninterested in cooperating. Either sitting immobile with his limbs locked in place, staring into space as Lestat tried to remove the burnt tatters of what used to be a half-decent shirt, or jerking away from the damp towel Lestat tried to use to wipe away the grime without rubbing too hard at the still-healing skin. In the end, he cornered Louis in the shower cabinet and, arming himself with the detachable shower head, turned the spigot as far as it would go, letting a very outraged Louis drench them both in his struggle to get away as he watched the water run down the drain, first a revolting murky color, then a yellow-orange shade with little specks of grime and dried blood, before finally running clear as the sludge of dead skin and ash washed away. 

With one clammy arm slung across his shoulders, Lestat managed to guide them to his own coffin, which someone had the presence of mind to return to the bedroom during his absence. Here, at least, Louis cooperated. Seeming to realize what to do with the open coffin he climbed in, with only mild protest when Lestat climbed in after him.

Even as he drifted off into sleep, his own prediction echoed over and over again in his mind. 

My blood might make a monster of what's there.

Chapter Text

November

Lestat had left a book on the parlor table. 

He had been doing that a lot, leaving books around the house before he went hunting. Not that Louis ever saw him do it. The books would simply appear, on the unused dining table, on the closed lid of their coffin, precariously balanced on the edge of the bathtub, or on Louis’ chair by the desk. Louis never read them– never touched them, really– and without fail, the book would be gone the next night, replaced by another for Louis to stumble upon while Lestat was out. Once he had caught the flicker of disappointment on his face the moment Lestat noticed today’s selection was precisely where he had left it, still untouched on the table. Neither of them brought it up, and the books kept showing up;  always in plain sight, never the same book twice. 

Their content varied, Austen, Baudelaire or Dostoevsky (he suspected Lestat had started in alphabetical order); paperbacks and hardcovers and old editions bound in vellum; some novels, some poems, and twice, biographies. They were never new, but despite the slight curling at the corners and yellowing pages, none of them had broken spines. They belonged to Louis. He did not need to be told as much, though he couldn’t necessarily remember reading any of them. 

This was not one of his books. This one was different. 

Louis sat and stared at the small white paperback on the table in front of him, so worn that the cover had peeled off entirely along the spine of the book. Most of the print on the front cover was also gone, exposing the paperboard underneath, only occasionally disrupted by flakes of the original glossy white background and now illegible red title. The pages were stained and curled from water damage, making the far edge bulge upwards, refusing to lay flat. 

Something told him that he should recognise this crappy little book, as if this particular mass-printed block of paper were important. He tried to work out where he could have seen it before, tried to place the mangled cover in the context of his life. Unsuccessfully. It felt like he was trying to think of a word he had only ever learnt in another language, an absence only detectable once you went right up to it and tried to feel the shape of the void that was left. Like the memory was somehow on the tip of his tongue. 

At the same time he feared that once he knew what was missing it would be less familiar than it should have been. That it would be all wrong, like returning to one’s childhood bedroom to find that everything was smaller than you remember, that the wallpaper that had seemed so magical when you were small now looked dull and the whirling shadows cast by the lamp-shade were quickly dismissed with explanations of the behavior of light and shape and color of the glass. 

The book, still lying untouched on the table, gave him no answers. 

He rifled through the pages, lifting them all at once with a thumb before letting them fall back into place; too fast to make out any of the words printed there. But slow enough to notice that  on the margins of almost every page were notes, scrawled out in a messy, uneven cursive hand. 

Louis repeated the gesture, a little slower this time, noting just how many colors the commenter had used. Several passages had been underlined or circled, and a few crossed out entirely.

Rifling one more time, he let half the pages fall back into place before catching his thumb on a page at random, flicking the book open and lifting it to his face in one swift motion, fixing his gaze right above a particularly dense block of ballpoint-blue commentary.

‘-its handle. He looked up at me, the hair falling down into his eyes.

“Louis! Louis!” He let out one more gasp and fell sideways on the 

carpet. She stood looking down on him. The blood flowed everywhere–

–his eyes flitted down the page–

‘–Finally the irises rolled to the top of his

Head, and the whites of his eyes went dim. The thing lay still. A 

great mass of wavy blond hair, a coat, a pair of gleaming boots; 

and this horror that had been Lestat, and I staring helplessly at it.’

Louis was standing behind his chair before he even fully registered the words on the page, dropping the book as if it had burnt him. He left it there as it had landed on the table, open on the title page. 

May

On the third day Lestat left the house. 

He refused to leave at all on the first night. A mistake; he was weak after the ordeal the night before, the bloodloss had made him thirsty for the first time in decades and judging by the blue-green veins that stood out against his now translucent skin, Louis could not possibly be feeling much better. When he stood in front of the light Lestat could have sworn he could see right through him, veins and nerves and bones suspended in see-through matter like one of those awful-looking gelatin dishes. 

There was nothing to be done about it. Lestat spent the night going over every inch of skin, just to make sure. Achilles tendon, elbow crease, nails, teeth, the tiny webbing of skin between his fingers. All present and accounted for; all undeniably Louis’. He still had little patches of burnt; areas where the skin was smooth and rugged all at once, spots in his scalp where the hair hadn’t grown in right. He poked and prodded, and as long as Lestat didn’t hold him too tight Louis didn’t seem to mind. 

Every so often, when someone passed by below, Louis would rush at the windows, moving faster than Lestat had ever seen him move before. He would scratch at the windowpane and slam against the walls, trying to get out and, presumably, bite whatever unfortunate happened to be walking past. Miraculously, the glass had held out for now, though the cracks on the living room window were looking a bit concerning. Lestat tried to be quick in wrangling him back but a few seconds of vampiric struggle accumulated into minutes and had started to take a toll on the structure.  

On the second day Lestat hid behind the door like a child playing hide and seek and snatched someone in from the street. A well-dressed man, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, suddenly found himself sprawled on the entré carpet. Draining him was quick, a sprint towards his slowing heartbeat rather than the drawn out marathonic dalliances he usually reveled in. Hardly two minutes later the corpse was tucked away in the small building that used to be a kitchen, and Lestat was back upstairs before Louis even got out of the coffin. 

Feeding seemed to mollify Louis for a bit, if only because he couldn’t move around too much while his teeth were firmly embedded in Lestat’s wrist. And he looked better afterwards, more solid, more like himself. Lestat thought he did at least. The blood helped . 

So on the third day Lestat snuck out, confident he could get away with a brief absence. He hunted quickly, swept down on the first two people he came across who could arguably be called evildoers , and then he went back to Louis. Or he tried to at least. 

Merrick was too busy trying to look in through the ground floor window to spot him right away. She looked well-suited to vampirism, though every bit the fledgling of dear weak Louis. Nervously wiping her hands on the skirt of her shirtwaist dress (a different one from their first unfortunate meeting, the other one had been drenched in blood), she looked human, save for her bright green eyes. Next to her David tried and failed to look inconspicuous with his constant shuffling and darting gaze, hissing out an admonishment as Merrick rocked back on her heels to try and get a better angle to peep between the curtains. 

Lestat was weighing the risk of being seen flying into the courtyard when a clear voice interrupted his train of thought. 

“Lestat!” They were both looking at him now, Merrick waving at him as she called out his name. Wonderful. He smiled, half-waved back at her and continued to approach as casually as he could. 

“How is Louis?” Always to the point, David was the first to broach the subject.  He considered for a split second telling the truth, but the memory of David suggesting they destroy him with fire quickly made him dismiss that idea.

“ Louis is fine,” he lied instead.

“Is he… uhm...” Merrick drifted off, probably trying to figure out the most tactful way to ask whether or not her maker was still positively murderous and questionably sentient.

“He’s resting,” Lestat interrupted. “He just needs some time to… recover.” 

That seemed to be the right answer, judging by the relief on her face. “Could we come in? I would like to talk to him, apologize for everything.” 

“No. I don’t think he would want to see you.” Neither of them looked particularly convinced. “Or rather for you to see him right now. You know how he can get.” 

It wasn't really a lie, once he got better Louis would be mortified if Lestat let people ogle him like a zoo animal, even if the 'people' in question were David and his own fledgling of questionable morals.

“But I will tell him you stopped by,” he continued, already trying to shimmy his way around them. “We can have you over some other time, when he’s had more time to… compose himself.”

From somewhere on the second floor there was a thud, followed by the unmistakable sound of something moderately expensive shattering. 

David and Merrick looked up at the source of the sound, and Lestat used their distraction to slip inside and slam the door shut before they could ask any more incriminating questions. He shot up the stairs to find Louis by the window, standing among the broken remains of a vase. 

Luring him away from the line of sight of anyone out on the street was simple enough, all it took was a tear on his outstretched wrist and Louis followed him to the desk chair, crouching over his meal once Lestat had sat down. 

Once he had sat down Lestat watched Louis approach his dripping hand, coming to a stop a few feet from him and pouncing on the limb. 

What are we going to do with you?

Despite himself, he wished he could ask for help. Armand might understand, might have some idea of what to do, or at least might care enough for Louis to try, but he could not go to the others. Surely if Maharet considered a half-mad Lestat dangerous enough to keep him chained up for months Louis' current state would get them into some trouble– and he could only hope David and Merrick had decided to keep quiet. None of them seemed to have so much as noticed Lestat had woken yet. Maybe, if they were lucky no one would come knocking until Louis was better. 

He just needs some time. That is precisely what Lestat had been telling himself. Time (and blood) would heal all wounds. Because if it didn’t, Lestat had no idea what else to do.

Chapter Text

November

Curiosity got the better of him, in the end. He held out for ten, maybe fifteen minutes of staring blankly at the tattered book before picking it back up. 

He flipped through the early chapters; little fragments of memory dredged up at every phrase half-read. Paul’s death, meeting Lestat, the fire, years playing the happy family in this very house. The murder he skipped outright, stopping instead on a section of dialogue, set somewhere in their trip across the Atlantic, where Louis and Claudia tried to explain how Lestat had managed to come back alive from the swamp they had thrown him in. 

In the book, Louis hypothesized that Lestat had come back not because of some extraordinary passion for life or thirst for revenge, but because he simply could not die. That no matter if they were stabbed, bled, burnt or staked, nothing could stop a vampire from living on. Did that scare him at the time? Claudia said he was afraid, but he couldn’t remember if it was because Lestat might still come after them, or fear that he himself might never die. Had he felt relieved to be proven wrong? 

True immortality , what a joke. How naive he must have been. The Louis in the book wouldn’t have known immortality if it hit him in the face. 

He knew better now. Louis had died, and he had seen nothing on the other side. Whether that brought him comfort or sorrow varied greatly on the day. 

I saw nothing , he had told Lestat a few weeks ago, once he had taught himself how to speak again. I saw nothing, there was nothing better waiting for him after, not the shining city of song Lestat had told Armand about, nor Saint Peter waiting at the gate. Death was nothing like being asleep; Louis did not simply close his eyes, die, and wake up alive again. There were no dreams. Nothing was not just an absence –the absence of matter or time or space– but a thing in its own right. NOTHING. Italicized capitalized and emboldened. 

 He didn’t need anyone to tell him, Louis could feel it; could see it.

Even seeing his own reflection for the first time had been quite a shock. 

Louis actually startled when something moved on the wall over the mantle; stumbling over his own feet in his haste to turn around, vampiric dexterity be damned. It took him a second to realize that he was looking in a mirror, and a couple more to accept that the reflection staring back at him was his own. His face still had the same shape, eyes, nose, mouth, all accounted for and generally recognizable as belonging to one Louis de Pointe du Lac, yet there was something distinctly alien about the sight of it. His skin was too pale now, uniformly white and nearly pearlescent, which made dark eyelashes surrounding the ring of neon green pupil stand out all the more. The thing staring back at him from the mirror looked as though it would glow in the dark if he turned off the lights, like the cheap little plastic reptile on Lestat’s desk. He had left the room before all the glass shards finished falling to the floor, slamming the door behind him. Lestat hadn’t mentioned the mess, but both the fragments and the frame were gone when he woke up the next night, and there was a sheet over the vanity mirror. 

He knew what it meant. Lestat hadn’t perished to three days in the sun. Louis was weaker than him, but not by much. They had shared the blood over and over again. Lestat draining Louis draining Lestat. That’s how they made the strong ones, the ones made to last. There was nothing left for him in heaven or hell. And even if there were, he would have no way to reach it. Louis had died, not for the first, but for the last time.

True immortality . He had been right to be afraid. 

June

Lestat had known before he turned the corner into Rue Royale that he had been away for too long. 

It took just under two weeks before he began to crack. 

The issue, as four books of confessions in his own words have demonstrated, is that shortsighted grand gestures only really work out in the short-term. Great for crises. To make a bunch of cultists leave you alone for example, or to stop someone from abandoning you, or even to reconnect with one's beloved in a pre-digital age. Lestat had done his grand gesture. He had awoken from his magical slumber to kiss the dead prince back to life; onwards to a shotgun marriage and living happily ever after in a castle of some sort. A fairytale ending, quickly now, we only have a couple of pages left before the book is over. 

But it seems grand gestures always had a way to come back and bite him in the ass. The theater he founded turned against him; his daughter had tried to kill him; and his MTV serenade had nearly caused a genocide. 

His latest stint alternatingly playing prince charming and sleeping beauty had, of course, had left him in the role of Frau Gothel to a much bitey-er Rapunzel than he remembered reading about. And Lestat was quickly finding he was ill-suited to the role. 

Every night Lestat would go hunt, and he would come back to Rue Royale and everything would be exactly the same as it had been the night before. It was clear Louis didn’t get better on his own, and Lestat didn’t know what to do with him. 

Except there was a sort of restlessness building up in him, and every night it grew a little. He didn’t notice it at first. Only in retrospect did he realize that he had been talking too loud and too fast and too much, only aware of it in the harsh silence as he switched between topics and the instinctual flinch of Louis’ head as he began talking once again. Or just how frantically he would feed CD after CD into the stereo, narrating his opinions to an uninterested Louis as he caught himself up on the last several years of music. Or the way he had been snapping at Louis at the slightest provocation (which more often than not led to Louis literally snapping his teeth at him). Had he not known better, Lestat might have chalked it up to cabin fever alone. 

But tonight. Ah tonight.

Tonight, he had woken up feeling like he might just vibrate out of his skin. Lestat was alive, nay, supercharged, like all the living he missed out on in the past years on the cathedral floor had caught up with him. He wrestled with the electricity at his fingertips, flitting about the room as he got dressed and drew back the curtains, nearly flew down the stairs, and the hunt was on. 

A bar, he decided, a nice one, the kind with bankers in suits spending their hard-earned money while they got outrageously high. Lestat would just mingle, read the room, find a victim and get it over with. A quick in and out. At least one of them must have done something naughty, right? Except they didn’t, at least nothing unusually evil, and Lestat wasn’t sure being a banker on its own was enough to call someone an evildoer . But! But but but! They did say there would be a yacht party, on Luke’s boat (Lestat wasn’t clear on who exactly Luke was, but that seemed secondary). In fact, they were just about to go, and the ginger one with the funny pocket-square assured him he was definitely welcome. ‘They won’t mind, we bring plus-ones to this sort of thing all the time’ , were his exact words.  How hard could it possibly be to find a murderer or a rapist or some other kind of terrible person on a boat, after all? Bad people were always on boats, right? And bad things happened on boats all the time. Maybe he would even catch a lucky break and find himself in a Death in the Nile situation, he thought, filing into a taxi after the stoned suits. 

Innocent, the lot of them. At least as innocent as anyone in finance could be. But by the time he figured that out, they had already left the harbor, and though he would be surprised to find a single sober person in the entire yacht, he doubted they’d all fail to notice some guy in a shimmery shirt flying off into the night. So he waited for his opportunity to slip away. And since he was already here… well, Lestat was a charming, attractive vampire. In a very tight shimmery shirt, in a boat full of single (or “single”) women wearing short dresses and a surprising number of men who “just haven’t found the right girl yet”, as they often put it to their families and nagging coworkers. Even if he didn’t go looking for attention it would have been difficult to avoid. He found himself near-instantly dragged (well, maybe gently invited) into the heart of the party. Dancing in the middle of a crowd, conversations where both parties had to shout into their partner's ear so as to be heard over the blaring music, popping ridiculously priced champagne bottles and spilling half their contents on the deck; that kind of thing. Now, he didn’t entirely forget why he was here, but it took an embarrassing amount of time for him to come up with the idea of just taking the little drink whenever someone got close enough. And another embarrassing number of drinks to remember that literally every single person here was wasted, and now, by the awesome vector properties of blood, so was he. (Lestat wondered if that’s why Louis so often chose them, feeling the euphoric surge in energy after sipping from a businessman, settling into a comfortable leaden fog from the young lady in blue, senses at once dulled and heightened.) And another few hours and at least like, two more liters of blood before he realized there was absolutely no way any of these people intended to go back to shore before sunrise, and decided to just jump into the sea and swim to shore. 

Very much ignoring the stares he got for running (at a nice acceptable human speed, at least when he knew someone was looking) soaking wet through the city center, it took him less than ten minutes to get to Rue Royale. Enough time to notice the light blue tinge spreading slowly over the night sky, the first few rays of sunlight stretching languidly over the horizon. 

Fuck.

He slowed to a walk as he approached the newly renovated facade of their house, little tendrils of dread slipping through the cracks of his hazy euphoria. The door. He had forgotten to lock the door. It was open. Not wide open mind you, a little more than a sliver, just enough to make a yellow line of light on the pavement outside. Only then did the panic set in, a thousand scenarios rushing at him all at once. Where would Louis go? How much damage had he already done, how many people killed? Would he know to stay out of sight? Would he know to seek cover before the sunrise? How on earth was Lestat supposed to track him down? Lestat drew nearer to the door, about to close it before going to search the city when he saw the scene inside. First, a bundle of letters, too far in to have been dropped through the mailslot. Oh! And then he noticed the blood.

There was a big puddle of it some ways into the parlor, then a trail leading up the stairs, growing sparser as it went. Next he noticed the sounds predictably enough coming from the second floor, little gurgling noises accompanied by the familiar wet sound of tearing flesh. Lestat didn’t really take the time to feel relieved, clumsily taking the stairs two at a time,still dripping as he followed the red smears that would doubtlessly stain the carpet. Maybe Hansel and Gretel should have taken a page out of Louis’ book, he doubted birds could easily get rid of this kind of trail. 

He wished he could have been surprised at the scene that awaited him in the bedroom. Lying in a much smaller puddle of blood than the one downstairs was Tim, the postman Lestat had greeted maybe half a dozen times. And Louis, head tucked beneath his chin, biting vertically into the front of his neck. He looked like he was trying to cough up the blood in his throat, slowly drowning and conveniently gagging him, but could do nothing but sputter as Louis chewed on the muscles of his throat, completely missing any major arteries or veins. A very inefficient way of killing someone –a little chill on the back of his neck as Tim locked eyes with him, little droplets of blood spattering on the floor as he tried to ask for help–  but a wonderfully inventive way of keeping his prey alive for as long as possible while he fed. Louis was toying with him. 

Tim the postman was still making that awful burbling sound as Lestat took it all in, trying desperately to get his attention. Uhm… right. He should do something. 

“ Merde ,” he exhaled, moving in towards the figures sprawled on the floor. “Louis, let him go. ” 

Tugging at his elbow did less than nothing. Louis shook him off like he barely felt it. A little more force then. With a hand on either side of his ribs Lestat and a not inconsiderable amount of effort he did manage to pull him away. That earned him a gash across his chest, nails gritting uncomfortably against bone, as Louis swatted wildly at him, effectively ruining his shimmery shirt, though the scratches healed quickly enough. Blood oozed from the gash in his victims throat, the exposed muscle nearly obscured by the contents of hundreds of burst capillaries. Too deep to be healed, even if he hadn’t seen Louis in such a state. 

Pity, Tim was nice. 

Louis was tossed far and hard enough to give him a little time to fix this mess. Lestat was quick, going straight for the jugular, nothing he could do about the pain or the fear at this stage. There were no coherent thoughts, Tim was cold and scared as he died. 

“Did you absolutely have to play with your food?” Louis ignored him, as usual. Once he got his bearings he was back on the body. He got as far as latching onto the wound Lestat had opened, only to spit out the dead man's blood. Then he turned to Lestat, chin still dripping with the remains of his meal, and let out what could only be described as a snarl. “Oh now you want to talk.” 

It seemed like didn’t actually want to talk, quickly losing interest now that his plaything was drained, instead walking  so fast a human might have thought he had simply vanished and reappeared by the window, leaving Lestat to deal with the corpse; which had at last stopped bleeding into the already soggy carpet.

Chapter Text

November

There was no packing to be done Louis had nothing to pack, seeing as he didn't really have any belongings to take with him. 

No, that wasn’t right. Louis had taken stock, gone through every cabinet and drawer in the place, trying to guess at who owned what. He owned a signet ring, a small silver box containing two locks of hair tied in ribbon and a scrap of yellow fabric, and a locket with two little painted portraits, in addition to well over half the books in the library, to make no mention of whatever papers and documents strain about had survived the test of time. Add to that a modest pile of the clothes in the wardrobe –an ever growing pile in fact, as Lestat had recently began bringing him clothes that had caught his eye while out hunting, an old habit , if he was to be believed– and suddenly all his belongings took up more suitcases than a single human could comfortably carry. 

But clothes mattered very little to him, as did the books. He hadn't dared to touch the box, leaving it tucked away in the drawer of the library desk, where he had found it, and where it had been for the past few decades, judging by the fine film of dust around it. All the better for him really, it would be easier to travel light.

The locket had piqued his curiosity today though. He had spotted it on the dressing table earlier as Lestat brushed his hair, fiddled with it for a bit and tucked it into the small pocket of his vest.  

Louis pulled it out now, making sure that the closing mechanism was intact. He held the oval pendant in his palm again, and began tracing the ornamental engravings with a finger. The whorling floral shapes were worn, nearly level with the surrounding surface of the silver, the metal smoothed out by years of handling. His fingers found the opening mechanism, fickle with it for a moment. 

He didn't open it though, tucking it back into his pocket as he heard Lestat's footsteps growing louder against the background hum of the motor of the car that had been sent for him. A block away, maybe closer. Louis took a deep breath, steeling himself for what was to come.

August

It had only taken a month or two for them to fall into a routine. Every evening Lestat would wake in his coffin, –which he had moved down to the parlor, after Louis had absolutely wrecked the master bedroom for the third time in as many days– untangle himself from the limbs holding onto him, and check the knot around Louis’ ankle. The rather long rope had previously been used during his own flirtations with madness and subsequent less-than-consensual bondage ( thank you Maharet ). 

Lucky for him, Louis remained an early sleeper and late riser despite the copious amounts of his own powerful blood he had ingested, and no amount of rustling about would wake him up. After freeing himself, Lestat would get out of the coffin and close the lid after himself. 

(Once, he had lingered to watch Louis sleep. Like he used to in the old days, after a particularly good night, when Louis was either too tired or too pleased to kick him out of his coffin. He used to like seeing him there, lying in his coffin completely still; now, he couldn’t bear to do it. There was a reason why they called it the death sleep, after all.) 

Lestat would slip out of the flat, checking that the other end of the rope was still securely tied to the hand railing by the stairs –and that the railing itself remained intact. (Just in case. He had found Louis at the front door once, and even though he hadn’t been able to open it –and hadn’t realized he could just break through it– Lestat would rather he didn’t get that far again. Rather not have another Tim on his hands)

Hunting was much the same as it ever was, though Lestat took more victims each night than he would have in a whole month, had he been hunting only for himself. He tried to stick to the evil doer. Crooked cops were easy pickings, though he tried to space them out somewhat. They were always deemed suicides, but he'd rather avoid anyone looking too closely at the recent string of police suicides. Wife-beaters and murderers were harder to find, but drew far less suspicion (then again, there was a surprising amount of overlap). Once, he even ventured into an elder care facility, saying he was visiting his grandmother before draining one of the less foul-tasting end of life patients. 

But his time was limited, and morality had to take a backseat sometimes, given the circumstances. There was also a kernel of concern, that feeding Louis more of his own powerful blood might do more harm than good, well and truly extinguishing any ember of mortality. But what else could he do? No matter how many times he tried, Louis had uncharacteristically turned his nose up at every rat, cat, bird, and goat Lestat had brought him. Inconvenient that he had taken Lestat’s dietary advice, two-hundred and six whole years later. 

So Lestat would return home, feed Louis, and try to think of something new that might bring Louis back to himself. 

The first part was easy, that too had become routine. He would untie the rope and browse his CD collection, waiting for Louis to wake up. They would convene by the sofa, Louis standing by the threshold of the study, waiting for an invitation like the vampires of fiction, while Lestat lay down, propping himself up on the armrest as the album du jour played  at a reasonable volume from the stereo. 

(He always made sure to turn the dial back down before the other arrived, he knew Louis didn't like it when he put the music on too loud: he'd said as much in varying levels of irritation over the years.) 

Louis liked to go for the throat these days, so Lestat would lean his head to one side, sweep his hair away, and draw a nail against the  side of his neck. An invitation. 

(For all his bloodlust, dear Louis didn't seem all that interested in ripping him open to get to his jugular. Lestat tried not to take it personally, tried to reason that the only thing Tim the postman had that he didn't was a pulse. Not that Louis hesitated to bite him whenever he was dissatisfied. Or bored. Or happy. If he could scar he doubted he'd have an inch of unscarred skin anywhere above his waist. Louis bit him plenty was the point he was trying to make, but rarely thought to drink from him, though he seemed much calmer on days he did. So Lestat offered him what he wouldn't take for himself.)

Only then would Louis launch himself into the room, kneeling on either side of Lestat's waist, and latch on to the small cut. His teeth widening the incision whenever it started closing up, not just using his fangs but biting and tearing as if he were eating a particularly crisp apple. Lestat could feel the difference, could imagine the half-moon marks left behind. 

Meanwhile Lestat would stroke his hair, gently combing it away from his lover’s face, where it might get bloody; or trace little patterns on the back of his neck. He had free reign to tickle, scratch, or pet. Louis was indifferent to what he did with his hands, so long as Lestat kept talking.  

So Lestat would tell him about the hunt, what he had done and where he had gone to find the blood currently being drained from his veins, or he would just sing along to the music, stopping occasionally to comment on a lyric he particularly liked. (Louis, fortunately, also didn't mind if Lestat mimicked playing the piano on his back so there was little conflict of interest there.) Sometimes Louis would even hum back at him, whether in imitation or acknowledgment he didn't know, but it was the closest Louis had gotten to speaking in the months since . 

Lestat would like to think Louis just wanted to hear his voice. The less sentimental explanation was he liked feeling the vibrations under Lestat’s skin while he fed, that it told some part of his baser brain that his prey was still alive and therefore safe to drink from or some other nonsense.  

(He would like to think a lot of things. That Louis remembered him for instance; that despite it all, that despite everything they had been dealing with for the past several months he knew who Lestat was, knew he loved him. He would like to think that the miniscule changes in his demeanor when Lestat entered a room meant he was happy to see him. The more likely explanation –that Lestat was at best indistinguishable from a walking bloodbag and at worse a particularly mobile part of the scenery; that the only reason he Louis put up with him was the promise of nourishment and/or the fact he really had no choice– never strayed far from his mind, though he would have liked it to.) 

At some arbitrary point Louis would decide he'd had enough. Some nights he would allow himself to be held some more, patiently letting Lestat toy with his hair and fiddle with his fingers for another hour or so before growing bored. Other nights he would twist out of his grasp and bite his maker's fingers if he tried to reach after him. Which if nothing else was easy to interpret. 

He was getting better though, he really was. 

In those first few months of too-short summer nights, Louis’ energies were spent entirely on trying desperately to get at anything he might plausibly be able to bite, no matter the damage he might cause to himself or his surroundings. He did not ( could not? ) speak, there was something wrong with the way he walked, and despite the surprising dexterity with which he’d butchered Tim the postman ( motherfucking Tim ) his fingers didn’t quite work as they should. 

But he was getting better. 

He didn’t try to break the windows anymore, for a start. (Lestat wasn’t sure if it was a sign of natural recuperation or if he had simply learned it wouldn’t work, but either counted as an improvement in his book.) He did spend a lot of time wandering around the house. Or sitting in the same place for extended periods of time for no apparent reason, staring blankly into the air. (Less frantic. Definitely an improvement, Lestat tried to reassure himself.) Fine motor skills were not something he knew how to fix, but he’d tried his best, borrowed (stolen) a book on child development and tried to impose some of the exercises detailed therein every night, after sharing the blood. (Louis didn’t seem to like them but he’d humor him for a while before resorting to biting again.) Speech had been harder. (A work in progress, Lestat reminded himself; he hadn’t given up hope.) 

Now their nights were spent in mostly peaceful cohabitation. Some nights Louis would hole himself up somewhere far away from Lestat and completely ignore the fact he wasn’t the only one in the house. Other times he might settle down in the same room as his maker, and only then completely ignore him. 

That was fine though, it was all fine. Because at the end of the night, every night, somewhere around four-or-five, they would convene in the bedroom. Lestat would usually climb in first, Louis crawling in on top of him. And the coffin lid would be shut. There would be some shuffling, some bumping into wood or each other, kneeing and elbowing as they tried to find their positions within the cramped space. Eventually they would, settling so as to face each other in a tangle of limbs as sleep crept in on them. Some well-earned rest. They had a routine to contend with, after all.

Chapter Text

November 

The first sign of Lestat’s arrival was the soft click of the front door shutting behind him. He did not try to announce himself, instead humming softly to himself as he moved from room to room, looking for Louis. Louis did not stir at the commotion, still sitting by the parlor table as the sound of his boots against the hardwood floor grew louder. Then came a flash of blond hair and those blue eyes looking back at him. Lestat smiled.

“I’m leaving.”

Not leaving you , just leaving. He had been planning on what to say for some time, had been picking his words since he’d made his mind up. The comparison to the last time he’d made a similar threat– some two hundred years ago, in a hotel room not too far from here– lingered heavy between them anyways. Louis waited for a reaction, but Lestat remained rooted to his spot, one hand on the doorframe, the very picture of a deer in the headlights. 

Louis had prepared for an outburst. Yelling and crying, accusations thrown back and forth, maybe a broken vase. A tantrum that would justify leaving without explaining himself, some perfect scenario where he Instead all he got was Lestat staring mutely at him. Only when the silence became unbearable did he speak up again, calmly, as if talking to a small child or a wild animal. “I can’t stay here.” 

That finally got a response. “Of course you can,” he said dismissively, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and Louis, silly Louis, had somehow overlooked the simplest fact of life. “No one is making you leave. This place is as much yours as it is mine.” Lestat was picking at his nails now, leaning sideways in the doorway as he held one hand up for inspection, playing at nonchalance. “If the renovations aren’t to your liking we can have someone redo it. I’ll call the contractors tomorrow evening.”

Louis sighed. “You know this is not about the house.”

“What is it about then?” 

“We just can not keep pretending this is working. This isn’t– I can’t be what you want me to be and it’s not good for either of us to pretend otherwise.” 

Lestat’s thumb slipped, scratching a gash into his finger. “For the love of God Louis, I’ve never asked you to be anything!” He sucked the blood off his finger. 

“You never ask , you never have. I know you. I know how you idealize things. I know that you want to pretend that things can be how they were before. But that is not something I can do, no matter how much you try.”

“ What? ” he asked, turning to face Louis as if he needed to see him to believe those words had really come out of Louis’ mouth. 

Louis huffed out a laugh. “You either treat me like an invalid, tiptoe around me like I’m made of glass, or spend all night baiting me into an argument.”

“Because you won’t talk to me!” he snapped, then quickly recomposed himself, arms crossed over his chest. His voice was softer when he spoke again.

“Because I miss you.” 

Louis wished he would look away, but Lestat stared straight at him, slowly approaching as he spoke. 

“I miss you, Louis. The Louis I know, who argues like it’s his job, who mopes like it’s his only goddamn purpose on this earth, where is that Louis? This is the most you’ve talked to me since–” Lestat took a sharp breath, cutting himself off, but they both knew what he had been about to say. “–in months.”

“Years, Lestat. This is our longest conversation in years ,” Louis corrected softly, though Lestat pretended not to hear him. 

“I can stop hunting for you, that’s fine. You can do it yourself whenever you want to, I’ve invited you to come with me almost every day for weeks now. I’m not keeping you prisoner here.” 

Not anymore , Louis thought, though saying it seemed needlessly unkind. 

“If that’s what this is about I’ll stop. I won’t pick fights anymore. Fine.” He rubbed at his eye with an open palm, a clumsy gesture, like a child trying to rub away his tears. 

“Even if you meant that, it wouldn't be enough.”

“Why, Louis? What is it you think I did? Do you think that I brought you back from being a pile of ashes just to torment you?"

“I don’t know Lestat, why did you do it?”

“I know what it’s like to lose someone like that. I couldn’t just–”

Louis tried not to roll his eyes. “Oh was it guilt then? You felt bad you couldn’t save Nicholas so now–”

“Don’t bring him into this!” He’d stepped towards Louis, one finger held up menacingly. Louis looked at up him, unimpressed. “That’s not–”

“What then,” Louis snapped. “Explain it to me. Tell me why.”

“Because I woke up and you weren’t there! And I didn’t know what else to do.” Louis knew that if he looked up now he would see tears forming in the corners of his eyes, threatening to run down Lestat’s face. Instead he fixed his gaze at the ornately carved mantelpiece; Lestat no more than a vague shape out of the corner of his eye. “I didn’t think you would hate me this much for it.”

“It hardly matters why you made the choices you made. Only that you did, and now here we are.”

“Yes, here we are. You’re here and you’re alive and you’re fine !” There was a trace of desperation lacing his words. Lestat threw his hands up in frustration, raked them through his hair, pulled at it when his ring got caught in a curl. 

“I can barely remember anything that happened before last week. It’s been months and I still feel like my skin is burning whenever I fall asleep.” Louis pretended not to have heard Lestat wince at that. He kept going, trying to keep his tone even. “I’m different now, and I didn't want this. You knew I didn’t want this.”

“What, did you plan on staying weak forever?” Lestat snorted out a laugh. “Why? Is my blood not good enough for you, is that it? Or were you refusing any blood offered just so you could keep the threat of suicide up your sleeve?”

“So you’re allowed to kill yourself but I’m not?”

“That's not the same,” he snapped back. 

“How? Lestat, how is what I did any different from you flying off to the middle of the Gobi fucking desert?” 

“ I didn't actually die,” he hissed. “That wasn't ever the point.” 

“Don’t kid yourself. You had no way to know you would survive that.”

“Well you left me without even saying goodbye!” He had started pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, between the table and the door. Like a newly caged tiger. Louis watched him do it, his own eye gliding back and forth, back and forth. 

“You were not exactly available at the time. I did try.”

“Couldn't you have waited–” His face was all painted in shades of red by this point, the drying tear tracks forming crimson stripes on the lighter background of his face, flushed from frustration. 

“What, until you woke up? Until you came back from galavanting with the next biblical ghost or psychic detective that caught your eye? I was tired, Lestat. You were gone. Armand went into the sun, and the others…” Louis trailed off. “I did wait. I waited for years.”

Lestat finally came to a stop, standing directly in front of him, not quite blocking his exit. For the first time that night Louis allowed himself to really look at him. His face was red and blotchy, hair wild, eyes pink-tinged with fresh tears threatening to fall. He drew in a breath through his mouth, held it open as if to say something. Nothing came out. 

Louis tapped his finger on the table, nail clacking against the wooden surface before finally standing up. Try as he might, he had nothing else to say. 

“Armand has a car waiting outside,” he said instead. One of his hands moved up to Lestat’s shoulder, politely trying to make him move out of the way, only to instead find itself by one of Lestat’s own hands. Louis slid it off his shoulder as he walked past him. He stopped a few steps from the threshold, reaching for something on the mahogany side table. 

“May I borrow this?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder as he held up the book Lestat had once kept in his pocket for months on end, the little beat up paperback that got them all into this mess to begin with. 

“As long as you bring it back.”

October

For a while he could only look to the small things for signs of improvement. 

The way he would rest his hands on the table, fingers interlaced; the way he cocked his head towards the door when Lestat walked in (on the occasion he decided to acknowledge Lestat's presence at all, though his supernatural ability to ignore him might as well count as one of Louis’ many distinctive qualities). 

Occasionally he would go outside, radioactive-green eyes occasionally tracking a passing insect from where he sat on the wrought iron bench, just a few feet from the spot he had dragged his coffin.

It helped, seeing those little changes. But Lestat could pinpoint the exact moment he knew they would be fine. They had been watching TV —Friends, to be specific, which Lestat had grown to like over the last three months— when it happened. Louis had been sitting on the couch for once, curled up with his knees tucked under his chin, sucking idly on Lestat's wrist while the other fiddled with his hair, splayed out so as to take up the rest of the space. 

“Can we watch something else?” 

He didn’t startle at the question, mostly because he simply didn’t realize where it had come from at first. They were both silent for a beat as Lestat slowly realized that the voice had not come from the stereo. 

“What ?” 

“Can we watch something else?” he croaked out again, his voice breaking a little as he strained to speak louder. 

“Yes,” Lestat answered him eventually, once some of the shock had passed. “Yes, of course, whatever you want.” He flipped through channels, colors and figures flashing back at them until Louis had him stop on a nature documentary. They sat on the sofa until the sun tinged the sky purple, watching lions tear chunks off a zebra’s throat. 

Things would get better. He knew they would.