This, Lestat knows intrinsically, like bones know the weather. It doesn't stop him as he gets ready, a ritual that involves a bite to neck of a young man on pills, a stand-off with his mirror as he applies cosmetic glue and a random pattering of multicoloured glitter to his face, around his eyes, down his cheeks, messy, and replenishes last night's eyemakeup with scribbles of eyeliner. Louis is here, and it makes him giddy to think about.
That's the best word for it, for the confused, carbonated mix of anger and desire and defiance and a sense that would come with having broken an expensive belonging out of spite.
Out onto the stage, where calm is smashed by the storm, the pounding drums and the guitar. The lights shine piercing white into the gloom. If the theatre had once covered vampiric traits with greasepaint and shifting lights, none of it is veiled in Lestat's performances. He is, likewise, made bare—clinging purple velvet pants that could have been spraypainted on if not for the looser cuff around his boots, and a corset with black lace panels cinching his waist, tied in dangling black ribbon.
And other details. Reddish bruising across his chest, wrapping around the cuff of his shoulder. The kind of marks of quick healing but damage lingering.
And he seeks Louis out, of course. A smile just for him.
A chance the outfit is meant to showcase the injury, the marks that stand out stark on his skin. He is glittering and bare and mortals reach hands up to him and Louis is still—
Louis is angry. But it doesn't matter. He still wants him. His heart still beats in perfect time with Lestat's on the stage.
Inadvertently dressed to match, Louis wears only leather harness beneath the gauzy white tunic hanging open off his shoulders. Gold gleams from the fastenings, securing loops of leather across his chest, broad strap cinching his waist, the loose-cut trousers Louis still favors. Bared throat, a challenge to any who dare attend and mean to create trouble.
And they are here. Louis can sense them too, blank spots in a crowd that roars its devotion to Lestat.
Louis is counting, tallying, considering, as he meets Lestat's eyes. Sees his smile.
Feels his heart stutter. Always the same. Always Louis soft for him, in spite of all their arguments.
Louis smiles back, a rueful twist of expression. He is here. His heart lurches and warms for Lestat all the same, no matter how badly they parted.
Louis smiles back at him, just like that, and he could nearly forget everything that led up to him taking the stage. Their argument, their absence. His failures, his mistakes. That there are other vampires in the room. That there is anyone else at all in the room.
But he won't forget he is performing. His veins have new blood in them, sparkling and hot. If there was some other purpose to come out here other than to perform, and to do so for Louis, it's lost on him.
He sings. He flirts. He flips his hair this way and lets it fall back with bedroom untidiness. He moves in ways he would not have imagined moving a century ago, paws at himself with nails that scrape his own skin and put marks in his pants, leaning past the stage monitors, putting himself not quite out of reach of grasping humans.
Here, someone has turned their back, filming themselves with Lestat looming in the frame. He drags his gaze off Louis in time to reach out and snag it, a playful theft in which he sings to the little camera, kisses it, and tosses it back into the crowd as artlessly as a fish returned to the sea, no attempt to aim it.
A heavy melodic downswing in the song. He looks again to Louis, a little bit to ensure he has not simply hallucinated him and gotten excited.
And Louis is there still, unmoving, watching. Trying to parse through the feelings burning feverishly in his chest.
He hasn't forgotten being dismissed, banished onto the sidewalk in the late hours of the night. Hasn't forgotten their argument. Hasn't forgotten careening past all the boundaries he'd asked for and Lestat had agreed to.
But he is here.
And he is jealous, he thinks. Maybe jealous, watching hands reaching up to Lestat. Maybe jealous of the easy adoration these mortals can show him. Nothing complicated in it. They scream for him. Lestat glows all the brighter in return.
Louis wants to drag him from the stage and bite him all over.
This desire is written on his face. He is helpless to hide it. Their eyes meet and their connection is nearly a tangible thing, brings Louis a useless step forward.
A whisper breaks the spell. Misplaced. A fledgling's error. A whisper of thought in the air that says I'm ready, I'm ready, I can do it.
Louis' head whips around, placing the vampire. And following the gaze of this overeager young one upwards, to find who is lining the balcony, vampires flexing hands on the edge, readying themselves to leap down into the crowd, onto the stage.
They have seen him. They are reveling in their good luck. Louis' lips peel back off fangs, ignores the mortal beside him who compliments the costume.
He is already moving, breaking eye contact with Lestat to better position himself to leap upwards to meet these vampires before they do whatever it is they intend to do.
Lestat hears it at the same time as Louis, but doesn't have the same whipcrack response. A beat, and then something like jealousy when Louis' attention is no longer on him.
They haven't been brazen enough to attack him during a show, but it has felt inevitable. Irresistible, maybe, to those few who would decide the public nature of Lestat's performances is not a deterrent but an opportunity. See what happens, when someone reaches out the shadows they've been consigned to, towards the illumination of visibility? They are ripped apart.
A risk. Maybe the humans would believe in them more than ever. But then the wilful ignorance would set in, the explanations, the rapid onset of time turning their focus elsewhere. So long as it never happened again.
Louis is moving.
Lestat feels it as a ripple in the crowd, attuned as he is to them, like his nervous system has extended out from his own body to permeate through the mob. He lifts his eyes to the balcony but continues to sing, and move, and slowly wind the tenuous link he has with the psyche of his audience around his hand, ready to yank.
The crowd rearranges itself for Louis. Little mental nudges, coupled with the expression on his face. These things in combination, it's enough. He winds his way to the edge of the crowd where the crush of bodies eases up. Room to move.
Aware of Lestat. Aware of Lestat's attention, and how the crowd feeds that attention, the way they seem to exist as a looped entity rather than performer and audience. Maybe Lestat would have something poetic to say about the state he and his crowds find themselves in, if he and Louis were speaking.
They are not, not presently. And Louis is busy.
He's turned his face up. One of them is looking down. Louis can see the excitement blooming, transparent glee as the young man points a finger downwards. Young. Young and overconfident, never thinking that it may well be a mistake to so brazenly indicate Louis below and say aloud beneath the driving roar of the crowd and clash of guitar and drum and Lestat's sonorous voice: The fucking other one is here too, look, he's right there!
Two birds, one stone. Louis bares his teeth upwards, one of these children snarls back.
It turns out Louis doesn't have to jump upwards. They being to launch themselves over the rail, one by one, with their fangs out and murder in their eyes as they cut through the startled mortals. Louis pivots to meet them, some intention of drawing them off, back, away, out a door, into the street—
The plunge silence feels almost physical. The driving drumbeat tapers, stalls out. The guitars whine, go still. The cheering and singing and the stomp of shoots and thump of jumping mortals all cease.
Comical, nearly, the orderly way every mortal in the venue stops what they are doing and begins to make for the exits, including his bandmates—Larry, still holding his drumsticks, Alex unwinding his guitar strap, Cookie turning from her keyboard, clomping her way backstage in her heavy boots. The sound of a heavy exhale from Lestat whispers through his microphone, the speakers, and then a thump and a whine as the device is discarded.
Perhaps not the best of all ideas to do a thing that drains him still—but it has been a century. No blood drips from his ear. A burst capillary at the corner of his eye is manageable. A moment of double vision blinked away.
What Louis is capable of, how he can make a path but not clear a room, is so instantly dwarfed as every mortal falls silent. Louis feels a whine rising in his ears. (A memory: banishment.) The movement that follows after is shockingly orderly, considering the scents in the air, drugs, alcohol, those who were stumbling before and are not stumbling now.
There is not total silence, but the absence of noise makes it feel as if it were. As if all the noise in the world is gone, and all these vampires stand in absolute quiet.
Then the most eager of the fledglings hisses down at Lestat.
Overconfident, even in the wake of that show of power. Louis could admire if it he were so absolutely galled, so immediately furious.
"Last chance to turn tail," he calls up, a breezy quality to the threat. Taunting. Drawing focus. Look at him. Easy mark.
And Louis is on the way. Positioned between the spread-out cluster of vampires in the balcony, those who had leapt down to meet Louis and Lestat from the floor. Their fangs are out. Louis' lips peel back off his own. He has put his back to Lestat, though the nape of his neck is prickling, aware, oversensitive.
"Come on," invitation. He can see eyes lifting past him, measuring. Lestat on the stage. Louis on the floor.
Above, a heavy voice from an unseen participant instructs, "Go ahead."
And they do, all of them, all these vampires. They break into a run, claws out. Already certain of their victory.
They move. They dare. Lestat roars at them, a harsh bellow, another kind of primal compared to his singing, his previous song that had felt a little more like something that could be murmured against the neck.
In Louis' periphery, a sudden clash. Lestat, leaping directly from the stage to slam himself bodily into the one coming at Louis from the left. A loud thump of bones within flesh and the smack of two dense bodies hitting the ground hard enough to slide and tumble. By the time they've rolled to a halt, Lestat has long fangs sunk into the stretch of muscle that connects elbow to arm, tearing muscle.
The vampire he is tangled with snaps to do the same, but is rolled before he can, and punched clean across the face.
Another. A voice from on high, directing but not participating. Louis marks it, but is occupied, maybe exactly as intended.
Lestat roars and Louis feels his own bones rattle with it. Not directed at him, no, but he is caught in the effect anyway and obliged to grit his teeth, push past the flinch as adrenaline floods his system.
Passing thought: Lestat is a beautiful hunter, beautiful and terrible and Louis had forgotten just enough to be awed.
The impact of Lestat's fist is loud in this place. Underscored by fire, a burst of flame catching three and sending them shrieking and reeling away as their clothes catch. He wishes he hadn't done it. He is aware they are being watched.
But there is little option. They are outnumbered. There are enough hopefuls to split, and they do, picking their target, rushing. Louis grabs one by the face, nails grinding against jawbone as he kicks out and breaks a kneecap, flings the broken body aside. Turns to find Lestat, eyes catching his in the split second before two fledglings slam into Louis and bear him, snapping and snarling, down to the pavement.
Another close fisted strike, enough to knock teeth free of jaw, dark blood spattering and the head winged aside so violently that a delicate click of bone is a signal of catastrophic spinal damage.
Just in time for Lestat to look up, eyes murderously black and mouth already gory. Firelight striking red blood and colourful glitter and the shine of party lights currently unmoving, abandoned by tech filing out with everyone else. A moment to meet eyes before further chaos breaks out and he moves, gets to his feet, speeds over with impossibly fast, silent footfalls of elevated platform heels—
He picks one up by the neck who had fumbled his grip and simply throws him, hard enough that when the vampire strikes the load-bearing cement pillar he is aimed at, there's a crack of bone and a bloody streak as he tumbles to the ground.
The second one, Lestat wheels on, bringing his hands up so as to strike back down to sink nails deep into flesh, intent on wresting him off Louis.
No separation now, as they are brought back together and Lestat is here, towering over him. Already bloody, skin gleaming, Lestat is beautiful and terrible and Louis feels a savage urge to laugh.
They are surrounded. A tightening circle. There is a figure on the balcony, shadowed still, watching. Louis can see them, a glimpse, as Lestat wrests a snapping fledging up and off Louis.
He springs to his feet. They have been driven together and it's an error. Perhaps their assailants don't yet realize it.
"Die," Louis invites, as he turns his attention wholly to the vampire caught in Lestat's grip and sets them alight.
Trusts Lestat to throw them, to use the body as a weapon.
Between his hands, the assailant bursts into flames.
Lestat, for all his anger, still has room to bark a delighted laugh. Singes some strands of extra-flammable hair, leaves ash on his skin, but he moves before the little inferno he is holding can do him real damage, spinning like a dancer and hurling the hapless, screaming mess at two of the circling threats that had been at his back.
Fire loves the dead, it seems. Or Louis' burns extra hot. Lestat could believe that, that this force of nature produced by his fledgling's passion could feast as greedily as his hunger wants him to. Fire catches, spreads, and snarling turns to screams.
There is another, not yet joining the fight. Lestat is aware, but more occupied with those he can more easily get his teeth into.
A lurch. An invisible pressure catching his ankle, hauling it out from under him, and he lands with a heavy thump against the concrete floor. He loosens an indignant snarl as he is dragged by invisible force towards the two other assailants, who have clued into the thought that Louis and Lestat at each others sides is a tactical error.
Something ancient observing them from on high. Louis touches the edges of its presence and feels the sun baked heat of age. A desert, vast and deadly and a problem, but only upon descent.
Marked. Set aside, because the more pressing matter is Lestat, dragging across the filthy concrete.
No warning. Fabric tears, scrapes welling blood, frustrated curses filling the air as Louis slips from grasping hands. Louis is faster, blurs past Lestat to those waiting for their prey to be delivered to them. Launches into the air, up and over Lestat's body, making himself into a projectile.
The sound of cracking bone is audible. The vampire pinned beneath Louis is shrieking, wails dissolving into wet gurgles as Louis batters fists into their chest and head until he is yanked backwards by the neck.
This one gets him into the air, up and off, but doesn't quite avoid teeth. Louis' mouth fills with blood, tearing flesh. He can't see Lestat, but feels him, aware of him close by, alive and present. Louis thrashes towards the awareness of him as the vampire tightens her hold, fighting to strangle rather than drag.
The spiked blood, maybe, or the draining of his faculties to shepherd the humans to safety and ignorance, or both, roaring up to make his sudden horizontality more of disorienting that it should have been. Lestat rolls aside, a hand slapped to the ground as if he feels himself start to tip too far forward, threatening to overcorrect and fall on his face.
It's the desire to disguise weakness that spurs him to get his shit together, chasing the sound of Louis. Up, into the air. This, too, as sobering as a bucket of ice.
He scrambles to his feet, propels himself towards the tangle in something that is both flight and a leap, claws digging into flesh and muscle and fangs finding somewhere to dig in. To drink.
Nonsensically, Louis thinks of Claudia. (He hasn't taught me to fly.) This vampire digs her claws in at his throat and Louis is snarling into her face even as his heartbeat rises, panicky and afraid because he can control neither of these things. She is smiling. She smells it on him, even without her fangs in his skin, and Louis will kill her, he'll kill her—
And then, Lestat.
A blur of movement. The impact of him, slamming so hard into her that they spin sideways, all three of them colliding with a support beam running from floor to ceiling. Debris shudders down, a hungry murmur rising up from the vampires circling below.
Lestat bites down and Louis' almost-captor shrieks, sputters. Hooks her fingers in under Louis' jaw, struggling, thrashing. Exposes her throat enough for Louis to stab fingers into it, and burn her there, grapple up with one shaking hand to take hold of her by the face and twist until bone and muscle give, separate.
They are up near the scaffolding from which hang light fixtures still aimed at the stage, the smell of burning dust and plastic and hot metal, and now blood. The whole rig clatters as Lestat's attack drives them up against it, and there is something slack about the blood that spills from bite wound when Louis snaps something vital.
A wrenching. A limpness.
Lestat only registers Louis' fall when it's begun, and he moves, all instinct. Compels himself downwards faster than gravity as the corpse of the other vampire is blindly flung aside. His arms wrap around Louis who feels it like impact, a spin of wild momentum, and a lurch as they are caught by Lestat's will.
A sideways rush. They clash into the balcony. Things to grab.
The force of impact drives the breath from his body. Louis is in and out of it, adrenaline spiking high. Reaches for anger, because it is better to be incandescently angry than to feel any other thing he feels in this moment.
There are things to grab. Lestat is holding him, and when Louis' eyes focus, all he can see is Lestat. His hand grips bannister, the dangling electrical cords. Behind them, this ancient is vanishing, displeased with the action intruding on their chosen view. They could chase, but what advantage do they have here? Louis measures himself against vampires of all stripes, and he knows when he needs to take a different approach. The ancient is going. The fledglings below are churning, eager, faces upturned.
Louis grips Lestat's face in one hand, tremor stilled by the force of his grasp.
"They all gotta die," Louis rasps. His tongue feels thick in his mouth.
Maybe they have to die for making him feel this. For provoking a reaction so far beyond his control. Maybe they have to die for witnessing it. For doing it in front of Lestat.
Maybe they have to die simply because they raised a hand against Lestat.
Hard fingers, but Louis' face. Lestat is handled willingly, mouth parted and fangs peeking past curled lip. Eyes dazed and then, all at once, sharply attentive.
He smiles in spite of the intrusion of fingertips into facial muscles. "Oui, mon cher," dreamily breathless. They all gotta die. Lestat can do this for him. Lestat would do anything for him. But, you know, first, for luck—
Lestat goes to hook his hand around the back of Louis' head, intent on crushing a kiss to his mouth.
They kiss. Louis' grip becomes an encouragement, guiding Lestat in as his opposite hand splinters the balcony rail behind them. They kiss and Lestat tastes of blood and liquor and chemicals. He fills Louis' senses. He blots out the tinny whine in Louis' ears, the panicky thud of his heartbeat.
It is as it has always been: Lestat is everything, even when they've argued, fought, hurt each other.
For a split second, everything else goes away.
And then Louis bites him, a sharp nip to his lower lip.
Says, "After," without even fully considering what he's proposing.
After. Everything must wait until after those below have been made to regret what they've done here tonight.
And time slows around them, one last flex of ability that Lestat is happy to funnel into giving them space for a biting kiss instead of shooting the fish in the barrel below. He could swoon again, but keeps his grip on the railing, lists into Louis. After. Something to look forward to. He's lacked this simple joy for a while, now.
Lestat looks down. These ones are in the way of his after. So, he leaps again—lets gravity do the work, drags the burliest of them down with him into a tussle, Lestat's swifter hand catching his target up under the chin to slam his skull back into concrete.
Whether or not they survive is a foregone conclusion.
Louis is left dangling as Lestat goes, a moment to catch his breath. The elder is an ink blot in the corner of his awareness. Fading fast, packing up. Louis has some certainty this attempt was organized, a gift for Lestat. Louis is less sure anyone realized he was going to attend.
No, Louis can't fly, but he can fall. Swings his legs where he hangs, building momentum, before he lets go of the ruined balcony and follows Lestat's example, makes himself into a projectile.
Again, they are a matched set. Lestat drags down the largest of their number. Louis lands so hard behind him that the vampire unlucky enough to break his fall snaps bone, screaming from the floor as Louis gets to his feet. This vampire does not rise alongside him. Louis does him a minor mercy: kicks him hard enough in the face to send him into unconsciousness before he makes an end of him.
No wavering in Louis' resolve. They all must die. Some have survived him, ones and twos, to spread the word. But tonight isn't that kind of night.
"Lestat," is the beginning and end of Louis' sentence. Nothing else needs to be said. They move together as they always did, and Louis need say nothing else other than his name to draw his attention to the fact that the remaining three have begun backing away from them. That their assailants are considering retreat.
Edited (no, let's do it different) 2025-08-10 15:17 (UTC)
In Louis' periphery, Lestat slides to a stand, a liquid way of moving that always informs the way he navigates the world but seems especially pronounced when he is either closing in on something he wishes to kill, or prowling the stage as he was moments ago.
He smiles as he sees what Louis has called attention to: fear. Fear unmasked, no vampiric bravado or adrenaline or fierceness, just hasty math being made of the doors, their relative positioning, and a sense of white noise where Lestat can just barely hear swift telepathic correspondence snapping back and forth between them.
"Don't run," he suggests. Touching Louis' shoulder. Three, two, one—
And scaffolding with a full set of stage lights slams down onto the trio, where, beyond anyone's perception, the screws had been nimbly untwisted, enough connecting pieces overhead quietly, telekinetically worked free until the whole rig could come down with a crash of shrieking metal and breaking glass.
Lestat's cackle fills the ringing aftermath, the angry hissing and clamour.
Sudden awareness: Louis has missed Lestat's laughter, even ill-timed or infuriating.
Louis looks at these struggling, pinned vampires, and extends a hand. Unnecessary, dramatic gesture. Louis doesn't need any physical movement to encourage flame. It cracks to life, consuming these last three, heating the metal of the scaffolding to molten temperatures.
Lestat is touching his shoulder. At some point, Louis has caught hold of his hip.
They're alive.
"We missed one."
Mild. Louis doesn't truly count whatever or whoever had been occupying the balcony as a player in this conflict. That had had been a conductor. It will be a problem another day, Louis is sure.
They are touching each other, a thing as natural to Lestat as standing, breathing, existing. It is natural then too to pivot on the axis of these touches, to sling his arms around Louis' shoulders, moving them in a circle together. He reaches out, encourages flames to leap, to set hot teeth in the other downed vampires. It's the only way to be sure.
"Very wise of them," Lestat is saying as he does so. The black is shrinking in his eyes, which are bloodshot and bright, a little manic in a way that is probably familiar and new at the same time. Moon-bright irises have a natural intensity. So do his moods.
And Louis is here, in his arms, although there is a jostling, rowdy, bullying quality to this grasp as they turn together.
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no subject
This, Lestat knows intrinsically, like bones know the weather. It doesn't stop him as he gets ready, a ritual that involves a bite to neck of a young man on pills, a stand-off with his mirror as he applies cosmetic glue and a random pattering of multicoloured glitter to his face, around his eyes, down his cheeks, messy, and replenishes last night's eyemakeup with scribbles of eyeliner. Louis is here, and it makes him giddy to think about.
That's the best word for it, for the confused, carbonated mix of anger and desire and defiance and a sense that would come with having broken an expensive belonging out of spite.
Out onto the stage, where calm is smashed by the storm, the pounding drums and the guitar. The lights shine piercing white into the gloom. If the theatre had once covered vampiric traits with greasepaint and shifting lights, none of it is veiled in Lestat's performances. He is, likewise, made bare—clinging purple velvet pants that could have been spraypainted on if not for the looser cuff around his boots, and a corset with black lace panels cinching his waist, tied in dangling black ribbon.
And other details. Reddish bruising across his chest, wrapping around the cuff of his shoulder. The kind of marks of quick healing but damage lingering.
And he seeks Louis out, of course. A smile just for him.
no subject
And he is hurt.
A chance the outfit is meant to showcase the injury, the marks that stand out stark on his skin. He is glittering and bare and mortals reach hands up to him and Louis is still—
Louis is angry. But it doesn't matter. He still wants him. His heart still beats in perfect time with Lestat's on the stage.
Inadvertently dressed to match, Louis wears only leather harness beneath the gauzy white tunic hanging open off his shoulders. Gold gleams from the fastenings, securing loops of leather across his chest, broad strap cinching his waist, the loose-cut trousers Louis still favors. Bared throat, a challenge to any who dare attend and mean to create trouble.
And they are here. Louis can sense them too, blank spots in a crowd that roars its devotion to Lestat.
Louis is counting, tallying, considering, as he meets Lestat's eyes. Sees his smile.
Feels his heart stutter. Always the same. Always Louis soft for him, in spite of all their arguments.
Louis smiles back, a rueful twist of expression. He is here. His heart lurches and warms for Lestat all the same, no matter how badly they parted.
no subject
But he won't forget he is performing. His veins have new blood in them, sparkling and hot. If there was some other purpose to come out here other than to perform, and to do so for Louis, it's lost on him.
He sings. He flirts. He flips his hair this way and lets it fall back with bedroom untidiness. He moves in ways he would not have imagined moving a century ago, paws at himself with nails that scrape his own skin and put marks in his pants, leaning past the stage monitors, putting himself not quite out of reach of grasping humans.
Here, someone has turned their back, filming themselves with Lestat looming in the frame. He drags his gaze off Louis in time to reach out and snag it, a playful theft in which he sings to the little camera, kisses it, and tosses it back into the crowd as artlessly as a fish returned to the sea, no attempt to aim it.
A heavy melodic downswing in the song. He looks again to Louis, a little bit to ensure he has not simply hallucinated him and gotten excited.
no subject
He hasn't forgotten being dismissed, banished onto the sidewalk in the late hours of the night. Hasn't forgotten their argument. Hasn't forgotten careening past all the boundaries he'd asked for and Lestat had agreed to.
But he is here.
And he is jealous, he thinks. Maybe jealous, watching hands reaching up to Lestat. Maybe jealous of the easy adoration these mortals can show him. Nothing complicated in it. They scream for him. Lestat glows all the brighter in return.
Louis wants to drag him from the stage and bite him all over.
This desire is written on his face. He is helpless to hide it. Their eyes meet and their connection is nearly a tangible thing, brings Louis a useless step forward.
A whisper breaks the spell. Misplaced. A fledgling's error. A whisper of thought in the air that says I'm ready, I'm ready, I can do it.
Louis' head whips around, placing the vampire. And following the gaze of this overeager young one upwards, to find who is lining the balcony, vampires flexing hands on the edge, readying themselves to leap down into the crowd, onto the stage.
They have seen him. They are reveling in their good luck. Louis' lips peel back off fangs, ignores the mortal beside him who compliments the costume.
He is already moving, breaking eye contact with Lestat to better position himself to leap upwards to meet these vampires before they do whatever it is they intend to do.
no subject
They haven't been brazen enough to attack him during a show, but it has felt inevitable. Irresistible, maybe, to those few who would decide the public nature of Lestat's performances is not a deterrent but an opportunity. See what happens, when someone reaches out the shadows they've been consigned to, towards the illumination of visibility? They are ripped apart.
A risk. Maybe the humans would believe in them more than ever. But then the wilful ignorance would set in, the explanations, the rapid onset of time turning their focus elsewhere. So long as it never happened again.
Louis is moving.
Lestat feels it as a ripple in the crowd, attuned as he is to them, like his nervous system has extended out from his own body to permeate through the mob. He lifts his eyes to the balcony but continues to sing, and move, and slowly wind the tenuous link he has with the psyche of his audience around his hand, ready to yank.
no subject
Aware of Lestat. Aware of Lestat's attention, and how the crowd feeds that attention, the way they seem to exist as a looped entity rather than performer and audience. Maybe Lestat would have something poetic to say about the state he and his crowds find themselves in, if he and Louis were speaking.
They are not, not presently. And Louis is busy.
He's turned his face up. One of them is looking down. Louis can see the excitement blooming, transparent glee as the young man points a finger downwards. Young. Young and overconfident, never thinking that it may well be a mistake to so brazenly indicate Louis below and say aloud beneath the driving roar of the crowd and clash of guitar and drum and Lestat's sonorous voice: The fucking other one is here too, look, he's right there!
Two birds, one stone. Louis bares his teeth upwards, one of these children snarls back.
It turns out Louis doesn't have to jump upwards. They being to launch themselves over the rail, one by one, with their fangs out and murder in their eyes as they cut through the startled mortals. Louis pivots to meet them, some intention of drawing them off, back, away, out a door, into the street—
no subject
The plunge silence feels almost physical. The driving drumbeat tapers, stalls out. The guitars whine, go still. The cheering and singing and the stomp of shoots and thump of jumping mortals all cease.
Comical, nearly, the orderly way every mortal in the venue stops what they are doing and begins to make for the exits, including his bandmates—Larry, still holding his drumsticks, Alex unwinding his guitar strap, Cookie turning from her keyboard, clomping her way backstage in her heavy boots. The sound of a heavy exhale from Lestat whispers through his microphone, the speakers, and then a thump and a whine as the device is discarded.
Perhaps not the best of all ideas to do a thing that drains him still—but it has been a century. No blood drips from his ear. A burst capillary at the corner of his eye is manageable. A moment of double vision blinked away.
He bares his fangs.
no subject
There is not total silence, but the absence of noise makes it feel as if it were. As if all the noise in the world is gone, and all these vampires stand in absolute quiet.
Then the most eager of the fledglings hisses down at Lestat.
Overconfident, even in the wake of that show of power. Louis could admire if it he were so absolutely galled, so immediately furious.
"Last chance to turn tail," he calls up, a breezy quality to the threat. Taunting. Drawing focus. Look at him. Easy mark.
And Louis is on the way. Positioned between the spread-out cluster of vampires in the balcony, those who had leapt down to meet Louis and Lestat from the floor. Their fangs are out. Louis' lips peel back off his own. He has put his back to Lestat, though the nape of his neck is prickling, aware, oversensitive.
"Come on," invitation. He can see eyes lifting past him, measuring. Lestat on the stage. Louis on the floor.
Above, a heavy voice from an unseen participant instructs, "Go ahead."
And they do, all of them, all these vampires. They break into a run, claws out. Already certain of their victory.
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In Louis' periphery, a sudden clash. Lestat, leaping directly from the stage to slam himself bodily into the one coming at Louis from the left. A loud thump of bones within flesh and the smack of two dense bodies hitting the ground hard enough to slide and tumble. By the time they've rolled to a halt, Lestat has long fangs sunk into the stretch of muscle that connects elbow to arm, tearing muscle.
The vampire he is tangled with snaps to do the same, but is rolled before he can, and punched clean across the face.
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Lestat roars and Louis feels his own bones rattle with it. Not directed at him, no, but he is caught in the effect anyway and obliged to grit his teeth, push past the flinch as adrenaline floods his system.
Passing thought: Lestat is a beautiful hunter, beautiful and terrible and Louis had forgotten just enough to be awed.
The impact of Lestat's fist is loud in this place. Underscored by fire, a burst of flame catching three and sending them shrieking and reeling away as their clothes catch. He wishes he hadn't done it. He is aware they are being watched.
But there is little option. They are outnumbered. There are enough hopefuls to split, and they do, picking their target, rushing. Louis grabs one by the face, nails grinding against jawbone as he kicks out and breaks a kneecap, flings the broken body aside. Turns to find Lestat, eyes catching his in the split second before two fledglings slam into Louis and bear him, snapping and snarling, down to the pavement.
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Just in time for Lestat to look up, eyes murderously black and mouth already gory. Firelight striking red blood and colourful glitter and the shine of party lights currently unmoving, abandoned by tech filing out with everyone else. A moment to meet eyes before further chaos breaks out and he moves, gets to his feet, speeds over with impossibly fast, silent footfalls of elevated platform heels—
He picks one up by the neck who had fumbled his grip and simply throws him, hard enough that when the vampire strikes the load-bearing cement pillar he is aimed at, there's a crack of bone and a bloody streak as he tumbles to the ground.
The second one, Lestat wheels on, bringing his hands up so as to strike back down to sink nails deep into flesh, intent on wresting him off Louis.
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They are surrounded. A tightening circle. There is a figure on the balcony, shadowed still, watching. Louis can see them, a glimpse, as Lestat wrests a snapping fledging up and off Louis.
He springs to his feet. They have been driven together and it's an error. Perhaps their assailants don't yet realize it.
"Die," Louis invites, as he turns his attention wholly to the vampire caught in Lestat's grip and sets them alight.
Trusts Lestat to throw them, to use the body as a weapon.
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Lestat, for all his anger, still has room to bark a delighted laugh. Singes some strands of extra-flammable hair, leaves ash on his skin, but he moves before the little inferno he is holding can do him real damage, spinning like a dancer and hurling the hapless, screaming mess at two of the circling threats that had been at his back.
Fire loves the dead, it seems. Or Louis' burns extra hot. Lestat could believe that, that this force of nature produced by his fledgling's passion could feast as greedily as his hunger wants him to. Fire catches, spreads, and snarling turns to screams.
There is another, not yet joining the fight. Lestat is aware, but more occupied with those he can more easily get his teeth into.
A lurch. An invisible pressure catching his ankle, hauling it out from under him, and he lands with a heavy thump against the concrete floor. He loosens an indignant snarl as he is dragged by invisible force towards the two other assailants, who have clued into the thought that Louis and Lestat at each others sides is a tactical error.
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Marked. Set aside, because the more pressing matter is Lestat, dragging across the filthy concrete.
No warning. Fabric tears, scrapes welling blood, frustrated curses filling the air as Louis slips from grasping hands. Louis is faster, blurs past Lestat to those waiting for their prey to be delivered to them. Launches into the air, up and over Lestat's body, making himself into a projectile.
The sound of cracking bone is audible. The vampire pinned beneath Louis is shrieking, wails dissolving into wet gurgles as Louis batters fists into their chest and head until he is yanked backwards by the neck.
This one gets him into the air, up and off, but doesn't quite avoid teeth. Louis' mouth fills with blood, tearing flesh. He can't see Lestat, but feels him, aware of him close by, alive and present. Louis thrashes towards the awareness of him as the vampire tightens her hold, fighting to strangle rather than drag.
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The spiked blood, maybe, or the draining of his faculties to shepherd the humans to safety and ignorance, or both, roaring up to make his sudden horizontality more of disorienting that it should have been. Lestat rolls aside, a hand slapped to the ground as if he feels himself start to tip too far forward, threatening to overcorrect and fall on his face.
It's the desire to disguise weakness that spurs him to get his shit together, chasing the sound of Louis. Up, into the air. This, too, as sobering as a bucket of ice.
He scrambles to his feet, propels himself towards the tangle in something that is both flight and a leap, claws digging into flesh and muscle and fangs finding somewhere to dig in. To drink.
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And then, Lestat.
A blur of movement. The impact of him, slamming so hard into her that they spin sideways, all three of them colliding with a support beam running from floor to ceiling. Debris shudders down, a hungry murmur rising up from the vampires circling below.
Lestat bites down and Louis' almost-captor shrieks, sputters. Hooks her fingers in under Louis' jaw, struggling, thrashing. Exposes her throat enough for Louis to stab fingers into it, and burn her there, grapple up with one shaking hand to take hold of her by the face and twist until bone and muscle give, separate.
Abruptly, he is released.
Louis cannot fly.
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A wrenching. A limpness.
Lestat only registers Louis' fall when it's begun, and he moves, all instinct. Compels himself downwards faster than gravity as the corpse of the other vampire is blindly flung aside. His arms wrap around Louis who feels it like impact, a spin of wild momentum, and a lurch as they are caught by Lestat's will.
A sideways rush. They clash into the balcony. Things to grab.
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There are things to grab. Lestat is holding him, and when Louis' eyes focus, all he can see is Lestat. His hand grips bannister, the dangling electrical cords. Behind them, this ancient is vanishing, displeased with the action intruding on their chosen view. They could chase, but what advantage do they have here? Louis measures himself against vampires of all stripes, and he knows when he needs to take a different approach. The ancient is going. The fledglings below are churning, eager, faces upturned.
Louis grips Lestat's face in one hand, tremor stilled by the force of his grasp.
"They all gotta die," Louis rasps. His tongue feels thick in his mouth.
Maybe they have to die for making him feel this. For provoking a reaction so far beyond his control. Maybe they have to die for witnessing it. For doing it in front of Lestat.
Maybe they have to die simply because they raised a hand against Lestat.
Pick one. Pick all. Louis' already decided.
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Hard fingers, but Louis' face. Lestat is handled willingly, mouth parted and fangs peeking past curled lip. Eyes dazed and then, all at once, sharply attentive.
He smiles in spite of the intrusion of fingertips into facial muscles. "Oui, mon cher," dreamily breathless. They all gotta die. Lestat can do this for him. Lestat would do anything for him. But, you know, first, for luck—
Lestat goes to hook his hand around the back of Louis' head, intent on crushing a kiss to his mouth.
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He doesn't.
They kiss. Louis' grip becomes an encouragement, guiding Lestat in as his opposite hand splinters the balcony rail behind them. They kiss and Lestat tastes of blood and liquor and chemicals. He fills Louis' senses. He blots out the tinny whine in Louis' ears, the panicky thud of his heartbeat.
It is as it has always been: Lestat is everything, even when they've argued, fought, hurt each other.
For a split second, everything else goes away.
And then Louis bites him, a sharp nip to his lower lip.
Says, "After," without even fully considering what he's proposing.
After. Everything must wait until after those below have been made to regret what they've done here tonight.
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And time slows around them, one last flex of ability that Lestat is happy to funnel into giving them space for a biting kiss instead of shooting the fish in the barrel below. He could swoon again, but keeps his grip on the railing, lists into Louis. After. Something to look forward to. He's lacked this simple joy for a while, now.
Lestat looks down. These ones are in the way of his after. So, he leaps again—lets gravity do the work, drags the burliest of them down with him into a tussle, Lestat's swifter hand catching his target up under the chin to slam his skull back into concrete.
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Whether or not they survive is a foregone conclusion.
Louis is left dangling as Lestat goes, a moment to catch his breath. The elder is an ink blot in the corner of his awareness. Fading fast, packing up. Louis has some certainty this attempt was organized, a gift for Lestat. Louis is less sure anyone realized he was going to attend.
No, Louis can't fly, but he can fall. Swings his legs where he hangs, building momentum, before he lets go of the ruined balcony and follows Lestat's example, makes himself into a projectile.
Again, they are a matched set. Lestat drags down the largest of their number. Louis lands so hard behind him that the vampire unlucky enough to break his fall snaps bone, screaming from the floor as Louis gets to his feet. This vampire does not rise alongside him. Louis does him a minor mercy: kicks him hard enough in the face to send him into unconsciousness before he makes an end of him.
No wavering in Louis' resolve. They all must die. Some have survived him, ones and twos, to spread the word. But tonight isn't that kind of night.
"Lestat," is the beginning and end of Louis' sentence. Nothing else needs to be said. They move together as they always did, and Louis need say nothing else other than his name to draw his attention to the fact that the remaining three have begun backing away from them. That their assailants are considering retreat.
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He smiles as he sees what Louis has called attention to: fear. Fear unmasked, no vampiric bravado or adrenaline or fierceness, just hasty math being made of the doors, their relative positioning, and a sense of white noise where Lestat can just barely hear swift telepathic correspondence snapping back and forth between them.
"Don't run," he suggests. Touching Louis' shoulder. Three, two, one—
And scaffolding with a full set of stage lights slams down onto the trio, where, beyond anyone's perception, the screws had been nimbly untwisted, enough connecting pieces overhead quietly, telekinetically worked free until the whole rig could come down with a crash of shrieking metal and breaking glass.
Lestat's cackle fills the ringing aftermath, the angry hissing and clamour.
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Louis looks at these struggling, pinned vampires, and extends a hand. Unnecessary, dramatic gesture. Louis doesn't need any physical movement to encourage flame. It cracks to life, consuming these last three, heating the metal of the scaffolding to molten temperatures.
Lestat is touching his shoulder. At some point, Louis has caught hold of his hip.
They're alive.
"We missed one."
Mild. Louis doesn't truly count whatever or whoever had been occupying the balcony as a player in this conflict. That had had been a conductor. It will be a problem another day, Louis is sure.
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"Very wise of them," Lestat is saying as he does so. The black is shrinking in his eyes, which are bloodshot and bright, a little manic in a way that is probably familiar and new at the same time. Moon-bright irises have a natural intensity. So do his moods.
And Louis is here, in his arms, although there is a jostling, rowdy, bullying quality to this grasp as they turn together.
"Did you like the show?"
What all thirty seconds of it occurred.
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