Maybe Louis sees the photoshoot first before Lestat's gift arrives in his penthouse in Dubai. It makes a social media splash, a racy photoshoot between the Vampire Lestat and another rising star, a female popstar of similar inclination towards glitter and spectacle. Black and white images with deliberate harsh lighting and flash photography, a tangle of rockstar messiness and, notably, blood rendered in tones of steely black. Pale skin decorated in accessories, framed in what is more lingerie than clothing, some more dressed than others.
Specifically a photograph of Lestat's fangs in the meat of her thigh, her head thrown back as liquid trickles around and down between her legs. Blood smeared in the next, across his face, across her thigh. Later, the starlet posts some images on her Instagram, a full colour version showing dark red blood, and her own picture of bruised, marked up skin, a little vampire emoji, a lyric from a song, and chaos in her comment section.
And then Louis receives a package. Merch, first: a poster, a few different styles of T-shirts, tending towards black and purple. A keychain, a bumper sticker. More intriguing, a folder without a note, and several printed photographs within.
Ones that didn't make publication, for obvious reasons. A handful of images of just Lestat, still wearing bracelets of leather, a metal spiked collar, but only those things. It is the kind of shoot that is a love affair with the photographer, unabashed and shameless, gazing down the camera as if it were the object of his own desire. If there is cut material of his musician friend, it only shows up in one of the images, where she is standing out of frame save for her bare leg, and Lestat is licking clean a rivulet of blood.
Louis is a photographer, isn't he? Certainly, he should appreciate these insights.
Yes, the photos find Louis before Rashid forwards the package in question.
Lestat, looking out from a glossy magazine cover strewn artfully across a glass tabletop in a hotel lobby. An artful shot, bright eyes looking up from lovely thigh. Newsprint arranged so as not to distract from her face, his fangs.
Louis had felt his heart flip, clench, whole body flush hot. He'd taken the magazine. Hadn't opened it, only stashed it in his suitcase. (Entertained buying out the entirety of the run. Frivolous. Foolish.) It had traveled with him, one hotel to another, untouched.
Untouched until the package arrives, along with a handful of other forwarded mail, other things Louis requested from his penthouse. A shock, opening the folder. The box of merch is sitting on a tabletop. Louis is seated, all mail neatly arranged, and then:
These photos.
These photos.
Lestat, bare. Bare and made more so by the items that remain. The suggestion of this musician, Lestat's tongue on her skin.
Louis fetches the magazine to compare. Is not assuaged by what has made it to print. Has the sense that he will never break free of the furious flush of jealousy, that it will consume him, that he can do nothing but feel it, and feel it, and feel it, with nowhere and nothing to do but wrestle uselessly with what isn't his to claim any ownership over.
The contents of the package, t-shirts, key-chains, bumper sticker, magazine and photos, all of it would burn.
Louis doesn't burn any of it.
All things, photos and magazine, merchandise and all, are packed up neatly and added to the assortment of items that follow Louis around his own miniature tour of the country. They follow him to New Orleans, where he is absent from Lestat's dressing room at the beginning of the show.
Deciding, still. Deciding what he should be doing around Lestat when Louis has been driven to distraction by what feels pointed but cannot be about Louis, not really. It is a photoshoot. The additional pictures are—
It's not about Louis. He cannot entertain any other possibility without losing his grasp on his self-control.
Here too, Louis descends into the crowd into the crush of mortal bodies screaming eagerly for Lestat as he appears onstage. It doesn't soothe the snarling tangle of jealousy Louis has carried for days in his body. But they are playing. He will dance. He will be polite, if he is fetched.
It is a show. Louis will enjoy it. He will not indulge the near overwhelming urge to disrupt all of it by ripping Lestat off the stage. He will not begrudge whichever mortal is plucked from the churn of bodies to bare their throat to Lestat's teeth.
Louis makes himself all these promises, and pretends he is not a breath away from them coming all apart, that his patience isn't being tested by the rush of feeling and thought surrounding him. He will make it a balm. He will let it sweep him away, until Rachida or otherwise fishes him out.
The melt-water qualities of days and nights, of concerts and downtime, of parties and interviews and appearances. He has, he thinks, gotten better at it all, of understanding each kind of performance. Whether it's this, an adoring crowd, or just one person shivering as he sips from their throat, he has become quite proficient at being the thing required of him.
Misbehaving in between, perhaps. Rejected the preliminary call Christine had scheduled him to have with Molloy about the upcoming interview. More screaming matches with Cookie. Terrorising the backstage crew. Admittedly, sending Louis the cutting room floor copies of his photoshoot is a form of misbehaviour.
Earlier, he couldn't find the boots he wanted, and threw a chair into the mirror. Then he did find the boots he wanted, so it's fine, and now—
Lestat, on stage, wearing a tightly tailored suit of glittering violet, bare beneath his jacket, red nails and red eyeshadow. Heavy driving beats and an escalating tempo make for a good way to begin a show, high energy that he has every intention to match again and again. Already here at the edge of the stage, already kneeling and leaning past the stage monitors as if he might prowl his way down into the thick of things.
He has imagined doing that before. Letting the sea of faceless people swallow him whole, never to be seen again. But he doesn't do that. Instead, he does what he always does: sweeps a searching look over them.
Already, Lestat perched at the edge of the stage. Already, Lestat studying the crowd that reaches hands up to him, eager in their adulation.
Unflattering, feeling some echo of that in himself. Louis' heart, his heart, seizing up as Lestat looks out over the crowd. It is unlikely that Lestat seeks him along this throng of mortals, but Louis cannot avoid the way he falls back into the man he was once, years ago in New Orleans. Wanting and wanting and wanting.
In the midst of all these mortals, Louis is briefly still. Looking back at Lestat.
And something dangerous in Louis is obvious enough that it creates a pocket of space around him. Mortals giving him wide berth in some unconscious instinct towards self preservation. Louis has observed it in humans, when he drops pretense, lets the warmth of humanity fall from his face. No fangs, only the chill of a century enhanced by Louis' own jealousy and frustration.
He dressed for this night too. (Dresses for every night he might see Lestat, yes, but also for the pleasure of expanding the limitations of his wardrobe.) No leather, this time. Flowing white pants cinched high at his waist by a wide corset belt, delicate gold fastenings polished and gleaming. Bare arms tonight, tight-fitted deep purple mesh a more suitable choice for Oklahoma heat. Heavy gold rings on pinky and third finger, silver on his thumb. A strip of heavy-linked gold chain at his throat. There had been a coat, discarded into Rachida's care before Louis descended into the crowd.
Here now, watching Lestat watching the crowd, and thinking that he is a fool for being here. For trailing after Lestat across the country, hanging on too tight in spite of all the promises they made to each other, the promises Louis made to himself. He's still here. He still can't stop looking at Lestat.
Inevitable, that he should see Louis. It could nearly be hallucination.
A shock that he is so close, and Lestat has been—distracted? Perhaps? For having not noticed his nearness before, or dismissed it as some other preoccupation. He feels his body flush warm to find himself so unexpectedly studied by him, to see him dressed in these fashions amidst the churn of colourful young things surrounding him.
Lestat does not miss a beat or a word, but it's a near thing. A spread of a smile, fangs on display. Louis, emanating a familiar kind of aura. Is he angry at him? Did Lestat push things too far, their careful boundaries? He hopes so. If nothing else, an argument might be fun.
Rises back up to his knees as he sings, holding Louis' gaze with eyes of violet-grey, bringing his hand up to touch his own face. Barely feels it when he sinks his claws in to lay bleeding stripes down his cheek. Blood spills quick, hot red streaks that run down his jaw, his throat, smear in the sweat and sparkles sprayed onto his chest. Barely legible to his audience in the back, obvious to those in the front.
Deep crimson droplets marking the stage. Something of himself, left behind. A sign of a job well done, he likes to think.
The crowd is screaming, deafening. The sound swallows up the sharp hitch of breath, the keenjerk Don't that falls out of his mouth, Louis' flinch at the vivid burst of blood. A useless lurch forward, as if he could grab Lestat by the wrist, soothe the injury.
Lestat is so far out of his reach. Dancing further away now, as blood streaks down his jaw, his throat.
Is Louis supposed to enjoy it? Is Louis meant to weather the reminder of New Orleans, of how much blood there had been on Lestat's skin even before Louis lifted the knife?
Is he supposed to dance?
A hand finds his back. A bold touch, considering the tension in Louis' body. Coaxing, even as Louis spares this young man the barest glance, his attention on the stage still. But it's not much of a deterrent. They are both here for the man bleeding onstage. When the man curls fingers between the firm cinch of leather and Louis' stomach, Louis doesn't push him away.
But it is as it was in Paris, was in San Francisco. A pretty boy as a medium for Lestat, barely a shadow by comparison.
Given a million chances, Lestat might never guess at Louis' reaction. Here, he is only thinking of the blood, the scent of it, the lure of himself, always a lure. Does he expect Louis to leap up on the stage?
No. Not really. The boundaries are clear, a few feet of space between the stage, the monitors, the metal railing.
Blood beneath his nails, wet down his throat, dragged through his hair. It's makeup, it's glitter, it's nothing. He sees a boy hook an arm around Louis and Lestat turns to push himself against Alex and his guitar, to invite him to sing with him as he grips his hip. Alex, understanding the assignment, tossing himself back into Lestat's gravity as he plays and sings. Living out his fantasies.
They all are. The audience is. Each concert a moment of dimensional travel, a world of noise and brightness and transformation. (The drugs help.) The wounds on his face have already healed.
Yes, Louis can smell Lestat's blood. Maybe if he focused, he could smell the powders and creams and sprays he's come to recognize as Lesat's favored products.
It sticks, the image of Lestat's claws drawing down his own face. Unsettling. Worrying.
This boy presses himself tight against Louis' back. They are meant to be dancing. The whole audience is in motion, electric, thrilling to every note and syllable. Louis wants to drag him from the stage. From the tour. Wants to keep him somewhere quiet, until the ache in his own chest ebbs.
Lestat is touching Alex. Louis knew this already, had known this was something Lestat had already indulged in. Hates it anyway, tastes envy like battery acid in his throat.
He is here to dance. So he dances, indulging hands on his body only to the extent Louis can turn teasingly out of their grip. Always, always, watching Lestat. There is no scripting Lestat, no anticipating his shows, but Louis knows what comes as the show builds towards an encore. Knows he will have to observe, because turning away simply isn't an option.
A show is performed. Whatever complicated feelings he might have for Louis in the audience, they're banished for the single thought that he will always be glad to see him, to be beheld by him. Dancers and special effects, a ballad or two that nevertheless are overwrought with drama. One costume change, down to tight leather pants and a tank top made entirely from glittering chains, more jewelry than clothing.
He has, a little, come to resent that the audience now expects it—for someone to be chosen, to drink from, and so hopefuls push forwards, willing sacrifices. Nevertheless, Lestat is going to do it, wishes very much to taste and be livened by this specific kind of adrenalised adoration. Maybe he'll kill someone this time. That could be fun.
Stands at the edge of the stage, singing, looking down at them. The metal barrier is tested. It is wholly unnatural, of course. He is a talented beautiful charismatic exceptional performer, obviously, but the Gift is at work, always at work. He feels he could make the whole world want him. The whole world, save for one.
Flicks another searching look about, to spot where Louis is in the crush.
Easily spotted: Louis, watching Lestat from behind the crush of the most eager humans. Hands on him still, weaving around him even as Louis' motions come to a stop. Gleaming, sweat beading on his skin, breathing hard still as his face tips up to watch Lestat prowling along the edge of the stage.
Lestat is as he has always been: entrancing, beautiful.
There is blood on his skin. Louis wants to lick it away.
It is still easy as breathing to fall into him. To be as swept up as all these mortals, something Louis can feel shame for later, after, when he is alone and Lestat has moved on to the next town with his pretty mortals to accompany him.
Here, now, his eyes lock onto Lestat. Everything on his face, conflicted and aching and wanting, all these things at once. The agony of all he feels for Lestat, in spite of the carefully enforced distance between them.
Lestat sees him, and feels the world spin a little off axis. Moments of clarity. He sees it, Louis' aching, his wanting. Sees agony, sees pain, sees yearning. Sees it all and feels it all, and he thinks,
Good. He thinks, good, fuck you, good, that feels right, that feels correct and deserving.
A blur of feeling. Reaching out on his knees, grasping, feeling grasping humans as his hand seals around the wrist of just anyone at all. On his feet, pulling them up with an obvious display of unnatural strength, enough to spook those around the man being hauled from their midst, and the man himself, a blood-warm youth whose hands catch on Lestat's bared shoulders.
Seems to struggle, but it's too late. Lestat sets his fangs in his throat and the mortal goes limp in his arms, distress leaking out in place of something more peaceful. Hands still gripping, then one raising up to tangle in blonde hair.
He is left there, encircled in the arms of nameless mortals, among those not quite frenzied enough to dash themselves against the metal dividers.
Lestat chooses, and he doesn't choose Louis, and for a moment Louis forgets all the reasons why he shouldn't. Only that he wants to be chosen. (It is the problem. The reason why they must separate, so Louis can grow into himself, rather than just grow back into Lestat, and yet.) He sees them, their embrace, this moral with a hand in Lestat's hair and feels as if he'll catch on fire.
What can he do?
Walk away.
He should.
He watches instead, intent on the display playing out in front of him. Says, a whisper that maybe no one at all can hear (why would Lestat be listening?) : Please, don't kill them.
And famously does not like to be told what to do. The problem being, of course, that Louis has not tried to tell him what to do in so long, with or without a please making it a request. What if Lestat disobeys him now, and he never tries again? But if he never tries again, and Lestat misses his chance to disobey?
He could kill this mortal and ruin everything. The tour, his career, his ability to stand in the great spotlight of the world. Maybe whatever it is that binds him and Louis together. The unbreakable vampire bond that can nevertheless take a fucking beating.
Lestat retracts his fangs, kisses the boy's neck until his wound stops actively bleeding. Still, he has taken quite a lot, and the mortal's knees buckle. Lestat guides him down into a gentler collapse, and two of the security guards nearby are already rushing in, collecting the boy down off the stage, rushing him away. One of them checking the wound, finding it gone, but knowing the boy's skin is colder than it ought to be.
He is a horror, now, blood all over his face, mixed where his own had dried. Seeks Louis' face again. Still here. Still real, perhaps, a fact he may come to doubt by the time he leaves the stage.
A little hand signal from him tells the band: yes, let's resolve the chorus, and the music presses on. He brings his microphone back up to sing his last lines, a mess of glittering silver and shining crimson. He will thank Oklahoma. He will look at Louis, and he will bring up a hand to his mouth and blow him a bloodied kiss. Another one left alive, just for him.
He will leave, the usual direct march for his dressing room. In a daze, heart pounding, eyes bright. Various backstage warm bodies scurrying out of his path.
Rachida, materializing out of the crowd to ask, What now?
Louis feels like he's been flayed, truthfully. Feels raw. Even Lestat's earlier assertion of welcome, there is some part of Louis that wants to avoid and evade.
He has a sense of what follows after. Lestat stripping out of his stage outfits and into something new. A party where Larry will not be present but Cookie and Alex will, flanking Lestat as his pretty companions. He will entertain Louis. They will part and Louis will carry this coal in his belly, this burning jealousy, out of Oklahoma with him.
His fingers stray, make a brief accounting. Set right what had been mussed by wandering mortal fingers. (It had felt good, being touched. It had felt good in San Francisco too, and Louis had taken that feeling and made it into a knife to torture himself with.) He tells Rachida, I'm going backstage. You don't need to wait.
Rachida can go back to the hotel, go ahead to the after party. Whatever she wishes. Louis can make his own way.
It is not difficult to pick up Lestat's trail. Louis shakes free of the crowd, nods at Sven, disappears deeper into the workings that make his show tick. The mortals out front are still cacophonous, even as the venue flicks on floodlights to signal a true end to the performance.
Louis knocks twice. Leans against the door frame. (Thinks of Claudia's stony anger, of coaxing entry at her door back when.) Says, "You gonna let me in?"
What else does he say? All the raw feeling Louis carries, that's for him to manage. Right now, he just needs to ease the fluttering worry in his chest. Can't stop remembering that first show, of Lestat striding off stage and falling into Louis' arms, shaking. Is that what this was too?
In his dressing room, someone has cleaned up all the glass. The mounted mirror removed. Helpfully, another has been sourced, left at an angle against the bare wall. Not quite like nothing ever happened, and Lestat doesn't have time to wonder if he had only dreamed up Louis in the crowd when he senses his approach. Hears him.
From the other side of the door—
Louis will hear footfalls of increasing volume, as he does Lestat's voice in much the same way, saying, "I have said to you about the doors," and said door wrenching open, "or did you forget?"
That he is welcome. Any room, any time. Lestat does not look particularly welcoming, granted, pale eyes blazing, blood still coating his face, run down his throat and chest, still dressed in a tank top formed entirely of looping, spangling chains, now also spattered red. Fangs showing, still, peaking past his lip, teeth blood-flecked.
Not welcoming, but perhaps that's a matter of perspective. Looking ready to claw someone apart is a form of welcome.
He has no answers. It is as it always was: Louis wants to be near him. It is a kind of agony to stay away. It is a kind of agony to be near him. All Louis can do is choose between them.
No, Lestat does not look welcoming.
Louis is aware of his own breathing, too hard, too fast. Of the scent of Lestat. Of all this blood, some his, some not. Remembering Lestat turning in to Alex on stage. Slashing his own face open. The glossy photos that had spilled out of the package Louis had opened. The marks decorating his skin, the slick of some mortal's spend on his thigh. All details that stick in Louis' head alongside what he sees now as Lestat stands before him. The blood in the chainlinks, drying tacky on Lestat's bare skin as the chain shifts and moves with Lestat's every motion. How pale Lestat looks beneath all this red.
Feels something like a snapping in his chest. Louis catches Lestat up by the chains, crowding him back and back, kicking the door closed behind them with a loud bang.
"You want me here?" Louis questions. Fear and worry funneled through aggression, still unmistakably raw as he shoves into Lestat's space. "You sure?"
One chain snaps immediately, but the others hold, dig into his skin where they are pulled taut. Well made. Most of his things are. He is being walked backwards and his hands fly to catch on Louis' bare arms and the door slams loudly in a way that would probably make most people flinch.
Not Lestat. His eyes lock on Louis' face as if he is seeing him for the first time, by now familiar in their pale bloodshot quality, but as intense as they've ever been. As transparent. His mouth parts under lengthened fangs, a curl of a smile in it, irrepressible. Feels lightheaded with the speed at which his body responds to Louis, Louis suddenly so near, suddenly so ungentle. Louis must feel it, the sudden rush, the hot glow in him.
"That depends," he says, instead of all he could say. Yes, yes, of course, please. He lets his eyes transmit this instead, lets the digging in of his claws communicate it more precisely than he could hope to. Says, "Are you going to waste my time?"
They hit the dressing table, rattling it back against the wall. No mirror, all accoutrements cleared away. Pins him up against the dresser's edge, keeps him caught there as Louis presses a thigh up between Lestat's legs.
There is some part of him that simply wants to lean in to Lestat. Hold him. Try to steady Lestat even as he spins further and further from Louis' reach. His hands twist tighter in the chains as Louis sways into him. Their noses brush.
Louis asks him, "What's a waste of your time, Lestat?"
Parties, and parties, and parties. Louis is only half-aware of it all, but he knows. He knows.
"You wanna wind me up?" he presses. "You wanna keep pushing me?"
Caught between a hard surface and Louis, the feeling of the chains pulling tightly around beneath the twist of his fists. Nowhere at all he would rather be. Cutting words, breath warm, and Lestat feels himself beginning to breathe harder. Louis pushes his thigh between his legs, presses close, and the breath that leaves Lestat is hoarse.
Doesn't press back into it exactly. Leans into where he is being pinned, pulling Louis into him, a hand sliding to the back of Louis' neck. Displays a big smile, now, sharp teeth.
"You liked my photos," he guesses.
He hadn't said. Lestat had sent them and there had been nothing. Not that he'd been waiting. A minor swipe, striking empty air, oh well, another concert, another afterparty, another comatose bus ride, thrown in amongst the gear for all he knows. Waking up in another city, another state. Perhaps Louis will be there, perhaps not, he can't keep track.
Louis, here now. More real than ever. "So did the photographer. He said I was a natural." Which, in practice, answers Louis' questions.
A flash where Louis is back in the courtyard of their home in New Orleans. Where Louis is asking, strained, Ain't I enough? and Lestat had laughed.
He's smiling now, and Louis wants to bite it off his face. He wants to pin him down, keep him close, block out all the noise, talk until they feel like themselves again. Feel connected, not like a fracture.
Here, now, Louis presses his knuckles into Lestat's chest, asks him, "You let him touch you after? You let him see you?"
See. Capture.
Suppose Louis eats this photographer. Who would know?
There is scarcely any evidence left on his face from his scratching. The wounds had healed, the blood diffused with sweat, but maybe a drying streak of it clings here high up on his cheek. Maybe the scent of his blood is detectable beneath the spill of the afraid mortal, whose blood now courses through Lestat's veins, racing from the pressure of a hard beating hard, of the draining towards his stiffening cock.
His eyes prickle. Not because of some specific thing Louis says, or any real urge to weep, but so it goes. He feels overwhelmed, and thus his eyes go glassy, smile diminishing but lingering. A nudging forward, permitting himself this small thing, a touch of bloodied lips to Louis' chin.
"Yes," he says. "I let him see me. I let him touch me."
(Not true. He'd flirted, they did some racy, unprofessional extras while the woman he'd posed with was busy on her phone, an assistant tending to her leg bite. Lestat had pressured the photographer to print these other photographs for him especially, and hasn't spoken to him since.)
But look at how angry Louis is. So close to him now. Lestat angles his hips, a shamelessly needful press of contact. "Do you think he looks at them, thinks fondly of me as he fondles himself?" Another brush of his lips against Louis' jaw. "Did you?"
No, it doesn't matter that he didn't fuck the photographer. There have been many others, others of all kinds. Some over and over, some once and never seen again. He doesn't recall his cowboy's name whatsoever. He barely remembers what they've done to him now. Recalls Louis' hands, mouth. His body. Craves it.
Breath catching in his throat as chains snap over his skin, thrown aside. He cannot even linger on the response of Is this happening?, a natural thing to think and feel after having been so sure it would never, but he can only dismiss it, tell it to fuck off, he's busy.
Hands slipping down off of Louis' shoulders, bracing instead against the edge of the table.
Maybe just unbearable, unbearable to think of this faceless photographer having not only the privilege of touching Lestat, but taking those pictures. Having that connection. Seeing him, laid so bare.
But there have been others. Others who have touched Lestat, kissed him, fucked him. Held him, maybe.
Lestat's hands fall away, and Louis shoves him, hitching him higher. Can't quite lift him off the floor, not in his boots, but the intent is there. Grabs Lestat round the face, leaning their foreheads together.
"Kissed you where?" Louis asks, low. Heated. Miserable. Asks, "Here?" as he drags his thumb along Lestat's lower lip.
Some amount of quiet permission, letting himself be hitched up against the bolted in dressing table, lets his thighs open, a knee bend up. A rush of a breath for Louis grabbing his face, the way their brows map together, noses bumping—
Words. The drag of Louis' thumb finds Lestat's mouth parted already. A twitch, a baring of teeth. Tempting to bite, to press for what he wants, for what is being dangled in front of him, has been dangled in front of him. His fingers curling, digging nails into the false wood they're braced against.
Louis doesn't sound happy. This must be fine, necessarily. Lestat had long ago given up being capable of making him so.
"Oh yes," he murmurs. "To start." If Louis doesn't kiss him he's going to burn down the arena.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Specifically a photograph of Lestat's fangs in the meat of her thigh, her head thrown back as liquid trickles around and down between her legs. Blood smeared in the next, across his face, across her thigh. Later, the starlet posts some images on her Instagram, a full colour version showing dark red blood, and her own picture of bruised, marked up skin, a little vampire emoji, a lyric from a song, and chaos in her comment section.
And then Louis receives a package. Merch, first: a poster, a few different styles of T-shirts, tending towards black and purple. A keychain, a bumper sticker. More intriguing, a folder without a note, and several printed photographs within.
Ones that didn't make publication, for obvious reasons. A handful of images of just Lestat, still wearing bracelets of leather, a metal spiked collar, but only those things. It is the kind of shoot that is a love affair with the photographer, unabashed and shameless, gazing down the camera as if it were the object of his own desire. If there is cut material of his musician friend, it only shows up in one of the images, where she is standing out of frame save for her bare leg, and Lestat is licking clean a rivulet of blood.
Louis is a photographer, isn't he? Certainly, he should appreciate these insights.
no subject
Lestat, looking out from a glossy magazine cover strewn artfully across a glass tabletop in a hotel lobby. An artful shot, bright eyes looking up from lovely thigh. Newsprint arranged so as not to distract from her face, his fangs.
Louis had felt his heart flip, clench, whole body flush hot. He'd taken the magazine. Hadn't opened it, only stashed it in his suitcase. (Entertained buying out the entirety of the run. Frivolous. Foolish.) It had traveled with him, one hotel to another, untouched.
Untouched until the package arrives, along with a handful of other forwarded mail, other things Louis requested from his penthouse. A shock, opening the folder. The box of merch is sitting on a tabletop. Louis is seated, all mail neatly arranged, and then:
These photos.
These photos.
Lestat, bare. Bare and made more so by the items that remain. The suggestion of this musician, Lestat's tongue on her skin.
Louis fetches the magazine to compare. Is not assuaged by what has made it to print. Has the sense that he will never break free of the furious flush of jealousy, that it will consume him, that he can do nothing but feel it, and feel it, and feel it, with nowhere and nothing to do but wrestle uselessly with what isn't his to claim any ownership over.
The contents of the package, t-shirts, key-chains, bumper sticker, magazine and photos, all of it would burn.
Louis doesn't burn any of it.
All things, photos and magazine, merchandise and all, are packed up neatly and added to the assortment of items that follow Louis around his own miniature tour of the country. They follow him to New Orleans, where he is absent from Lestat's dressing room at the beginning of the show.
Deciding, still. Deciding what he should be doing around Lestat when Louis has been driven to distraction by what feels pointed but cannot be about Louis, not really. It is a photoshoot. The additional pictures are—
It's not about Louis. He cannot entertain any other possibility without losing his grasp on his self-control.
Here too, Louis descends into the crowd into the crush of mortal bodies screaming eagerly for Lestat as he appears onstage. It doesn't soothe the snarling tangle of jealousy Louis has carried for days in his body. But they are playing. He will dance. He will be polite, if he is fetched.
It is a show. Louis will enjoy it. He will not indulge the near overwhelming urge to disrupt all of it by ripping Lestat off the stage. He will not begrudge whichever mortal is plucked from the churn of bodies to bare their throat to Lestat's teeth.
Louis makes himself all these promises, and pretends he is not a breath away from them coming all apart, that his patience isn't being tested by the rush of feeling and thought surrounding him. He will make it a balm. He will let it sweep him away, until Rachida or otherwise fishes him out.
no subject
The melt-water qualities of days and nights, of concerts and downtime, of parties and interviews and appearances. He has, he thinks, gotten better at it all, of understanding each kind of performance. Whether it's this, an adoring crowd, or just one person shivering as he sips from their throat, he has become quite proficient at being the thing required of him.
Misbehaving in between, perhaps. Rejected the preliminary call Christine had scheduled him to have with Molloy about the upcoming interview. More screaming matches with Cookie. Terrorising the backstage crew. Admittedly, sending Louis the cutting room floor copies of his photoshoot is a form of misbehaviour.
Earlier, he couldn't find the boots he wanted, and threw a chair into the mirror. Then he did find the boots he wanted, so it's fine, and now—
Lestat, on stage, wearing a tightly tailored suit of glittering violet, bare beneath his jacket, red nails and red eyeshadow. Heavy driving beats and an escalating tempo make for a good way to begin a show, high energy that he has every intention to match again and again. Already here at the edge of the stage, already kneeling and leaning past the stage monitors as if he might prowl his way down into the thick of things.
He has imagined doing that before. Letting the sea of faceless people swallow him whole, never to be seen again. But he doesn't do that. Instead, he does what he always does: sweeps a searching look over them.
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Unflattering, feeling some echo of that in himself. Louis' heart, his heart, seizing up as Lestat looks out over the crowd. It is unlikely that Lestat seeks him along this throng of mortals, but Louis cannot avoid the way he falls back into the man he was once, years ago in New Orleans. Wanting and wanting and wanting.
In the midst of all these mortals, Louis is briefly still. Looking back at Lestat.
And something dangerous in Louis is obvious enough that it creates a pocket of space around him. Mortals giving him wide berth in some unconscious instinct towards self preservation. Louis has observed it in humans, when he drops pretense, lets the warmth of humanity fall from his face. No fangs, only the chill of a century enhanced by Louis' own jealousy and frustration.
He dressed for this night too. (Dresses for every night he might see Lestat, yes, but also for the pleasure of expanding the limitations of his wardrobe.) No leather, this time. Flowing white pants cinched high at his waist by a wide corset belt, delicate gold fastenings polished and gleaming. Bare arms tonight, tight-fitted deep purple mesh a more suitable choice for Oklahoma heat. Heavy gold rings on pinky and third finger, silver on his thumb. A strip of heavy-linked gold chain at his throat. There had been a coat, discarded into Rachida's care before Louis descended into the crowd.
Here now, watching Lestat watching the crowd, and thinking that he is a fool for being here. For trailing after Lestat across the country, hanging on too tight in spite of all the promises they made to each other, the promises Louis made to himself. He's still here. He still can't stop looking at Lestat.
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A shock that he is so close, and Lestat has been—distracted? Perhaps? For having not noticed his nearness before, or dismissed it as some other preoccupation. He feels his body flush warm to find himself so unexpectedly studied by him, to see him dressed in these fashions amidst the churn of colourful young things surrounding him.
Lestat does not miss a beat or a word, but it's a near thing. A spread of a smile, fangs on display. Louis, emanating a familiar kind of aura. Is he angry at him? Did Lestat push things too far, their careful boundaries? He hopes so. If nothing else, an argument might be fun.
Rises back up to his knees as he sings, holding Louis' gaze with eyes of violet-grey, bringing his hand up to touch his own face. Barely feels it when he sinks his claws in to lay bleeding stripes down his cheek. Blood spills quick, hot red streaks that run down his jaw, his throat, smear in the sweat and sparkles sprayed onto his chest. Barely legible to his audience in the back, obvious to those in the front.
Deep crimson droplets marking the stage. Something of himself, left behind. A sign of a job well done, he likes to think.
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The crowd is screaming, deafening. The sound swallows up the sharp hitch of breath, the keenjerk Don't that falls out of his mouth, Louis' flinch at the vivid burst of blood. A useless lurch forward, as if he could grab Lestat by the wrist, soothe the injury.
Lestat is so far out of his reach. Dancing further away now, as blood streaks down his jaw, his throat.
Is Louis supposed to enjoy it? Is Louis meant to weather the reminder of New Orleans, of how much blood there had been on Lestat's skin even before Louis lifted the knife?
Is he supposed to dance?
A hand finds his back. A bold touch, considering the tension in Louis' body. Coaxing, even as Louis spares this young man the barest glance, his attention on the stage still. But it's not much of a deterrent. They are both here for the man bleeding onstage. When the man curls fingers between the firm cinch of leather and Louis' stomach, Louis doesn't push him away.
But it is as it was in Paris, was in San Francisco. A pretty boy as a medium for Lestat, barely a shadow by comparison.
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No. Not really. The boundaries are clear, a few feet of space between the stage, the monitors, the metal railing.
Blood beneath his nails, wet down his throat, dragged through his hair. It's makeup, it's glitter, it's nothing. He sees a boy hook an arm around Louis and Lestat turns to push himself against Alex and his guitar, to invite him to sing with him as he grips his hip. Alex, understanding the assignment, tossing himself back into Lestat's gravity as he plays and sings. Living out his fantasies.
They all are. The audience is. Each concert a moment of dimensional travel, a world of noise and brightness and transformation. (The drugs help.) The wounds on his face have already healed.
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It sticks, the image of Lestat's claws drawing down his own face. Unsettling. Worrying.
This boy presses himself tight against Louis' back. They are meant to be dancing. The whole audience is in motion, electric, thrilling to every note and syllable. Louis wants to drag him from the stage. From the tour. Wants to keep him somewhere quiet, until the ache in his own chest ebbs.
Lestat is touching Alex. Louis knew this already, had known this was something Lestat had already indulged in. Hates it anyway, tastes envy like battery acid in his throat.
He is here to dance. So he dances, indulging hands on his body only to the extent Louis can turn teasingly out of their grip. Always, always, watching Lestat. There is no scripting Lestat, no anticipating his shows, but Louis knows what comes as the show builds towards an encore. Knows he will have to observe, because turning away simply isn't an option.
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He has, a little, come to resent that the audience now expects it—for someone to be chosen, to drink from, and so hopefuls push forwards, willing sacrifices. Nevertheless, Lestat is going to do it, wishes very much to taste and be livened by this specific kind of adrenalised adoration. Maybe he'll kill someone this time. That could be fun.
Stands at the edge of the stage, singing, looking down at them. The metal barrier is tested. It is wholly unnatural, of course. He is a talented beautiful charismatic exceptional performer, obviously, but the Gift is at work, always at work. He feels he could make the whole world want him. The whole world, save for one.
Flicks another searching look about, to spot where Louis is in the crush.
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Lestat is as he has always been: entrancing, beautiful.
There is blood on his skin. Louis wants to lick it away.
It is still easy as breathing to fall into him. To be as swept up as all these mortals, something Louis can feel shame for later, after, when he is alone and Lestat has moved on to the next town with his pretty mortals to accompany him.
Here, now, his eyes lock onto Lestat. Everything on his face, conflicted and aching and wanting, all these things at once. The agony of all he feels for Lestat, in spite of the carefully enforced distance between them.
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Good. He thinks, good, fuck you, good, that feels right, that feels correct and deserving.
A blur of feeling. Reaching out on his knees, grasping, feeling grasping humans as his hand seals around the wrist of just anyone at all. On his feet, pulling them up with an obvious display of unnatural strength, enough to spook those around the man being hauled from their midst, and the man himself, a blood-warm youth whose hands catch on Lestat's bared shoulders.
Seems to struggle, but it's too late. Lestat sets his fangs in his throat and the mortal goes limp in his arms, distress leaking out in place of something more peaceful. Hands still gripping, then one raising up to tangle in blonde hair.
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Not Louis.
He is left there, encircled in the arms of nameless mortals, among those not quite frenzied enough to dash themselves against the metal dividers.
Lestat chooses, and he doesn't choose Louis, and for a moment Louis forgets all the reasons why he shouldn't. Only that he wants to be chosen. (It is the problem. The reason why they must separate, so Louis can grow into himself, rather than just grow back into Lestat, and yet.) He sees them, their embrace, this moral with a hand in Lestat's hair and feels as if he'll catch on fire.
What can he do?
Walk away.
He should.
He watches instead, intent on the display playing out in front of him. Says, a whisper that maybe no one at all can hear (why would Lestat be listening?) : Please, don't kill them.
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And famously does not like to be told what to do. The problem being, of course, that Louis has not tried to tell him what to do in so long, with or without a please making it a request. What if Lestat disobeys him now, and he never tries again? But if he never tries again, and Lestat misses his chance to disobey?
He could kill this mortal and ruin everything. The tour, his career, his ability to stand in the great spotlight of the world. Maybe whatever it is that binds him and Louis together. The unbreakable vampire bond that can nevertheless take a fucking beating.
Lestat retracts his fangs, kisses the boy's neck until his wound stops actively bleeding. Still, he has taken quite a lot, and the mortal's knees buckle. Lestat guides him down into a gentler collapse, and two of the security guards nearby are already rushing in, collecting the boy down off the stage, rushing him away. One of them checking the wound, finding it gone, but knowing the boy's skin is colder than it ought to be.
He is a horror, now, blood all over his face, mixed where his own had dried. Seeks Louis' face again. Still here. Still real, perhaps, a fact he may come to doubt by the time he leaves the stage.
A little hand signal from him tells the band: yes, let's resolve the chorus, and the music presses on. He brings his microphone back up to sing his last lines, a mess of glittering silver and shining crimson. He will thank Oklahoma. He will look at Louis, and he will bring up a hand to his mouth and blow him a bloodied kiss. Another one left alive, just for him.
He will leave, the usual direct march for his dressing room. In a daze, heart pounding, eyes bright. Various backstage warm bodies scurrying out of his path.
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Rachida, materializing out of the crowd to ask, What now?
Louis feels like he's been flayed, truthfully. Feels raw. Even Lestat's earlier assertion of welcome, there is some part of Louis that wants to avoid and evade.
He has a sense of what follows after. Lestat stripping out of his stage outfits and into something new. A party where Larry will not be present but Cookie and Alex will, flanking Lestat as his pretty companions. He will entertain Louis. They will part and Louis will carry this coal in his belly, this burning jealousy, out of Oklahoma with him.
His fingers stray, make a brief accounting. Set right what had been mussed by wandering mortal fingers. (It had felt good, being touched. It had felt good in San Francisco too, and Louis had taken that feeling and made it into a knife to torture himself with.) He tells Rachida, I'm going backstage. You don't need to wait.
Rachida can go back to the hotel, go ahead to the after party. Whatever she wishes. Louis can make his own way.
It is not difficult to pick up Lestat's trail. Louis shakes free of the crowd, nods at Sven, disappears deeper into the workings that make his show tick. The mortals out front are still cacophonous, even as the venue flicks on floodlights to signal a true end to the performance.
Louis knocks twice. Leans against the door frame. (Thinks of Claudia's stony anger, of coaxing entry at her door back when.) Says, "You gonna let me in?"
What else does he say? All the raw feeling Louis carries, that's for him to manage. Right now, he just needs to ease the fluttering worry in his chest. Can't stop remembering that first show, of Lestat striding off stage and falling into Louis' arms, shaking. Is that what this was too?
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From the other side of the door—
Louis will hear footfalls of increasing volume, as he does Lestat's voice in much the same way, saying, "I have said to you about the doors," and said door wrenching open, "or did you forget?"
That he is welcome. Any room, any time. Lestat does not look particularly welcoming, granted, pale eyes blazing, blood still coating his face, run down his throat and chest, still dressed in a tank top formed entirely of looping, spangling chains, now also spattered red. Fangs showing, still, peaking past his lip, teeth blood-flecked.
Not welcoming, but perhaps that's a matter of perspective. Looking ready to claw someone apart is a form of welcome.
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He has no answers. It is as it always was: Louis wants to be near him. It is a kind of agony to stay away. It is a kind of agony to be near him. All Louis can do is choose between them.
No, Lestat does not look welcoming.
Louis is aware of his own breathing, too hard, too fast. Of the scent of Lestat. Of all this blood, some his, some not. Remembering Lestat turning in to Alex on stage. Slashing his own face open. The glossy photos that had spilled out of the package Louis had opened. The marks decorating his skin, the slick of some mortal's spend on his thigh. All details that stick in Louis' head alongside what he sees now as Lestat stands before him. The blood in the chainlinks, drying tacky on Lestat's bare skin as the chain shifts and moves with Lestat's every motion. How pale Lestat looks beneath all this red.
Feels something like a snapping in his chest. Louis catches Lestat up by the chains, crowding him back and back, kicking the door closed behind them with a loud bang.
"You want me here?" Louis questions. Fear and worry funneled through aggression, still unmistakably raw as he shoves into Lestat's space. "You sure?"
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Not Lestat. His eyes lock on Louis' face as if he is seeing him for the first time, by now familiar in their pale bloodshot quality, but as intense as they've ever been. As transparent. His mouth parts under lengthened fangs, a curl of a smile in it, irrepressible. Feels lightheaded with the speed at which his body responds to Louis, Louis suddenly so near, suddenly so ungentle. Louis must feel it, the sudden rush, the hot glow in him.
"That depends," he says, instead of all he could say. Yes, yes, of course, please. He lets his eyes transmit this instead, lets the digging in of his claws communicate it more precisely than he could hope to. Says, "Are you going to waste my time?"
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There is some part of him that simply wants to lean in to Lestat. Hold him. Try to steady Lestat even as he spins further and further from Louis' reach. His hands twist tighter in the chains as Louis sways into him. Their noses brush.
Louis asks him, "What's a waste of your time, Lestat?"
Parties, and parties, and parties. Louis is only half-aware of it all, but he knows. He knows.
"You wanna wind me up?" he presses. "You wanna keep pushing me?"
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Doesn't press back into it exactly. Leans into where he is being pinned, pulling Louis into him, a hand sliding to the back of Louis' neck. Displays a big smile, now, sharp teeth.
"You liked my photos," he guesses.
He hadn't said. Lestat had sent them and there had been nothing. Not that he'd been waiting. A minor swipe, striking empty air, oh well, another concert, another afterparty, another comatose bus ride, thrown in amongst the gear for all he knows. Waking up in another city, another state. Perhaps Louis will be there, perhaps not, he can't keep track.
Louis, here now. More real than ever. "So did the photographer. He said I was a natural." Which, in practice, answers Louis' questions.
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A flash where Louis is back in the courtyard of their home in New Orleans. Where Louis is asking, strained, Ain't I enough? and Lestat had laughed.
He's smiling now, and Louis wants to bite it off his face. He wants to pin him down, keep him close, block out all the noise, talk until they feel like themselves again. Feel connected, not like a fracture.
Here, now, Louis presses his knuckles into Lestat's chest, asks him, "You let him touch you after? You let him see you?"
See. Capture.
Suppose Louis eats this photographer. Who would know?
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His eyes prickle. Not because of some specific thing Louis says, or any real urge to weep, but so it goes. He feels overwhelmed, and thus his eyes go glassy, smile diminishing but lingering. A nudging forward, permitting himself this small thing, a touch of bloodied lips to Louis' chin.
"Yes," he says. "I let him see me. I let him touch me."
(Not true. He'd flirted, they did some racy, unprofessional extras while the woman he'd posed with was busy on her phone, an assistant tending to her leg bite. Lestat had pressured the photographer to print these other photographs for him especially, and hasn't spoken to him since.)
But look at how angry Louis is. So close to him now. Lestat angles his hips, a shamelessly needful press of contact. "Do you think he looks at them, thinks fondly of me as he fondles himself?" Another brush of his lips against Louis' jaw. "Did you?"
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More undoing than anything else they're doing now, than the feeling of Lestat's cock or the warmth of his body, the bare skin beneath his knuckles.
"Him and everyone else," is an answer, isn't it? Everyone else, including Louis. "Is that what you want? Make sure I'm thinking of you?"
A second yank, tugging hard on the blood-stained chains until he feels the metal give. Flings the metal aside, clattering across the floor.
"Where'd they touch you?"
They. This photographer. All the others. Alex.
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Breath catching in his throat as chains snap over his skin, thrown aside. He cannot even linger on the response of Is this happening?, a natural thing to think and feel after having been so sure it would never, but he can only dismiss it, tell it to fuck off, he's busy.
Hands slipping down off of Louis' shoulders, bracing instead against the edge of the table.
"Well they kissed me first," he says.
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Maybe just unbearable, unbearable to think of this faceless photographer having not only the privilege of touching Lestat, but taking those pictures. Having that connection. Seeing him, laid so bare.
But there have been others. Others who have touched Lestat, kissed him, fucked him. Held him, maybe.
Lestat's hands fall away, and Louis shoves him, hitching him higher. Can't quite lift him off the floor, not in his boots, but the intent is there. Grabs Lestat round the face, leaning their foreheads together.
"Kissed you where?" Louis asks, low. Heated. Miserable. Asks, "Here?" as he drags his thumb along Lestat's lower lip.
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Words. The drag of Louis' thumb finds Lestat's mouth parted already. A twitch, a baring of teeth. Tempting to bite, to press for what he wants, for what is being dangled in front of him, has been dangled in front of him. His fingers curling, digging nails into the false wood they're braced against.
Louis doesn't sound happy. This must be fine, necessarily. Lestat had long ago given up being capable of making him so.
"Oh yes," he murmurs. "To start." If Louis doesn't kiss him he's going to burn down the arena.
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