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.
Even this, the incremental ways in which Lestat yields, makes Louis want to bite him. He's wanted to bite him for weeks, months, years, an eternity. (Or so it feels like, now.) Drags his thumb back across Lestat's lower lip. He smells of blood, of sweat, some sharp-sting of chemicals that Louis recognizes too.
Can he remember what Lestat tastes like?
Louis thinks he does, but can't be certain anymore. It's been over eighty years. He's dreamed Lestat, over and over, but this isn't a dream.
"Where else?" Louis asks, breath gone shallow. Words said so close that he is speaking nearly into Lestat's mouth. That if Louis angled his head just slightly, their lips would brush. "Tell me. Tell me how you let them have you."
A question like a knife. Tell him this thing that will hurt, will stoke all his anguished jealousy higher. Something to carry from this room when he goes, because Louis can't stay.
"I tell them they can't hurt me," Lestat says, his breathing shivery, voice quiet, but words coming our clear, even enough. Mostly because he is not thinking of them very much. "Even if they tried. So they will grab and pull and bite. I like this, I enjoy it."
Another shift of his hips, a needy rub of contact. He can permit himself that, when Louis has already presented him the option, the ability to do so. These last millimetres though, between their mouths, an unbroachable distance. Lightyears apart. It is as it was in the church that one terrible and wonderful night, waiting for eternity, sweetly granted it.
"I like to leave my marks on them. They show it off like a new necklace. I like it when they worship me. I like it from behind." A pleasant anonymity, he doesn't say. They had so often favoured the ability to see each other, to kiss, to whisper. He doesn't reach for this, most times.
A shift of his body, a heavy panting breath out. "Now go on," he says. "Call me a whore. Use me like one."
Unconsciously, Louis' fingers tighten around Lestat's face. Feels some mirrored reaction building in his body, a refracting memory of Lestat asking Did you hurt yourself?
Is that what this is? What these things are? Is this Lestat hurting himself? It had felt unique to Louis, that urge towards self-destruction, the thing that had propelled him into the sunlight, lives still in his own body. But Lestat says these things and Louis feels his own eyes prick with tears. Holds him tighter, bruising, thigh pressing up harder against the movement of Lestat's hips.
"You want that from me?" is a question filtered through frustration, unsteady where Lestat's voice is even. "I'm not them. I'm not like the rest of them out there."
Begging the question, what is Louis? What is he to Lestat now?
Some passing, heated thought: do these mortals call Lestat a whore? Useless. What can Louis do about it now?
Asks, thumb catching over the scar at the corner of his mouth as he asks, "You want me to fuck you the way they did? Not the way we did?"
Another tilt, the ground beneath them, maybe the building. A wrongness to it, something in Louis' voice as he says the things he chooses. The clutch of his fingers, even while he presses back against him. Lestat, all of a sudden, uncertain of the game they're playing, far less confident in it than he had been a moment ago.
Louis, jealous. Possessive. His body warming to it, yearning it, yearning hard hands, contact, being wanted, wanted so much and so madly that he is simply taken. Louis, refusing.
"I want you," he says, stupidly. "However you want me, I want you."
A question. Raw-voiced, fangs just visible in his mouth. Asks Lestat this, a question not unlike one posed before: Ain't I enough?
Louis, who had put all this space between them. Louis, who withheld.
Louis, who hauls Lestat up off the dresser. An impulse yank of movement, sending them staggering. Louis has a bare sense of the dressing room, the space Lestat has cultivated for himself. Glances off the wall, combined impact rattling the cheap frames, as Louis goes from pulling to shoving, pushing Lestat towards the couch as he asks, "You want me like you want them? Like a game?"
Feet moving numbly, just enough to stay upright, to ambulate along as Louis pulls him, pushes him, Lestat's hands finding a place to be on Louis' arm, his chest, unable to look anywhere but his face. Uncaring to try. A sense of the sofa right there, feeling his calves strike the padded furniture.
"Yes," he says. He says yes because, wildly, instinct says this is what is needed, called for. This is how they can have each other. He's believed that all this while, hasn't he? His attempts, his poking and prodding at the invisible boundaries between them?
His claws catch in purple mesh. Fabric tearing where he scratches along Louis' skin in his determination to hold him to it. "You don't want to play?"
A challenge, one he regrets as he says it. Suppose Louis says no. Suppose he leave him like this.
But maybe this is all there is. All Lestat wants. Variety, and a game, and then nothing else.
He can let himself be angry. Jealous. All of it still so close to the surface, less painful than what resolves beneath. Can let himself sink into this even knowing that it doesn't mean any kind of claiming, not truly.
The miserable calculus: wanting Lestat, but not this way. Not as a part of all the rest. Not toyed with, buttons pushed at Lestat's leisure, but that is where they are in this moment. Louis lost control and now they are here.
Wants to say No.
Instead, says nothing. Releases his grip on Lestat's face to slide palms down over the hairline scratches left on Lestat's skin when Louis ripped away the chainlink array masquerading as a top. A little tenderness, before Louis hooks fingers into Lestat waistband. Jaw tensing, grip tightening, Louis straddling Lestat's thighs as he rips the fabric down one seam.
The leather gives easily, as though it were made of something far finer. A loud tear along the strong stitching, exposing pale skin where it hasn't flushed with arousal, nothing underneath. Lestat's skin tingling where Louis' hands had run, gently, first.
Drags his hands down Louis' front, claws snagging in the mesh fabric clinging there. Grasping at his corset belt, attending to the buckles but putting strain on it anyway. He thinks, You look nice, but they are gone from that. He thinks, even more hysterically, Would you like to hit me, but suspects the answer would be no.
No requests, just hands, gripping, tearing. Groans out a breath, bends in enough to smear his mouth down Louis' jaw, his throat, panting heavy.
A dilemma to consider later: the state of his clothes.
Right now, Louis lays Lestat bare. He can see all the places his fingers gripped, too rough, grabbing at him, shoving him. The ruined leather slides off the couch. Louis takes Lestat in hand, grip flirting towards too tight, too much.
Wants to kiss him. Doesn't let himself have that, a wavering attempt at denial as he uses a knee to lever Lestat's thighs open.
Can't help the flush of heat in his own body, angry and hurt all at once. Touches Lestat still, the drag of his hand slicked only by what comes each time Louis swipes a thumb across the head of his cock.
"This it?" low, a bite of a question against Lestat's temple. "This what you wanted?"
The corset comes free, flung aside, fingers catching in Louis' waistband. Tugs, fabric shredding.
And then finding his legs pushed apart, and his cock touched, and the groan that leaves him is both pained and grateful. Muscles across his abdomen, thighs, all twitching tense and wanting. Nods helplessly at this question, yes, he has wanted this, wanted Louis' hands on him, wanted his wanting. Tastes his skin down his throat, sweat that tastes just that little bit like blood.
Different to a mortal. He's had to make do with so many. Can't help himself but graze sharp teeth against Louis' skin, not biting, not quite, but drawing blood all the same.
Hooks an arm around Louis' shoulders and neck. He wants his hand on him like this and also wants him close, sees no logistical issue in trying to have both.
And Louis goes, falling into him, guided down by the loop of Lestat's arms.
Come all undone, all his good intentions, and he just—
He wants Lestat too much. Always. Any way. Even like this, a temporary thing. A game. He feels Lestat's teeth and moans, ragged, aching. Lets himself be drawn close, chest to chest, cheek to cheek, breathing hot into Lestat's hair. Graceless, the way Louis crumbles. The way he is touching him still, even in the narrow space between their bodies.
"You wanted me?" fractures a little. Asking for a lie, Louis thinks. Lestat will tell him yes, whether it's true or not. "You wanted me in here, and not them?"
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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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Can he remember what Lestat tastes like?
Louis thinks he does, but can't be certain anymore. It's been over eighty years. He's dreamed Lestat, over and over, but this isn't a dream.
"Where else?" Louis asks, breath gone shallow. Words said so close that he is speaking nearly into Lestat's mouth. That if Louis angled his head just slightly, their lips would brush. "Tell me. Tell me how you let them have you."
A question like a knife. Tell him this thing that will hurt, will stoke all his anguished jealousy higher. Something to carry from this room when he goes, because Louis can't stay.
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"I tell them they can't hurt me," Lestat says, his breathing shivery, voice quiet, but words coming our clear, even enough. Mostly because he is not thinking of them very much. "Even if they tried. So they will grab and pull and bite. I like this, I enjoy it."
Another shift of his hips, a needy rub of contact. He can permit himself that, when Louis has already presented him the option, the ability to do so. These last millimetres though, between their mouths, an unbroachable distance. Lightyears apart. It is as it was in the church that one terrible and wonderful night, waiting for eternity, sweetly granted it.
"I like to leave my marks on them. They show it off like a new necklace. I like it when they worship me. I like it from behind." A pleasant anonymity, he doesn't say. They had so often favoured the ability to see each other, to kiss, to whisper. He doesn't reach for this, most times.
A shift of his body, a heavy panting breath out. "Now go on," he says. "Call me a whore. Use me like one."
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Is that what this is? What these things are? Is this Lestat hurting himself? It had felt unique to Louis, that urge towards self-destruction, the thing that had propelled him into the sunlight, lives still in his own body. But Lestat says these things and Louis feels his own eyes prick with tears. Holds him tighter, bruising, thigh pressing up harder against the movement of Lestat's hips.
"You want that from me?" is a question filtered through frustration, unsteady where Lestat's voice is even. "I'm not them. I'm not like the rest of them out there."
Begging the question, what is Louis? What is he to Lestat now?
Some passing, heated thought: do these mortals call Lestat a whore? Useless. What can Louis do about it now?
Asks, thumb catching over the scar at the corner of his mouth as he asks, "You want me to fuck you the way they did? Not the way we did?"
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Another tilt, the ground beneath them, maybe the building. A wrongness to it, something in Louis' voice as he says the things he chooses. The clutch of his fingers, even while he presses back against him. Lestat, all of a sudden, uncertain of the game they're playing, far less confident in it than he had been a moment ago.
Louis, jealous. Possessive. His body warming to it, yearning it, yearning hard hands, contact, being wanted, wanted so much and so madly that he is simply taken. Louis, refusing.
"I want you," he says, stupidly. "However you want me, I want you."
Of course. Isn't that obvious?
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A question. Raw-voiced, fangs just visible in his mouth. Asks Lestat this, a question not unlike one posed before: Ain't I enough?
Louis, who had put all this space between them. Louis, who withheld.
Louis, who hauls Lestat up off the dresser. An impulse yank of movement, sending them staggering. Louis has a bare sense of the dressing room, the space Lestat has cultivated for himself. Glances off the wall, combined impact rattling the cheap frames, as Louis goes from pulling to shoving, pushing Lestat towards the couch as he asks, "You want me like you want them? Like a game?"
Like a night, and then onwards to something new.
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"Yes," he says. He says yes because, wildly, instinct says this is what is needed, called for. This is how they can have each other. He's believed that all this while, hasn't he? His attempts, his poking and prodding at the invisible boundaries between them?
His claws catch in purple mesh. Fabric tearing where he scratches along Louis' skin in his determination to hold him to it. "You don't want to play?"
A challenge, one he regrets as he says it. Suppose Louis says no. Suppose he leave him like this.
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But maybe this is all there is. All Lestat wants. Variety, and a game, and then nothing else.
He can let himself be angry. Jealous. All of it still so close to the surface, less painful than what resolves beneath. Can let himself sink into this even knowing that it doesn't mean any kind of claiming, not truly.
The miserable calculus: wanting Lestat, but not this way. Not as a part of all the rest. Not toyed with, buttons pushed at Lestat's leisure, but that is where they are in this moment. Louis lost control and now they are here.
Wants to say No.
Instead, says nothing. Releases his grip on Lestat's face to slide palms down over the hairline scratches left on Lestat's skin when Louis ripped away the chainlink array masquerading as a top. A little tenderness, before Louis hooks fingers into Lestat waistband. Jaw tensing, grip tightening, Louis straddling Lestat's thighs as he rips the fabric down one seam.
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Drags his hands down Louis' front, claws snagging in the mesh fabric clinging there. Grasping at his corset belt, attending to the buckles but putting strain on it anyway. He thinks, You look nice, but they are gone from that. He thinks, even more hysterically, Would you like to hit me, but suspects the answer would be no.
No requests, just hands, gripping, tearing. Groans out a breath, bends in enough to smear his mouth down Louis' jaw, his throat, panting heavy.
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Right now, Louis lays Lestat bare. He can see all the places his fingers gripped, too rough, grabbing at him, shoving him. The ruined leather slides off the couch. Louis takes Lestat in hand, grip flirting towards too tight, too much.
Wants to kiss him. Doesn't let himself have that, a wavering attempt at denial as he uses a knee to lever Lestat's thighs open.
Can't help the flush of heat in his own body, angry and hurt all at once. Touches Lestat still, the drag of his hand slicked only by what comes each time Louis swipes a thumb across the head of his cock.
"This it?" low, a bite of a question against Lestat's temple. "This what you wanted?"
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And then finding his legs pushed apart, and his cock touched, and the groan that leaves him is both pained and grateful. Muscles across his abdomen, thighs, all twitching tense and wanting. Nods helplessly at this question, yes, he has wanted this, wanted Louis' hands on him, wanted his wanting. Tastes his skin down his throat, sweat that tastes just that little bit like blood.
Different to a mortal. He's had to make do with so many. Can't help himself but graze sharp teeth against Louis' skin, not biting, not quite, but drawing blood all the same.
Hooks an arm around Louis' shoulders and neck. He wants his hand on him like this and also wants him close, sees no logistical issue in trying to have both.
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Come all undone, all his good intentions, and he just—
He wants Lestat too much. Always. Any way. Even like this, a temporary thing. A game. He feels Lestat's teeth and moans, ragged, aching. Lets himself be drawn close, chest to chest, cheek to cheek, breathing hot into Lestat's hair. Graceless, the way Louis crumbles. The way he is touching him still, even in the narrow space between their bodies.
"You wanted me?" fractures a little. Asking for a lie, Louis thinks. Lestat will tell him yes, whether it's true or not. "You wanted me in here, and not them?"
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