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?"
They look ridiculous, collapsing into each other this way. He looks ridiculous, he's sure, clothes torn off his body and wearing only heavy boots, the heel of which grazes along Louis' leg as Lestat lifts his knees to cradle his body there. He doesn't care, certainly. Barely cares with anyone else, save that he is more particular about what kinds of indignities he will tolerate and enjoy.
"I wanted you," murmured. "I thought you were going to, when I made," and he flounders for the name, head light, distracted, whatever, who cares, "when you came to visit me. I thought you'd throw me over the couch and take over where he left off."
And he didn't, and it was a nice night anyway. Happy to see him the crowd. But all the same—
"Do you want me, Louis?" he asks. Teeth nipping at his jaw.
A little like Lestat reaching into his chest, plucking at his heart. Louis makes a wounded sound, grip tightening for a split second before:
"Yes."
The truth. It falls out of his mouth before Louis is even aware he's spoken.
Yes, and yes, and yes. Always. Endlessly. Even when he was convinced he shouldn't, when it felt like the worst kind of betrayal. Louis wants him. Louis has wanted him, desperately, terribly.
And he gives up this true thing even though he knows they are playing a game, that Lestat wanted a game, has been playing even before Louis agreed to join him in it.
Lestat's head falls back as Louis grips him harshly, says this thing that feels as good as it stings. "Then have it," he breathes out. The ceiling swimming into vision, the edge of the sofa. "Have me. Make me forget them, Louis."
They are forgotten, of course. Alex's doe eyes and Cookie's little bites, and the anonymous many who show him what they like best with their eyes, their fingers, their mouths. None of them remembered now, as if it's all been some kind of terrible waking dream since the last time they were together, the night of the masquerade eighty years ago, and now.
Slips a hand between them. Graceless and eager, the way he palms Louis' cock, feels a twinge like he's committed some kind of transgression even now. But he just wants to feel him.
It's what Louis wants. Forget them. Forget all of them. Forget everything that isn't them, together.
But—
Lestat touches him and Louis shudders all through his body. Loses the rhythm of his hand.
Who has touched him this way since he left Armand?
No one.
Lestat.
Some floating awareness of their entanglement. Of Louis flinging him around the room. Lestat saying all these things, a little like pushing a knife into Louis' hand.
Is this how they come together again?
"I got you," is bitten into Lestat's shoulder. Blunt, human teeth. A different kind of self-denial. "You're gonna come for me just like this."
His voice sounds like a wreck. Nothing to be done about it.
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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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"I wanted you," murmured. "I thought you were going to, when I made," and he flounders for the name, head light, distracted, whatever, who cares, "when you came to visit me. I thought you'd throw me over the couch and take over where he left off."
And he didn't, and it was a nice night anyway. Happy to see him the crowd. But all the same—
"Do you want me, Louis?" he asks. Teeth nipping at his jaw.
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"Yes."
The truth. It falls out of his mouth before Louis is even aware he's spoken.
Yes, and yes, and yes. Always. Endlessly. Even when he was convinced he shouldn't, when it felt like the worst kind of betrayal. Louis wants him. Louis has wanted him, desperately, terribly.
And he gives up this true thing even though he knows they are playing a game, that Lestat wanted a game, has been playing even before Louis agreed to join him in it.
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Lestat's head falls back as Louis grips him harshly, says this thing that feels as good as it stings. "Then have it," he breathes out. The ceiling swimming into vision, the edge of the sofa. "Have me. Make me forget them, Louis."
They are forgotten, of course. Alex's doe eyes and Cookie's little bites, and the anonymous many who show him what they like best with their eyes, their fingers, their mouths. None of them remembered now, as if it's all been some kind of terrible waking dream since the last time they were together, the night of the masquerade eighty years ago, and now.
Slips a hand between them. Graceless and eager, the way he palms Louis' cock, feels a twinge like he's committed some kind of transgression even now. But he just wants to feel him.
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But—
Lestat touches him and Louis shudders all through his body. Loses the rhythm of his hand.
Who has touched him this way since he left Armand?
No one.
Lestat.
Some floating awareness of their entanglement. Of Louis flinging him around the room. Lestat saying all these things, a little like pushing a knife into Louis' hand.
Is this how they come together again?
"I got you," is bitten into Lestat's shoulder. Blunt, human teeth. A different kind of self-denial. "You're gonna come for me just like this."
His voice sounds like a wreck. Nothing to be done about it.
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