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.
Boot buckles brush harshly against Louis' thigh, a mostly unconscious twitch through Lestat at these words. This promise, this threat. Louis' voice, shattering all over him. He wants to gather up the pieces, fit them back together. He wants to bite over Louis' adam's apple, wreck it even more.
Keeps his hand there, a possessive grasping, while his other slides of Louis' spine, pushing aside mesh fabric to get at his bare skin, letting it ride up.
"Is that how you want me?" he breathes, even as he eagerly pushes his hips up into Louis' hand. "Is that what you imagined?"
His voice isn't taunting anymore. Like he wants to know. Wants to know if Louis imagined putting his hands on him, driving him to madness.
Shivery under Lestat's hand, the press of fingers to bare skin without even the slight barrier of mesh to blunt the sensation. His whole body flushes impossibly hotter, eyes closing briefly, head dipping and turning away, into Lestat's hair, to curb the instinct that demands Louis kiss him. The instinct that doesn't see any reason not to when Lestat is caught beneath him.
"Lestat," Louis whispers. "I've imagined everything."
But he is choosing this, withholding even now because he wants—
Something else.
He wants to come to Lestat and take him to bed. Wants something more than a night, a diversion. Something that feels stolen.
It doesn't escape him, that they haven't kissed. Each missed beat. It makes this different, a little alien. They have always had an obsession for kisses, it has always meant so much each time Louis reached for him to give him one—whether as cosmically critical as their first clash of contact or the love and affirmation that came with the one bestowed unto him in the church, or smaller gestures, a kiss goodbye on his way to the street, a beckoning over a book upon Lestat entering the room.
And of course, when they make love. No sense of initiation or giving and receiving there, just a vital thing to do, as vital as breathing.
He feels Louis' breath in his hair, nuzzles against his cheek, his ear. Restraint still, he thinks. Still holding back. Still keeping something from him, as if perhaps Lestat might get the wrong idea. He is hardly, however, in any position to complain.
"Will you fuck me after?" he asks, and hates a little the bite of desperation in his voice.
The question sparks tremors all through Louis' body.
A hook caught behind his ribs, dug deep into his heart, pulled taut as Lestat asks Louis this and Louis feels as if he might come all apart.
How could he ever deny Lestat? It is near impossible to keep from turning his head at the graze of Lestat's nose and mouth alongside his face. Feels them like a silent request, a coaxing kind of contact that Louis' body would answer. Wants badly to answer. The twitch of motion already turns his face in alongside Lestat's hairline, panting, anguished.
"Lestat," is all wrecked, fracturing. "I don't wanna play like that."
All Louis' jealousy, for what? Going where?
They aren't supposed to be doing this. Louis lost his head. Forgot himself. They're supposed to be taking the time apart. Louis is supposed to be excavating, finding which pieces of himself are salvageable, which must be jettisoned, waiting for what grows up into the empty space. Taking the time to see what they are, what they might be to each other, beyond this.
But he is touching Lestat, and Louis is made very aware that they are still as they were. That he is desperate for Lestat still, burning jealousy at mortals touching him, fucking him, baring their throats to him. Louis wants to be all of those things. He wants—
He wants.
And he can't play at this, when there is so little chance of it lasting beyond dawn.
It's an enigmatic thing for Louis to say. Lestat should ask him what he means.
Except he feels like he is going to go insane, or has already gone insane. A flash flood of feeling swamping him, drowning him, feeling helplessly underwater and tumbled along strong currents. "But why," manages to escape his throat, but it sounds small and pathetic to his ear, and forces in a breath.
Also: desperately aroused, aching, pulling him in another direction. He should be quiet, he should let whatever happens happens, worry about it later. Doesn't matter that Louis won't kiss him. Won't fuck him. Won't have him the way he has known Louis to want him.
But he is already speaking. "Why do you touch me," he says. "Why do you have me say those things."
No longer touching Louis in that coaxing way, hands retreating, one at his side, one against his chest. A third urge to throw Louis across the room, like he'd thrown furniture across the room earlier that night, shivers through him. Wrangled.
Lestat stops touching him. Louis lifts his hand away. As he is now, he cannot see Lestat's face. And even as he braces himself, pushes up by scant degrees, Louis is forced to consider all over again how little he wishes to be parted from Lestat. No desire to give up what's required for even these minor realignments, or break from the dig of Lestat's boots round his thighs.
In spite of all Louis' better instincts, hopes for improvement, there is some incredulous bent contained in his expression. Why does he touch Lestat? Because he can't help himself. Can't exist in the same space as him without wanting a hand on him, to be stood just so close. All the old tricks from New Orleans don't suffice. Louis needs to touch him.
Doesn't Lestat know that? Doesn't he recognize Louis, or is Louis too far removed from the man he'd once been?
"Why you sending me photographs?" he counters, because Lestat knows, doesn't he? Knows that Louis is all in pieces, self-control shattered beyond repair? Knows jealousy when he invokes it? "Why you making me look at someone else's marks all on your skin?"
The loss of Louis' hand is nearly as stimulating as if he'd squeezed it again, the loss of it like an ache and enough for him to draw in a sharp breath. Louis is still all over him, he still finds himself holding him in place with the press of his knees.
Locked together, but locked broken. Feels something visceral like white noise filling his veins, rattling through his nervous system, prickling over bare skin.
"They were for you," he says. The photographs, the marks. It has always been for Louis. Everything he does, informed by his presence or absence. Louis, trying to find himself, and Lestat, no interest in this task whatsoever.
Whatever they are doing, whatever this game has become, however it has fallen apart, they should stop.
Louis should stop.
But it has been eighty years, maybe a little longer give or take some months, since they have been this near to each other. It is difficult to give up. Easier with Lestat's hands frozen up and away from his skin, some tension building between them that Louis knows to be dangerous, painful. Likely to break in a destructive way.
"For me?" is sharp, the way pain has always sharpened Louis' voice. Pain where he is holding too tightly to it, locking it into his body rather than letting it flow out of him. "For me like your record was for me?"
A record with Antoinette's voice. Lestat photographed with another woman's blood on his mouth. Lestat opening the door bitten all over, smelling of arousal and another man. These recollections, winding Louis up again. Worse now, with no clear path to direct the energy towards. He is obliged to hold fast to it, try to contain it. Take his pain and hurt and compress it down to a stone that might sight in his chest, weigh silently down.
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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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Keeps his hand there, a possessive grasping, while his other slides of Louis' spine, pushing aside mesh fabric to get at his bare skin, letting it ride up.
"Is that how you want me?" he breathes, even as he eagerly pushes his hips up into Louis' hand. "Is that what you imagined?"
His voice isn't taunting anymore. Like he wants to know. Wants to know if Louis imagined putting his hands on him, driving him to madness.
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"Lestat," Louis whispers. "I've imagined everything."
But he is choosing this, withholding even now because he wants—
Something else.
He wants to come to Lestat and take him to bed. Wants something more than a night, a diversion. Something that feels stolen.
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And of course, when they make love. No sense of initiation or giving and receiving there, just a vital thing to do, as vital as breathing.
He feels Louis' breath in his hair, nuzzles against his cheek, his ear. Restraint still, he thinks. Still holding back. Still keeping something from him, as if perhaps Lestat might get the wrong idea. He is hardly, however, in any position to complain.
"Will you fuck me after?" he asks, and hates a little the bite of desperation in his voice.
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A hook caught behind his ribs, dug deep into his heart, pulled taut as Lestat asks Louis this and Louis feels as if he might come all apart.
How could he ever deny Lestat? It is near impossible to keep from turning his head at the graze of Lestat's nose and mouth alongside his face. Feels them like a silent request, a coaxing kind of contact that Louis' body would answer. Wants badly to answer. The twitch of motion already turns his face in alongside Lestat's hairline, panting, anguished.
"Lestat," is all wrecked, fracturing. "I don't wanna play like that."
All Louis' jealousy, for what? Going where?
They aren't supposed to be doing this. Louis lost his head. Forgot himself. They're supposed to be taking the time apart. Louis is supposed to be excavating, finding which pieces of himself are salvageable, which must be jettisoned, waiting for what grows up into the empty space. Taking the time to see what they are, what they might be to each other, beyond this.
But he is touching Lestat, and Louis is made very aware that they are still as they were. That he is desperate for Lestat still, burning jealousy at mortals touching him, fucking him, baring their throats to him. Louis wants to be all of those things. He wants—
He wants.
And he can't play at this, when there is so little chance of it lasting beyond dawn.
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Except he feels like he is going to go insane, or has already gone insane. A flash flood of feeling swamping him, drowning him, feeling helplessly underwater and tumbled along strong currents. "But why," manages to escape his throat, but it sounds small and pathetic to his ear, and forces in a breath.
Also: desperately aroused, aching, pulling him in another direction. He should be quiet, he should let whatever happens happens, worry about it later. Doesn't matter that Louis won't kiss him. Won't fuck him. Won't have him the way he has known Louis to want him.
But he is already speaking. "Why do you touch me," he says. "Why do you have me say those things."
No longer touching Louis in that coaxing way, hands retreating, one at his side, one against his chest. A third urge to throw Louis across the room, like he'd thrown furniture across the room earlier that night, shivers through him. Wrangled.
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In spite of all Louis' better instincts, hopes for improvement, there is some incredulous bent contained in his expression. Why does he touch Lestat? Because he can't help himself. Can't exist in the same space as him without wanting a hand on him, to be stood just so close. All the old tricks from New Orleans don't suffice. Louis needs to touch him.
Doesn't Lestat know that? Doesn't he recognize Louis, or is Louis too far removed from the man he'd once been?
"Why you sending me photographs?" he counters, because Lestat knows, doesn't he? Knows that Louis is all in pieces, self-control shattered beyond repair? Knows jealousy when he invokes it? "Why you making me look at someone else's marks all on your skin?"
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Locked together, but locked broken. Feels something visceral like white noise filling his veins, rattling through his nervous system, prickling over bare skin.
"They were for you," he says. The photographs, the marks. It has always been for Louis. Everything he does, informed by his presence or absence. Louis, trying to find himself, and Lestat, no interest in this task whatsoever.
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Whatever they are doing, whatever this game has become, however it has fallen apart, they should stop.
Louis should stop.
But it has been eighty years, maybe a little longer give or take some months, since they have been this near to each other. It is difficult to give up. Easier with Lestat's hands frozen up and away from his skin, some tension building between them that Louis knows to be dangerous, painful. Likely to break in a destructive way.
"For me?" is sharp, the way pain has always sharpened Louis' voice. Pain where he is holding too tightly to it, locking it into his body rather than letting it flow out of him. "For me like your record was for me?"
A record with Antoinette's voice. Lestat photographed with another woman's blood on his mouth. Lestat opening the door bitten all over, smelling of arousal and another man. These recollections, winding Louis up again. Worse now, with no clear path to direct the energy towards. He is obliged to hold fast to it, try to contain it. Take his pain and hurt and compress it down to a stone that might sight in his chest, weigh silently down.
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