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.
This summoning of the far away past, Louis' sharp tone, gets at somewhere tender. Like saying it out loud is a betrayal of the game that Louis has said he doesn't want to play, and now, on top of all else he is feeling, Lestat must also feel foolish. And then angry.
"Yes, well," he says, a twinge at his mouth, like a dog ready to bite. "You knew what you wanted back then. You knew how to take it."
A shift. Elbow pushing into the couch, drawing himself back and up. Flustered, or at least, as near as Lestat is physically able to get to such a thing. "I won't anymore," he is saying as he does so, voice all at once sober, no longer husky with want, with raw needed. Like a steel thing closing in his throat. "I'll spare you the trouble, and me the many indignities of throwing myself at you over and over,"
and so on. All the while, hands off Louis. Refusing to push him, to throw him, to scratch or grapple.
If Louis keeps pushing, will Lestat bite? Will he snap in a way that breaks the tension between them, this misalignment that neither of them can seem to break from?
Lestat is leaving. Lestat is slipping away, and Louis is so—
"Me and how many others?"
A moot point. Louis had been the one to ask for space and for distance and for time. Louis had needed it. Louis is all apart, ripping up his life at the root and shaking loose all things that had grown up around him.
But there is no way to tear Lestat out of him. He had loved him endlessly, desperately, for so long. Even when Louis believed the worst of him, believed he had participated in the worst betrayal of his life, that he had seen Claudia killed and wanted it, Louis had still loved him.
He loves him now. Wants him now. He just doesn't want to be—
"Me tonight, someone else tomorrow? Don't play like it's about what I want or what I'm gonna take."
Lestat, spinning away from him. Louis, weight bearing briefly down as if to hold him close before the thought of pinning Lestat to him sickens Louis. Can't make Lestat do anything, can't bear to try and keep him if he's trying to go.
Lestat is speaking before he can really catch up with himself,
"Someone else tomorrow," snapped. "Someone who can give of themselves. Someone who won't fuck around."
A traitorous thrill when he feels Louis press him back can't be listened to. Listening to that desire, the promise of what he can evoke, has gotten him nowhere. And maybe there is something wrong with him, something wrong with him and not Louis, something that believes in the love that the wolf has for the deer, for the wanting that closes jaws and tears flesh, but it cannot be detangled in the moment.
They can be, though, Lestat insisting himself out from beneath Louis when no further resistance is brought to bear. Boots on, still, flesh pale save for where grabbing hands has reddened him.
Moving for where a robe is hanging, and still speaking as he yanks it off the hook, flips it around his body. "Call me spoiled, or a slut, or whatever it is you're saying," he says, a furious clip to his tone, the movements of his hand. "But when I am on stage, there are a thousand people yearning for me. Hands reaching as if they could take me down into the midst of them all. It is my name in their mouths, in their blood. So I partake.
"Six years of begging," if they are going to reference the past. He thinks he is shouting, and can't stop. "Eighty years of exile, untouched. And now you are going to whine and withhold in equal measure because I take some comfort for myself."
Louis feels it like a slap. Words that ring in his ears, even as he comes up off the couch. Lestat is already remote, disappearing, swathed in a robe. No one has come knocking, perhaps wisely avoiding a room with two volatile vampires rattling around inside. Louis is looking at him and is a little shocked, both at how hurt he is and how angry he is.
So many years, decades of emotion soothed down to nothing. To feel everything at full force, it's dizzying. Louis is acclimating to it still.
Can only observe this at a distance as he looks back at Lestat and hates him. Loves him, still. Hates himself for that. Maybe for the fact that he's wavered, plunged both of them into this position.
"No," Louis tells him. Heated. Frustrated. The mesh of his top is ruined, and Louis reaches to rip it off, let it drop to the floor. The pants can be salvaged, will get him out the door. "Take whatever you want from them."
Six years of begging. Eighty years of exile. There's a good reason they aren't tallying past transgressions, trying to litigate past hurts. Louis slipped and he can't slip any further. Straightens up, abandoning his belt to whoever Lestat flung it as he does up the fastenings of his trousers.
"If we're all the same, it don't matter. Enjoy them."
Because what is Louis if not another body in the crowd? Wanting and wanting and wanting, yearning for him uselessly? As caught up as all those silly mortals, aching for someone who has moved past him.
Louis turns away. There is a door. He'll see himself out and away, before they do more harm than they've already managed.
A very loud What the fuck are you talking about? is close to exploding from his throat. Louis, the same as all the rest? A statement so far from reality that it stuns Lestat instead, and as he's done so many times before, he only watches as Louis storms out from the room, teeth bared, eyes blazing.
He will close the door if Louis doesn't. Either way, an angry snap of punctuation.
And perhaps this is where he collapses into tears and regret. He remembers—he had read the book so many times, lingered over their fights, why it always felt a little misaligned to him despite the words possessing fidelity to his recollections. Then, of course, it would occur to him, they can only be written from Louis' own memory. No recollection of Lestat's anguish in his wake, no word of his sense of panic, nauseous regret. Self-loathing, when it was bad, shame.
Why would it be there, anyway? Why would Louis know any of that? When Louis views him the way he does, remembers him as wholly selfish, because of the wholly selfish things he does? He can feel it now, the familiar gravity of such a spiral, but finds himself simply standing in place, floating in place.
Then he moves. Here is a bottle of vodka, unopened, on the low table. He grabs it and flings it against the closed door, where it explodes into glitter. A vase of his requested flowers, batted aside, breaking and spilling.
From beyond, the muted sound of crashing, breaking, thumping will carry on until there is nothing left worth breaking.
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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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"Yes, well," he says, a twinge at his mouth, like a dog ready to bite. "You knew what you wanted back then. You knew how to take it."
A shift. Elbow pushing into the couch, drawing himself back and up. Flustered, or at least, as near as Lestat is physically able to get to such a thing. "I won't anymore," he is saying as he does so, voice all at once sober, no longer husky with want, with raw needed. Like a steel thing closing in his throat. "I'll spare you the trouble, and me the many indignities of throwing myself at you over and over,"
and so on. All the while, hands off Louis. Refusing to push him, to throw him, to scratch or grapple.
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Lestat is leaving. Lestat is slipping away, and Louis is so—
"Me and how many others?"
A moot point. Louis had been the one to ask for space and for distance and for time. Louis had needed it. Louis is all apart, ripping up his life at the root and shaking loose all things that had grown up around him.
But there is no way to tear Lestat out of him. He had loved him endlessly, desperately, for so long. Even when Louis believed the worst of him, believed he had participated in the worst betrayal of his life, that he had seen Claudia killed and wanted it, Louis had still loved him.
He loves him now. Wants him now. He just doesn't want to be—
"Me tonight, someone else tomorrow? Don't play like it's about what I want or what I'm gonna take."
Lestat, spinning away from him. Louis, weight bearing briefly down as if to hold him close before the thought of pinning Lestat to him sickens Louis. Can't make Lestat do anything, can't bear to try and keep him if he's trying to go.
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"Someone else tomorrow," snapped. "Someone who can give of themselves. Someone who won't fuck around."
A traitorous thrill when he feels Louis press him back can't be listened to. Listening to that desire, the promise of what he can evoke, has gotten him nowhere. And maybe there is something wrong with him, something wrong with him and not Louis, something that believes in the love that the wolf has for the deer, for the wanting that closes jaws and tears flesh, but it cannot be detangled in the moment.
They can be, though, Lestat insisting himself out from beneath Louis when no further resistance is brought to bear. Boots on, still, flesh pale save for where grabbing hands has reddened him.
Moving for where a robe is hanging, and still speaking as he yanks it off the hook, flips it around his body. "Call me spoiled, or a slut, or whatever it is you're saying," he says, a furious clip to his tone, the movements of his hand. "But when I am on stage, there are a thousand people yearning for me. Hands reaching as if they could take me down into the midst of them all. It is my name in their mouths, in their blood. So I partake.
"Six years of begging," if they are going to reference the past. He thinks he is shouting, and can't stop. "Eighty years of exile, untouched. And now you are going to whine and withhold in equal measure because I take some comfort for myself."
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Louis feels it like a slap. Words that ring in his ears, even as he comes up off the couch. Lestat is already remote, disappearing, swathed in a robe. No one has come knocking, perhaps wisely avoiding a room with two volatile vampires rattling around inside. Louis is looking at him and is a little shocked, both at how hurt he is and how angry he is.
So many years, decades of emotion soothed down to nothing. To feel everything at full force, it's dizzying. Louis is acclimating to it still.
Can only observe this at a distance as he looks back at Lestat and hates him. Loves him, still. Hates himself for that. Maybe for the fact that he's wavered, plunged both of them into this position.
"No," Louis tells him. Heated. Frustrated. The mesh of his top is ruined, and Louis reaches to rip it off, let it drop to the floor. The pants can be salvaged, will get him out the door. "Take whatever you want from them."
Six years of begging. Eighty years of exile. There's a good reason they aren't tallying past transgressions, trying to litigate past hurts. Louis slipped and he can't slip any further. Straightens up, abandoning his belt to whoever Lestat flung it as he does up the fastenings of his trousers.
"If we're all the same, it don't matter. Enjoy them."
Because what is Louis if not another body in the crowd? Wanting and wanting and wanting, yearning for him uselessly? As caught up as all those silly mortals, aching for someone who has moved past him.
Louis turns away. There is a door. He'll see himself out and away, before they do more harm than they've already managed.
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He will close the door if Louis doesn't. Either way, an angry snap of punctuation.
And perhaps this is where he collapses into tears and regret. He remembers—he had read the book so many times, lingered over their fights, why it always felt a little misaligned to him despite the words possessing fidelity to his recollections. Then, of course, it would occur to him, they can only be written from Louis' own memory. No recollection of Lestat's anguish in his wake, no word of his sense of panic, nauseous regret. Self-loathing, when it was bad, shame.
Why would it be there, anyway? Why would Louis know any of that? When Louis views him the way he does, remembers him as wholly selfish, because of the wholly selfish things he does? He can feel it now, the familiar gravity of such a spiral, but finds himself simply standing in place, floating in place.
Then he moves. Here is a bottle of vodka, unopened, on the low table. He grabs it and flings it against the closed door, where it explodes into glitter. A vase of his requested flowers, batted aside, breaking and spilling.
From beyond, the muted sound of crashing, breaking, thumping will carry on until there is nothing left worth breaking.