Lestat does not believe he is crying, not yet. From the outside, his eyes are wet, becoming brighter for it. His voice is thicker, shakier. There is a tumultuous cascade of thought going on in his skull, like steady ground turning to quicksand, burying sentiments and promises of togetherness and being chosen, making Louis say it, and he had hesitated, hadn't he, when Lestat had said companion, he was not imagining it—
"Not a decade, maybe not," he is saying as he draws himself up onto his knees. "But fifty years, one hundred," his voice rising out of their little whispers, a louder bark.
Not a human dalliance, a brief flicker of life to be extinguished in time, but another vampire. A vampire who hasn't hurt him, who will make a better eternity, who is no tyrant at all, who is incapable of shouting this way, of feeling this way.
Lestat rises and Louis rolls up to mirror him, meet him there.
"No," firm, reaching out a hand to set to his skin, his shoulder, his back. Whatever will be permitted to keep them linked, even in this small way. His pulse has kicked up. He is aware of it, but Lestat is human. Won't hear it. "No, it ain't gonna be like that."
Does it matter how many times Louis says this, when he can't say the words that matter?
Rare but not unheard of for Lestat to refuse Louis' touch. When he is angry enough, petty enough. It is a near thing now.
But never when it is a tender touch. A stopping touch, a grab, yes, but it is all very different when Louis is reaching for him, when his voice is this way. No vitriol here, no sniping, which does little to stop tears from escaping the corners of his eyes or for the unflattering way he feels his sinuses fill as if allergic.
"Then what is it like?" he asks, still swift and hard in tone, but a structural waver, a crack down the centre.
Or maybe all of it. All three of them, separate and together. The configurations they exist in. How they would grow into them and past them as the decades passed.
Whatever. Whatever it is, whichever it is, the vision Louis has when he imagines his growing vampire family, his maker and fledgling.
Meanwhile, plucking at the sheets that had been shoved aside. Dragging a corner over his lap, sullen. Louis can find his own modesty, if he would like some.
No burning desire for modesty in this moment. Louis stays naked, moves along the bed to put himself in Lestat's eyeline. Lestat can look at him or not. Louis wants to see his face, wants to look at him.
"He thinks he's in a cage," Louis says quietly. "I want to give him a way out of it."
And then, softer, "Like you did for me."
Lestat, who saved him. Saved him before Louis was ever dragged onto the stage in Paris.
"He can take it and go, if he wants. Maybe he will, and I'll ask him to come back when he's done roaming. But I ain't never gonna leave you."
Louis will say this again and again. Maybe Lestat will believe him, will have this in lieu of the things Louis can't put voice to.
"Do you see a place for him with us? You gotta tell me, if you don't. If you can't."
Lestat's mouth is a stubbornly unhappy line, ever expressive, and tension carried in a tight brow as he lets his gaze settle on the bed between them.
Still, it is not so bad, this vision. Enough that the beartrap clutch of his despair lets off the pressure by some fine degree, where it squeezes his heart. Still, it is hard not to think about Louis' appeals from long ago, how it would be for him and Louis and Claudia, the family they would make. That he would never leave. Louis had been so panicked. The one in front of him is not.
And Lestat, well. He had been intolerable. They had killed him to escape him. No amount of new perspective can change that this is so.
But he doesn't want to refuse just as he doesn't want to agree. Refusing requires something more certain than the chaos he is feeling now.
"I will have to think about it," comes out as a slightly precious whisper.
His heart catches as Louis reaches out, touches him. Risks it. Lestat drags his focus up to meet his eye, as watery as his own is. A minor crumbling follows this entreaty, but perhaps this is a better sign than the steely haughtiness that denotes another lashing of fury.
Louis has asked him for this, to speak, to explain. They have told each other that they are going to be better.
"I don't know," is not deflection, then. A restless little touch, fingertips brushing Louis' wrist, hand dropping. "I don't know. It lies with me. The thing that needs to be better for us is me."
For a given definition of better in this fucking place, where everything is stretched and strained to the limit.
But they've had excuse not to talk about so many things because they've been here. Because the world had been far away, and now it is looming close. They have opportunity to go home. They have opportunity to bring Wrench with them.
And Lestat says this and reminds Louis of himself. How he had felt, walking in New Orleans. Picking up pieces of himself, carefully resettling each one within his body.
"We're different, you and me. It's been different, hasn't it?"
Enough so that it'll be different there. It has to be.
"I am human," for instance. "We are not in New Orleans. Or the planet Earth. We are not beset upon by the trivialities of a shared home or a shared street, of the debate of how we occupy our time. You have had a great many occasions to rescue me, tend my wounds. I could gift you daylight."
Lestat reaches out to Louis' other hand, taking it gently. Maybe he is not wearing his ring now, it being the night time, but he fidgets with his fingers anyway.
"I wish you would say it," he says, nearly a whisper.
It's not new. Louis knew this. Knew Lestat wanted it.
But it is wrenching all the same to hear it aloud.
Says instead, "Lestat," hushed, anguished.
The ring is close at hand, set out on Lestat's nightstand. A sliver of home, old habits. Their lives mingling, overlapping cuff links and ties, rings and watches. Distinct, always, but tumbled together on dressing tables and inside armoirs. Their lives had settled together easy. They have only barely begun to try here. Now they don't have to.
Louis' fingers turn, lace through Lestat's. Hold tight.
"Can't you feel it?"
All the ways Louis says it without the words.
It's not enough. It will never be. But he wanted it to be something.
He had promised he could, he thinks. That night in the church, he didn't need Louis to speak it. Only to nod, to reach for him. Lestat had promised his own love would be so sufficient that he could give it to Louis and wait for its return. Had wanted to dedicate himself to doing so.
Lestat sures up his grasp of Louis' hand. It feels shameful, to state the wish out loud. Make a demand of it.
"I felt I had tricked myself," he confesses, watching their hands. "Long ago. That I had felt it as a delusion, and I would believe it of you every so often and be happy that way until sense returned and reminded me that you could never. Not the one who had taken your life. The one who had hurt you so."
And so, sometimes it is still that way. Imagining the love telegraphed to him in other ways. Phantoms of it, or hallucinations, or something spectral.
He'd said the words over and over to Armand. Almost eighty years saying them aloud and it had been so easy.
It had been different. The feeling had not been so overwhelming.
Lestat had done these things. He had taken Louis' life. He had hurt him.
But that was not the whole truth.
"You gave me a Gift," Louis reminds him. "Ain't your fault it took me so long to see it."
Hard won knowledge. It had been a gift. Louis had felt it like a curse for so, so many years. Punished Lestat for it. Punished himself when Lestat was gone.
Here, now, Louis keeps hold of him. Long years apart, Louis wandering through the wreckage of his life, but he'd found his way back.
"You won't be human forever. Then you drink from me, like we used to."
And maybe that would make it easier. Maybe that made things easier then, when they'd made that a habit, before everything fractured and fell apart. Long years even before their fight when Louis hadn't been letting Lestat near him, not his veins, not his bed. They've been far away.
It is a sweet offering. And yes, there had been little question about what lay at the heart of them when one could simply open a vein, when one was willing to bleed.
Lestat lets out a sigh.
Then lists forward, pressing forehead to Louis' shoulder, his chest, knowing there is no universe he will push Louis away. And more than just an offering of blood, there is another kind of offering, a like we used to. Perhaps they can never really go back to what it was like when they were their happiest, and perhaps they don't want to, not really, but still. Something familiar, something shared.
"Let me think about it," he says, there, not quite muffled. "And then I will say there is such a place as you imagine. And then I will have you tell me that we are companions. That you choose me. That you will never leave. Over and over you will say this. I will try as well."
These are the things that might make it easier. A patience, a tolerance, for his worse instincts.
Louis puts his arms around him and Lestat moves in closer, arms sliding around him in return. Either he will wind up in Louis' lap or tip them both back into bed, either suits him just fine, stealing affection and comfort as a balm to restless feelings as directly as a cat seeks warmth.
Does this while Louis makes these promises. Tangles with, presses closely. Reminds himself how certain he had been that he would never feel this again, perhaps not from anyone, but certainly not the only one he wanted it from.
But a little room maintains for the sake of conversation. Negotiations.
Lestat, studying Louis' face. Active crying has ceased, at least, just leaving him a little raw at the edges. Considers this thing, untested. They had fought so much, before. It had felt like disaster each time. They came back together and avoided the injuries, kissed around them.
"I promise," he says. "Certainly I cannot promise to be on my best behaviour always."
He's had eighty years of best behavior. Or worst behavior, and then best behavior overwritten onto it. Erasing the worst. Omitting it.
He had all the worst of Lestat. Lestat had all the worst of Louis.
Louis keeps him held, settled into his lap. Fingers drawing up and down his back, encouraging Lestat back into a draping kind of lean. Close, Louis' hands say. Stay close.
"I want you. Wanna figure out what we look like when we aren't here."
Lestat slouches however Louis encourages him, resting the weight of his torso against Louis', staying folded up in his arms. There is no one else, he thinks. No one who holds him this way, no one who can love him, no one and no one and no one. No one else who wants him like that, who wants him so completely, who even could.
"Me too."
Maddening. Shades of the maddened despair he had felt in his solitude, save that Louis is hear and holding him and saying these things.
"You will fight with me," he says. Circling back, feeling for a specific. "You won't go quiet."
The silence is the worst. The silence is what kills him.
Is he truly so changed from who he was? Is he capable of staying present, always?
His fingers skim up Lestat's back, cup his face. Study him, traces of salt water on his skin, wide blue eyes. He puts his thumb over the little scar at the corner of his mouth.
"I promise I'll try," he tells him, as honest as he can be. "You promise me you won't let me stay quiet."
They'd started leaving each other before Lestat had ever been expelled from their home. Louis retreating inwards. Lestat fleeing the house when the sun set. Leaving each other by degrees before everything gave way.
No one else who will care to touch him this way, thumb at the little scar like it has its own virtues contained within it. Like Lestat has virtue contained within him.
"I promise," he says. "You promise you will remember you said that."
A little levity, this one, spoken softly as he leans in, nudges Louis into a kiss. But he will do it. He will not let Louis retreat from him. He will not give up, run off into the night.
They kiss. Louis keeps Lestat's face held firmly in his hands as they break apart again, eyes roaming over his features. Soft strokes of his thumb.
"I'll remember."
A precious thing, memory.
Terrible, to feel grateful for the ability to remember. To know that nothing will be taken from his mind. He'll remember this promise. He'll remember all their fights. He'll remember everything.
"I'm gonna remember," he tells him. "I want to."
Everything. These promises, this place. Everything. Their fresh start, he wants all of it.
Lestat allows his own capture, studying Louis back. Keeping a loose hold, arms around him. It is the two of them all at once, anxieties about what it means for Louis to love another easing if only because Louis is holding him so closely, imparting to him important information.
"Have you been forgetful?" he asks, with a whisper. Truer than he knows. For now he thinks of it as the fuzzying of time, smoothing out edges, both pleasurable and hurtful. He can imagine. Louis has led a full life, in their time apart.
It feels a little like being caught, trapped up between two less than ideal routes.
They are trying to be better. Louis is trying not to withhold.
"Not on purpose," he murmurs, which explains next to nothing. He was forgetful. He has been told he wished to be. It is difficult to believe that, but there is the possibility. A small possibility he had, once.
But how many times since? How much had Armand adjusted?
Louis can never know. He will have to recover all the pieces on his own.
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It is always this. Their oldest fracture, the first thing to break. Lestat wanting these words. Louis never able to give them to him.
And now, another.
"I ain't leaving you. It ain't that way."
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Lestat does not believe he is crying, not yet. From the outside, his eyes are wet, becoming brighter for it. His voice is thicker, shakier. There is a tumultuous cascade of thought going on in his skull, like steady ground turning to quicksand, burying sentiments and promises of togetherness and being chosen, making Louis say it, and he had hesitated, hadn't he, when Lestat had said companion, he was not imagining it—
"Not a decade, maybe not," he is saying as he draws himself up onto his knees. "But fifty years, one hundred," his voice rising out of their little whispers, a louder bark.
Not a human dalliance, a brief flicker of life to be extinguished in time, but another vampire. A vampire who hasn't hurt him, who will make a better eternity, who is no tyrant at all, who is incapable of shouting this way, of feeling this way.
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"No," firm, reaching out a hand to set to his skin, his shoulder, his back. Whatever will be permitted to keep them linked, even in this small way. His pulse has kicked up. He is aware of it, but Lestat is human. Won't hear it. "No, it ain't gonna be like that."
Does it matter how many times Louis says this, when he can't say the words that matter?
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But never when it is a tender touch. A stopping touch, a grab, yes, but it is all very different when Louis is reaching for him, when his voice is this way. No vitriol here, no sniping, which does little to stop tears from escaping the corners of his eyes or for the unflattering way he feels his sinuses fill as if allergic.
"Then what is it like?" he asks, still swift and hard in tone, but a structural waver, a crack down the centre.
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Or maybe all of it. All three of them, separate and together. The configurations they exist in. How they would grow into them and past them as the decades passed.
(Louis, still thinking in decades.)
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Whatever. Whatever it is, whichever it is, the vision Louis has when he imagines his growing vampire family, his maker and fledgling.
Meanwhile, plucking at the sheets that had been shoved aside. Dragging a corner over his lap, sullen. Louis can find his own modesty, if he would like some.
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"He thinks he's in a cage," Louis says quietly. "I want to give him a way out of it."
And then, softer, "Like you did for me."
Lestat, who saved him. Saved him before Louis was ever dragged onto the stage in Paris.
"He can take it and go, if he wants. Maybe he will, and I'll ask him to come back when he's done roaming. But I ain't never gonna leave you."
Louis will say this again and again. Maybe Lestat will believe him, will have this in lieu of the things Louis can't put voice to.
"Do you see a place for him with us? You gotta tell me, if you don't. If you can't."
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Still, it is not so bad, this vision. Enough that the beartrap clutch of his despair lets off the pressure by some fine degree, where it squeezes his heart. Still, it is hard not to think about Louis' appeals from long ago, how it would be for him and Louis and Claudia, the family they would make. That he would never leave. Louis had been so panicked. The one in front of him is not.
And Lestat, well. He had been intolerable. They had killed him to escape him. No amount of new perspective can change that this is so.
But he doesn't want to refuse just as he doesn't want to agree. Refusing requires something more certain than the chaos he is feeling now.
"I will have to think about it," comes out as a slightly precious whisper.
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As much as Louis wants to push. Wants Lestat to say, Yes, Louis, okay.
But he'd pushed before, for Claudia. Frantic, on his knees. Begging. Promising.
He doesn't want it to be like that now.
Easing closer, carefully, into Lestat's space. Reaching to cup his face, despite the sense that this is pushing too far.
"Think about it," Louis says, then entreats, "Talk to me about it. What you're thinking. What you gonna need to make it easier."
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Louis has asked him for this, to speak, to explain. They have told each other that they are going to be better.
"I don't know," is not deflection, then. A restless little touch, fingertips brushing Louis' wrist, hand dropping. "I don't know. It lies with me. The thing that needs to be better for us is me."
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For a given definition of better in this fucking place, where everything is stretched and strained to the limit.
But they've had excuse not to talk about so many things because they've been here. Because the world had been far away, and now it is looming close. They have opportunity to go home. They have opportunity to bring Wrench with them.
And Lestat says this and reminds Louis of himself. How he had felt, walking in New Orleans. Picking up pieces of himself, carefully resettling each one within his body.
"We're different, you and me. It's been different, hasn't it?"
Enough so that it'll be different there. It has to be.
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Yes, it has been different.
"I am human," for instance. "We are not in New Orleans. Or the planet Earth. We are not beset upon by the trivialities of a shared home or a shared street, of the debate of how we occupy our time. You have had a great many occasions to rescue me, tend my wounds. I could gift you daylight."
Lestat reaches out to Louis' other hand, taking it gently. Maybe he is not wearing his ring now, it being the night time, but he fidgets with his fingers anyway.
"I wish you would say it," he says, nearly a whisper.
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But it is wrenching all the same to hear it aloud.
Says instead, "Lestat," hushed, anguished.
The ring is close at hand, set out on Lestat's nightstand. A sliver of home, old habits. Their lives mingling, overlapping cuff links and ties, rings and watches. Distinct, always, but tumbled together on dressing tables and inside armoirs. Their lives had settled together easy. They have only barely begun to try here. Now they don't have to.
Louis' fingers turn, lace through Lestat's. Hold tight.
"Can't you feel it?"
All the ways Louis says it without the words.
It's not enough. It will never be. But he wanted it to be something.
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He had promised he could, he thinks. That night in the church, he didn't need Louis to speak it. Only to nod, to reach for him. Lestat had promised his own love would be so sufficient that he could give it to Louis and wait for its return. Had wanted to dedicate himself to doing so.
Lestat sures up his grasp of Louis' hand. It feels shameful, to state the wish out loud. Make a demand of it.
"I felt I had tricked myself," he confesses, watching their hands. "Long ago. That I had felt it as a delusion, and I would believe it of you every so often and be happy that way until sense returned and reminded me that you could never. Not the one who had taken your life. The one who had hurt you so."
And so, sometimes it is still that way. Imagining the love telegraphed to him in other ways. Phantoms of it, or hallucinations, or something spectral.
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It had been different. The feeling had not been so overwhelming.
Lestat had done these things. He had taken Louis' life. He had hurt him.
But that was not the whole truth.
"You gave me a Gift," Louis reminds him. "Ain't your fault it took me so long to see it."
Hard won knowledge. It had been a gift. Louis had felt it like a curse for so, so many years. Punished Lestat for it. Punished himself when Lestat was gone.
Here, now, Louis keeps hold of him. Long years apart, Louis wandering through the wreckage of his life, but he'd found his way back.
"You won't be human forever. Then you drink from me, like we used to."
And maybe that would make it easier. Maybe that made things easier then, when they'd made that a habit, before everything fractured and fell apart. Long years even before their fight when Louis hadn't been letting Lestat near him, not his veins, not his bed. They've been far away.
Now they're not. Don't have to.
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Lestat lets out a sigh.
Then lists forward, pressing forehead to Louis' shoulder, his chest, knowing there is no universe he will push Louis away. And more than just an offering of blood, there is another kind of offering, a like we used to. Perhaps they can never really go back to what it was like when they were their happiest, and perhaps they don't want to, not really, but still. Something familiar, something shared.
"Let me think about it," he says, there, not quite muffled. "And then I will say there is such a place as you imagine. And then I will have you tell me that we are companions. That you choose me. That you will never leave. Over and over you will say this. I will try as well."
These are the things that might make it easier. A patience, a tolerance, for his worse instincts.
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"Okay."
Louis will be patient. He will be present. They will come to a solution together.
In the meantime—
"We gonna fight," he promises. "I'm not promising we ain't gonna fight, Lestat."
And he cannot explain exactly why it's so important without explaining Armand. What he had done. What Louis had perhaps asked for, perhaps allowed.
"But we're gonna come back to each other every time. Patch it up after we scream ourselves out."
Choice. Being allowed the ugliest parts of themselves, without any editing or erasing.
"Promise me," he asks. "Promise me we're gonna fight. And that we'll make up after."
Not like they used to. Maybe a little like they used to.
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Does this while Louis makes these promises. Tangles with, presses closely. Reminds himself how certain he had been that he would never feel this again, perhaps not from anyone, but certainly not the only one he wanted it from.
But a little room maintains for the sake of conversation. Negotiations.
Lestat, studying Louis' face. Active crying has ceased, at least, just leaving him a little raw at the edges. Considers this thing, untested. They had fought so much, before. It had felt like disaster each time. They came back together and avoided the injuries, kissed around them.
"I promise," he says. "Certainly I cannot promise to be on my best behaviour always."
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He's had eighty years of best behavior. Or worst behavior, and then best behavior overwritten onto it. Erasing the worst. Omitting it.
He had all the worst of Lestat. Lestat had all the worst of Louis.
Louis keeps him held, settled into his lap. Fingers drawing up and down his back, encouraging Lestat back into a draping kind of lean. Close, Louis' hands say. Stay close.
"I want you. Wanna figure out what we look like when we aren't here."
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"Me too."
Maddening. Shades of the maddened despair he had felt in his solitude, save that Louis is hear and holding him and saying these things.
"You will fight with me," he says. Circling back, feeling for a specific. "You won't go quiet."
The silence is the worst. The silence is what kills him.
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Is he truly so changed from who he was? Is he capable of staying present, always?
His fingers skim up Lestat's back, cup his face. Study him, traces of salt water on his skin, wide blue eyes. He puts his thumb over the little scar at the corner of his mouth.
"I promise I'll try," he tells him, as honest as he can be. "You promise me you won't let me stay quiet."
They'd started leaving each other before Lestat had ever been expelled from their home. Louis retreating inwards. Lestat fleeing the house when the sun set. Leaving each other by degrees before everything gave way.
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"I promise," he says. "You promise you will remember you said that."
A little levity, this one, spoken softly as he leans in, nudges Louis into a kiss. But he will do it. He will not let Louis retreat from him. He will not give up, run off into the night.
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"I'll remember."
A precious thing, memory.
Terrible, to feel grateful for the ability to remember. To know that nothing will be taken from his mind. He'll remember this promise. He'll remember all their fights. He'll remember everything.
"I'm gonna remember," he tells him. "I want to."
Everything. These promises, this place. Everything. Their fresh start, he wants all of it.
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Lestat allows his own capture, studying Louis back. Keeping a loose hold, arms around him. It is the two of them all at once, anxieties about what it means for Louis to love another easing if only because Louis is holding him so closely, imparting to him important information.
"Have you been forgetful?" he asks, with a whisper. Truer than he knows. For now he thinks of it as the fuzzying of time, smoothing out edges, both pleasurable and hurtful. He can imagine. Louis has led a full life, in their time apart.
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Does he want to lie?
It feels a little like being caught, trapped up between two less than ideal routes.
They are trying to be better. Louis is trying not to withhold.
"Not on purpose," he murmurs, which explains next to nothing. He was forgetful. He has been told he wished to be. It is difficult to believe that, but there is the possibility. A small possibility he had, once.
But how many times since? How much had Armand adjusted?
Louis can never know. He will have to recover all the pieces on his own.
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cw suicide mention
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are we approaching bow territory