One hand turns, like the instinct is to go to Louis again, help him to his feet. Lestat can imagine doing so, and can imagine being shoved away. A stumble turns into something worse. Turns into Louis realising he can simply leave, turns into Louis leaving him.
And—voices. Foot steps.
Walking the river's edge, the smell of alcohol almost as vibrant as the clap of the woman's drunken laughter. She is wobbling on the arm of the man she is with, and he is moving them with intent. Lestat does not seem surprised, does not even look, as if maybe this manhole had more to do with the sound of easy prey up above than the nearest location of whatever he's managed to procure himself.
Louis is as Lestat has never seen him, not really. Pieces of it. Fury, bloodlust, hatred. But a proper hunt between them, they'd never quite managed. Always Lestat's hunts, and Louis in attendance. Always Louis' fumbles, and Lestat looking aside.
Now, he says, "Go on," and, "I'll keep watch," and expects Louis to do as a vampire should.
Later, maybe Louis will hate him for this too, even as he recognizes the reprieve couched in the temptation laid out before him. The man's intention. The woman, unsteady on her feet but more than capable of fleeing the thing Louis becomes in this moment. Straightening. Scenting them on the air. Hearing the pulse of blood.
And for a moment, thinks of Claudia. Not her absence. Not her death. Thinks of her, aglow with the joy of her kills, French spilling out of her mouth.
I never want to hunt alone again.
The sound Louis makes then, halfway between a snarl and a sob, startles the man. The woman's laugh goes high, a shrill cackle at what sounds nonsensical to her. What must look nonsensical, in the shadows. Is not identifiable, until it is too late. Louis is older than he had been in New Orleans, faster now than he was then.
This man is already dead. He is already dead when he begins to shout. He is already dead when the woman begins to scream, when Louis flings her away from her companion without looking to see where she lands or if he has left her only to Lestat's mercies. He hasn't chosen her.
Louis tears this man's throat out. Blood spills down his chin, down his chest. The scream turns to a wet gurgle. It is not enough. It will not be enough. His hunger and his anger are one thing. They are a wildfire. This man is only kindling. Louis hears bone snap as he slams the body against the bridge rail, and abruptly the struggling ceases.
There is no chance at all that Louis will hear the shuddered intake of breath in the moment he launches himself away, Lestat tipping a stare up at the sky as the animal sounds of the attack echo down the low walkway. It would have been the same, rescuing Nicki—an immediate and hateful thought. Vitriol, madness. But this is different. He has always determined that Louis would be different.
And so it is. Blood spatters. The panicky scrape of a drunk woman trying to get up and run, one of the heels of her shoe broken. Lestat looks over, evaluating the progress. Louis, tearing his victims to shreds.
He is there in an instant.
Not to stop Louis, or interrupt the meal he is now quietly indulging in. Further off. He takes the woman by the throat and snaps her neck, and she is dead, and without looking, he hauls her aside to drop into the river. A waste, he knows. He had intended to feed.
A little penance.
Turns on a heel, evaluating Louis, the curve of his back. Ready to intercede, should he decide to drink too deeply.
There is some distant awareness of a pulse suddenly stopping, of the splash that follows. That he is starving still. That he can still taste Lestat in the back of his throat, even as blood flows forth from the mangled man pinned up against the side of the bridge.
Not so much flow as sluggish spurts, but there is still the promise of more.
And then after, what next? Another, and another after.
More, until he is no longer weak. Until he is no longer a fool. (More, and more, because the world is quiet while he is so occupied, because the oppressive reality of Claudia's death is no longer crushing him beneath its truth.)
The sound of a dwindling heart beat, the deep gulping down of blood, weak breathing. Lestat, standing, waiting, nails digging into his palms.
Then, a step forwards, and another.
"Chéri."
The endearment comes without thought, pure reflex, as if its been no time at all since the last time he said it. When he follows the next instinct, it's with more trepidation, a hand going out to touch high on Louis' back, to go and take his shoulder in hand and encourage him away from his prey.
A whole body shudder underneath Lestat's hand. A moment where his teeth dig in harder, pushing a last weak whimper from his prey.
Chéri wedging under his skin, finding that deep, intrinsic part of him that Louis has never been able to sever.
His jaws release. The man falls. Louis' breathing too hard, too heavily. Something near to shock setting in, vision blurring, narrowing to the corpse at his feet. The hand at his shoulder an anchor point as he sways back a step further.
He has never had to consider whether a vampire can overeat. Has never asked what happens to a vampire nearly starved, and then animated once more.
Shrouding himself in his anger, going rigid in its grasp, this is the only thing keeping Louis from collapsing too. (And Lestat, the hand at his shoulder, the touch he almost sways to if not for his rage. His rage cannot yield.)
"No," has nothing to do with this moment, a moaned misplace of a word.
(He'd screamed it, over and over. It had done nothing.)
"I need more, I need..."
Claudia. The coven reduced to ash. To climb back into that coffin among the stones. His mind spins between these things, flinches away from Armand among the wreckage of them.
Unbidden memory: Claudia dropping to her knees, whining that she wanted more. Is that how vampires die? From starvation?
And Louis doesn't shrug off his hand, so Lestat keeps it there, and brings another in to touch his arm. Two solid points, steadying, easing him back away from the corpse. One full adult is enough to sate a vampire, and one who has already drunk another vampire deep enough to fell a mortal.
They could hunt more. There is plenty of night left and Lestat finds he cares very little for the laws that prohibit the kinds of excess that might betray them, given the antics of this coven in particular.
But then, where does hunger end, and blackhole of this rage begin? What one bad night can do to a person. Louis is sensitive. He always has been. Lestat's hands squeeze, urging him to turn.
"No," is a sob of a response, even as he gives over to the pressure of Lestat's hands. Says it again, even as he does turn, his head before the rest of his body follows.
"No."
No near to the same tenor as I hate you.
These aren't untrue things. They are only incomplete. Louis has no space for the rest.
Claudia is dead.
The blood has streaked down his chin, his throat. Soaked through his tunic. Lestat is touching him, and Louis wanted that. Louis wanted to be touched by him, has always wanted to be touched by him. Sat on that stage and heard Lestat lie, heard him render their lives in malicious tones to a gleeful mortal audience, and still—
His heart leaps, erratic. Wanting. Even in the midst of all-consuming grief, a corpse at their feet and their daughter dead, Louis still wants him.
Breaking his own rules and intentions by taking Louis' by the face with his hands. How can he not?
But what can Lestat say? Please don't be broken, I need you. Or something even more absurd, like, I'm sorry. The terrible and endless fount of explanation, excuses, reasoning, threatening to break like a furious river against a weakened dam, but even if he allowed it to break, it changes nothing.
But he can hear Louis' heart. Feel it, in that strange, near-subconscious attunement shared between them. He can feel himself crumbling, but the fear also crumbles, fear of rejection or doing the wrong thing, fear of that certain hatred that hasn't left Louis' voice. Lestat looks at him now and he sees Claudia looking back, that desperate searching look that asked him why this was happening, why did it hurt so badly, why couldn't he make it stop?
He had stood frozen, and made himself watch. Here, a choking sound leaves him, and his arms go around Louis, am embrace so insistent they both stagger a step.
It is only Louis, so locked in his own building fury, that keeps them from collapsing here in the street.
There is a not insignificant part of Louis that desperately wants just that. To collapse. To be crushed under the weight of his grief.
Claudia is dead. (A refrain that he cannot shake. That feels as if it will follow him for the rest of his life.)
Lestat is holding him again.
Something in Louis snaps. Breaks.
Lestat clutches him and for a moment Louis cannot move at all. His breath rasps in Lestat's ear, tremors held in check by the force of their embrace. Says something. Maybe no, again.
It doesn't matter.
Slowly, clumsy as if Louis cannot recall how, his arms come up in return. And then it is a bruising, clinging thing, holding Lestat desperately tight in return.
Is he broken? He feels broken, or near to it. As if the only thing keeping him from spiraling into absolute insanity is Lestat, holding on to him.
He knows a pulse of loathing, disgust for himself, when the first sob breaks through. There is no helping it, of course. He had denied himself it up until this point, and as Louis' arms go around him tightly, it is all at once impossible to continue.
But Lestat holds him in return. A firm arm around his shoulders, across his back, centre of gravity reestablished after that initial rocking forwards.
He turns his head, tucking his face in against the side of Louis' neck. His pulse is strong with this new flush of blood. He is alive. Claudia is dead but Louis is alive, breathing harshly into his ear, heart beating, muscles lashing to bone as he returns the embrace so tightly. Louis is alive and in his arms, and the surge of relief and joy makes for a strangely bitter, potent mix with everything else.
And Louis hates him, but isn't that wonderful too? In the scheme of things.
"Stay with me," is blatant begging. "Don't go away, Louis. Whatever you need, I'll give you, only stay."
The first thought, reflexive: Where would I go? What does it matter where I am? Claudia is dead.
Stay, Lestat begs, and it's not about location, about proximity or about intent to flee. It's an appeal for Louis remaining alive, whether Lestat realizes it or not.
She would hate him for this, Louis knows. He's doing it again, she'd hissed, as if she could sense the way Louis' heart, his terrible, foolish heart was already softening.
And while rage and grief have locked so much of Louis into place, his heart—
There is just enough left to warm here, clutched close with Lestat's voice in his ear. Louis' grip on him tightens impossibly further. The words don't come for a long stretch, only the ragged rhythm of his breathing until Louis can finally dredge up a reply.
"I want all of them dead."
Lestat can help if he wishes. Louis will accomplish it with or without help.
One thing at a time, Lestat had cautioned. Maybe it will be easier to feel the grief without being destroyed by it when those responsible have been made to regret harming her.
An answer he baited. An answer that sinks like a stone in him.
Turns his head, forehead pressed to Louis' shoulder. The audacity of destroying a coven, headed by a mostly-ancient. There is a dark urge to laugh. The impossible things that Louis asks of him. (He isn't asking it of him, but there is certainly no world in which Lestat is going to allow him to do it alone. And what, lose him again?) His arms pull tighter, if possible.
Then, his hand on the side of Louis' face, and a kiss on the other. It's almost unromantic, something more akin to a blessing or reverence than romance, but there's more familiar affection where he rubs his thumb against Louis' cheek.
"Then we'll kill them," he says, Tearful, still, but steadier.
The audacity of it may become clearer to Louis in the years to come. Later, when he has some distance, when he has more understanding of the world he's treading within.
In this moment, it is only repayment in kind. It is only a necessity. It must be done. He cannot survive any other way.
"Okay."
As if it is a simple thing Louis has set out to do. The specifics of it, the extent to which they will involve Lestat, are unclear even to Louis. It is only the desire, and the permission to see it through, that matters in this moment.
Lestat's fingers upon his face, the way the touch of his lips lingers, distracts—
It appeals to the same part of him, whatever breathless, inexorable part of him that hadn't been able to do anything but rejoice at Lestat's coming. At the sound of his footsteps upon the metal grating. Fear and hatred and love, always love. Always these three things in a terrible potent combination.
There is a teetering unsteadiness still in Louis' face. It's there when he looks back at Lestat, being held upright perhaps only by Lestat's hands about his face and neck. Louis' fingers have found their way to a loose, absent grasp on Lestat's tunic, flex there as Louis finds his way to, "We have to go."
And it is nonspecific enough that Lestat would be forgiven, if he assumed Louis means back. Back the way they came. There is only unsteady movement to signal his intention, a pull towards momentum before the churn of emotion can drag him under.
He had meant death. He had meant madness. He had meant the kind of hatred that would separate them forever, a sure intention of the script he had played to, as if Armand wouldn't be satisfied by Louis merely dying, but to solidify his hatred first as well. Lestat had meant these things as sincerely and wholly as he had meant their physical proximity to each other, if not more so, although only in theory could he stand the idea of them parting ways.
And Lestat studies his face with the intent of trying to decide if this deal between them is true.
These words are assuring for their sobriety alone. His grasp of Louis doesn't loosen immediately, as if not truly trusting that he won't immediately fly back to the coven, wrathful, suicidal. But he does let him go, and when Louis doesn't leave, he nods. Yes, they have to go.
The dead man is slid into the river, and they leave. Louis is covered in blood, and they move through dark sidestreets, avoiding the late night crowds and the lamps. It isn't far to go, at least, wherever Lestat is leading them.
They kill again, whatever poor soul wanders into the same dark alleyway. Louis can slake his hunger, Lestat keeps watch, again refusing to share in it, and they move on, easy as shadows.
They arrive at a small apartment in a poorer neighbourhood. The smell of old blood lingers in the air, but not decay, prior occupants long since taken care of, disappeared. A cellar and a coffin, a cheap affair of plain wood, and gathered comforts from the apartment upstairs to line it. Only one, of course. Whatever Lestat had planned for, in Louis' rescue, it didn't appear to involve the scenario in which they both arrive back in his hideout.
A nearer thing than Louis is perhaps given credit for. It is tempting, to return to the theater to die.
But they have stood still long enough for a different instinct to manifest itself among the all consuming weight of his anger, shape the trajectory of the manic energy gathering inside Louis. He is hurt and weak, and if he is to die, he should take them all with him.
And Lestat, even now, is a gravitational force. (His heart, all the shards of his heart, demand proximity, and more.) The inkling of awareness that Lestat has drunk nothing wedges in the back of his mind, even as Louis drains another Parisian. Less brutal, but no neater. The blood is still drying on Louis when they find their way to their destination.
Stood on the stairs, a gore-splattered ghoul thinking in circles about the murder of a coven of vampires, Louis doesn't immediately understand. It takes him long minutes to respond, having come as far as the bottom step and stalled there, kited thus far by Lestat's purposeful movement.
Stirs finally from his internal reverie to look from the coffin to Lestat, parsing the offer.
"It's yours."
This place. The coffin. A humble assortment of essentials, all of which refuse to lay neatly alongside Louis' assumption of the extent of Lestat's participation.
"Go on," slowly, head tilting as he looks at Lestat. "You have it."
Is a petty thing to feel, given everything. Minor in the scheme of things. But it tangles up in his chest, frustration like fire catching. Lestat would desperately like to not lose his temper with Louis—and in fact, there is simply no option. He will not. He cannot.
"You need proper rest, chéri. Your mind needs it."
Locked in a coffin in such a way that Lestat doubts that even when the sun rose, it gave Louis any reprieve. It certainly didn't feel that way, for all the time its been. Lestat moves towards it, lifting the lid—it isn't hinged, so he just holds it aside.
And of course, the worry that he will sleep and Louis will leave. There is enough hazy pre-dawn time for that to be possible, or to slip away during the narrow gap between sundown and his own rising. Nails dig into wood.
Feels like a counterpoint to Louis, whose attention is all in fragments.
"I need to think," also feels like a clear counterpoint. What does his mind need? A plan. A way forward. He needs to think on how he'll kill the coven. The audience, he'll leave for Claudia.
A thing that feels rational in this moment, a respectful division of labor. She'd laid her claim. Louis will allow her that. She'd be angry with him, overstepping and leaving nothing for her.
(She's gone, she's gone, it doesn't matter, because she is gone.)
Louis' study sharpens. Perceiving, perhaps, the gesture being made, the care inherent in it. Feels the way it threatens to disarm him, hook the soft parts of his heart that are so attuned to Lestat's proximity.
"Go on," is a slower repetition, as he comes down off that last step.
Lestat hovers in place for a moment, and then sets the lid back down onto the coffin. It slots in neatly, decent craftsmanship.
He will not lose his temper.
"Have it your way," he says as he straightens, a hopeless swing of an arm. "See how it is, slaughtering a full coven of vampires without any rest. Mm? So I can watch them tear you into pieces in front of me." His voice picks up in volume, a flare of feeling. "Like they did her?"
A shaky breath in. Back teeth clenched together, denying himself the easy vitriol that could emerge if he let it.
Looking back at him, hearing these words land, Louis' expression shutters. Goes briefly blank, driven away from the agony. A tinny ringing in his ears, a strangling pressure in his chest.
Louis wasn't there to see her. Claudia. He hadn't seen.
There is a void. For a terrible moment, something occupies it.
And when Louis fights past the knife-twisting agony of it, what crawls in afterwards is ugly, and bitter. If he pressed, would Lestat lose his temper? Louis sees that clearly too, what would come of it. How momentary the relief. How great the damage.
How cruel, to make Lestat into a bludgeon to harm himself with.
The silence has gone on too long, by the time Louis makes his way back to himself. Collects enough of his mind to dredge up a reply, and even then—
All he does is descend that last step, reach past Lestat to take hold of the lid.
"I'll get in when you do."
A reckless offer. (A conciliatory offer, an apology. One given the only way Louis is capable in this moment.)
The silence scares him. That's the word, so might as well use it. The anger dwindles as it stretches out, but liable to flare anyway if Lestat speaks now, so he remains helplessly silent as Louis finds his way out of it.
Eyes fixed on Louis as he moves down the stairs.
It has occurred to him that Louis could snap in some way. Could decide that of the vampires who deserve to die for Claudia's death, Lestat could be one of them. And why not? He was on the stage. No one was chaining him to it.
So there is a small scrape of heel to ground as Lestat takes a step back when Louis nears, but otherwise keeps himself poised. A glance down after the lid lingers, taking a moment for that uneasy tension within to unwind itself. He doesn't want to get into the coffin. He doesn't want to drink blood. Louis had no rest. Louis had no blood. Why should he?
But he steps into it. Fully clothed, still, no sense in getting caught horribly off-guard if the worst were to happen. Sits, hesitates, tipping a look up at Louis before he settles back on the blankets inside, raised on an elbow.
Looking down at Lestat, Louis' expression cracks into something briefly, revealingly, lost.
They'd been happy. Claudia. (Madeleine. Madeleine, his daughter. His fledgling. Some part of the void in him is shaped like her.) Now Louis is here.
And Claudia is dead.
Louis doesn't make Lestat press him. He climbs in silently after him, and his heart aches to find how easy it is to simply fit himself beside and over Lestat. He still knows how to do this, as easy as drawing breath. As if they had never been parted, as if the years hadn't passed.
"Okay," is a quiet murmur, answering no one. Here they are. He reaches over the side of the coffin to drag the lid up and over, let it thump into place over them.
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And—voices. Foot steps.
Walking the river's edge, the smell of alcohol almost as vibrant as the clap of the woman's drunken laughter. She is wobbling on the arm of the man she is with, and he is moving them with intent. Lestat does not seem surprised, does not even look, as if maybe this manhole had more to do with the sound of easy prey up above than the nearest location of whatever he's managed to procure himself.
Louis is as Lestat has never seen him, not really. Pieces of it. Fury, bloodlust, hatred. But a proper hunt between them, they'd never quite managed. Always Lestat's hunts, and Louis in attendance. Always Louis' fumbles, and Lestat looking aside.
Now, he says, "Go on," and, "I'll keep watch," and expects Louis to do as a vampire should.
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And for a moment, thinks of Claudia. Not her absence. Not her death. Thinks of her, aglow with the joy of her kills, French spilling out of her mouth.
I never want to hunt alone again.
The sound Louis makes then, halfway between a snarl and a sob, startles the man. The woman's laugh goes high, a shrill cackle at what sounds nonsensical to her. What must look nonsensical, in the shadows. Is not identifiable, until it is too late. Louis is older than he had been in New Orleans, faster now than he was then.
This man is already dead. He is already dead when he begins to shout. He is already dead when the woman begins to scream, when Louis flings her away from her companion without looking to see where she lands or if he has left her only to Lestat's mercies. He hasn't chosen her.
Louis tears this man's throat out. Blood spills down his chin, down his chest. The scream turns to a wet gurgle. It is not enough. It will not be enough. His hunger and his anger are one thing. They are a wildfire. This man is only kindling. Louis hears bone snap as he slams the body against the bridge rail, and abruptly the struggling ceases.
He drinks.
The world around him quiets, for a moment.
(Claudia. Claudia is dead.)
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There is no chance at all that Louis will hear the shuddered intake of breath in the moment he launches himself away, Lestat tipping a stare up at the sky as the animal sounds of the attack echo down the low walkway. It would have been the same, rescuing Nicki—an immediate and hateful thought. Vitriol, madness. But this is different. He has always determined that Louis would be different.
And so it is. Blood spatters. The panicky scrape of a drunk woman trying to get up and run, one of the heels of her shoe broken. Lestat looks over, evaluating the progress. Louis, tearing his victims to shreds.
He is there in an instant.
Not to stop Louis, or interrupt the meal he is now quietly indulging in. Further off. He takes the woman by the throat and snaps her neck, and she is dead, and without looking, he hauls her aside to drop into the river. A waste, he knows. He had intended to feed.
A little penance.
Turns on a heel, evaluating Louis, the curve of his back. Ready to intercede, should he decide to drink too deeply.
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There is some distant awareness of a pulse suddenly stopping, of the splash that follows. That he is starving still. That he can still taste Lestat in the back of his throat, even as blood flows forth from the mangled man pinned up against the side of the bridge.
Not so much flow as sluggish spurts, but there is still the promise of more.
And then after, what next? Another, and another after.
More, until he is no longer weak. Until he is no longer a fool. (More, and more, because the world is quiet while he is so occupied, because the oppressive reality of Claudia's death is no longer crushing him beneath its truth.)
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Then, a step forwards, and another.
"Chéri."
The endearment comes without thought, pure reflex, as if its been no time at all since the last time he said it. When he follows the next instinct, it's with more trepidation, a hand going out to touch high on Louis' back, to go and take his shoulder in hand and encourage him away from his prey.
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Chéri wedging under his skin, finding that deep, intrinsic part of him that Louis has never been able to sever.
His jaws release. The man falls. Louis' breathing too hard, too heavily. Something near to shock setting in, vision blurring, narrowing to the corpse at his feet. The hand at his shoulder an anchor point as he sways back a step further.
He has never had to consider whether a vampire can overeat. Has never asked what happens to a vampire nearly starved, and then animated once more.
Shrouding himself in his anger, going rigid in its grasp, this is the only thing keeping Louis from collapsing too. (And Lestat, the hand at his shoulder, the touch he almost sways to if not for his rage. His rage cannot yield.)
"No," has nothing to do with this moment, a moaned misplace of a word.
(He'd screamed it, over and over. It had done nothing.)
"I need more, I need..."
Claudia. The coven reduced to ash. To climb back into that coffin among the stones. His mind spins between these things, flinches away from Armand among the wreckage of them.
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And Louis doesn't shrug off his hand, so Lestat keeps it there, and brings another in to touch his arm. Two solid points, steadying, easing him back away from the corpse. One full adult is enough to sate a vampire, and one who has already drunk another vampire deep enough to fell a mortal.
They could hunt more. There is plenty of night left and Lestat finds he cares very little for the laws that prohibit the kinds of excess that might betray them, given the antics of this coven in particular.
But then, where does hunger end, and blackhole of this rage begin? What one bad night can do to a person. Louis is sensitive. He always has been. Lestat's hands squeeze, urging him to turn.
"Louis," he says. "Look at me."
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"No."
No near to the same tenor as I hate you.
These aren't untrue things. They are only incomplete. Louis has no space for the rest.
Claudia is dead.
The blood has streaked down his chin, his throat. Soaked through his tunic. Lestat is touching him, and Louis wanted that. Louis wanted to be touched by him, has always wanted to be touched by him. Sat on that stage and heard Lestat lie, heard him render their lives in malicious tones to a gleeful mortal audience, and still—
His heart leaps, erratic. Wanting. Even in the midst of all-consuming grief, a corpse at their feet and their daughter dead, Louis still wants him.
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But what can Lestat say? Please don't be broken, I need you. Or something even more absurd, like, I'm sorry. The terrible and endless fount of explanation, excuses, reasoning, threatening to break like a furious river against a weakened dam, but even if he allowed it to break, it changes nothing.
But he can hear Louis' heart. Feel it, in that strange, near-subconscious attunement shared between them. He can feel himself crumbling, but the fear also crumbles, fear of rejection or doing the wrong thing, fear of that certain hatred that hasn't left Louis' voice. Lestat looks at him now and he sees Claudia looking back, that desperate searching look that asked him why this was happening, why did it hurt so badly, why couldn't he make it stop?
He had stood frozen, and made himself watch. Here, a choking sound leaves him, and his arms go around Louis, am embrace so insistent they both stagger a step.
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There is a not insignificant part of Louis that desperately wants just that. To collapse. To be crushed under the weight of his grief.
Claudia is dead. (A refrain that he cannot shake. That feels as if it will follow him for the rest of his life.)
Lestat is holding him again.
Something in Louis snaps. Breaks.
Lestat clutches him and for a moment Louis cannot move at all. His breath rasps in Lestat's ear, tremors held in check by the force of their embrace. Says something. Maybe no, again.
It doesn't matter.
Slowly, clumsy as if Louis cannot recall how, his arms come up in return. And then it is a bruising, clinging thing, holding Lestat desperately tight in return.
Is he broken? He feels broken, or near to it. As if the only thing keeping him from spiraling into absolute insanity is Lestat, holding on to him.
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But Lestat holds him in return. A firm arm around his shoulders, across his back, centre of gravity reestablished after that initial rocking forwards.
He turns his head, tucking his face in against the side of Louis' neck. His pulse is strong with this new flush of blood. He is alive. Claudia is dead but Louis is alive, breathing harshly into his ear, heart beating, muscles lashing to bone as he returns the embrace so tightly. Louis is alive and in his arms, and the surge of relief and joy makes for a strangely bitter, potent mix with everything else.
And Louis hates him, but isn't that wonderful too? In the scheme of things.
"Stay with me," is blatant begging. "Don't go away, Louis. Whatever you need, I'll give you, only stay."
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Stay, Lestat begs, and it's not about location, about proximity or about intent to flee. It's an appeal for Louis remaining alive, whether Lestat realizes it or not.
She would hate him for this, Louis knows. He's doing it again, she'd hissed, as if she could sense the way Louis' heart, his terrible, foolish heart was already softening.
And while rage and grief have locked so much of Louis into place, his heart—
There is just enough left to warm here, clutched close with Lestat's voice in his ear. Louis' grip on him tightens impossibly further. The words don't come for a long stretch, only the ragged rhythm of his breathing until Louis can finally dredge up a reply.
"I want all of them dead."
Lestat can help if he wishes. Louis will accomplish it with or without help.
One thing at a time, Lestat had cautioned. Maybe it will be easier to feel the grief without being destroyed by it when those responsible have been made to regret harming her.
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Turns his head, forehead pressed to Louis' shoulder. The audacity of destroying a coven, headed by a mostly-ancient. There is a dark urge to laugh. The impossible things that Louis asks of him. (He isn't asking it of him, but there is certainly no world in which Lestat is going to allow him to do it alone. And what, lose him again?) His arms pull tighter, if possible.
Then, his hand on the side of Louis' face, and a kiss on the other. It's almost unromantic, something more akin to a blessing or reverence than romance, but there's more familiar affection where he rubs his thumb against Louis' cheek.
"Then we'll kill them," he says, Tearful, still, but steadier.
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In this moment, it is only repayment in kind. It is only a necessity. It must be done. He cannot survive any other way.
"Okay."
As if it is a simple thing Louis has set out to do. The specifics of it, the extent to which they will involve Lestat, are unclear even to Louis. It is only the desire, and the permission to see it through, that matters in this moment.
Lestat's fingers upon his face, the way the touch of his lips lingers, distracts—
It appeals to the same part of him, whatever breathless, inexorable part of him that hadn't been able to do anything but rejoice at Lestat's coming. At the sound of his footsteps upon the metal grating. Fear and hatred and love, always love. Always these three things in a terrible potent combination.
There is a teetering unsteadiness still in Louis' face. It's there when he looks back at Lestat, being held upright perhaps only by Lestat's hands about his face and neck. Louis' fingers have found their way to a loose, absent grasp on Lestat's tunic, flex there as Louis finds his way to, "We have to go."
And it is nonspecific enough that Lestat would be forgiven, if he assumed Louis means back. Back the way they came. There is only unsteady movement to signal his intention, a pull towards momentum before the churn of emotion can drag him under.
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And Lestat studies his face with the intent of trying to decide if this deal between them is true.
These words are assuring for their sobriety alone. His grasp of Louis doesn't loosen immediately, as if not truly trusting that he won't immediately fly back to the coven, wrathful, suicidal. But he does let him go, and when Louis doesn't leave, he nods. Yes, they have to go.
The dead man is slid into the river, and they leave. Louis is covered in blood, and they move through dark sidestreets, avoiding the late night crowds and the lamps. It isn't far to go, at least, wherever Lestat is leading them.
They kill again, whatever poor soul wanders into the same dark alleyway. Louis can slake his hunger, Lestat keeps watch, again refusing to share in it, and they move on, easy as shadows.
They arrive at a small apartment in a poorer neighbourhood. The smell of old blood lingers in the air, but not decay, prior occupants long since taken care of, disappeared. A cellar and a coffin, a cheap affair of plain wood, and gathered comforts from the apartment upstairs to line it. Only one, of course. Whatever Lestat had planned for, in Louis' rescue, it didn't appear to involve the scenario in which they both arrive back in his hideout.
"You can have it," he says. "I'll guard you."
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But they have stood still long enough for a different instinct to manifest itself among the all consuming weight of his anger, shape the trajectory of the manic energy gathering inside Louis. He is hurt and weak, and if he is to die, he should take them all with him.
And Lestat, even now, is a gravitational force. (His heart, all the shards of his heart, demand proximity, and more.) The inkling of awareness that Lestat has drunk nothing wedges in the back of his mind, even as Louis drains another Parisian. Less brutal, but no neater. The blood is still drying on Louis when they find their way to their destination.
Stood on the stairs, a gore-splattered ghoul thinking in circles about the murder of a coven of vampires, Louis doesn't immediately understand. It takes him long minutes to respond, having come as far as the bottom step and stalled there, kited thus far by Lestat's purposeful movement.
Stirs finally from his internal reverie to look from the coffin to Lestat, parsing the offer.
"It's yours."
This place. The coffin. A humble assortment of essentials, all of which refuse to lay neatly alongside Louis' assumption of the extent of Lestat's participation.
"Go on," slowly, head tilting as he looks at Lestat. "You have it."
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This is so stressful.
Is a petty thing to feel, given everything. Minor in the scheme of things. But it tangles up in his chest, frustration like fire catching. Lestat would desperately like to not lose his temper with Louis—and in fact, there is simply no option. He will not. He cannot.
"You need proper rest, chéri. Your mind needs it."
Locked in a coffin in such a way that Lestat doubts that even when the sun rose, it gave Louis any reprieve. It certainly didn't feel that way, for all the time its been. Lestat moves towards it, lifting the lid—it isn't hinged, so he just holds it aside.
And of course, the worry that he will sleep and Louis will leave. There is enough hazy pre-dawn time for that to be possible, or to slip away during the narrow gap between sundown and his own rising. Nails dig into wood.
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Feels like a counterpoint to Louis, whose attention is all in fragments.
"I need to think," also feels like a clear counterpoint. What does his mind need? A plan. A way forward. He needs to think on how he'll kill the coven. The audience, he'll leave for Claudia.
A thing that feels rational in this moment, a respectful division of labor. She'd laid her claim. Louis will allow her that. She'd be angry with him, overstepping and leaving nothing for her.
(She's gone, she's gone, it doesn't matter, because she is gone.)
Louis' study sharpens. Perceiving, perhaps, the gesture being made, the care inherent in it. Feels the way it threatens to disarm him, hook the soft parts of his heart that are so attuned to Lestat's proximity.
"Go on," is a slower repetition, as he comes down off that last step.
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He will not lose his temper.
"Have it your way," he says as he straightens, a hopeless swing of an arm. "See how it is, slaughtering a full coven of vampires without any rest. Mm? So I can watch them tear you into pieces in front of me." His voice picks up in volume, a flare of feeling. "Like they did her?"
A shaky breath in. Back teeth clenched together, denying himself the easy vitriol that could emerge if he let it.
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Louis wasn't there to see her. Claudia. He hadn't seen.
There is a void. For a terrible moment, something occupies it.
And when Louis fights past the knife-twisting agony of it, what crawls in afterwards is ugly, and bitter. If he pressed, would Lestat lose his temper? Louis sees that clearly too, what would come of it. How momentary the relief. How great the damage.
How cruel, to make Lestat into a bludgeon to harm himself with.
The silence has gone on too long, by the time Louis makes his way back to himself. Collects enough of his mind to dredge up a reply, and even then—
All he does is descend that last step, reach past Lestat to take hold of the lid.
"I'll get in when you do."
A reckless offer. (A conciliatory offer, an apology. One given the only way Louis is capable in this moment.)
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Eyes fixed on Louis as he moves down the stairs.
It has occurred to him that Louis could snap in some way. Could decide that of the vampires who deserve to die for Claudia's death, Lestat could be one of them. And why not? He was on the stage. No one was chaining him to it.
So there is a small scrape of heel to ground as Lestat takes a step back when Louis nears, but otherwise keeps himself poised. A glance down after the lid lingers, taking a moment for that uneasy tension within to unwind itself. He doesn't want to get into the coffin. He doesn't want to drink blood. Louis had no rest. Louis had no blood. Why should he?
But he steps into it. Fully clothed, still, no sense in getting caught horribly off-guard if the worst were to happen. Sits, hesitates, tipping a look up at Louis before he settles back on the blankets inside, raised on an elbow.
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They'd been happy. Claudia. (Madeleine. Madeleine, his daughter. His fledgling. Some part of the void in him is shaped like her.) Now Louis is here.
And Claudia is dead.
Louis doesn't make Lestat press him. He climbs in silently after him, and his heart aches to find how easy it is to simply fit himself beside and over Lestat. He still knows how to do this, as easy as drawing breath. As if they had never been parted, as if the years hadn't passed.
"Okay," is a quiet murmur, answering no one. Here they are. He reaches over the side of the coffin to drag the lid up and over, let it thump into place over them.