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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.)
no subject
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.
no subject
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.