Kingpin Playlist

by miraculan

Summary:

With Lestat on the move again, someone ought to come and keep New Orleans held down. And Louis wasn't going to let it be anyone but him.

Chapter 1: Rattlin' Bones

Louis hadn't told anyone he moved into an apartment in the quarter.

 

He didn't think it was a secret, per say—Lestat would notice he was nearby as soon as he was back in town. Daniel might tease about what the “real reason” for moving back might be (it's not that, it's Not.) If anything, he could say that it's the one place he was confident Armand would not show his face in. It wouldn't even be much of a lie to say so. Definitely a bonus. 

 

The real answer had more meat on its rattlin’ bones. The penthouse was too big, too wide and gray no matter what he tried to fill it with. Cavernous, with no cover. Cold, even on hot desert days. Quiet, especially now that the entirety of his staff was also gone with the wind. Talamasca, almost all of them. So was his contact at the Farm. And hunting in Dubai was starting to dry up quick— with “debutante” quickly becoming one of Louis' least favorite flavors. 

 

Dubai was boring. Artificial. Made him feel like a princess stuck up a tower. 

 

His new apartment in New Orleans was a significant downsize, maybe even small for a bachelor, but it had old bones and new amenities. He was on the third of three floors, so he won't have to worry about stomping feet above his head when he's trying to sleep the days away. He shared the floor with only one other apartment—a white lady in maybe her early sixties named Candy who worked nights, so they ran into each other frequently. She kept her gray hair dyed blonde and her thin mouth painted red, and had a voice stained an octave deeper than you'd imagine from decades of smoke when she'd shuffle over to Louis on the other side of the shared balcony and ask, “You got a light, baby doll?”

 

For Candy, of course he did. 

 

The second floor had a single Hispanic mother whose name he hadn't caught yet, though he knew the little boy's name was Manuel because he had heard her shout it across the stairwell after his pattering feet. He was fairly certain she worked the day shift at the same place Candy did. Blanca, that was her name. She shared that floor with a pair of college girls from out of state, best friends that saved up the money to move down to the Crescent City all on their own. Louis didn't know their names, but wondered if there was something other than platonic starting to develop there—if the taller one hated the shorter one's new boyfriend for the reasons suspected.

 

The first floor housed a very sharply dressed Haitian man named Baptiste, who Candy said was working on earning a doctorate of some kind, though she didn't know his area of study. Louis took her word for it, since he'd yet to even catch a glimpse of him. Across the way was the last neighbor—one of the oldest people Louis had ever seen, a tiny old black lady named Mamie who must have been in her nineties at the youngest. She lived alone, because she was stubborn, but her youngest son and his grown son came by very frequently to help her with errands. 

 

It was the type of place where the renters have to play by the rules, but it wasn't like Louis was hurting for the deposit back. By God, he wasn't gonna keep living in stone gray walls. He filled the space with green and gold, jewel-toned and chocolatey colors making the bedroom cozy and dim. He was currently in the process of putting up a floral wallpaper in the living room on his own, which was not easy but just hard enough to refuse to quit. Who was he gonna ask for help anyway? Fly Daniel in from New York? Ask the ancient old woman on the ground floor? Lestat?

 

No, he hadn't told Lestat he was here. It wasn't a secret though, was it? Why hadn't he wanted to tell? He thought maybe he wanted it to be a surprise, is all. He had a few surprises actually, big and small. And bizarre. And eerie. 

 

For example, Louis could... see through the blood, sometimes.

 

It started after the hunger, after the theater—so he didn't give it much credence. Just another almost-madness to live with. He asked Armand about it once, somewhere in Morocco, on a train. It seemed to surprise him, but he hid it quickly, and thought very carefully before he spoke.

 

“Estelle described something similar to me, once.” He'd said, light and airy. “You recall she was Celeste's fledgling? She was given the gift not long after the theater's original founding. I remember her as...slow to wean. She fed off of us, mostly Celeste, more than she hunted. Not that she was shy about taking a life, she was just used to being spoiled by her maker. But she had a more pleasant temperament than most, so we indulged her. Whether or not the memory recall is a gift inherent or born of regular indulgence in vampiric blood, I couldn't say.”

 

Louis had found himself endlessly embarrassed by the phrase “slow to wean,” even if it was technically an apt descriptor. In the early days, he really did drink mostly from Lestat. Spoiled, indeed. The memory nearly made him blush. 

 

He only backed off of it when Claudia came around, because of her...unique metabolism, she had to take from Lestat at the end of the night to keep her from wreaking havoc on Royal Street worthy of making the papers. Very rarely did she ever take from Louis, and only after they’d left New Orleans—it was...an odd sensation. Rather, the sensation was familiar, it was just odd that it was her. Maybe it was different for Lestat, who had been a maker several times over and regularly topped off Claudia's tank that to them it must have been practically mundane. Domestic, maybe. To Louis, Claudia's enthusiasm and hunger carried the same leaden guilt that incest might. 

 

He remembered, unwillingly, an early morning towards the end, when his stomach nearly dropped to the floor beneath him at the peripheral view of Claudia half feral drinking from the gory middle of Lestat's chest—as if in a rage she'd tried to claw his ribs open and get at the heart with her teeth. Anger and guilt. Villains, dissemble no more.

 

Lestat had obviously taken a tumble to the rug, caught by a pounce, and hadn't done anything to fight her off. Practically unbothered, aside from the occasional wince or hiss—he even had the thought to hold her hair out of the way for her, and had managed to acquire and light a cigarette all while supine on the floor.

 

A weird feeling, to be relieved that your daughter had only straddled your husband on the ground to half maul him in a blood-drunk haze.

 

Louis shook off the memory with a shiver. Or tried to. 

 

“To be expected, really, for one turned at the age she was.” Armand not-so-helpfully shrugged, admiring the landscape out the window. “Constantly under or overstimulated—the blood, or rather their thirst, takes the place of any and all other impulses. Mortals die too quickly to scratch the itch, as it were.”

 

It must have been the look on his face, or the surge of ice through his veins that made Armand finally take the hint and change the subject—dear fucking God, change the subject.

 

“The things you see,” he began, “might be easier to unravel if you were to write them down somewhere, in as much detail as you can recall. Or a drawing, if one appears too vague for articulation. I will not ask to see them, but know that I do find such a gift fascinating, and would be most interested in helping you identify what you're seeing.”

 

And so, he started drawing the little flashes he saw, mostly in dreams but occasionally in waking hours too. Some he knew right away—a folklore anthology on a desk in front of him, a hand not his own scribbling notes on strigoi and vourdalak on a yellow notepad while a radio crackled pleasantly from the other side of the room. A horse, dying in the snow, making an awful, gut-churning, heart-breaking cry. Stained glass windows. Stage lights. Chains. Others he could make educated guesses at—measuring tapes, aching and bruised and scraped knuckles forced into the grip of heavy old scissors, cutting through velvet. Hands on strings.

 

A dark room, looking down at where his hands used to be. 

 

Others were a mystery to him. Waking to the feeling of insects crawling over him and jumping awake, only to see the flicker of a snake sliding across his lap. A silver comb. Stone walls, more snow, then open desert sky. The persistent feeling of needing to cough—waking to the feeling that he'd been breathing through a straw all night.

 

Beakers. That was the sketch that gave him the most trouble—a still life of cluttered glassware bubbling away by the light of nothing more than fire. Archaic tools, obsolete and oddly shaped. A horrid smell. Numb. These dreams have no sensation, other than the cloying warmth of fire. Empty but not hungry. He always woke from these in a sweat, starving and shaky. 

 

The same numbness but more intense, by the ocean. A beautiful sea, so black that only its churning separated it from the sky above it. Utter stillness. He couldn't quite call it peaceful, because for some reason he always found himself pissy and annoyed—the sound of footsteps approaching only made him want to roll his eyes. 

 

But he couldn't. 

 

There were others. Too brief to remember. Too quick to capture on paper. It was growing to be quite the ghoulish and mundane collection.

 

After the interview, once he was alone more often than not, in a coffin again—they became more frequent. After sharing blood with Lestat again, it was almost every night. Some sweet, some disturbing, but most were boring. Recording them, revisiting the repeats, adding more detail every time, adding color to the ones most familiar to him, became one of the more interesting ways to pass the time. 

 

A few in particular started gaining more traction than the others, all from the same onlooking eyes. Hushed giggling, fumbling with a faceless boy or three, stuffed in a stuffy old college supply closet. The siren song of glowing night time streets. The warmth of the salons, of a music hall. The cold of being flung back home. Those heavy scissors, scuffed hands. The gloom and gloom and gloom, bleak, dark. The only joy came from the strings—and then from...

 

A tall and wiry thing with hand-me-down clothes hastily taken in to fit. Face tanned and freckled, made dry from braving the wind. A bruise above his brow from God knows what, a scratch on a handsome jaw from shaving, and yet there was already new stubble to take its place—shimmering bronze and gold in the light along with his lashes, with his flyaway hairs. Pretty blue eyes. Glittering, joyful tears. By hearth fire. By sunlight. It took Louis until the pencil touched paper to recognize that boy as Lestat. 

 

Louis always thought of him by moonlight—huge, low hanging moons the color of butter, the nights hazy and humid and made all the more richer in color for it, all shades of gold and midnight blue.

 

When “the idea” struck, he dismissed it immediately. Lestat had been “haunting” him for decades without even being dead—a self-soothing hallucination, but a hallucination nonetheless. Just because he'd seen someone else down there in the tunnels that night under the theater didn't mean they were something as whimsical as a ghost. But, cynical as he might seem, you don't grow up in New Orleans without believing in magic and ghosts.

 

But if it was his imagination...no, how could he conjure a face he'd never seen before? A stranger?

 

“Tu veux le brûler? Ça devrait brûler.”

 

Could a vampire become a ghost if they're already dead? It was a vampire that told him that, told him that if he wanted to burn the theater he should burn it. When he looked away and back, he had vanished. 

 

But now...

 

Louis couldn't be sure, but the peripheral dream-like flashes of memory, on occasion, made him think of that arson-endorsing figure in the tunnels under the theater. Maybe the hair? A chocolate colored wisp of curl out of the corner of the mind's eye, a face he'd call “mousey” for a man, with an upturned nose and mouth pinched in a permanent Parisian little moue. His eyes were jarring, though. Louis was certain they must have been very dark before he was turned, but the vampire—or the ghost of one—had eyes yellow like an animal’s. Turned that mousey face feline and snooty.

 

It's a dumb idea that would get him mercilessly teased at best, and interrogated at worst. All Louis knows how to do is dig up the past. Picking at scabs. 

 

He headed down to the storage unit at the apartment complex, where he'd last imagined that specter browsing the black market paintings and antiques stored in vacuum seals and temperature controlled rooms that measured the humidity or lack thereof. The little welp had been carelessly—or maybe spitefully—rifling through Armand's things the last time Louis envisioned him. 

 

No surprises on which paintings and trunks and drawers were now missing, though few were worth grieving over. Armand could hoard his maker's works far away from Louis now, which he would have preferred from the beginning. 

 

But, true to where his little ghost had been rummaging, there were a few trunks and chests left behind. Even the ornate key had been left in the lock, as if meant as a parting gift—the metal heavy and decorative, probably as old as Louis. 

 

Opening the trunk wafted a mildewy smell that for whatever reason he never truly grew to hate. Not like wet towels sat too long in a hamper, more like that strange paper-rot smell, both musty and dark but also vaguely of apple peel. 

 

Playbills sat atop the eclectic hoard, some he recognized from the Theatre de Vampir, but some were so old he thought they would be better preserved behind glass plating—not on paper, but parchment. Most from Paris, but he spotted one from Marseilles that he set aside out of curiosity. Underneath these, a few broken and worn trinkets that Louis was fairly enamored with right away: a churchwarden pipe, a rusted pocket watch, a solid silver hand mirror missing the glass, cufflinks, a buckle, a brooch, many many ribbons in various stages of wear, a woman's jewelry box with the name “Eleni” engraved on the front. It was empty, but beautiful on its own.

 

Beneath this, a very heavy garment, all velvet. Maybe a dress or a skirt from the owner of the jewelry box?

 

Louis had to stand up from his crouch to unfold it properly, unfurling to a length nearly as long as he was tall, sending a dozen moth balls rolling along the floor like marbles. The color of it was shocking against the gray on gray of the apartment, a red so deep and vibrant that it seemed to suck every other color out of the room. There was some moderate insect damage along the bottom hem, but the mantle was in almost pristine condition. 

 

Not a dress, but a cloak.

 

The fur lining might be what kept up the structural integrity, if it was as old as the rest of the trunk. An odd color choice, maybe—Louis would have pictured something either very dark or very light to stand its ground against the red, but the fur was actually a warm gray, freckled here and there with brown and black. The lining at the shoulders was matted down, but the hood was still soft. He couldn't guess what animal it might have been.

 

When he first unfolded it, he'd wrinkled his nose at the medicinal smell of the moth balls mixed with the long-dried sprigs of gray twigs that might have been lavender once, along with a waft of what might have been smoke or ash. 

 

Right at the collar, however, it smelled like tobacco and cologne—one that had long since lost its top note, but had faded to something woody in the middle and crisp at the end. Green apple. Sea salt. Pine needle, whipping through the wind like knives. White wine and trouble.

 

Vermouth, annihilation...

 

It was easier to miss him, these days. Or maybe it was just a different kind of ache, something bittersweet instead of mourning. Louis knew he'd see him again, could probably name the date and time they'd arranged to do so, could call and hear his voice flattened and dulled by the speaker on his phone. 

 

He wouldn't tell him he missed him, though. Not yet. Give him an inch and he'll take a mile.

 

Louis had another guilty indulgence when he was missing him, too: following the band on YouTube, Alex on Twitter, Larry on Instagram, and Cookie on TikTok. Really, he follows Cookie on everything because she's his favorite—which would normally be taken as an insult by the brat himself, but Cookie is Lestat's favorite also. It's just good taste.

 

The woman known as “Tough Cookie” was approximately five-foot-nothing, teeny and plump, with light brown skin and dark brown eyes, and hair she kept shorn close to the scalp. She had more piercings than he could count, a virtuosic familiarity with her guitar, and a masters in sociology. She also had an aunt with a horse farm outside of Houston, one with half a dozen working dogs on it that she volunteered to bathe—and so had recruited her whole band to do so. And recorded it. 

 

He's lost count of how many times he's watched it, smiling like a lunatic alone at his screen as Lestat's three mortal band mates use their jackets to protect him from the sun on the afternoon train, at how excited and fidgety he is even after they scold him for dislodging the carefully constructed parasol. The camera zooms in on his face when the sun finally knocks him out cold, face smushed in Alex's shoulder.

 

The dogs were wary of him at first, but were eventually won over by laying flat on his back and cooing, practically groveling for the chance to play with them. 

 

Lestat laughing and running, corralling the huge muddy beasts into the garage with the aid of vampiric stamina. Lestat in paint-stained Levi's and a tank top, covered in mud, then covered in soap. Lestat, surrounded by sleeping band mates and sleeping dogs, singing softly as he worked on combing and de-matting, with a growing pile of discarded fur beside him. 

 

Not how he sang for the stage, or for the studio, but how he sang at home.

 

Louis remembered the first time he ever heard him sing in anything more than passing. It was that first year in the townhouse—still getting used to the hours, the coffin, the hunger, and his new senses. He woke up alone, which wasn't unusual. Lestat was an early riser, even on dreary, stormy evenings like that one. Thunder rumbled, rain hitting the window in waves when the wind pushed the spray of it against the glass. At the sound of sloshing water inside the house, Louis braced for an unpleasant night before he realized it was likely just Lestat doing some washing.

 

Louis had teased him about it before, that little laundress is a rascal and I do not trust her , which had tickled and delighted a very sudsy Lestat. It made sense, that the goriest of their clothes would have to be burned, the lightly scuffed could go to the washerwoman, but anything in between would be best to do themselves. And Lestat had been doing it a long while. 

 

That time, though, beneath the patter of rain and the rumble of thunder and the sloshing of laundry, Lestat sang quietly to himself. It was beautiful, low and quiet, careful not to disturb the peace. He climbed high and dove deep without strain or effort. It was an old song that Louis had never heard, in a French he didn't really understand, sad and sweet and longing. Louis leaned over the edge of the coffin, face half hidden in his folded arms, his eyes hot and his chest aching, smile waxing and waning as he listened. 

 

When the rain worsened, it drowned him out a bit, and Louis could only imagine how lovely the sound would be if he got closer to the porcelain and tile in the bathroom. He was right, of course, the acoustics inside sounded like a chapel, even as gentle as the song was. He had been too eager, maybe, too greedy to hear it closer—Lestat stopped when he heard Louis in the doorway, blushed and apologized for waking him, rambling about the laundry of all things as if Louis wasn't choking on his heart. He sat next to the wooden stool on the floor, his own face somewhere around Lestat's waist, and shyly asked him if he would start from the beginning. 

 

Louis knows down to the minute and second in the video that Lestat starts singing, and he rewinds it over and over, to hear it from the beginning.

 

But that had been in Dubai, and now he's back in New Orleans, doing his damnedest not to pine and fester and rot alone in his apartment. He brought the whole trunk with him, including the cloak and maybe Nicki's ghost.

 

The wallpaper, right. It was in the middle of the paper debacle that Louis looked down to discover his feet were not planted on the chair beneath him, but on the wall along with his hands—as though he'd just run out of chair and kept climbing like a spider. 

 

He shrugged, relieved that it would be much easier to get the air bubbles out.

 

...

 

He'd woken up earlier than he'd wanted to the next evening, with the sun only just starting to set on the horizon—too fidgety to stay in bed. He ignored the voice in the back of his head that said the coffin would fix that, throwing off the blanket and resigning himself to the shower. He was bored. He was hungry. And as it turned out, Bourbon Street was as great a place as ever to get a bite.

 

He wasn't looking to take a life tonight, only partly for morality’s sake. Really, he kind of wanted to get laid, and there was little to no overlap in the type of mortal men he'd find no remorse in killing and the ones he'd let touch him. Seemed like he'd just have to find more than one “little drink” for the night. What a chore. How inconvenient.

 

Truly.

 

He took the twists out his hair at the bathroom mirror, used a mousse to pull and stretch the curl so it would dry more natural than he usually let it—artful disarray, a romantic asymmetry. He dragged a cologne-damp wrist from his neck all the way down to his sternum, turning back to the second bedroom that he used for storage and as a closet. He hadn't taken everything with him from Dubai, in fact everything here was mostly dragged out of a storage unit of more colorful and less modern pieces, things he bought on a whim but never felt bold enough to wear.

 

Jeans weren't normally a staple for Louis, since the last 30 years or so of menswear had been shapeless and sloppy—but he had some he liked in the 80s. Bit of a higher rise. Tailored close at the hip and thigh. Straight legged, no bunching at the ankle. That could work. He remembered he had to jump in place to get them on, but they'd work for the task at hand. He had some nice boots somewhere in here, sleek and dark and green. He had a suit jacket in the same color, actually. He'd never worn it because he couldn't find a shirt to go under it...but for this particular outing...he could just go without? Bold. Maybe too bold, but he's old enough now that he's stopped pretending to not know what he looked like. No shirt—just the jacket, and two gold chains. 

 

He debated whether or not he should bring his phone, given that tracking down people suspected of murder had been getting easier and easier in the past decade alone, but he hadn't been planning on overindulging anyway. It also meant he could snap Daniel a few pictures as proof that he wasn't holed up somewhere playing the hermit anymore, like he'd promised.

 

He got a whistle from Miss Candy as he walked downstairs and out into the noisy night. 

 

...

 

A very well-received selfie to Daniel and an appetizer of one large closeted groomsman later, and Louis was starting to feel like he was being tailed. Not by a vampire, even—Felix gave a little “ping” of acknowledgement when Louis reached out, confirming that he was on the other side of town.

 

No, it didn't really feel like a vampire at all. 

 

His tail, who he'd seen at every stop he made, was a very young woman who blended in perfectly. The same brown skin as Louis, with lighter hair she wore loose, and light eyes that always had something perfectly unsuspecting to look at. She was maybe a smidge overdressed, but looked just as trendy as any other twenty-something with room in the budget for a night out like this. Something gives her away, though. 

 

He can't read her properly. 

 

Her thoughts are like fog behind glass, before something mundane bleeds through—like the echo of the music playing at the bar, admiration of a woman's hair or a man's shoes, an inquiry about a fajita she saw being walked to someone's table. Almost a deliberate misdirection.

 

But right on the surface, fog behind glass. 

 

He had a hunch on who she was with, but couldn't even confirm that it was more than coincidence he kept finding her. And no matter who she was with, he wouldn't lead her through some back alley to confirm she was sticking close to him. He walked to the nearest intersection, in a crowd of other pedestrians in no particular hurry. He waited on the crosswalk, even, looking both ways before splitting off from the crowd to take a stroll down Royale. 

 

As soon as he turned the corner, he bolted—too quick for human eyes to follow, scaled the wall of a trendy plant shop up to its roof to settle into his vantage point high above the street amongst wisteria and ferns. 

 

A perfect view of 1132. 

 

If this tail stopped to look for him there, then it couldn't be a coincidence. She knew exactly who he was. And when she did pause at the gate, like he thought she would, she was not alone. The man she came to stand beside was smartly dressed, with a dark complexion and dark glasses. His thoughts were politely veiled, but not out of secrecy, Louis guessed. More out of habit. He wore his worry and frustration on his face anyway, so it wouldn't take a mind reader to notice.

 

“I said we were fairly certain he came back, not that we could be sure. Plenty of reasonable doubt.” The man insisted, though his face looked unsure as he scanned the street. 

 

“Well then, your reasonable doubt came from somebody else. It's him. I know it is.” The woman clipped.

 

“We debriefed you on them, we did not train you on how to work with them or around them. I had to pull a lot of strings to get you assigned to this.”

 

“I was already assigned to it, this is my case.”

 

“The case, but not him.” 

 

“My case is a dead end without him!”

 

Louis was plenty content to stay perched up on the roof and listen, but as soon as he lit a cigarette he caught an awfully familiar weight settle at the back of his neck—a warmth, a little shiver, a here I am that tugged eagerly at the other end of a string. Lestat's plane just landed.

He pretended to be torn between staying here and heading home to see if his maker could follow the string to him for all of two and half minutes when he received the message.

 

Are you in New Orleans??

 

He smiled, decision made.

 

Why don't you come find me, yeah? Got a surprise or two for you. 

 

He made a leap back to the ground between buildings, ashing the cigarette once before thinking better of it and putting it out completely, trying his best to wrangle a grin as he did it. 

 

The man and the woman saw him, like he'd hoped they would, stopping their conversation in its tracks. He looked both ways before crossing over to them, weaving between foot traffic and an SUV before joining them in front of the gate. It still looked odd, he thought, with none of the lights on inside. With a final wistful sigh, he turned his attention to the two agents in front of him. 

 

“Evenin’.” He nodded in greeting to both, but kept his focus on the woman who'd been following him all night. “Ma'am.”

 

“Can we help you with something?” The man asked. Smooth.

 

“Can I help y'all with something?” He countered, smiling now as he glanced between the pair. They stayed quiet, nervous but not truly afraid. “Seems like it'd be a hell of a lot less work to just ask.”

 

After another beat of silence, he offered his hand.

 

“Louis du Lac, ma'am.” He said, watching her brighten up a bit at being proven correct, her hand clammy and warm but her grip strong and sure. The man took his hand with a gloved one, a bit of tension dissolving as he did. Both humans relaxed, but kept a well-trained guard up. 

 

Not before a few little blips of memory slipped past their walls, mostly from the man: feral fledglings scratching at doors after their interrogators fled the room, botched things wheeled away from hospital rooms, revenants in the making, Felix throwing a middle finger over his shoulder as he evaded them. 

 

It seemed this branch really didn't specialize in vampirism, and only heard horror stories here and there. So why were they looking for Louis?

 

“Ciprien.” The man introduced himself. “And this is Merrick. Apologies for the precaution, Mr. Du Lac, it wasn't meant as an insult.”

 

Cute.

 

“I sure hope not.” He smiled. “Couldn't help but overhear that I'm not the normal fare for your department, is that right?”

 

The woman, Merrick, spoke swiftly as if expecting something or someone to stop her from doing so.

 

“No. I work in archives, for the most part—gathering eye-witness accounts, testimony, photographs if they're available. I organize the descriptions and summaries written by us, and make sure they accurately reflect the evidence collected. Several files were compromised, or deliberately sabotaged over the last few decades, one of which is my business whether I like it or not.” Merrick huffed, shooting a bit of a glare to her left. 

 

This is fun.

 

“Ah, ok.” Louis nodded, starting to see the big picture. They don't need a vampire, per say. They need an eye-witness.

 

“Early 20th century sources are hard to come by, and the subject matter would put our questions nearly under your authority to answer.” Ciprien seemed to implore.

 

Louis gave him a card with one of his business lines on it. Lestat was on the move, and he didn't want him on their radar if he wasn't already. 

 

“It's late. Y'all go on home and get some sleep, and tomorrow we can set up a time and place. If I don't answer, just leave a message and I'll get back with you.”

 

He didn't stay to hear a reply, zipping in the opposite direction of his apartment to circle back, keeping what side of town he lived on a secret from the agents and also confusing Lestat who seemed to be on the prowl already, sleuthing him out.

Chapter 2: Future People

Notes:

Come see me on tumblr @ miraculan-draws!!

Louis sat on the wicker chair on the porch working through some long-neglected business on his phone—authorizing wires, updating an ID, selling off some shares to narrow his pool of responsibilities going forward. He'd only been out there about forty minutes when he broke into a grin, the other end of the string wobbling with excitement as graceful steps trotted up the steps behind him. 

 

“That was fast.” He smiled, leaning out the chair to poke his head from behind the wall before thinking better of it and setting his phone down on the table to stand. 

 

Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.

 

He still had his carry-on slung over one shoulder. That's why he was so quick—he hadn't even stopped at home first. He had another bag rolling along the ground behind him, and Louis was helplessly charmed by this 250 year old predator trying his damnedest to quickly shuffle over to greet him. It looked silly and eager and boyish, and Louis couldn't help but rush over to nestle underneath those open arms. It was clear the embrace surprised Lestat, who had obviously been gesturing in a here I am sort of way, but he didn't complain.

 

He was warm, smelled like apples and salt, and let Louis squeeze his arms around that teeny waist hard enough that it would have snapped a human spine.

 

Louis still didn't quite know how to say “I missed you,” or “I've been thinking of you,” so he just shoved his whole face into the space between neck and shoulder, nuzzling blonde locks out of the way so he could give a little kiss to the corner of his jaw. He received a happy little spin for his efforts, the sound of luggage wheels clanking against concrete reminding them that they hadn't even made it past the front door. He watched but did not mention Lestat blink away pink joyful tears, the sheen of it tinting his eyes violet for a moment. It made Louis usher him inside even quicker, eager to have him to himself for a little while. 

 

“Surprise?” Louis smirked, gesturing around the apartment, taking and setting the luggage just inside the second bedroom’s door for the moment.

 

“This is yours?” Lestat asked, wide-eyed, starting and stopping his next question a few times. “Are you—will you be here for a while, then?”

 

“I’m sure I’ll end up looking for a bigger place after a while, maybe something older to restore as a project.” Louis shrugged. “But I ain't got plans to relocate any time soon.”

 

“I had wondered if maybe you'd end up wanting out of Dubai, after everything. But, I'll be honest, I thought you'd roam.” Lestat mused. “I pictured you somewhere gloomy and fashionable—like Seattle. London, maybe.”

 

“Nah, I hate the cold. Wanted to come home.” 

 

He’d thought he went and made Lestat emotional again, what with how he wouldn't meet his eyes anymore, before realizing that he seemed to barely be paying attention. Louis couldn't wrangle his grin so he let it split his face with a huff, tapping his foot in mock-annoyance. He was still in his “come to me” outfit from earlier.

 

“My eyes are up here.”

 

Lestat knew that, but did not correct, biting his lip, expression nearly pained.

 

“It might as well be lingerie, chèrie—you wear it like black lace.” He groaned, falling in an exaggerated stumble over to Louis to trail a hand from his uncovered collar down, fiddling with the delicate chains, running fingers through the chest hair.

 

Louis let him, practically purring. Whatever they were to each other was without title, at the moment, but it was good, good good, especially with one of those broad hands very presumptuously unbuttoning his jacket. Louis let him do that, too, then presumed something of his own. 

 

Maybe he didn't ask whether he could bite or not, but the second Louis nuzzled underneath his jaw, Lestat was already tilting his head back for him. Spoiled, even still. He didn't take much, just enough to get the buzz that always came with the blood that made him, removing his teeth after and busying himself with the clean up while his jacket was attempted to be pushed from his shoulders. He laughed, but pulled himself just a bit out of reach.

 

“Hold up, baby—I told you I got surprises and I've been waitin’ too long to show you.” Louis smiled, hoping it hid his nerves well enough. It had only just then crossed his mind that what he wanted to show Lestat might be unnerving, even disturbing, that they might make him sad. Hell, it had been disturbing to Louis, at first. 

 

Lestat tilted his head, a little pout of concern pinching his wide mouth. It was cute, though, and drew him back in like a magnet to those pretty petal-pink lips. He couldn't help but capture them with his own, throwing his arms right back around those broad shoulders. 

 

“But I guess I didn't finish showing you this one, did I?” Louis teased, throwing himself into the role of seductress if it meant maybe taking some time to rehash his approach to the other surprises. And it was certainly no chore to lean into it. He was going to end up here anyway.

 

God, no one ever fucking kissed him like this—hungry and indulgent, until he was dizzy, until his mouth felt too dry without the aid of another against it. Just Lestat, the French fucking bastard who was nibbling in soft, wet little pinches at Louis' lower lip in a way that haunted his dreams for a century.

 

The bedroom in the apartment was the true culmination of his desire to put Dubai behind him, to put the listlessness, the emptiness, as far away as possible. This was the thesis. Ground zero.

 

It was dim and colorful, with so little rhyme or reason to the use of pattern that it circled back around to coherency. It was unapologetically eclectic, deco and nouveau, mid-century and millenial—he even hung up string lights that came with a little remote to change the colors. The bed was tucked into a corner, partly to save space and partly because. Well. 

 

Lestat didn't like beds. Louis thought he'd feel safer by the wall. And had made that decision when arranging the bedroom of his supposed bachelor pad. 

 

It was clear Lestat was taking in the room. While he was distracted, Louis pressed a button that had quiet music playing from a speaker in the opposite corner and arranged himself artfully on the bed, eagerly awaiting attention to return fully to his person. When it took exactly eight seconds too long, he kicked off his pants but left the black briefs he had on underneath—making peace with the fact that they would most certainly be a casualty of tonight's itinerary.

 

 

Louis dropped his fangs, talking around them. 

 

“I'll give you the full tour later, baby—right now I want you on me.” 

 

Lestat froze for a moment at the sight in front of him before closing his eyes to settle himself, hands pressed flat together by his mouth as if praying for strength before prowling eagerly into action—kicking off his shoes as soon as his knees hit the bed, sprawling out over Louis and immediately licking into his mouth. 

 

It was bliss, the weight of him, kissing Louis thoroughly into the mattress with single-minded intent. Barely restrained vampiric strength man-handled Louis' legs to either side of those slender hips, the grip greedy and groping. Lestat took his time tracing the familiar curves of Louis’ hips and thighs and ass, leisurely licking across his fangs to feed him right from the tongue in lazy swipes.

 

If Louis' could purr, he was sure he would be. This was luxury. Decadence. The word “spoiled” popped back into his head and instead of fighting off the usual flush of embarrassment, he preened. He was downright smug about it. Seventy-seven years without letting anyone dote on him, without letting anyone pamper him, or ravish him—he adored it like this, always wanted it like this, needed it, even.

 

It was long, lingering minutes before Lestat sat upright, leaving Louis to savor the rosy stain, sucking on his own lip to chase the taste.

 

In the early days, Louis couldn't handle being looked at like this—like he was a sunrise, like he was the Milky Way, like the world itself. He would shift and wiggle and huff, try to drag his smitten husband back within kissing distance so the weight of his eyes would be lessened. Not anymore, though. Louis looked right back up at him, a work of art framed on either side by his own bare legs. Lestat wore light denim and a white T-shirt that should have clashed with his light skin and light hair, his light eyes...but in here, in the intimate dimness of the bedroom—

 

One of them must have rolled over on the remote to the lights. Lestat soaked in every single color on the prism, a reflective patchwork of rainbow caught in Louis’ bed. Those eyes picked up the violet light, but shimmered with little sparkles of red and green and orange, the rest of him favoring pink and gold. Louis was the one struck dumb, now, wishing for all the world he had a camera to capture the moment.

 

The same candlelit creature from the century past, the same sweet friend that warmed him like coal fire, now perched above him bathed in Christmas lights with an Alabama Shakes track playing on a Bluetooth speaker. He was still here. For eternity, like he promised. Louis didn't tremble when he reached for him, this time. No, he launched forward and up instead, blindly maneuvering himself upright into Lestat's lap, shrugging off his jacket and tugging insistently at that pretty white tee to leave them both bare on top. 

 

Skin-on-skin was a relief he didn't know he needed, settling into his perch, arms lazily thrown across broad shoulders, arching forward so they could press together chest to chest, running his fingers through blonde hair at his leisure, much to the delight of his very willing captive. Lestat made delighted and muffled little sounds into his mouth, huffing through his nose to try and keep quiet—the air blowing across Louis’ skin and giving him a new wave of goosebumps every time. 

 

He'd been hard since Lestat unbuttoned his jacket in the living room, so it didn't take much convincing to follow the hands on his hips guiding him to rock back and forth, greedy palms sliding backward under his briefs to get at his ass, the span of them putting a few fingers teasingly close to where they both wanted them to be.

 

Louis’ smirk smeared wet across Lestat's dropped jaw.

 

“Louis! Louis, Louis...why are you already slick?”

 

“Hm?” He hummed, cheeky, nibbling at the square corner of jawbone, the thin skin just underneath, the healed place he'd already bitten through, reopening the wound. He got a hand between them, working at the fly of those handsome Levi's, slipping beneath the layers. “Oh, I was out for dinner, and knew I'd want company for dessert. Lucky you, that I felt your plane land while I was out. Why are your nails already short?”

 

“Desperate optimism. Did these come in a pack?” Lestat panted, snapping the waistband of the briefs against his skin, a bit harder than he probably meant to but Louis going from fondling to stroking was likely to blame for that. He barely got to the second half of his “mm-hm” when the fabric was torn off.

 

Lestat would want to warm him back up on his fingers, he knew, but Louis twisted them a bit and then shoved him down flat—blond hair fanning out against the dark red bedding. It looked good on him, the color. Why didn't he ever wear it? Louis knew he looked good on him, too, taking him to the hilt in one fell swoop, making them both cry out at once. They took a moment of white-knuckled stillness to catch their breath and get their bearings.

 

Louis leaned forward, trailing slow hands from Lestat's hips up to his waist, over the slight curve of his chest, the elegant line of his collarbone and then back down again. They looked good together, sharing the red bedding and the rainbow lights. 

 

“Oh, pretty baby—” he couldn't help but croon down at Lestat's pretty face, rocking himself gently back and forth on Lestat's stupid pretty cock, his own twitching between his legs at the pretty, pretty picture they made, leaking at the bruising grip on his hips.

 

“You have grow n-ngh!- wicked, in your centennial.” Lestat groaned, helplessly riding the slow-moving wave. 

 

Louis tilted forward, using Lestat's waist to hold his weight so he could swivel his hips further, take a deeper stroke. He felt drunk.

 

“Ain't I bein’ sweet?” He slurred, his vision a bit blurry, lazy and steady throbs of pleasure making the whole room soft and hazy. The ground beneath them, liquid, and Lestat solid as marble inside him, with a solid hand coming between them to wrap around Louis. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. It should be too slow to have him this out of his goddamn mind, but it's good, it's so good, they've always been so good—and they hadn't gotten quite this far since they've been reacquainted. It's been so long. Louis was panting quietly, gentle gasps tumbling from bruised lips. He smiled. “Thought I was bein’ good, cher. ”

 

“Oh, you're so good, you're so good—”

 

Lestat sounded in awe, probably looked rapturous, too, but Louis was struggling to keep his eyes open—only catching glimpses of blown pupils, the angelic blush across his nose showing even in the technicolor of the lights. He was being good too, eager to let Louis just use him like a toy, rocking into his hand and back onto his cock. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.

 

It was starting to sound slicker both ways, both of them eager and leaking, both of them whimpering when they noticed the beautiful filth of the noise over whatever sultry tune was playing from the speaker.

 

Louis didn't ever quicken the tempo, kept it syrupy sweet, maybe even slowed down so he could grind down at the deepest— forward, back, forward, and back. He was moaning at the crest of every wave, hushed things that he didn't even notice he'd been making under all the other music in the air. He only broke the rhythm when he came, and only because it took him by surprise. He shot upright, throwing his head back as he shot across Lestat's stomach, thighs trembling and clenching down on his sides hard enough to break a lesser man's hips.

 

Lestat knew exactly when he'd go limp and loose-limbed, rushing up to catch him and flip him over, pinning him to the mattress without ever pulling out, peppering kisses all over his face until Louis managed to give him the green light by throwing a boneless arm over his shoulder.

 

Taking the inch for a mile, that arm was instantly pinned down to the bed, same as the other—and Louis would writhe if he could find the coordination to do so. He only managed to nuzzle his head into the pillow, making a mess of his hair while Lestat's teeth made a mess of his neck. He didn't keep Louis' boat-on-the-water pace, but it was clearly inspired: Choppier, stormier waters, where your sea legs won't be of much use. They're out the mouth of the river and into the ocean.

 

The Frenglish worship being breathed into his skin was humid and fervent, a stream of depraved worship that made Louis flush warm in the face and chest, made him tilt his hips up, and that had Lestat ramming into his prostate head-on with a rhythm like a hurricane. It took less than another song to pass that Louis came again, weak and pitiful, just like the sound that was forced from between his teeth. He didn't want Lestat to stop, though, managed to blubber about it as he tossed his head back and forth, finally settling his mouth next to an ear gone pink with exertion, then lower, freeing one of his hands to get fistful of blonde hair out of the way so he could sink his teeth in deep.

 

It felt like Lestat came forever, pushing in ruthlessly, then simmering back to their slower stroke. Out of the ocean, back through the mouth of the river—making an absolute mess of Louis' insides all the while, staying tucked inside as they both caught their breath. 

 

Even racing, they shared a pulse. It was easier to hear the synchrony as they slowed.

 

Louis huffed when Lestat pulled out, downright pouted up at him when he actually got up from the bed before realizing he was just wiggling the jeans he'd never gotten off onto the floor. The expression on his face when he looked back was just as open as Louis' arms, still left reeling and off-balance at the offer of affection freely given. It made him look young and heartbreaking as he slowly climbed back into the space made for him, settling with his head at Louis' collar. 

 

Long minutes, an hour maybe, of maybe two bodies at rest that were sort of one—one heart, each carrying one lung that came together to make the set. Long enough for for Louis to doze in a strange twilight between rest and wakefulness, eyes closed with heavy limbs he'd all but lost track of, but listening to the air conditioner kick on and off at random, to a door downstairs opening quietly, to Candy on her balcony somewhere talking passionately on the phone to someone back home in Tulsa, to a very, very distant and lonely trumpet down the street. He hears it, but is only distantly aware of it when his own playlist loops back around to the beginning. 

 

He managed to hum an acknowledgement when Lestat poked his nose into Louis' cheek, affirming he was awake when he was poked rudely between the ribs by a gentle but impatient hand. 

 

“Louis, unpair your phone.” 

 

He hmphed, patting around blindly for his phone before actually lifting up his head to look around and find nothing. 

 

“Prob’ly in my pants.” He sighed, glaring after it was retrieved and the cold plastic was plopped unceremoniously onto his bare chest but still unpairing from the speaker as requested.

 

Whatever Lestat picked before sitting his own phone under the pillow was smooth and a bit older, perfectly serene and cozy—the static of an old recording making Louis smile as he watched Les putter around the room, gathering their clothes and throwing them all together in a chair, double checking the black out curtains on the windows. Almost dawn, then. 

 

Louis sat up and scooted over, making room for Lestat to be between him and the wall, patting the spot to make his intentions known. Lestat climbed in from the foot of the bed, doing a great job of not looking tense about the sleeping arrangement, but not a perfect one. 

 

That was fine. Louis had thought of that, too. 

 

He waddled on his knees to the wall by the foot of the bed where a snazzy little privacy screen stood folded in its track that ran along the floorboards, pulling it around the corner, then shuffling back to the head of the bed to pull the other side around to meet it. 

 

“Will you grab that, baby?” Louis pointed up at the wall. Confused, Lestat found the little remote to the lights to turn them off, leaving them in cozy darkness. “No, the ties. There's a rug hanging there.”

 

A near priceless silk rug that Louis didn't want to leave in Dubai, rolled up on the wall in a perfect position to be draped long and wide over the top of the privacy screen—a loose but secure ceiling to the little nest of darkness and red bedding. Open enough that it won't trigger any claustrophobia from Louis, but enclosed enough that Lestat can't open his eyes and see out. Safe from the sun, and any tricks their eyes might play on them in the dark. 

 

This seemed to touch Lestat, who played it off by being extravagantly pleased with the ingenuity, wiggling with delight as he shimmied under the covers and opened his arms to wait for Louis, this time, who took the space with a great heaving sigh. 

 

He used to dream about this. Later on, it would be waking hours—using the memory of this man's arms to soothe himself to sleep. Fitfully so, since he had to try and keep his mental walls up, to keep the memory away from Armand, almost as if he knew it wouldn't be safe from him, that he might tamper with it. Stupid, maybe, to think he didn't already know about it. 

 

Louis had liked the song that just finished playing, but instantly recognized the next song's piano intro as something he's heard before. The name doesn't come to him right away, nor does the singer, more like the feeling of a single exclamation point, as if to say “oh this song is playing.” Lestat knew it too, well enough to mimic the fingering of the keys on Louis' ribs. 

 

Louis realized what it was, but not in time to steel himself. It hit him like a stake through the chest.

 

Black is the color...

Of my true love’s hair...

 

Nina’s recording, because Lestat had good taste. Lestat also had all of it memorized, played it lazily against his ribs, with a sleepy articulation that spoke of how familiar it must be to him. They both listened to the whole thing with an unspoken reverence hanging in the air. The same air that was taken in deeper breaths into Lestat's lungs in a way that made it seem like he might've started to sing here or there, but lost his nerve. Like it might be too much for the two of them now. 

 

And it would be. Louis was already choking on it. What they had was good, he was companion enough for himself, yadda yadda. But it would be so fucking beautiful, wouldn't it, to hear it with his ear pressed to his chest? Louis wants it so badly he could weep, but he's also glad he didn't get it. 

 

He could breathe again when the song was over, heaving a sigh of relief and a huff of a laugh when I'll Be Seeing You starts up, at a much quieter volume. His thoughts wandered without rhyme or reason in the way they would on the edge of sleep when it pops in his head again, long enough later that even Lestat's playlist had looped and then stopped altogether. 

 

“There was a song you used to sing ‘round the house.” He mumbled, face half-smushed into skin. “Dunno what it's called. It was French, though, for sure.”

 

He didn't expect an answer, knowing when he said it that it was a fifty-fifty shot of Lestat even being awake. 

 

“That doesn't narrow it down much, mon cher. ”

 

Fair enough. Louis would not sing it, and did not think he could hum the top note that was the most recognizable. But he was a miraculously good whistler. Perfect pitch. Even hit the vibrato before trilling the notes back down. 

 

“Oh, that's Douce Dame.” Lestat caught it right away. “Older than me by a good four hundred years.”

 

...

 

“...will you sing it for me?” Louis asked, quiet, as if the question were some great confession. Maybe it was. 

 

Lestat's heart and his breath both stuttered in the stillness before settling, letting it drag on. He seemed nervous to break the peace they'd spent all night winding down to. So when he did sing, it was soft. It was tender, just like Louis wanted it to be, without strain and without showmanship.

 

Douce dame jolie,

Pour dieu ne pensés mie

Que nulle ait signorie

Seur moy fors vous seulement

 

Louis pictured him singing quietly, in a whisper between stone walls, knowing that he'd be told to shut up if anyone so much as noticed he took up air. He pictured him in a monastery, shy and timid the first time anyone praised him for steadiness in his voice. He pictured him in lonely woods, singing where the wind would drown him out. He pictured him in red. 

 

Louis almost made it to the end of the song before he fell asleep. 

Notes:

Future People--Alabama Shakes
Rainbow--Cage the Elephant
TYRANT--Beyonce
Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair--Nina Simone
I'll Be Seeing You--Billie Holiday
Douce Dame Jolie--recorded by Annwn

Chapter 3: You're Dead

Summary:

AR did a bad job with a cool concept so Merrick is getting the OC treatment. She is under my wing, now.

“Come on, I'll show you. It's pretty weird, though, so don't say I didn't warn you.” Louis shrugged, feeling anything but casual as he led Lestat to the second bedroom full of all his clothes and storage, guiding him to sit on a half-charming half-tacky 1970s monstrosity of a loveseat he'd claimed from a flea market. 

 

Louis stayed standing, taking a slow inhale and a quick exhale as he grabbed his sketchbooks from his desk against the far wall, approaching the loveseat with growing dread even as Lestat noticed what they were and immediately made grabby hands for them. Maybe that was the best approach, actually—let him look through them and ask his own questions. They sat hip to hip as they flipped through the pages. 

 

The first book was admittedly pretty old, he realized, with the graphite starting to fade and smear. It was 70 years old now. 

 

“I started them in...I dunno, maybe ‘54, ‘55?” Louis explained, making a mental note to start putting the dates in the corners of the pages from now on. He'd have to change them frequently, though, since he often just added new details to the same sketch, over and over again. Most of these early books were vague, more gesture than sketch, and the clearest ones were memories most likely to be Claudia’s—university libraries and storage closets, the backseats of buses and trains. 

 

Lestat seemed pleased enough that Louis had taken up a hobby, but confused as to the subject matter. He politely didn't question it, until he got to the second book. Not quite as old, probably from the mid-80’s. The first one he lingered on was the worktable with the sturdy set of scissors in a well-practiced grip. 

 

“This is truly very good, Louis.” He perked up, noticing the jump in quality more than what was actually being depicted, though it was clear it reminded him of something. He still thought it was a coincidence. He must have thought the same about the comb, though he didn't say so—just looked to Louis as if waiting for an explanation that didn't come. 

 

He stopped turning the pages completely at the sketch of a rearing horse in the snow, closing the book with his hand inside to keep track of his place.

 

“Louis, what is this?” He asked, voice just a little shaken. “Things Armand has shown you?”

 

“No, we didn't so much as say your name for twenty years.” Louis assured him, though he didn't actually know if it would be a relief or not. Time to confess. “I started having...not dreams, I don't think—but, memories, maybe? I think it...I think it goes back through the blood. Like drinking it from a human, but it usually happens when I'm asleep.”

 

Lestat hesitantly turned back to the sketches, still suspicious of Armand's involvement, most likely. Louis took the book from him and held it in his own lap, flipping out of order to show the few that Armand couldn't have truly known to conjure. The beakers, which were the bane of Louis' existence, was the first one he chose. From his expression, Lestat had never seen them either. 

 

“I think that memory was Magnus’.” Louis explained gently, expecting a flinch or even for a flighty escape from the couch, but Lestat sat transfixed, nodding in agreement. 

 

“I never learned much about him, only what I saw when he turned me, but this—yes, they once fancied him an alchemist, of sorts.” 

 

Lestat's relative calm gave Louis the confidence to show a few more, the next one admittedly being Louis' favorite, as well as the one he knew the least about. A chapel, humble in structure but so delightful in light and warm in tone that Louis had to do this one in color. The walls were brick and stone, same as the floors. There were no rugs or carpets, no cushions on the pues, no statues or finery in sight—but the windows were so artfully placed that the room flooded with morning light and glittered in the dust. The architecture was clearly older than Armand by a good margin. 

 

“C’est incroyable...!” Lestat breathed, making something warm and fuzzy grow in Louis' rib cage. “This here,—this isn't the monastery I went to. This looks Frankish. Could be a thousand years old.”

 

The landscapes, he was certain, were mostly Gabrielle's, so he showed them next. They were tame and unobtrusive, genuinely fun to come back to when a new detail emerged. After that, he showed the one of that dark ocean—which made Lestat flinch so hard that he moved on as quickly as he could, needing to change the subject so badly that he stumbled to the drawing of a mortal Lestat without meaning to. 

 

The Vampire Lestat, in all his glory, sat frozen, looking into his strange mortal mirror on the page—messy and windswept, freckled and tan, crouched low near a bush to check a trap or pick a berry. He paid the task no mind, his full attention set upon the viewer, the one who held the memory Louis recorded on paper. 

 

Louis picked up the older book to show the scissors again, to put the puzzle pieces together. 

 

“The ones I see the most are these.” He confessed, gentle as he could manage, feeling the string between them wobble like a sad lip. He flipped through pages to show the pit of an orchestra, the installation of catgut strings, flipping back to the mortal Lestat because he wished he'd done the next few together in a series: the mortal Lestat, half in a bush. The mortal Lestat, in a rickety chair with his face half-painted, the rest being lovingly removed by a graceful hand. And then, very obviously, the Vampire Lestat, looking frozen in terror, while a hand attempted to wipe paint that wasn't there off of his face. 

 

Louis stood once more, letting Lestat go through the remaining books at his own pace, hoping the distraction would make the next part of the story less...gut-wrenching. 

 

“I saw him under the theater, in the tunnels. The second I thought of burning it down, someone was walking next to me, encouraging me to do it.” 

 

Lestat glanced up at him with a wobbly smile and a miserable laugh, too fascinated to stop the story yet as he turned the book around to confirm Louis' theory: the sketch page dedicated to his mean little ghost, mortal and then not, was indeed Nicolas. Louis confessed to the few other times he saw him in waking hours, like on a balcony in Marseilles, leaning on the rail right next to him. Or in London, trotting quicker to catch up to him in a night-time crowd. In Dubai, even, hovering around speakers where music played, whether on a vinyl or Bluetooth. Never when Armand was around—sometimes plopping down and slouching like a brat in whatever seat Armand had vacated, making rude gestures or faces. Sometimes he spoke, but it sounded muffled and strange, like it was coming from under water. 

 

Over the years, his little ghost grew bold. He'd get very close to Louis, sometimes to observe him closely with a scrutinizing gaze that Louis took in stride with a careful pride, and sometimes to simply hide in his shadow like a miserable, scolded child.

 

“When I got back to Dubai, after I came to see you, I saw him ransacking whatever Armand didn't take with him.” Louis continued. “There was a bunch of shit in a trunk that I'd never seen before, didn't even know it had been under our roof the whole time.”

 

He bent down to the floor under his rack of hanging coats to retrieve the half-hidden trunk—which was itself a very beautiful piece that he'd love to have restored, sitting criss-cross on the rug near Lestat's feet with it on his lap. He kept it unlocked, noticing that the key would get stuck most of the time and didn't want to break it. 

 

The first thing he passed Lestat was the stack of playbills, with many of their wording worn away and lost to time. Some had their titles, some had an actor's name or two, some would have the location, but none were in pristine condition. 

 

Lestat gave a strange smile as he thumbed through them, a soft exhale that was more disbelief than laugh hanging from his lip as he turned to show Louis a name from one of the pamphlets. Lestat de Valois.

 

“When I got to Paris, it was just barely after the revolution.” He mused. “The Auvergne was so far away, I might have been safe to use my real name, but I was paranoid. My brothers—Augustin and Théodore—were killed by a mob. The villagers sent their wives away, along with my nieces and nephews.”

 

This was the most he'd ever gotten out of Lestat in one sitting, so Louis was hesitant to push for more information, but couldn’t help but be absolutely enthralled in the story of it. 

 

“Did you ever learn where any of them went?”

 

“You remember both of my brothers were cruel, but Théo was the only one who'd managed to poison his wife against me too. Her family never reached out to me.” Lestat shrugged. “And I hate to admit it, but—I think fatherhood...softened Augustin. His wife was very clever and funny. Her name was Anderazu. Isn't that pretty? She was a Basque woman, with jet black hair and dark eyes. If their children wanted to play in the snow, she'd say ‘See if your uncle will take you, I shan’t be stolen from this spot.’ I like to think she thought of me as a friend, and my niece and nephew adored me. So over the years, Augustin grew less...antagonistic. I sent them money a few times after I left. Anderazu sent me a letter after they'd been banished, said they went to Marseilles and then to her family in Nevarra.”

 

“I know Gabrielle escaped. Was your old man already gone by then?”

 

“No, actually. Someone smuggled him here.” Lestat corrected, the mirth in his eyes bubbling to laughter as Louis gaped like a fish at the sheer coincidence of it all. Lestat wasn't the first Lioncourt in New Orleans.

 

He kept the momentum of openness going by passing up the jewelry box, where he'd stored the ribbons and the mirror. 

 

“I got these for one of Armand's underlings, one who kept in touch with me long after I left Paris. Her name was Eleni. I don't know where she went, but I know she wasn't with the coven by the time you met them.”

 

The comb and one of the darker ribbons were gifts for Nicolas himself, but the pipe was suspected to be Armand's—it was of Italian make, and had a dent near the mouthpiece where someone's tooth repeatedly worried at the wood. The brooch, too, a gift from Lestat, shaped like a peacock feather.

 

Louis finally handed over the whole trunk, standing with the nerves of a man walking to a noose as he parted the rack of coats to get at the black garment bag he'd been keeping the Big Surprise in, after having taken it to someone who specialized in antique pieces. He didn't have anything repaired, really, just confirmed that it was in decent enough shape not to dissolve if he looked at it wrong. 

 

“So...this was in the bottom of the trunk. I had it—uh, tidied up a bit.” Louis cleared his throat. “Pretty sure it's yours, anyway.”

 

Lestat accepted the garment bag into his lap like it was a snake, like an elder sibling being forced to hold an infant younger one—stilted and confused and hesitant. He kept his gaze on Louis, as if he could protect him from it, or guide him through it. Trusting and open. 

 

Louis had been thinking lately that in recollection, he had remembered those eyes wrong. He remembered them gray and cold, too sharp and intense on him, leaving them there on purpose to make him squirm. Really, they were just...open. They hid nothing, not seeing but showing. Their color was softer, too, a very Elizabeth Taylor shade of periwinkle that would throw blue or violet depending on the light, on what he was wearing. 

 

If he wore red, they'd look very very blue. 

 

Lestat unzipped the bag only by about a foot before a miserable laugh worked its way out his throat, gently trembling hands stroking over the red velvet, then more firmly petting through the fur at the collar. 

 

Louis knelt back down where he'd been before, simply letting his presence be an anchor to the here and now, his own hands resting over Lestat's lap, on top of the bag only. He watched those strange eyes well with tears and spill over, watched his movements steady in increments. 

 

“You ain't ever told me your whole story.” Louis began, soft as he could possibly be. “I can't make you. Dunno that I want to make you. But—I’d like to hear the story behind this. Just as a start, you think?”

 

Lestat's smile was so strange and beautiful.

 

“It is my whole story, Louis. Everything else, you were there for.” He shook his head, before it slowly changed course, a nod, slow and full of dread. 

 

XxXxXxXxX

 

Lestat went back to his apartment a day later, wrung out and tired but with a promise to message Louis, waving goodbye behind him with the cloak tucked under one arm under wraps. It would have made a striking photo—Lestat colored by all the street lamps and headlights and store windows, with an ink-black garment bag under one arm that looked heavy enough to weigh him down. Louis managed to get the shot with his phone, of this many-colored luminescent thing he'd sold his soul for, thinking he could play with the curves and levels digitally later.

 

He didn't have much on the itinerary tonight, so he just made his rounds. A creature of habit, always—he rarely got new ones, just rotated the old ones to the front. He walked the same route he did in 1910, passing new and unfamiliar streets. A ghost, walking up a staircase that wasn't there anymore.

 

Louis mentally checked on Felix, who was snippy enough that Lestat had clearly already reached out. The fledgling was tense, it seemed, about going back home to see the grandmother he lived with before he was turned—some tiny little town upriver. He was nervous and feisty, apologizing after Louis' pointed mental silence. 

 

Sorry, Mr. Du Lac. Don't mean nothin’ by it.

 

Just keep your cool, and you an’ me golden. Be safe. You got this, baby.

 

Thanks.

 

Louis reached out to Daniel next, almost wordless, just a brush against that sharp mind to say I'm here, but to his surprise his phone rang almost immediately. 

 

“LOUIS, you have impeccable timing.” Uh-oh. “Listen, uh, so I may have gotten myself into a bit of shit show.”

 

“You locked up?” Louis sighed, unable to fully control his grin, even knowing Daniel was too big of a name for a murder charge to not make headline news. It wasn't funny. Really.

 

“God, no.” 

 

The line was eerily silent. No street ambience. No cars. No strangers talking in the background. If Daniel was breathing, it was silent.

 

“I'm listening.”

 

“Look, man—you got a couch I can crash on?” Daniel finally asked, voice not as steady as it started. Louis could picture him running a frazzled hand through his hair. “I blacked out and fucked up in Little Rock.”

 

Louis screwed his face up in utter confusion, walking with one shoulder forward to maneuver around a crowd.

 

“Little Rock? Who the fuck is in Little Rock?”

 

“ME, LOUIS—me and the House of 1000 Corpses. I just. I-I remembered something, and I freaked out, then woke up with four bodies in a room that I'm pretty sure are vamps.” 

 

“You got a car of your own?”

 

“It's a rental, but yeah.”

 

“Don't take any other car but that one.” Louis said, dipping into an alley to lean against the wall, talking quietly. “Open all the blinds. The sun’ll take care of anything the fire don't.”

 

“Right, fire, ok.”

 

“Don't rush, be thorough, but don't fuck around either. I'm sending you a pin of my address. It's still early. You leave in the next hour or so, you can get to me before sunrise, then we'll talk about it.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, alright.”

 

“I'm sure I'll be home, but if I'm not, there's a key under the chair cushion. You've seen worse than this, Danny—you’re alright. Blinds, stove, lighter, highway.”

 

“Blinds, stove, lighter, highway. Okay. Okay, I got it.”

 

Louis stayed on the line, and let Daniel be the one to hang up. He didn't let himself worry too much on the crime scene itself—a fledgling as young as Daniel couldn't take four vampires alone. They were probably tracking him down when someone else intervened. Wasn't hard to guess who. And that someone wouldn't go through the effort and not clean up afterwards.

 

That wouldn't make Daniel feel safe though. They could talk about it in person.

 

Louis checked the messages on three of his lines—no voicemails or texts. The man he gave his card to hadn't reached out yet. A shame, because Louis wanted the details of the debacle in the way only a true outsider could. It was a novel with a reluctant bookmark inside. He wondered if Daniel still had Talamasca contacts. Did they know he'd been turned? Did they know who did it?

 

Louis really wanted to see their archives. Museums, you could just enter with a little force, a little tech know-how, a little wave of the hand in front of a guard's eyes. Talamasca probably protect their stash with something vampire proof. Maybe he could barter for a peek—all his information they'd wanted, for a few hours of wandering time. Of course that only worked if his information was valuable, and he didn't even know the subject that they needed an eyewitness for. If they were playing hard to get, it was working. 

 

The man—Ciprien—seemed to think Louis couldn't help, disguising it as disbelief. No, scratch that. Ciprien seemed like a man with a hunch. Emotional, and narrow-minded with it. There was another avenue he wanted to take that didn't involve Louis at all, one that reason wouldn't be enough to let him abandon. The woman—Merrick—had been worked into a froth over it already. She disagreed, repeatedly and emphatically. If Louis wanted to know the next part of the story, he'd be better off going with her. 

 

Decision made, he wandered with more intent but less direction, letting his feet stray from their well-tread route. At the corners of the busiest streets, he cast out a broad telepathic net, feeling through swaths of minds at a time to see if he could feel the smooth, glass-like finish he'd noticed when he'd first been followed. Cast, and reel—not a hook, but a net, letting the ones that didn't match filter through. 

 

It only took an hour. 

 

He didn't approach right away. It would be rude to interrupt, since it seemed Merrick had company. Or maybe it would be a rescue, since she looked absolutely miserable, furious even, to be sat across the outdoor table from the other woman. 

 

The mystery woman was pale even for white, noticeable from a distance at night, like she wasn't from here or didn't go out hardly ever. The gestures of her head and hands were quick, scrambled and imploring, but her too-blue eyes weren't those of a woman begging. Calculating, moving so quickly between the points of Merrick's face that it almost reminded Louis of Armand. 

 

Merrick took the glasses off her nose, tossing them carelessly to the table so she could pinch the bridge of her nose, subtly wipe at her eyes. The night time crowd wove around them, uncaring and unhearing. The mystery woman sighed and said one parting thought, tossing the last of her drink back as she stood and put a few bills on the table, disappearing into the crowd. 

 

Louis gave it another handful of minutes, weaving seamlessly through the crowd to take the vacant seat before another man got any story in his head about how his night would end with the picture Merrick painted at the table alone. She hadn't noticed him yet, eyeballing the drink next to her. Tall glass, red color, condensating in the humidity. She wouldn't drink it because she didn't trust it, because she didn't trust the woman who got it for her. 

 

Louis reached over and took it, pouring it out with a toss in the vague direction of a storm drain. The sound startled Merrick, who had only just then looked up at him—just in time to watch him flag down a passing waitress. 

 

“Two sazeracs, if you could, ma'am.” 

 

Merrick couldn't seem to figure out whether she wanted to see him or not. She looked just as nice as she had the other night, but it was clear she'd been stressed if you knew what to look for: glasses, where they weren't before, meaning she didn't bother with her contact lenses. Her hair was up and covered with an artfully tied scarf, no stray curls falling to frame her face. She had dark circles, too young to have wrinkles but they made her look older all the same. Her mascara wasn't running, but came off in flakes as she tried to tidy the tears from her eyes. Makeup from the day before.

 

She accepted the sazerac that Louis ordered, downing it like a shot before taking the orange peel and twisting it in her hands—picking the rind away in chunks, uncaring if it stuck under her fingernails. He took a slow sip of his own drink, let her have a minute. 

 

“Ciprien didn't reach out to you.” She didn't ask, because it wasn't a question. 

 

“No ma'am, he did not.” Louis nodded.

 

“You been followin’ me this whole time?”

 

“No. Came lookin’ about an hour ago.”

 

She hummed, taking him at his word for the moment. He swirled his drink in the glass, looking at the oil from the orange peel shimmer across the top in the neon lights, took one more sip and then slid it over. He expected her to refuse it, either out of a semblance of manners or lingering suspicion, if not at least make a comment about it. She didn't. Just drank it slower than the first. 

 

“Not worried I got bad intentions?”

 

She shrugged.

 

“Now that she knows who I am,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “I'm on borrowed time. You killin’ me would at least mean no one else got to.”

 

Louis might get the story after all, tilting his head.

 

“And who are you?”

 

She chuckled, her breath smelling like orange and absinthe, offering her hand for him to shake. 

 

“Merrick goddamn Mayfair, and I can talk to the dead.”

 

Louis took the handshake, smile wide.

 

“ Enchanté, Miss goddamn Mayfair.” he laughed, and she seemed to loosen at the sound. “You put that on all your resumes or just the one?”

 

“You don't apply. You are approached. ” she clarified. “I was approached the day I walked out my Mama's house at 19. They brought me on within the week.”

 

Louis hummed, letting the lull in the conversation breathe, a subtle nudge sending away any lingering pedestrians that had gotten curious about their topic of conversation.

 

“And you still with ‘em? Or is it more the same—you don't leave, you get removed?”

 

“They have very competitive pay and benefits.”

 

Fair enough. 

 

Some pieces of the puzzle were coming together. Merrick was set on pursuing Louis as her source, because the other option would put her in the path of the mystery woman. Ciprien made that choice without Merrick’s approval, and she believed it had doomed her. 

 

“Who was she?” Louis asked, softly.

 

It was long enough of a wait that he didn't expect an answer at all, but was surprised to find Merrick part the veil of fog that covered her mind—not fully, just directed at him. Like she'd wiped some steam off of a bathroom mirror, just enough to talk through.

 

“Rowan Mayfair.” She offered, crystal clear. “Prophetic child, hidden away from the whole family until about a year ago. Came sweeping in from Cali with a medical license and a god-and-victim complex. She inherited the house and the proverbial crown. And Mayfairs have been dropping like flies since she's been in charge.”

 

“Poor leadership skills?”

 

“You could argue they're great leadership skills, if anyone who tries to push back against her ends up six feet under. Even some of the ones who were on her side. As long as she comes out on top, she'll say she did all she could to save them, that she couldn't prevent it.”

 

Louis could relate to the frustration.

 

“Ciprien told her how to find you. Why?”

 

“Because she slept with him one time and now he believes they're fuckin’ soulmates or whatever the fuck.” 

 

He laughed, delighted and wanting more of that later. 

 

“But why you, I mean.”

 

She hesitated, getting tense and shaky again. Wobbly-lipped. Watery-eyed.

 

“They want me to talk to the boogie man, or his mama, or his grandmama, and they don't care whether he kills me to keep me quiet, or worse.” Merrick confessed, her grip on her walls starting to shimmer and go thin, letting Louis see flashes of the conversations and arguments she'd been in about it, getting more afraid, more desperate. A file, with his name on it. “I wanted to look for you, instead. Ask you about him. Keep me away from her all together and maybe the boogie man won't know I exist. But now he will. All I can hope for is that I get to tell Cip he's the one that killed me before I end up in a pool of blood on my kitchen floor.”

 

Louis was so deep into the pathos of it all that the realization struck him like a brick to the head. He pulled out another card from his pocket, this time snagging the pen off a passing waitress to write his personal cell number on the back and handing it over. 

 

“Name a time and a place, and I'll tell you everything I can about Julien.”

 

XxXxXxXxX 

 

“Thank God.” 

 

The scene presented to Louis just inside his own doorway could have been a how-to guide on environmental storytelling. Daniel, wild-eyed and disheveled on Louis' living room floor, just setting himself to rights and getting his bearings. He had a hastily-healed but significant bite on his neck. Lestat, right as rain, adjusting the coffee table after it had been pushed either askew or over then placing a parchment-wrapped parcel atop it, had a messier but well-healed bite on his wrist. 

 

Louis sighed and shut the door behind him, throwing his coat over the chair and kicking his shoes off. “Gentleman.” He nodded, plopping down on the couch, fighting a smile. 

 

“That's it??” Daniel scoffed, incensed. “Your guard dog attacked me on sight!”

 

Lestat was unbothered, flipping his hair over his shoulder, his weight on one hip and the arm propped up on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.

 

“I had meant to drop off a gift for you on the porch, but I felt someone moving around inside the house that wasn't you—and the door was unlocked.”

 

“You bit me. ” 

 

“Yes, and I graciously allowed you to bite me back. Now we both know the other's intentions and are brought slightly closer in the process.”

 

“So a handshake would have been too mundane, is that it?” Daniel complained, running a hand through his messy curls. The bite had left him reeling. Would have been less so if Lestat had taken from the wrist, but this wasn't just a familiarization. It was a demonstration. Blood sharing could be a lot of things: hospitality, punishment, sex, communication, an assertion of dominance, ritual, etc.

 

Louis shrugged. 

 

“You've been on the move a lot. You're gonna run into other vampires and they're all gonna handle their affairs different.” He said. “Best learn to announce yourself and state your business, or be discreet enough to not get caught.”

 

Daniel grumbled something about a pecking order while he wiped access blood off his neck, how monsters didn't need to act like animals to prove a point, asked if the way he rolled over and showed his belly was adequate enough to hang around for a bit. Lestat was beaming, immediately fond of this creature who was both infant and old man, and Louis couldn't help but smile at him just for looking happy and pretty. 

 

“Jesus Christ, Louis—those goo-goo eyes are fucking crazy.” 

 

Louis pointedly ignored the jab.

 

“What did you bring me?”

 

Lestat nodded down to the brown paper-wrapped package, encouraging him to open it. 

 

“Cookie insists on bringing me to every antique flea market she goes to, that way she can find genuine pieces without paying genuine prices.” He explained. “And books tend to be left in totes and boxes,—no one ever shops through them. But the spine of that one looked very familiar.”

 

It was a very fragile looking spine, with Dumas still delicately legible in the gold leaf. Most of the front cover was gone, but it didn't seem to be missing any large chunks of pages. The title page was crisp and clear.

 

“The Count of Monte Cristo?” Louis smiled, remembering it being one of his favorites ever since he was a boy. 

 

“I know you said your French is rusty, but if you look at the year, I think you'll understand why I didn't pass it by.”

 

1849...older than Louis by a few decades. It was a miracle that the paper survived the humidity for so long. Or the hurricanes. Or the collectors. 

 

Wait.

 

“This is a first edition of the original publication?” Louis laughed, in complete shock. He hopped up off the couch, gave Lestat a peck on the cheek in thanks and then made his way over to Daniel to show him, too. 

 

“Well, I'll be damned.” He muttered, double checking the back few pages to confirm the publishing matched. “I've never read it, I don't think, but I watch every single movie adaptation that gets released. The new one is spectacular.”

 

“The 2002?” Lestat and Louis asked, simultaneously.

 

“No, the 2024.” 

 

No one had any objections about settling in to watch it in the living room. Daniel still sat on the rug, legs criss-crossed and looking up at the screen in a way that reminded Louis of a much younger Danny. The blood bag Louis gave him didn't get the dignity or romance of a cup, just a slice to the top like it was a capri sun pouch. Lestat sat on the ground with his back to the sofa, his whole side pressed to one of Louis' legs, drinking from a thermal cup that had LESTAT'S CUP written on every possible inch of the surface. Louis laughed every time he saw it, trying to guess which bandmate had been the inciting incident. 

 

Louis, from his perch on the sofa, couldn't help but be adrift. The movie was beautiful and well-acted, but he was only half-watching. He thought about Armand trailing Daniel close enough to save him from a small coven in middle America. He thought about Merrick. He thought about Alexander Dumas. He played with Lestat's hair, mindlessly twirling waves into curls.

 

Daniel made it about two hours in, which was impressive. He rolled in at about four in the morning, and it was a long movie. The thing about fledglings, though, is that they still slept in a mortal fashion. It was hard to tell if he was truly out cold. And Louis' French was rusty, but he needed to know, without Daniel overhearing.

 

“Tu penses qu’il suivra?” He asked, clearly bringing Lestat out of a haze. It was hard to picture Armand in New Orleans, but he also found it hard to believe that the two of them would be enough to keep him from Daniel if he'd been following from the beginning. 

 

“Qui, Armand?” 

 

“Oui.” 

 

Lestat seemed to think on it, mindlessly petting the skin just above and below Louis' ankle, where the surface was thin and smooth.

 

“Il m’a rendu visite. J’ai dormi... Une décennie. Mais, je n’ai pu pas dormir, parce qu’il m’a parlé d’un garçon.”

 

“Une décennie?” Louis wondered, his heart cracking in two. That Lestat had spent some of the time in that shack dead to the world was hard enough to hear, but to know that for a decade he spent it six feet under?

 

And that Armand had essentially kept watch? To keep him under? A captive audience, to a story about a boy?

 

...to keep Lestat safe, while he slept? To keep him company?

 

“Ils ont une histoire remarquable.”

 

Remarkable seemed like an understatement for whatever those two had going on. For what any of them had going on.

Notes:

You're Dead--Norma Tanega
Hound Dog--Big Mama Thornton
Blue Veins--The Raconteurs

Notes:

"Rattlin' Bones"--Preservation Hall Jazz Band