Chapter Text
VEDO DALLA TUA BRAMOSIA DI FRAINTENDERMI CHE È VERO AMORE
(english version)
“Soothe my madness with your words,
or leave me to the soul’s serene night,
eternal, shadowed, ever-enduring.”
Federico Garcia Lorca
The red tassel of the bookmark on the edge of the table sways slightly.
Louis feels that same shift of air brush against his neck: “Hello, Lestat” he murmurs.
He doesn’t pretend to be surprised—he sensed his presence a block away. There’s a tremor in the air every time Lestat comes near him, an electromagnetic wave that disrupts his every thought, every buzzing speculation, leaving a void in his mind. Louis knows from that, from the absence of sound in his head, that Lestat is coming.
He has always managed to carve out a space within him.
Even if, perhaps lately, he struggles to fill it.
He slips the bookmark between the pages, closes the book, and turns toward him: “You found me quickly.”
“When someone broadcasts their address on the vampire frequency...”
“Oh, of course” Louis murmurs with the hint of a smile, “you read it in the minds of others. You’re the first, though.”
“I don’t like arriving once the party’s started.”
Direct. Unadorned. Lestat never wasted time sugarcoating the truth. Louis feels that familiar tug in his no-longer-human guts. He has felt it every time Lestat has hurt him.
“Do you want to be the first to try one of the colorful methods they’ve threatened to use to get rid of me?” he asks, dulling the pain with irony that tastes bitter on his lips.
After all, Lestat was the first in many things.
He doesn’t answer, but narrows his eyes and tilts his head as if to read his mind.
The problem between them has always been communication. Louis has often wondered if it would have been easier had they been able to access each other’s minds, bypassing the obstacle of words.
“Are you angry about the book?” he presses.
Lestat takes a few steps toward him, then changes his mind and veers toward the couch: “No” he clarifies, and with an exaggerated sigh he drops onto the cushions. “Although I must admit your words didn’t exactly do me justice.”
He has stage presence as always, but his appearance is very different now. When he left him in New Orleans months earlier, Lestat was the faded echo of his former self, but now, in sweatpants, sneakers, and a dark hoodie, he perfectly embodies the spirit of the new millennium.
Louis feels both relief and sadness.
“And why are you here?”
Lestat raises his palm in an eloquent gesture: “To see how you’re doing, obviously. Didn’t you hear the invitations I sent you?”
Of course he heard them.
Hundreds of unsuspecting fans, manipulated, kept calling his name in confusion.
Louis, Broadway.
Louis, in two days in Manhattan.
In the backstage of the Barclay Center, Louis.
And always, above every other thought, the echo of those words repeated in mortal minds.
Come to me.
A chant he deliberately ignored.
“Didn’t you think having your fans call me out in chorus was a little excessive?”
Lestat straightens his back and spreads his arms; his hands smack down on his knees in exasperation, stirring the air; the tassel of the bookmark between the book’s pages sways again.
“What else was I supposed to do?!”
“Call me on the phone.”
Using that icy coldness to slap down Lestat’s irritation is the quickest way to start a war, and Louis doesn’t want that. Not after all this time.
That’s why he sits beside him and adds a brief touch on his tense arm to soften his words.
He does it because physical contact has always disarmed Lestat’s anger—and because, though it costs him to admit it, he wants to touch him. “I thought I’d left you one in working order, with my number already stored.”
Lestat’s shoulders relax, he leans back against the couch, and though Louis’s hand has already retreated, Lestat’s eyes follow its path as if it had left a mark on his skin.
“Well, soon I’ll learn how to use it” he mutters, dismissing the matter quickly.
When he raises his eyes, Louis notices a shadow in them, something that dims their brilliance, making the blue darker, more thoughtful. He puts his hand back on him—he can’t stop himself—this time brushing his knee, running his thumb along the soft fabric of his sweatpants.
“Why did you have all those people call me, Lestat?” he asks softly. “What did you want to tell me?”
He stirs, lips curling in the hint of a smile: “It doesn’t matter anymore” he replies casually. “I’m here now. I’ll take care of it.”
“Take care of what, exactly?”
“Of keeping you safe.”
If Lestat knew him as well as Louis knows him, he’d know that’s the fastest way to ignite his anger.
“Lestat” he hisses.
But maybe that’s just it—maybe he knows and doesn’t care.
“I’m not trying to undermine your abilities” Lestat hastens to clarify. “It’s just that the vampires out there—”
“Can be vicious” Louis cuts him off. “I know.”
Or maybe he really is worried.
He looks at him.
And though the nervous spasm tightening his jaw seems like the sign of a new unease, Louis refuses to play the part of someone who needs saving.
“Lestat” he warns in a measured tone, “you know what I did to the Paris coven, don’t you? Do you think I can defend myself?”
“There are others, Louis” he replies. “Older. Stronger. Even I wouldn’t stand a chance against them, especially if they came in a group.”
“Not even you?”
“Not even me.”
“Then forgive me, Lestat, but again: why are you here?”
Lestat holds his gaze and keeps silent. His look is eloquent, strangely hesitant, the trace of a fragility Louis only recently understood, one storm-lashed night in a rotten coffin with a ragged figure in his arms.
“You didn’t want to be alone, did you?”
Lestat remains still, blinks only once.
He has never explained the bond between maker and fledgling, but he hasn’t needed to: Louis understood right away that beyond intimacy, beyond attraction, there would always be the echo of Lestat in the blood flowing through his eternal body.
It’s a tremor radiating through his veins, anchoring itself in every corner of his mind, conjuring images of him when Louis thought him dead, flooding him with his presence at his side. As though he were its custodian.
Trying to sever that bond with poison and blade was the most painful thing Louis had ever endured.
And now, as he sees the shadows of merciless loneliness pass across Lestat’s gaze, he realizes that pain was the first thing Lestat ever felt as a fledgling.
Turned without his consent and, after only a few hours, violently abandoned.
“Louis” he calls him back after a moment, whispering, “whatever happens, I’ll be with you.”
Louis’s hand on Lestat’s knee trembles, and he only notices when Lestat covers it with his own.
It seems obvious, but Louis only truly understood it after Madeleine’s death.
That bond runs both ways.
And losing a fledgling is no less painful than losing a maker.
Lestat has endured that too. More than once.
“When I broadcast my address telepathically, I didn’t mean to repeat the gesture of September 1973” Louis feels compelled to explain. “Is that what you feared? A suicidal act?”
Lestat moves the hand still resting on his leg aside, stands, and walks away toward the fireplace. He turns back to him: “Loneliness, death, the will to fight” he begins theatrically, then bows toward him, “bonds, love” he whispers. “Who’s to say it isn’t for all those reasons together?”
Honest and enigmatic at the same time, and Louis can’t help but think that if Lestat had mastered the art of communication as well as that of commanding the stage, many of their problems would have been softened from the very beginning.
“Okay” he answers simply. “Then stay.”
He rises and joins him.
“If it’s for all those reasons, then stay” he repeats. “Stay here, with me.”
His figure, silhouetted against the light of the fire, looks soft, diffused. Almost human.
Louis has missed him terribly.
“If I want to spend the day away, I need to let my manager know” Lestat says suddenly.
Louis feels a burst of laughter rise from deep inside him and escape his lips. It’s been nearly a century since he’s laughed like that: “And to let her know, do you use the phone, or do you get inside her mind?”
Lestat smirks.
“I made you laugh, Saint Louis” he says proudly, preening.
His lips twist into a brazen grin, and the room’s light makes them look more vivid. Louis can’t stop staring at them.
After all, he died beneath those lips.
“I’ll send my driver to inform her” Lestat adds under his breath.
Louis nods. He raises a hand to fix the strands of Lestat’s hair caught in the collar of his hoodie—he’s not used to seeing him less than perfect—but then reconsiders and slips his hand back into his pocket.
Lestat pretends not to notice.
“Let me show you your room” Louis says evasively. “You can stay as long as you want.”
End of Part One