Chapter Text
It had been a strange kind of peace, for Louis, to crawl into that bed. To let himself finally give in to the pull and lie quietly beside its source. Close enough to Lestat to feel the soft huff of his sleeping breath. But no closer than that.
When before had he ever been reluctant to touch Lestat, he wonders now, save out of his fear of the magnitude of his own desire?
Never.
And yet. Lying there in that bed, he couldn't bring himself to reach out. Not even with the very tips of his fingers.
It had been a day of fitful rest. When Louis woke properly that evening, Lestat was still fast asleep.
He rose silently. He pushed back the thick curtains from the window, letting the dim glow of the night come in. He wandered to the living area and fed from a little of the supply the contractors had left. Any serious attempt at thought faded unhelpfully into the half-blank blur of his mind. Soon enough he gave it up entirely, returning to the bedroom and curling up once more to bask in the steady, thoughtless rhythm of Lestat's breathing.
Louis drifted in and out, half dreaming, half waking. He isn't sure, looking back, exactly when Lestat's eyes had begun to roll beneath their lids, or when his brow had begun to spasm with the quiet agitation of nightmare.
Fuck, he'd thought. What was the thing to do? Wake him? Let him sleep, let it pass?
Lestat's chest heaved. He made an awful sound—a whine, animalistic and desperate.
No, Louis thought, no. I have to wake him. I can't watch this. I can't let it go on.
He put a hand to the side of Lestat's face, featherlight, intending to coax him gently from his dream.
A jolt at the contact. Lestat, awake, eyes wide, throat closing around a scream.
"Lestat," Louis whispered. "Lestat, please. It's me."
Unseeing terror. Breaths coming in awful, cut-off hiccups.
"Lestat," Louis whispered again desperately, cupping his cheek. "Breathe."
A flinch. Slurred words, barely intelligible: "Don't touch me."
Louis obeyed immediately, pulling back as though he'd touched a hot stove. It was about then that recognition began to bleed into Lestat's expression.
"I'm sorry," he panted, limp against the pillows, glassy eyes flitting here and there as though following some kind of invisible pattern on the ceiling. "A... moment. Then..."
Then what, Louis had thought. Then what?
And it's the same now, as they lie here hopelessly entwined on the kitchen floor. Now what? What comes after this, and after that? What are the right steps to take to get from here to something better?
Well.
The first thing—the simple thing—is probably to wash Lestat's hair.
Louis rises, taking Lestat up with him as carefully as he can. He's pretty much dead weight as they make the short trek to the bathroom.
Louis lets him go as gently as possible. Lestat groans softly, collapsing onto the closed toilet seat. Louis starts running the bath.
For a while, they simply exist there in silence. Louis doesn't know how exactly to break it, but knows he has to.
He settles on something simple. "Where hurts?"
Despite Lestat's tired, tear-stained state, his spark already seems to be relit. "Everywhere," he grumbles almost theatrically.
"Maybe," Louis replies lightly, "you should aim for a blood alcohol level of less than fifty percent the next time a horde of fledglings tries to kill you."
Lestat scoffs at that. "They couldn't actually have done it."
The false bravado turns everything sour.
"You were about to get drained dry."
"I was having an off-night."
Oh, it's infuriating—one painful truth about Claudia gets through, and suddenly it's nothing but deflection again. Something ugly flares in him.
"Uh huh?" he asks. "And why was that? Too much drink? Too much coke? According to Daniel, every night's an off-night."
Lestat doesn't bite back like he's supposed to. He just avoids Louis' eyes, hurt displayed nakedly in that way Louis' never quite prepared for when he says something cutting.
Because he doesn't want Lestat hurt, not really.
And that's the point of all of this, isn't it? Lestat's letting himself get hurt, badly, by living like this. It scares Louis. It scares him to the point of sharpness.
Maybe he should just say that. Maybe that's where he needs to start.
"You scared me," he says, even as the words feel like stones in his mouth, heavy and awkward. "You fucking terrified me."
"I'm sorry," Lestat mutters bitterly, pulling the robe tighter around himself. "I wish you hadn't been there to see it."
"What? No, I'm glad I was. Don't know where you'd be if I hadn't."
"I can apologise a hundred more times. I can thank you profusely, even, will that finally—"
"No," Louis snaps. "I didn't do it for a fucking thank you."
Louis twists the tap off. Steam rises in soft waves from the still water. He turns to Lestat, who eyes him oddly for a few seconds before letting the robe fall. Louis helps him into the bath.
The state of Lestat's body, thankfully, has improved significantly from the bleeding, bruised mess it was yesterday night. Still, the healing is far from complete. Louis can't imagine the energy it's taken to get to this point so quickly. No wonder he can barely stand.
He takes the handheld showerhead and starts to wet Lestat's hair. Conscious that he'll lose his nerve if he pauses for too long, he forces himself to continue speaking.
"The way they touched you," he says, prying the words from his own mouth, "the way they hurt you. It made me want to destroy them. And I did. I tore them to fucking pieces."
Something flickers in Lestat's gaze, sudden and hot with barely disguised desire.
"But," Louis continues. "When I thought it was over—when I'd killed them all, and my blood was finally flowing onto your lips, then—"
There's a lump in his throat.
Lestat glances away, then, heat abruptly extinguished. "I am sorry about that. Truly."
"No, don't apologise. Not for that. I don't need that from you. What I need is answers."
This change in Lestat's expression is familiar. Wary. Written all over with a desire for Louis to go no further. A hundred years ago, Louis acquiesced every single time. Today, he's done sweeping his questions under the rug. He's working with half the pieces of a puzzle. If any of this is ever not going to crash and burn, he needs the rest.
"Daniel said some things. While you were asleep."
Lestat's shoulders stiffen.
"Oh? What did he say?"
"Less than I wanted him to."
Lestat presses his lips together. Louis sets down the showerhead, takes some shampoo and starts lathering it into the roots of his hair.
"Why does Daniel know more about you than I do, Lestat?"
"He doesn't. He barely knows anything. He makes up the story himself, mostly."
The editing of the book notwithstanding, Louis knows that's not true. "I spent two weeks sitting across from him, Lestat. That's not what he does. I know what he does. He asks questions. Hard questions."
Lestat's lip curls. Louis continues massaging his scalp.
"Yes, okay, fine," Lestat agrees, finally deflating into the touch. "He asks hard questions."
He's quiet, then, as Louis washes the shampoo out. When it's done he speaks again, albeit haltingly.
"It's hard. To talk about... To look at it all again." Lestat worries at his lip for a moment. "I didn't think it would hurt to see. I didn't think parts of it would feel... new? Or, raw, tender... like new." He laughs minutely, a touch derisive. "Daniel has young eyes. Modern sensibilities."
He pauses.
"I think perhaps those sensibilities are rubbing off on me, because things that I thought couldn't possibly hurt me anymore…"
He trails off, stares down at himself.
"I thought maybe it was his fault that I suddenly felt like this. That he was twisting everything out of shape. But... I don't know. I don't know."
"You're scared," Louis says.
Silence, for a time.
"Yes."
It's barely a whisper. It makes something in Louis ache.
"What scares you? What scared you, last night?"
Lestat goes rigid, but Louis doesn't stop. He can't stop. The only way is through.
"Daniel thought he knew what was going on with you, but I didn't ask him to tell me what he thought. I didn't want his version of your story. I want your version. I want to hear it from you. Because if this is going to work between us"—and, oh, of course, Lestat perks up minutely at the idea of an 'us'—"I need all of you."
"You have all of me," Lestat whispers, voice trembling. "You've always had all of me."
He's not lying. Not in the way he means it. But that's not what Louis needs, right now. It's not what either of them need. More of what has always been will not change things.
"I don't," Louis says, soft but firm. "Not really. Not the things that scare you. And don't say they don't matter, because they matter to me."
Lestat had been about to retort, but that last sentence silences him. Good—because Louis has more to say, even if he doesn't know exactly what it is until it's tumbling out of his mouth.
"Do you know how it felt, last night," he blurts out, "to realise that Daniel understood more about how to help you then I did? You were terrified. You were terrified of me, and I didn't know what to do. Everything I tried was wrong. Felt like I was fucking dying. The only thing worse than seeing you hurt was hearing you praying for God to save you from me. Seeing you look at me like that."
Lestat holds his gaze with wet eyes, expression growing more agonised with each word. When Louis finishes, he hangs his head, staring vacantly down at the water.
It feels like a surrender.
"I wasn't looking at you, Louis," he murmurs. "You weren't there."
Perhaps he can see the question in Louis' face, then, because he shifts uncomfortably. Runs his tongue over the inside of his lip, like he's about to speak.
Almost starts. Then stops. Swallows.
Finally, he lets out a long, tremulous sigh.
“For so long, I was fine. I am fine.”
Silence.
“But…?” Louis prompts gently.
Lestat exhales again, slow and deep, but the tension in his shoulders does not leave him.
He wets his lips. He closes his eyes. Everything is still.
“I feel his hands on me,” he whispers, each word heavy with untold effort.
Louis knows. In his soul, he knows. But he asks anyway.
“Magnus?”
Lestat swallows again, eyes twitching behind their lids. He nods. It’s small, shaky. “His voice, too. Against my ear. Against my skin. Cold lips. Cold breath.” He shivers. Covers it with a strained laugh. “It's not even— it's not even that that was what it was, most of the time. It was simple, mostly. He was violent. I fought. He—”
His eyes flick open and he stops, staring blankly at the other end of the bath. For a very long while, he is silent, and with each second that passes, Louis becomes more and more afraid that he’s completely gone and last night is about to repeat itself.
But it doesn't. Lestat makes his way back.
“Even when it was… gentle,” he continues—it looks like the word tastes wrong in his mouth, but he presses onward. “It was only when I was exhausted—when he had exhausted me.”
He chuckles wetly. “A rare reprieve, for him, for me, for…” He swallows, suddenly intently focused on the line where the ceiling meets the wall. “For him to do what he wanted, without fuss.”
Silence, then. Lestat doesn't look at him. Doesn't elaborate. But Louis can infer. Lestat expects him to infer.
He fed on me every night, Lestat had said, once, a lifetime ago. Louis can't say that his description of the room full of beautiful blond corpses hadn't made him wonder if something was being left unspoken.
“But he desired me most when I resisted," Lestat carries on. "The harder I fought, the greater his love.”
Yes, desire. Unmissable, even clothed in euphemism and hidden in silences. But love? Louis can't leave that unchallenged.
“That wasn't love, Les.”
Lestat shakes his head emphatically. “He did love me. He loved me more than anything. He told me.”
A pause. Louis is staring at Lestat, and for a brief instant all he can see is Claudia.
The worst part was when he told me he loved me. She'd said that, hadn't she? Before, during, and after. Before. During. After.
But Lestat is not Claudia. No, Lestat turns away, and his eyes flutter closed.
“And," he whispers, "by the end of it, I loved him.”
Louis feels like someone's carved him hollow. Like his chest cavity's been emptied out, and nothing can ever fill it again.
He can't see Lestat's face, but there's trepidation etched in the line of his body.
Oh. He's bracing for admonition.
Louis presses his hands together, newly conscious of their temperature. To his relief, he finds that they're warm.
"Hey," he says, proffering one. "May I…?"
Lestat nods minutely, eyes flicking dazedly to him. Louis tentatively runs a hand up the side of Lestat’s jaw. Lestat leans into the touch.
Louis keeps his voice as gentle as he can. “That why you still beg for mercy at the memory of him?”
Lestat’s eyes snap open. Blue fire. Fuck. Wrong thing to say.
“You don't understand.”
“What?”
“You don’t under—”
“I heard you," Louis says, rubbing his thumb against Lestat's cheekbone. “You're right. I don't understand. But how can I understand any of it unless you say something to me?"
Lestat’s voice is small. “Yes, well, I'm saying something to you now.”
Louis crouches down, coming level with him over the lip of the bathtub. He cups Lestat’s face in both hands, leaning in until their noses are touching. “Yes. Yes,” he breathes, something rising up in his chest, his voice teetering on the edge of a sob. “You are. You're saying that he haunts you. You're saying that…”
Lestat pulls away, wordless. Louis lets him go.
Silence.
“You told Daniel that I haunted you,” Lestat says suddenly, “and it wasn’t because…”
“Because I was afraid of you? I was afraid of you, at first, if you remember that part. Feared the spectre of you like I feared death.”
Lestat wilts, and it's enough to make Louis relent.
“But then, okay, yeah, it was… oh, come on, you read it. You know it was because I missed you.”
“And what if,” Lestat begins triumphantly, seizing on the admission only to stumble, “what if I miss—”
“Do you?”
Silence, again. God, Louis has to know. This, above anything, he has to know.
Lestat swallows.
“I… I miss…”
He trails off.
When he speaks again, his voice is as fragile as a thread about to break.
“I miss that he loved me.”
Louis wants to scream. He wants to cradle him. He wants to wrench him up from the bath and shake him, tell him that wasn't love, that wasn't love, that wasn't—
The sensation comes unbidden. Cold wind. A gulf of air beneath his feet.
The fall. The slow-healing ache in every part of his broken body, for months after. The even slower-healing ache in his heart.
He never did quite fix himself of that last one, did he?
He sags against the side of the tub and stares up at the blank, white void of the ceiling.
This time, Lestat is the one who eventually breaks the silence.
"Well, there it all is. Another ghost," he says. Tired. Bitter. "Is it everything you thought it might be? Are you left wanting?"
Louis doesn't let the sarcasm thwart him. He is left wanting. He straightens up and looks Lestat in the eye once more.
"Last night," he begins, "Daniel said that he had asked some follow up questions about your turning. Said it got physical. What did he ask, before you..."
Lestat sighs, sagging as though the very thought of talking further exhausts him.
"I don't remember exactly. I... he gave me such a piteous look. Like he thought he understood. Like he—" He chews on his bottom lip. "He called it rape. Like it was simple. Like it fit in a box he already had ready. Like he had decided that was what it was, and that was the end of it. I..."
His mouth closes around nothing.
"You objected to the word?" Louis asks.
"…yes," Lestat murmurs. "No. No. I don't know. I..."
There's a pause.
"I told you—there were moments, between the protestations, when I'd surrender," he blurts suddenly, guiltily, as though it changes anything at all.
"But you didn't want it," Louis says gently.
"No," Lestat whispers, shaking his head. "I didn't want it. I didn't want it. I didn't… but the unwillingness was the thrill, for him. His grand purpose. That was part of the lure of me. I could endure. Had endured."
He absentmindedly traces his fingertips down the scar over his heart. Louis finds himself staring. He won't ask, not now. But he wonders. Lestat follows his gaze with an apprehensiveness that makes Louis feel wrong for looking.
"Yes, I was beautiful, too," Lestat murmurs, nodding. "That was important, of course. That I was perfect for him. Blond hair, blue eyes. Right there, bathed in stage-light. His type."
The way Lestat puts it makes Louis feel genuinely nauseous, and it must show on his face, because Lestat suddenly seems affronted.
"You don't think I'm beautiful?" he asks abruptly.
It's such a childish question that Louis laughs, even as he blinks back tears. "What?" he asks, incredulous. "Yes, I think you're beautiful."
He reaches out again. "I— can I—" he asks clumsily.
Lestat nods, and Louis takes his face gently in his hands once more. "You are beautiful," he says. "Of course you're beautiful. But that's only one part of you. You're not just a body. You're not his thing. You're you. You survived him. You're still here, and he's gone. He's gone.”
"I wish you were right," Lestat breathes.
The floor comes out from under Louis. "He's not dead?"
Panic flits across Lestat's features. "No, I didn't mean— He is dead. I didn't lie to you. I promise. I promise I didn't."
He crushes his eyes shut, as though it'll do anything to erase the memories as they begin to spill from his lips, an avalanche of wrenching, unstoppable remembrance.
"He made me watch him burn. He made me scatter the ashes. He made me make sure he'd never come back. But he had already poured himself into me."
He sucks in a wet, trembling breath.
"He's in my head and in my body. The blood in me is his, and I didn't want it. I didn't ask for it. I told him no. Every time he drank from me, every time he fucked me, every time he took, I said no. And it didn't matter. It didn't—"
He chokes on the words, tears running red down his cheeks.
"And now, two hundred years later, I'm still his. He can do things like that to me, and I can't— He can make me see him instead of you. Make it seem like I'm afraid of you, when I will never be afraid of you, Louis. Never. I love you. I love you more than I ever loved him, more than I've ever loved anyone. I love you. I love you, I love y—"
Louis kisses him. Lestat kisses back like he's been thrown a lifeline, ravenous and desperate, trembling hands pulling awkwardly at him over the lip of the bathtub. Louis surrenders, letting himself tumble into the lukewarm water. Lestat yelps reflexively at the sudden weight. Louis pulls back, bracing his knees against the sides of the tub to lighten the pressure on Lestat's still-healing body.
"No," Lestat pants, "don't stop. I want it. I want it. I can take it."
Louis leans down carefully and kisses him again, as softly as he can.
"I don't want you to have to take it," he says. "I want things to be soft when you need them to be soft."
"Is this your way of politely rejecting me—"
Louis kisses him again. Lestat melts into it, moaning weakly in equal parts pleasure and frustration.
"I'm getting mixed messages here, mon cher," he croaks breathlessly, the joke jarring against the broken, thready sound of his voice.
"I'll say it again, then. I don't want you to have to take it. Not from me. When I said I wanted all of you, that included your comfort, Les. Your well-being."
"What if my well-being necessitates that right now, you—"
Again, Louis gently kisses him quiet.
"Ah, you cannot just keep doing that if you're not going to—"
"No. You're right," Louis says. "You're still injured, and you've just done something really fucking hard. You're exhausted, Les. You're shaking."
"But—"
"If you really wanna fuck, we'll do it tomorrow night, or the night after. Whenever you can move without it hurting."
Lestat lets out a small huff, but he protests no further as Louis lifts himself from the bath.
He's soaked. He'll have to steal another set of clothes. It's not like Lestat will miss them; his wardrobe is bursting with pieces that Louis is entirely sure he's not even aware he owns.
First, though, he leans over and goes through the final stages of washing Lestat's hair, combing the conditioner through the damp strands. Lestat is obligingly quiet. Soon enough, Louis' finished, and he's helping Lestat out of the bath. He has him sit. Towels his hair.
When he's done, Lestat still hasn't said a word.
Louis wraps the towel around Lestat's shoulders and moves round to his front, crouching to come level with him. Lestat stares dazedly through him, half-damp hair falling around his face.
"Hey," Louis says quietly.
Lestat gradually meets his gaze.
"Thank you," Louis says. "For telling me some. I know it hurt to. The telling brings it back. Makes it real again."
Lestat nods minutely. He blinks. His lips part. His throat works a little. Nothing comes.
Abruptly, his hand jerks out to clasp Louis' own. Louis acquiesces easily, meeting palm with palm, warmth with warmth.
"It's okay," he murmurs. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
And the strangest thing about those words, Louis realises, isn't that he didn't consciously plan to speak them. It's that he really, really fucking means them.