Chapter Text
Antoinette was flirting from one guest to the next, smiling and flashing her new necklace with a few well placed gestures. Lestat watched this paltry display with something approaching humor but which tasted much closer to regret.
When he had changed her months ago, it had been with the thought that his thousand lonely nights would come to an end. She was like him in so many regards, flamboyant and exuberant for all the pleasures life could grant. She wished for the world and Lestat had promised it and she took to the nightlife with many stumbles but an overall grace he nearly hated her for.
"Oh and we spoke of going West! Think of me on the big screen!" She laughed, her golden curls rolling like sausages down her back as her flock scuttled in close to feed off her newly adopted wealth.
"You takin' the books when you move out?"
Lestat looked back towards the voice and found it belonged to a handsome black man in a well tailored suit and shiny shoes. He was smiling politely, gesturing to the walls of books he had bought to cultivate the appearance of studiousness which he later learned Antoinette cared not a lick for. Lestat smiled back, turning away from the party and to better listen to the man's thoughts.
"Unfortunately, they will have to be rehomed. Mayhaps even with a handsome man named…?" Lestat trailed off and the man's mind bloomed open like a flower, refractions of Lestat in his mind and a burn of attraction shoved down just as quickly as it came. Just business, his mind said, just the books.
"Louis de Pointe du Lacs, I own the Azalea." He held out his hand and Lestat wished nothing more than to press a kiss to the soft skin between the man's thumb and forefinger. It would not be well received surrounded on all sides with what Louis referred to as Lily White Boys. "And your name, sir?"
The sir ranked Louis, added for pleasantries sake and it was for that reason that Lestat stood and walked to the far side of the room where more bookshelves stood. It was also tucked back a ways, the fireplace hiding them from the sight of the other groups gathered.
"Please, no sir, I'm not my father. I am Lestat de Lioncourt." Lestat held out his hand again and Louis took it with a laugh. He thought him a touch strange, European sensibilities, he thought, and Lestat could not help but find himself charmed. "What titles should I pull for you?"
Louis sputtered a touch and Lestat could feel the blood rise to his cheeks at the thought of this rich white man waiting on him like a common librarian. That was followed by a vivid picture of Louis being thrust up against the bookshelf as Lestat's hands lifted him as they kissed. It was pleasantly tame compared to some of the imaginings he'd been partial to, and that too charmed him. He would be delicious.
They spoke at length on the various copies and Louis quailed when Lestat seemed set on gifting him three rare first editions that he'd never so much as cracked the cover of.
"Please, it would warm my cold heart to know they were going to reside with one who could love them as they deserve." Lestat pleaded, tilting his head boyishly and Louis eventually took them, but only with the promise of taking him out one night to update Lestat's wardrobe.
"You look like you walked out of a Dickens novel." Louis laughed and Lestat was ecstatic that he knew the reference. It also helped that it was not barbed, Louis hadn't meant it as a slight but in a tone and emotion of quiet comradery. "Thursday, 7:30?"
"I will count down the hours," Lestat said more honestly than might be used during such a short acquaintance, but he was not one to hold his hand when there was a prize worth winning; it was that failing which made him so horrendous at cards.
"Lestat!" Antoinette's shrill call echoed over the din and broke the warm bubble he had been lounging in. He caught her eyes and the tightness around her mouth which signified her distaste in company.
"Until next time." Lestat smiled and tilted his head the way he might if he was wearing a hat and Louis smiled, a polite nod to Antoinette before he made his escape weighted down with the books.
His mind was a delicious chaotic stew of joy for the books and the budding promise of new companionship, and Lestat could do nothing but savor it.
"What could you possibly have to talk about with Louis the Bore?" Antoinette asked the room as a whole and the gathered sycophants laughed in time with her. Their minds were vile cesspits of hatred and violence against a man few of them knew, and Lestat became more intimately aware of just how deeply race had ingrained itself into the minds of all this meat. With a wave of his hand, her group fluttered off after the next butterfly and Antoinette looked put out to be deprived of her audience. She leaned against him, full lips leaning close to his ear more to entice than to whisper. He could have heard her from across the room. "Do you plan on killing my boss? He really is dreadfully boring."
"I found him charming." Lestat stated more to gauge her reaction than in any attempt to remain honest. Antoinette laughed again, throaty and grating so close to his ear.
"Louis? That man is so tightly wound round his mother it's a wonder he's not spinning like a top each time she lets him go." Antoinette laughed, leaning down to fix her bust to better show her ample assets. She seemed not to have gathered his actual interest and continued as if they were trading jokes. "He always comes struttin' in like he's the big man, as if he ain't another whore working there just like the rest."
That caught Lestat's attention and Antoinette grinned in enjoyment at another's perceived torment.
"They say Tom only sold him the Azalea cuz they have that fancy room up on the fourth floor with a door only he can open." Antoinette said snidely and he didn't need to read her mind to hear her distasteful thoughts on that matter. "Fucking queer, thinkin' he’s better than me!"
Lestat felt any attraction to her fizzle out. He had hoped her becoming might loosen those pearls she had clutched so tightly, but she seemed disgusted when he drank from a man and annoyed when from a woman. He smirked. "You work there too, darling, what does that make you?"
She hissed at him and huffed off to be subsumed by the pulsing crowd making ruckus mess of their sitting room.
It was this difference in feeding he used as an excuse when two days later Antoinette was hosting a gaggle of giggling women who came to fawn over their velvet curtains and marble in-laid fireplace while they tittered about whichever book they pretended to read while they gossiped instead. Lestat found it a touch tedious and his joke of "eating out" went over poorly when he realized she had hoped to show him off the way she had their crystal chandelier.
Lestat would have rather eaten them.
The Azalea was busy at this time of night, a different singer on stage crooning about a lost love. She was not as talented as Antoinette, but she had a touch more energy and the waiting men seemed not to care about much more than the length of her skirt.
Letting his senses wander, he plucked through minds with the speed and dexterity of a pianist, hopping from key to key, mind to mind. Hunger, sex, and wanting to go home seemed to be seeping from every mind in every direction from the women faking moans in the rooms and the men pretending they don't notice. It was on the fourth floor that he found that familiar heartbeat and singular mind.
Louis' mind was tucked away behind dark curtains, but hummed with the desperate need to go home.
It was painfully easy to make his way up the steps and to the second floor, walking to the edge of the walkway and leaping up to the railings of the third. The sounds of sex permeated the whole floor, skin slapping together and the exaggerated moans and yelps. He would almost be impressed with the showmanship if it didn't nearly drown out the sinful happenings of the floor above.
The fourth floor was deserted. It was a small overhang, more for decoration than anything, presumably for offices and a sole bedroom, currently occupied.
Louis' mind was cracked open like an egg, spilling out its insides. He thought of the unattractive way Tom Anderson leaned over him, the weak grip he kept on Louis' leg, and the unsatisfying rhythm he could not keep up. Interspersed in the occasional pangs of pleasure when Anderson aimed true were thoughts of what dinner would be left out for him and that his quilt at home was softer on his back than the cheap throw which was currently rubbing his shoulder blades raw.
Lestat could not help but lean in to peer through the curtains. The strip of light gave way to much a similar scene as Lestat expected. Tom Anderson was an underwhelming specimen while Louis, spread out on his back like the Birth of Venus, seemed to be sensuality made flesh. Each arch of his toned back was breathtaking, each soft moan when Anderson got lucky with his aim seemed to echo in Lestat's head.
It was easy, child's play really, to slip into Louis' mind and place himself in Anderson's spot.
It was immediate, the difference. Louis threw his head back, letting out three soft pants before he gave an arch of his back to sit himself up, planting his legs on either side of Tom's pale legs, before setting his own pace to ride.
Lestat nearly tore the buttons of his suit free in his haste to open his trousers. His cock was already hard just imaging the tight grip and the frantic almost pained way Louis rode.
Anderson stood no chance. He came weakly in a few pathetic sounding grunts before falling backwards in a sprawl. Louis' mind, steadily growing towards orgasm after he set the pace, rebelled when Anderson slid, slimy and soft, from him. At the forefront was a deep-seated disappointment, but not surprise, and Lestat felt a bolt of disgust that such a pathetic showing from Anderson was the norm and not a rarity.
Louis stood on shaking legs, pulling a white robe from the floor and opening the window to smoke. The acrid scent of cigarettes flamed to life and Lestat stared at the sharp line of Louis' jaw when the lighter illuminated it. With practiced ease, Louis leaned his head back against the nook and watched the people milling below.
Lestat thought he might take himself in hand to finish what the oaf sleeping back on the bed behind him was incapable of, but Louis' mind drifted off in various directions as the sweat cooled on his body. He thought of the sharpness of his mother's disapproval at his whoring while wearing the clothes his whoring bought. A sister floated past, thoughts of her tangled up in a brother, and something about a wedding. There were scattered thoughts of Tom, mostly centering around a horrid amount of self-hatred.
Who else could possibly want me? Louis' mind whispered softly and Lestat nearly dropped down off the roof where he had been lounging to show him the answer to that question. The shame held his hand. It was thick and viscous in Louis' mind, spreading like tar.
For only a single second, Lestat saw himself in Louis' mind. His face was tangled up with so many conflicting feelings that Lestat feared by pulling on one he might unravel the bunch. Clearly, there was some small flame curled up near to that memory, the taste of possibility which Louis could not quite dismiss. It was sugar sweet, hope, when it came to their meeting tonight.
Louis rose not long after, redressing with another man's come still staining his briefs before shaking Anderson awake and walking with him down the stairs to the door.
For the first time all night as he took the stairs back down to the ground floor, Lestat dipped into Anderson's mind. It was, as most human minds were, bland. He thought about his cock and how he was hungry, and faintly about spritzing on some cologne to avoid his wife asking any more questions. Mostly, though, he thought about Louis.
Lestat couldn't hold back a grimace at having something in common with Tom Anderson, yet both watched as the man made his rounds to regulars, charming them with a sweet smile and an earnest charm few could emulate. He remembered names, offered free drinks to people growing frustrated at the wait, and caught men likely to start throwing punches with a casual arm and a listening ear. He was enthralling to watch and Lestat had the privilege to watch Louis turn and spot him, his mind flashing with miniature flashes of pleasure and excitement. He dodged serving trays and ducked around a swinging trombone to meet Lestat around the side of the band.
"Come on!" Louis gestured and Lestat couldn't help but let his hand rest tellingly along the small of his back. Louis paused, looking back at him, his beautiful mouth falling open with surprise but not with a single thought of it being unwelcome.
Louis, with a credit to his skill, finds a tailor open late and willing to be paid extra for quick turnaround. Lestat found the night to be entirely pleasant, more so when he could watch Louis take charge, picking out complimenting fabrics and cuts, his hands brushing over Lestat's shoulders and hips to demonstrate the folds and pleats he wanted done. It was a taste of seduction and Lestat could see clearly that it was unintentionally done, with only the barest whisper of impropriety at the farthest reaches of his mind where his guilt and shame lay buried. It would be a shame to kill him so soon.
Dawn stained the sky when he slipped back into the apartment and to a waiting Antoinette. She was clearly livid, hair done up in curlers and clad in a chiffon slip. One of the book club members laid sprawled and still on their couch, mouth torn open and staining their rug as she dripped empty.
"Could you not clean up after yourself, dear?" Lestat hummed, undoing his jacket and tossing his hat over the coat stand. He hadn't expected an answer and Antoinette gave none, just some drivel from the club, something about the tablecloths. Apparently Samantha had made a rather disparaging remark on them and it had earned her a place at the dinner table. The Lestat of a fortnight ago might have found some humor in that. The Lestat of that night had his mind full of Louis' witty wordplay and their discussions on a local production of a favorite Italian play and found little humor in it.
As he slid into sleep, it was with a dryness on his tongue, a longing to know just how Louis tasted in all senses of the word.
Under Louis' tutelage, New Orleans opened for him like a flower. With a native at his side, new bars seemed to crop up, music halls filled with the croon of horns and shops catering to any assortment of goods and services. Three weeks into their acquaintance Louis took him into a dance hall wearing steel-heeled shoes. In the back corner he taught Lestat the basics of tap dancing and laughed when he could never quite pick up the tune.
There was a small opera house a short drive from Storyville and they spent many nights in its worn velvet seats. Louis had an amazing capacity for compassion and Lestat wished nothing more than to see his favorite plays through his eyes.
The dramas were rather rough in his opinion. The opera house was composed mostly of poor actors and any cast offs from larger playhouses and the slim pickings made him ache to take Louis to a proper opera just to see his reaction when a true artist plied their craft. Yet, each attempt was shut down, each ticket went unused, or he was forced to sit through the play with Antoinette who only ever slandered other singers as beneath her.
"We friends, Lestat?" Louis asked the third time he brought out tickets to a superior showing of an opera only for Louis' mind to be an impenetrable haze of disappointment. When Lestat nodded, Louis waved him to sit down at their reserved table in the Azalea. His dark eyes flashed through the cigarette smoke. "Good, I'm glad to be your friend, Les. But I ain't goin' to no all-white opera house to sit at your back like some paid butler. I won't."
"Well I had thought to give you a chair–" Lestat had joked but stopped when the general buzz of anger in Louis' mind sharpened to a single, clear thought.
He don't understand. Louis looked in that moment a little drawn, and Lestat could sense a growing distance between them the longer they remained quiet.
"Help me understand." He said instantly and while Louis seemed a touch put out to have to explain it, he seemed to grasp Lestat's plea as an honest one.
"It's demeaning, Lestat. You get to walk into any room you want, sit at any table, in any chair." Louis said softly, putting out his cigarette and then using the butt to snuff out any of the flickering ashes. "On a bus, in the street, in those damned poker games. You think I don't know what is going through the heads of all those people when they see me?"
The volley of nasty, snide comments seemed to echo through Louis' mind and for a minute Lestat was shocked by just how accurate he was, even without the gift of mind-reading.
"My apologies, Louis. I had not thought you cared." Lestat said and instead of cooling Louis' temper, it only sent his teeth grinding and his mouth to tighten in the corners as it only did when he was annoyed and refused to let it show. He tried again. "I am unfamiliar with all this–"
"I have my pride. They can take a lot, but they can't take that." Louis pulled out another cigarette and Lestat's hand was out with his lighter before Louis could reach into his pocket.
Lestat did not ask who they were. He may not be the most well read, but even he understood the placeholder they served as. It was the Tom Andersons who thought Louis uppity while indulging in his body and the white John's who turned up their noses at Louis while paying to fuck his whores. It was, Lestat could see clearly in his mind, the men like Lestat who, Louis thought, thought themselves so progressive to care for a colored man while not bothering to inconvenience themselves in any meaningful way.
"I fear I have mistepped." Lestat said softly. An apology was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew from the way Louis' hand had tightened into a fist that the other man would not be open to accepting it.
"Ain't no problem, Lestat." Louis said while his mind and body screamed otherwise. That was Louis he'd come to learn, his mouth spitting pretty lies when the truth was buried behind his eyes and in each flexed tendon.
Lestat had taken the rest of the night to seek out any books on the topic but found most to be sanitized retelling of slave narratives. It was only by charming the pretty dark-skinned woman cleaning the shelves of the History section did he learn of magazine stands where colored voices could publish their thoughts to a colored audience.
He bought three copies, and Lestat read them that night in his coffin, skimming at first, then reading in earnest as the sun slowly rose. Most were tales of struggle, but a few articles featured discussions on various laws and even a rather good science fiction story submitted by a young girl from Storyville.
"Why would they waste the paper?" Antoinette questioned as she lifted the lid of her coffin. Her dress was smeared in places from their last bout of fucking but it was all he could do to have her leave him alone long enough to pick his way through the articles for his meeting with Louis the next night.
"I find them rather exquisite." Lestat said, more to goad her than anything. She just huffed, too tired to fight.
When he opened his mouth the next night, Lestat had not even gotten to mention his purchase of the magazines before Louis had burst into laughter so wild patrons looked back at him in surprise.
Lestat was not one for shame, but he could feel the blood of the accountant he had killed on the way over flood his cheeks and the strange beast that was embarrassment seemed to creep into every corner of his mind. He ached to just scour Louis' mind for the answer which would earn him back whatever regard he had lost, but before he could begin prying, Louis reached across the table and patted his shoulder. It was tender, and his words were said in a low and familiar tenor.
"That's sweet, Lestat, that you're trying." Louis said and there was a touch of humor there, but mostly Louis mind was flooded with the warm, sticky affection tinged with thoughts of my white boy out reading–
"I mean to please you." Lestat said honestly, caught up on Louis' thought of my white boy and the wanting desperately for him to say it aloud.
"Of course you please me, Les." Louis said softly. There was the shame in the corners of his words, seemingly a part of him from brain to marrow, but selling his body off had stripped him of much of his self-consciousness, and the words came out true.
They spent many nights like that. Lestat would express the wonderment of Europe and his many adventures watered down for human ears while Louis would share with him tender truths of his family. Three months into their acquaintance during a drive which ended with them arguing rather passionately on which of La Bohème's songs was the most passionate did he meet Louis' brother yelling at whores.
"You oughtn't be down here." Louis had said and Lestat had been rather annoyed at the distraction yet charmed at the display nonetheless. He was a doting big brother, kind and harsh, threatening when need be but only to protect his brother from far meaner monsters than a cane knife. "Get in, I'll drive you home."
"Lestat de Lioncourt. Friend of Louis'." Lestat introduced himself and Paul sensed instantly that there was a predator in the car with them.
"Ignore him, Lestat. Paul, why did you go out? Grace said she would take you to midnight mass tomorrow." Louis hummed and Lestat let his head lean back as their relationship leaked out from two brains. There was love, thick and vital like lifeblood from Louis and something bordering on paranoia from Paul; this insatiable need to see Louis safe and happy, redeemed in the light of the Lord.
Lestat saw Louis as he truly was, in all his perfection, and accepted it. He had some vague idea of whispering to Paul of his dark gift, to show him what true insanity felt like, but then Louis said something about their childhood and Paul whispered back and Louis laughed so unrestrained that people on the street were forced to stop and watch them pass.
So he let the cruel thought pass and asked for the story which Louis gave in grand, sweeping detail. It was a good story, but Lestat could still hear the parts Louis left out, about how in taking his siblings out into the swamps to hunt for frogs, he had been beaten by his father and starved for days by his mother. He laughed when speaking of finding said frogs under his pillow yet his mind slipped right over the punishment of standing barefoot out on their large porch for hours with his maman watching through the glazed windows.
"You love them." Lestat said. It was not supposed to be a question but it sounded like it. Louis turned off onto a gravel road and then looked over to him questioningly.
"Do you have any siblings, Mr. de Lioncourt?" Paul asked, seemingly to be polite after Louis glared at him.
As a rule, Lestat never talked of his past as anything other than dead and buried. Antoinette had asked about past lovers, but he had evaded. His first fledgling had been poorly done, kept too close and thus knew him too intimately to ever see him as a Maker. He knew not to make that same mistake again, yet Louis and his mad brother were not his fledgling, just rather interesting meat. And Louis–
"Brothers. I was the youngest." Lestat said softly. It felt strange to lay himself bare for the first time in nearly a century. At Louis' soft smile, the words were drawn up out of whatever place he had hidden them. "All dead now, and better for it."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Louis said and meant it honestly, followed by Paul's noticeable softening, his voice quiet over the hum over the automobile, "They are with God now."
"I should hope not!" Lestat barked out and then felt the stirrings of self-consciousness he hoped to cover with a smile and a cheeky recovery. "They were horrid men. It seems my line ends with me."
"Then let them burn in Hell." Paul said and Louis yelled out a startled "Paul!" but Lestat laughed loud and deep, turning back to Louis' brother was his first genuine smile and an outstretched hand which Paul took in confusion before Lestat said, "A man after my own heart!"
Louis' mind was ablaze by the time they reached the house. It was a handsome colonial and his thoughts flitted from self-disgust at the long and bloody history and pride at how it looked all lit up for Lestat.
"Come on, Paul." Louis said and Paul jumped up and out. A woman, too young to be their mother but of age to be the sister from the men's memories, stepped out onto the porch with a stern look on her face and crossed arms, her voice as solid as her stance when she called, "Where the hell you been, Paul? We was lookin' for you everywhere!"
"Louis brought his white man 'round." Paul snitched and Grace looked at the automobile with interest. Lestat had stepped out and leaned back casually, raising a hand in a wave which she returned hesitatingly. Quietly, in a voice so soft Lestat would have been unable to hear if he was alive, Grace shattered Louis's good mood with four words.
"Mama wants to talk."
"Give me a minute, Lestat." Louis said and Lestat nodded. Grace watched him climb the stairs before turning to watch him with a calculating gleam in her eyes. She walked down the porch and stopped a respectful distance from the fence. She was to be married soon, Louis had said.
"I hear congratulations are in order. You are soon to be married?" Lestat smiled charmingly and within minutes, he could see the softening in her mind. He was not one of Louis' men, she thought and Lestat realized just why both siblings had started so cold. How often did they have to face the men their brother fucked so that they might remain in their rich home, wearing silk dresses and expensively cobbled shoes?
"Well, Mr. de Lioncourt, please come in. My boy has no sense of propriety." Florence du Pointe du Lacs had stepped out onto the porch. She was a stout woman in her middle fifties and looking every year. Her face was made more unattractive by the bitter scowl she wore and whose energy was reflected in the sharp points of her thoughts.
Despite the promise of her eldest child and the testimony of a much beloved youngest youngest son, the matron saw a sexual deviant brought home to roost in the purity of her daughter and sick baby boy.
Lestat felt his teeth descend and draw blood from his cheek as he kept them hidden behind his lips. The vitriol she held for her eldest, for Louis who even now seemed to shrink beside her, made him want to eat so; no, turn Louis and then feed him his own mother as he experienced his becoming–
Even as he walked up the stairs and was welcomed into their home, his mind was caught on the simple fact that there was nothing which stopped him from making two fledglings. He could have Louis, could steal him right out from under them, could keep Louis, if he so wanted.
The siblings were welcoming and warmed by the knowledge that their contentment with him brought Louis joy, Lestat calculated each comment to be lightly comedic and friendly. He avoided each topic which had made Louis flinch during their early conversations and mostly demanded stories of Louis as a young terror. He had apparently ruined his mother's prized rosebush when he was a young boy, replaced spices into wrong jars and forced his mother to serve a peach tart made with cups of salt instead of sugar, and spilled ink over an important business deal of his father's.
Except, their minds told him, he hadn't. Paul had fallen on the rosebush during a partially quick turn during a game of tag. Grace had read the labels wrong and Louis had claimed the tart as his own creation instead. His father, drunk and not coherent enough to keep all his limbs straight, had ruined it. When he woke sober, Louis was old enough to know that arguing only added more to the punishment.
"I'm sorry about them." Louis apologized as they drove away, waving to the two shadows on the porch, Paul long since gone to bed. "They are protective."
"I would say you are protective of them." Lestat reached his arm out over the back of the seat and allowed his fingers to just brush the tweed patterning of the other man's sleeve. "Don't think I missed the glances thrown your way. How many of their punishments did you take?"
"Oh, we all got punished. I just knew sometimes it could be just me. They would do the same for me."
They are not worthy of you, Lestat thought, but I will be.
Antoinette was singing at the Azalea that night and when Louis dropped him off at the house, he invited the man in for a drink and to his immense joy, Louis agreed.
He was so open with me tonight. Variations on that thought drifted through their conversation as they discussed a recent art piece he had acquired solely because Louis had mentioned it being a favorite movement of his. The couch felt like miles but as they spoke, the distance closed and their bodies drifted closer. He faked sips at his whisky as Louis grew more animated while pointing out the symbolism of the crushed blue colored sky.
The door opened and Lestat's stomach rolled with a crushing disappointment that it signaled that dawn approached and Louis would slip back into the world of the living.
"I've kept you too long, I ought to be going." Louis smiled, pleasantly loose from the liquor and good company, so much so that he missed the dismissive look Antoinette shot him as she removed her sleek fur coat. "Good night, Lestat. Antoinette."
"Good night." Lestat said softly, waving at him from the doorway. Antoinette's eyes were on his back, sharp and biting. When he shut the door, he could feel the return of tedious arguments rising in the air. "Might as well get it out now."
"Are you fucking him?" Antoinette demanded. He looked her over. Her lipstick was perfect, an impossibility after hours of singing, and her hair was coiled tightly to her head but the strands around her neck were loose, grabbed at. They had never discussed outsiders in their relationship, never had need to, and now he wished they had just so that he would have some footing on which to stand against her.
"I have yet to touch him in any way other than platonic, my lovely." He promised truthfully, but Antoinette was not an idiot for all that it would have been easier if she was.
"But you want to? Fuck him, that is?" Antoinette accused and Lestat sighed and turned to the stairs. There were claws in his shoulder and he was yanked around. "Lestat–"
She screeched when he grabbed her hand and accidently snapped a finger. Clutching it to her chest, she looked at him incredulously as it slowly straightened out and healed. Lestat was more focused on the silk shirt which had been mauled, torn to strips and stained with his blood. It had been one Louis had picked out, touching the fine fabric and then putting back when the tailor had told him the price for a yard. Lestat had bought the whole bolt and the shirt's twin sat in a small wrapped box for the next night it seemed Louis might be in need of a gift.
"You ruined this shirt." He hissed and Antoinette only glared at him and marched past, stopping every few steps to throw nasty glares over her shoulder.
The chill continued the next night and the night after. More parties were thrown, more people invited, and yet Lestat found himself out more nights than in. Louis could always use company at the Azalea and on a few nights, they even drove to Louis' family home for a dinner which must have been delicious if everything did not taste like paste in his mouth.
The de Pointe du Lacs were like a particularly interesting house of cards just waiting for a stray wind to come knock them down. The mother oscillated between love and exasperation, his sister Grace allowed for his blunders because Louis liked him, and Paul seemed interested in his knowledge of the Bible while despising his lack of interest in talking about it. Lestat put up with the tedium of humanity for the simple fact that it pleased Louis.
His mind was always so bright when they sat around the same table, and it was filled with the same thought revolving around, sharp and lovely, that I can have this, I can have this, I can have–
Lestat had never been on such good behavior. He played nice, put away his claws and teeth, became the playful cat in place of deadly predator, and watched as Louis fell into his orbit. Or, he thought the night Grace had pulled him aside to hug him, perhaps he was falling into Louis'.
Anderson was the only roadblock to an otherwise smooth relationship.
Lestat had seen men's perceived entitlement to whores get out of hand, and each night Louis turned Anderson away with a gentle hand and a soft, lowered voice, Lestat could see the entitlement begin to fester.
He'd thought to see when the man might snap. It would have been something to break up the monotonous nights, to see Louis flaming with righteous anger. Lestat imagined the cane blade tucked into the flapping skin of Tom Anderson's throat with glee.
It was that thought which was swirling through his mind when he walked into the Azalea with Antoinette on his arm that he caught the tension in the air.
The whores were more tense than usual, and Lestat gained their worry when their eyes continued to flash upwards to the fourth floor where one of the windows, the office, shone like a beacon.
"Mr. Louis said to tell you he's sorry for missing dinner and to enjoy the night on him." The little page boy explained, listing off the words as if he had worried he might forget. Lestat looked up at the window and as Antoinette took the stage, he let his senses expand until he could hear the argument clearly, layered over top of Louis' heartbeat.
"--do? You think that matters to a man like him?" Louis yelled and the woman, Brickhouse he thought, just grunted. "Paid back in full and still–"
Lestat stood and took the stairs two at a time. Antoinette's eyes burned a hole in the back of his well-tailored suit. The halls were mostly deserted this early in the night. Debauchery was best served at night, and most mingled below, throwing out lines to catch stupid fish. The top floor was roped off, but left unguarded and he only jumped to the roof when the door opened and the woman marched past in a tiff.
She'd left the door open and he slipped inside and shut it with care for the supine form on the couch.
Lestat thought him horribly hungover, sprawled out with limbs loose and shoes off. He had stripped down to an undershirt and Lestat found there was something charming of a Louis not so put together. His face was covered with a tea towel and the ice wrapped inside had begun to melt and drip down his neck like rivulets of blood.
"Oh, Louis if I had know hard drinking were on the table–" He started and Louis sat up so quickly the ice slipped from his hands and scattered across the wooden floor, revealing the abomination that had been made of his face.
Louis' left eye had been swollen shut, his lip split and dried blood still clung to the edges where the ice had not washed it away. His cheek was pink and inflamed and his pulse pounded loudly in Lestat's ears. Louis tried to hide it, turning his face to the window as if Lestat could not feel the way the blood pooled in the places where punches must have caught him. He only spoke when he finally knew his voice could be tight and controlled. He reached out a soft hand and turned the melted face to better see it in the light.
"Who?" Lestat didn't need an answer. Louis' mind conjured it up anyways, the sound of Anderson's voice catching him alone behind the Azalea, the grip on his arm Louis made the mistake of shoving off, of the people who had watched as Anderson had shoved him down, sick in the knowledge that so much as raising his arms could get him arrested, of the sound of a button popping open and the knowledge if Bricks had not come looking– "I'll kill him."
Louis laughed coldly. He could have no idea of the truth of Lestat's statement. Lestat would rip off his cock and feed it to him, flay him until he could no longer scream. He would boil the man, or break off pieces and feed them to the massive creatures who lurked under the marshy waters.
"It ain't nothing, Lestat." Louis brushed off the hand, leaning back and trying to play off the whole incident while his mind revealed how badly his back twinged each time he moved. "Just a scuffle with a couple a few hours back. Fell down some stairs."
"It seems the stairs have won. Why did you not… fight back?" Lestat demanded, standing to collect the larger pieces of ice slowly melting into the floorboards and re-wrapping them, placing it back on Louis' swollen check.
"You know damn well why." Louis hissed. He was not meeting his eye anymore, mind circling back and examining each indignity with shame so thick it nearly choked them both. Lestat sat there on the couch and felt something approaching shame rise up in him too.
Entertainment, he'd thought. Louis sat quietly as Lestat rubbed a soft hand across the other man's knuckles. Silently, he raised a finger to his mouth and nicked a finger. Louis watched with his mind rolling in warning; he was faced with a predator and his body told him to run while his mind clung stubbornly to talk of European sensibilities.
Reverently, he slid the blood across his lips and Louis had to have felt as the split lip closed. Next came the cut over his eyebrow and while he could do little about the black eye forming right then, already Louis looked better, more put together.
"Why would he think this is the way to handle such things?" Lestat derided and then a small flame of anger rose in his belly as Louis laughed. It only cooled when Louis sighed and drooped tiredly forward, his head coming to rest on Lestat's shoulder.
"Cuz he can, Lestat. Don't you know that?" Louis whispered.
Something twisted inside him, along the nape of his neck where Magnus' cold hand had first touched him, pulling him from his bed, Nicki's arms. It felt reverent in this moment, the way he remembered only in fragments from falling to his knees in cathedrals surrounded by choirs whose voices rebounded back on him until thoughts were unnecessary. Now, with the gentle crooning of a trumpet rising up from the band below, encircling them in the moment, Lestat wanted to tell him. Louis' face was tucked into his throat and he could pretend to tell it to the night sky and not the man half in his arms. Tell this man his story, a fragile mortal who would die in a few decades but would do so knowing him.
He ignored the twist in his heart at even thinking about allowing the words Death and Louis in the same sentence.
"When I was a young man in Paris…" Lestat whispered. As if he had been holding it behind his teeth, it came spilling out, the chill of Magnus' fingers, the way his hands had sent waves of revulsion with each soft touch, the way his nails would bite into his bony hips. When he had gone as far as he could, never quite touching on his final night alive, but Louis would have been blind to not sense his deliberate withholdings. Louis was anything but blind, and a hand reached up and traced his throat as Lestat discreetly wiped away his bloody tears.
"This man dead, Lestat?" Louis asked and righteous, painful, vindictive love roared up his chest and warmed his cold heart. Louis understood, not in its horrible entirety, but in the powerful touching something which they had no right to lay hands on. How could he not?
"Killed himself not long after." Lestat hummed and then Louis leaned up. Lestat's blood had lessened the swelling and he had color back in his cheeks.
"Coward." Louis hissed in French and Lestat couldn't help but laugh, letting his head brush the underside of Louis chin as he just held himself back from burying himself into Louis' warm body.
They parted not long after, Louis to do rounds and mend any ruffled feathers and Lestat to go and hunt. His taste that night was pointed and the cruel white men he cut and drained that night all had the face of Tom Anderson.
The following days were filled with tedious parties and trips to the opera with Antoinette who demanded to see the new Soprano who had taken New Orleans by storm, then ruined the whole night by complaining through the whole show. Lestat sat in his expensive box seats rueing ever agreeing to attend and not quite being able to shove down the thought that the night would have been infinitely more enjoyable with Louis beside him.
Then the invite came in the mail.
"Who do you know over in the Black Quarter?" Antoinette demanded the night it had been delivered. She tore into the paper and Lestat resisted the urge to tear it from her hands. The invite, printed on thick, expensive cardstock and inlaid with rich, dark ink, was undeniably telling. A note slipped out with it and Antoinette grabbed it before he could. "'Join us, Mr. Lestat, for my brother's sake, if not for the sake of my sanity in wrangling my brothers. Grace.' What a forward woman."
"Louis' sister." Lestat hummed and a burst of pride bloomed behind his ribs. He knew he could be charming, just as he knew he could be extremely off putting, and there was something precious about being invited solely because Louis' family could see how happy he could make their son with his presence alone.
"You can't be going!" Antoinette laughed incredulously. "A Negro wedding in that house with that man!"
"Louis and I are friends and I quite like his sister." Lestat hummed, going to scour his closet for what to wear so as not to blend in yet also not outshine the other guests. Louis hated being reminded of their differences in station so Lestat decided he hated it too.
His words were also not a lie. Paul was a tedious test in his control, but Lestat had refrained from anything which could jeopardize their relationship for the way he knew despite the connection he and Louis shared, the man would, for the moment at least, pick his family over Lestat. For now. Grace he liked most. She was whip smart and able to break apart arguments with the skill of a professional orator. Their horrid mother on the other hand, of her he could barely hold back his hatred of.
Louis had noticed his recindent attitude but said nothing more than a quiet reproach of his name. It had felt like the first shift and it had started his mind thinking about how he could possibly see Louis more.
The wedding was weeks away and when Antoinette hosted her next night luncheon to make up for the fact that she was never seen out before nightfall, Lestat slipped out the backdoor and made his way to the Azalea in high spirits.
"Oh, you're gonna be insufferable now, ain't you?" Louis laughed when he spotted Lestat waving the invitation as they sat at their table. "Invited to one wedding, and the man thinks he's family."
It was clearly a joke, and Lestat forced himself to take it as one thought the words stung a touch.
"And you dared claim I was lacking in charm!" Lestat said instead and it made a soft moment between them. Louis was happy, truly happy, even with the bruises just starting to fade along his chin. Unbidden, Lestat asked, "Have you given the stairs their due for daring to touch a hair on your precious head?"
"I'm keepin' away from stairs for now." Louis hummed and he could feel the appreciation for Lestat's tactful dodging of the true perpetrator both in his soft smile and the warmth of his mind. "Thanks, though. For the other night."
"My pleasure, mon cherie." Lestat waved it away while he was near to bubbling in his joy. The term of endearment was the only thought in Louis' head, just replaying Lestat's words and working to keep down a blush.
The night of the wedding he showed his face right as the sun set. Antoinette had been fuming, then pleading when that failed, then angry when he told her not to come. All his hard work on Louis' family would be ruined the moment Antoinette showed her face.
It was in full swing by the time he opened the gate and he could see Grace calling to her brothers in the audience. Lestat sat his gift, an expensive China set imported from the continent, on the table and then quietly skirted the edges until he could see Louis clearly. He was laughing and pulling Paul to his side, needling him into joining what Lestat realized was a dance only when their mother brought out the shoes.
Lestat thought it might have been demeaning to force them to remember such a time when they danced for pennies in the streets, but Louis' mind saw it differently. It was bubbly from the wine and sated from the food; Lestat could taste the memory of spice on his tongue when touching Louis' thoughts. Almost unwillingly, he found himself joining their revelry. It had been years since he had just slipped into a gathering, and it felt strange, even when he nearly snapped the arm off a clearly intoxicated man who placed a lumbering arm over his shoulders. He was in a good mood and simply fractured his wrist.
Louis was passion made flesh, picking up the tune and moving with the music, feet clicking in time with the beat as he and Paul circled each other, each in tune. Lestat clapped when they fell to the ground and only then did he touch Louis' mind. On the constructed dance floor, Louis' eyes opened and immediately caught Lestat's, mouth breaking into a smile.
"You came!" Louis laughed and soon he was engulfed by de Pointe du Lacs. It was like being pleasantly suffocated. Grace gave him a peck on the cheek and took in his flamboyant dinner jacket with a soft laugh and thought French White indeed. Louis and his Mother were seemingly on good terms, talking quietly and for once his presence did nothing to insult the matriarch, which in turn fed Louis' joy.
Paul was unbelievably quiet, though Lestat only noticed it because it was on Louis' mind as the man made his rounds. Lestat glanced back to where Paul sat, another piece of checkered cake on the plate in front of him and mind the steady rocking of waves against a shore, repetitive and thoughtful.
"You are quite a talented dancer." Lestat offered, not due to any real care, but because Louis' mind calmed when Lestat sat down and drew Paul into conversation. Except, for the first time in nearly a year of their acquaintance, Paul had no interest in discussing religion.
"You care for Louis?" Paul asked. He had finished his cake and now looked at the desert table as if he might grab another, but glanced back when Lestat said nothing. "Well, Mr. Lioncourt?"
"Yes, I care for him very deeply." Lestat answered honestly. He wondered if Paul wanted an argument on the sanctity of sodomy.
"You the devil, I know it. The birds told me so. But…" Paul hissed. His eyes stayed locked to Lestat's and the man, for the first time in their knowing each other, became rather interesting. How often did humans brush off that worry in the back of their mind as they walked into his home and to their deaths? Paul sighed and both of their eyes were drawn to where Louis was dancing with a pretty dark haired girl. Her thoughts were the same as Lestat's, thinking about the handsome cut of Louis' shirts and the way his hands felt spread along her lower back. Lestat would have drained her dry if only for the fact that the only thing Louis thought of was finishing the dance to come sit beside himself and Paul.
"So devilish am I?" Lestat said eventually. "Why not tell your brother, then?"
"He is enthralled by you. And it will only end one way." Paul sighed, and suddenly he looked very tired and very old for one so young. He caught Lestat's eyes and frowned. "Louis can never be like you, a Devil. It would rip him apart inside. You both would be disappointed. Go back to that White woman of yours, and forget Louis."
"Forget Louis?" Lestat repeated dumbly. He felt off balance and in payment he tore into the fleshy soft parts of Paul's mind. It flaked away like tissue paper, and the man gave a startled cry, pained and frightened.
It was there, as obvious as a punch to the face, laid out in painful detail. Paul would eat cake and dance with his sister. He would pull Louis free from that sick, sick, sick man and convince him to marry in the eyes of God. He would follow Louis to the roof as they always did to watch the sunrise and there, clean as God's fingers. Having done all he could, he would simply…take that next step.
Lestat withdrew too quickly and Paul made a panicked, pained noise which drew eyes to them. Louis' fear rolled over from the dance floor. Lestat had jumped to his feet, for the second time that night, wrong footed. There was no helping it, not now that Paul was quietly sobbing and Lestat turned and caught Louis before he could reach his brother and in the most horrified tone possible, leaned in to whisper in his ear.
"Your brother said he wished to walk off the roof as the sun rose." Lestat panted, shooting a mock-worried look over his shoulder to Paul who had quieted and instead held his head in his hands.
The party broke up after that and Lestat felt torn when he was forced to depart before dawn. It would have been a perfect time to offer his shoulder and comfort a grieving Louis who had fallen to his knees before his brother, frantic with whispering. He could have been the one to encircle him in his arms, to hold his head in his hands as he sobbed. It would have been beautiful.
Instead he let himself into his back door, chatted politely with the handful of people still milling about the apartment, drunk and sprawling across any piece of furniture able to hold them up.
Antoinette was half in the lap of a handsome man, his hand resting on her hip and his face tucked into her neck. Neither moved much when he slipped past, but the man's mind was laughing at him as he passed, swirling with Antoinette's tasteless comments which she dripped into his ear. Something about unnatural company.
Lestat paused at the bottom of the stairs.
He was tired, worn out from recent nights he spent with Louis instead of out hunting, yet that sharp piece of himself seemed to rip and tear at his stomach. He turned.
"Thomas, yes?" Lestat hummed, throwing himself down carelessly on the couch beside him. The man was surprised, thinking first of Antoinette's annoyed rambling about him, then of the bright blue color of his eyes. "Dear, what a handsome ascot. I had one such as this–"
It was easy to draw him in and Antoinette grew more tense as Thomas turned away from her, brushed her legs from his lap and turned to animatedly discuss the newest news reel he saw with Lestat. The others had left, pushed out by a gentle mental nudge until all that remained was them and the fragile human between them.
"I could whip those troops into shape–" he prattled on, something about armaments that Lestat could care less about, and it was easy to simply tilt his head back and bite.
Antoinette made a sound, something between startled and annoyed, and that only riled up his blood more. As he drank in long gulps, he wished for it to go on forever, for the spark of fear to inch on indefinitely, for Louis to be here, to be under him, to be fading softly as the taste of death crept in–
The body dropped to the floor with a thud and Antoinette got up, furious at the splatter of blood on her dress.
"He was mine!" She hissed.
"You were too slow." Lestat hummed and Antoinette in this light looked almost palatable, worn down from the sunlight just outside their thick curtains. She was too tired to be vindictive and too hungry to do much more than huff at the stains. When she leaned in to bite at his neck, he scruffed her like a cat and redirected her to his mouth. They kissed and then her dress dropped to the floor and they found themselves in the bed, in part because Antoinette found the coffins a touch distasteful to fuck in.
And if it was Louis' face he imagined, and his voice which Lestat thought to hear with each moan, and his fingers he pretended to feel down his back, then it was between him and his nonexistent God.